Sense of Evil - Kay Hooper [113]
“Like closing a circuit,” Rafe said slowly. “Or maybe . . . opening one. All this started when I held your wrists. Both of them.”
“Alan, why on earth would I trust you?” Dana Earley demanded.
“Because you want a good story, you want to find out what happened to Cheryl Bayne, and you don't want to be the next blonde on the menu.” He paused. “Probably in that order.”
Dana didn't bother to be indignant. “So you found out that I have police sources in Alabama you want me to tap, and in exchange you'll share information you got from your own sources in Florida.”
“Yes. Look, you're TV and I'm newspaper; if we work this right we can both be heroes.”
“Or one of us could be dead. Like me. Alan, if Cheryl is dead it has to be because she got too close. I'm not so sure I want to get too close to this guy, story or no story.”
“Which,” Alan said, “is why we have to move fast.”
“Jesus. I know I'm going to regret this.”
Isabel turned slightly so that they were facing each other, glanced down at the bloody ground where the horribly mutilated body of a young woman she had both liked and felt sorry for had so recently lain, and her mouth firmed. “We should be somewhere else,” she said.
“No.”
She looked at Rafe.
“We should be here. We need to be here, Isabel.”
“Why?”
“Because two women died here. Because evil did what it wanted to do, needed to do, here.”
The sound of thunder grew louder, more ominous.
“It's disrespectful. Let the rain wash away her blood.”
“That isn't the investigator talking,” he said.
Isabel smiled wryly. “No. It isn't. I liked her, you know. She felt isolated and misunderstood—and I could relate. I'm sorry she's dead.”
“I know. So am I. But the only thing we can do for her now is stop her killer before he does that to someone else.”
Before he does it to you.
Isabel could almost hear his words in her head. Or maybe she did hear them. Whichever it was, she knew he was right. “Yes,” she said.
“The universe put us here. And it put us here, and now, for a reason. Remember what you told me? We leave footprints when we pass. Skin cells, stray hairs. And energy. He left his energy here, and recently. He left his hate, and his anger, and the stamp of his evil.”
There was a flash in the distance, and Isabel said, almost to herself and with a touch of fear in her voice, “I can smell it. But it's lightning, not brimstone.”
His fingers tightened around hers. “Is it? You said you had to face it this time. Confront it this time. That ugly face evil always hides behind something else. You have to face it. But, Isabel, you won't do it alone. Not this time. Not ever again.”
She drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I didn't expect that. I'm not quite sure how to deal with that.”
“The same way you deal with everything else,” he said, smiling faintly. “Head-on.”
“Before the storm gets here.”
He nodded. “Before the storm. Before the rain washes away the blood, and the lightning changes the energy here. The energy in this place—his and ours, even anything left of hers—is what we need to help us take the next step. There's nothing disrespectful about that. It's doing our job. It's fighting evil the only way we can.”
“How do you know so much?”
“I've been paying attention.”
Isabel hesitated only another instant, then held out her right hand. “Okay. Let's see where the next step takes us.”
He put his left hand into her right one.
Hollis said, at the time and long afterward, that there should have been something, some outward sign, to indicate what turned out to be a most astonishing event. But, outwardly at least, there was nothing. Just two people facing each other, holding hands, their faces calm but eyes curiously intent.
Mallory took a step closer to Hollis, murmuring, “I get the feeling I've missed something important.”
“Beats the hell out of me,” Hollis told her. “I mean, I know it has to do with this shield of Rafe's, but I have no idea what they're trying to do about it.”
“Get rid of it, maybe?”
“No, from what Isabel told me, that would probably not be such a good idea.