Sense of Evil - Kay Hooper [90]
“Waiting for me to blow my stack?” he asked.
“Well, law-enforcement officials we work with tend to get a little upset when they find out they've been left out of the loop. Even for a very good reason. So, let's just say it wouldn't surprise me if you did.”
“Then,” Rafe said, “your senses really are in a box. And I'm not just talking about the extra ones.” His voice was very calm, almost offhand. He got to his feet. “When do I meet this telepath?”
Isabel checked her watch. “Forty-five minutes. We'll have to leave in thirty to make the meeting.”
“Okay. I'll be in my office until then.”
She watched him leave the room and continued to gaze at the open doorway until Hollis appeared just a minute or two later.
“Isabel?”
“The thing that actually scares me,” Isabel said as though they were continuing a conversation begun sometime before, “is that I have this uneasy feeling he's at least three steps ahead of me. And I don't understand how he's doing that.”
“The killer?”
“No. Rafe.”
Hollis closed the door behind her, then came in and sat down at the conference table. “He's still surprising you, huh?”
“In spades. He just never reacts to things the way I think he's going to.”
Mildly, Hollis said, “Then maybe you're thinking too much.”
“What do you mean?”
“Stop trying to anticipate, Isabel. Instead of thinking about everything, why not try listening to your instincts and feelings?”
“You sound like Bishop.”
Hollis was a little surprised. “I do?”
“Yes. He says I only get blindsided when I forget what my senses are for. That I have to accept and understand that what I feel is at least as important as what I think.”
“More important,” Hollis said. “For you. Especially now, I imagine.”
“Why now?”
“Rafe.”
Isabel frowned and looked away.
“He reached out to you, Isabel. You wanted him to. You let him. But you couldn't reach back. You weren't quite ready to take that chance.”
“I've known the man a grand total of about four days.”
“So? We both know time has nothing to do with it. You and Rafe connected in those first few hours. You were wide open because you always are—or were. He was definitely attracted and unusually willing to open himself emotionally, or so it seemed to me. Jesus Christ, Isabel, you two strike sparks when you touch. Literally. Are you telling me you can't see a sign from the universe that clear?”
“We're going over old ground here,” Isabel said tightly.
“Yes, but you keep missing the point.”
“And what is that?”
“Those control issues of yours. You can be flip about them if you want, but we both know they're at the heart of this entire situation.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You came into this as confident as always, sure of yourself and your abilities. In control. I don't know, maybe you were a little more vulnerable than usual because it's this particular killer, this old enemy, that you were after. Or maybe that had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was just a case of right place, right person—and really lousy timing.”
“I'll agree with that much, anyway,” Isabel muttered.
“Doesn't really matter. The fact is, you found yourself losing control, and not just of your own emotions. Your abilities were suddenly different. You were so wide open you didn't have a hope in hell of being able to even filter all the stuff coming at you. You could do that before, I'm told. Filter what came through, exert a kind of control over it even if you couldn't block it out. But once you got to Hastings, once you connected with Rafe, you didn't even have that.”
“What happened here was nothing that hadn't happened before, as far as my abilities go.”
“No, but the scale of it was different. You've already admitted that much yourself.”
Reluctantly, Isabel nodded.
“And there he was, so close. Too close. All of a sudden, you got very spooked. So you opened the door to your chamber of horrors, thinking that would drive him away and things could get back to normal. But it did just the opposite. It