Cullen Ruppe was a dark man in his fifties, powerfully built through the shoulders and arms, and with a longtime rider's slim hips and strong legs. He was also, Nate had informed Quentin under his breath, apt to view himself as a badass, possibly why he was apparently hell-bent on giving everybody a hard time. Nobody was searching his tack room, not without permission from Management or, failing that, a warrant.
"I can't get a warrant," Nate told Quentin in a low voice as he joined the other man near the entrance end of the long barn, leaving Ruppe scowling just outside the tack room door. "Not on the word of a maybe-psychic who could have been walking in her sleep for all we know."
Quentin kept his voice low as well when he said, "I believe her, Nate. I believe we need to search that tack room."
"Yeah, I know you believe her. The question is, what do I tell Steph — Ms. Boyd — to convince her?"
"You said she was agreeable when you talked to her last night."
"Yeah, but she wasn't happy about the situation. Now I'm supposed to get her up at dawn to okay this? Look, what do you really expect to find in there?"
"I don't know. Something. Something to help us figure out who murdered Missy and Jeremy Grant — and who knows how many of the others."
"You're expecting a lot of a lousy tack room, Quentin. People in and out all day, every day. What could be hidden in there?"
"I don't know," Quentin repeated. "But I think we need to find out."
Nate pursed his lips and blew out a slightly impatient breath. He looked tired, which wasn't surprising; he might have gotten five or six hours' sleep before Quentin's call pulled him out of his own bed, but it was more likely he'd been working in his office until well after midnight.
"You're asking me to go out on a pretty goddamned long limb here," he said finally. "We both know a thorough search of that room is going to mean checking under floorboards and behind walls. If we don't find anything after all that, the owners of this place are going to raise hell."
"I know. I wouldn't ask it, Nate, if I wasn't convinced we'll find something worthwhile in there."
The cop studied him for a long, silent moment, then sighed again. "Ah, shit. Okay, I'll go roust Ms. Boyd, see if I can think of a reasonable explanation to give her. You got any suggestions?"
Quentin was more or less accustomed to coming up with reasonable explanations for psychic "hunches" or leads, since the SCU members often found themselves in that position, but this time he was stumped. Absolutely nothing he knew of in the information he had on the missing and dead kids connected them in any unusual way with these stables. Nothing.
No connection, no warrant.
"I wish I did, but... sorry."
"And I don't suppose Ms. Brisco is ready to go public with this psychic stuff?"
"I doubt it. She's only beginning to believe it herself."
"She believes enough to insist there's something hidden in that tack room. Because another ghost told her so?"
Diana had already returned to her cottage to get dressed — at Quentin's insistence — by the time Nate had arrived, so the cop hadn't yet spoken to her. About any of her... encounters, including the one the previous afternoon. Which was probably why he sounded frustrated.
Probably.
"The ghost of another one of the missing kids told her so, Nate. Rebecca Morse. That's one missing kid you should definitely remember; you worked on her case."
Nate was frowning now. "Yeah. Yeah, I worked on it. She went out to play in the gardens one morning, and nobody admitted to seeing her once she stepped off the back veranda. We never found a trace of her. My boss at the time decided her father had snatched her; there'd been an ugly divorce. But we couldn't trace him."
"Trust me, the father didn't snatch her. Or, at any rate, she never left The Lodge." Quentin glanced toward Ruppe, and added, "I'll wait here while you talk to Ms. Boyd, if you don't mind."
"You suspect Ruppe?"
"He was here twenty-five years ago. He's here now. That's all I know." Quentin was also wary of the fact that Ruppe had turned up here when, if Quentin hadn't followed her, Diana would have been alone and vulnerable. Maybe the stable manager would have posed no threat to her even so, but Quentin wasn't prepared to accept that as a given.
There had to be a reason, after all, why his own abilities had sent him down here after her. Maybe he had just needed to wake her, to pull her from the gray time before she remained there too long. Or maybe the threat to Diana had been of the flesh-and-blood sort.
Quentin didn't know. Yet.
"Considering the precious little we've got," Nate said with another sigh, "I can't say as I blame you for what's probably grasping at straws."
"I know he was questioned after Missy was murdered. I read the file." He had memorized it.
"Then you know the cops at the time couldn't find a whiff of anything suspicious about Ruppe."
"I know. But like I said, he was here then. He's here now. If nothing else, maybe he knows something he doesn't know he knows."
Nate considered that and nodded. "Yeah, maybe. People do, often enough. But don't question him, Quentin, not yet. He woke at what he states is his usual time and came down from his apartment to find two guests poking around in his tack room, so he's got a right to be rattled and pissed. Let's not make things worse until we've got reason to, okay?"
Quentin nodded. "Understood."
"Are you okay? You look a little..."
Thinking he probably looked a lot, Quentin grimaced and said, "Headache. A real bitch of a headache." Plus his ears felt as if they were stuffed with cotton, like his sinuses, and his eyes burned and ached. He was definitely paying the price for his all-night vigil.
"You should take something for that," Nate said.
"Yeah. Yeah, I will." Quentin didn't bother to explain that painkillers couldn't touch this sort of thing. Nothing ever had, except time and rest.
Nate headed off toward The Lodge's main building, leaving Quentin and Ruppe eyeing one another across nearly half the distance of the barn's long hall. Quentin knew Ruppe undoubtedly had work to do; managing a stable comprising three separate barns and more than thirty horses was a full-time job even if others did most of the grunt work. The horses were already restless in anticipation of their morning feed, stamping their hooves and snorting softly; the maintenance crew would be showing up any moment to feed them and begin mucking out the stalls.
The clipboard hanging by the tack room listed three trail rides scheduled for today, as well as half a dozen classes for those beginning riders who wanted to do more than just hang on for dear life during future trail rides.
Ruppe clearly didn't have time to stand around all morning, much less engage in a pissing contest with the cops or Quentin. But it was just as obvious that he was jealous of his authority, and not about to give ground unless forced by Management to do so.
Quentin knew the type. He'd come up against them often enough in his years as a federal cop. He also knew that Nate was right in saying this wasn't the time to question the stable manager, badly as Quentin wanted to do that.
Nate would probably point out, however gently, that there was really no hurry, after all; Missy had been gone twenty-five years, and a few more hours or days or even weeks wasn't going to change that.
Probably.
But the restlessness Quentin had been conscious of last night had shifted abruptly into a deep, cold sense of foreboding this morning when Diana had opened her eyes so suddenly to make an eerily familiar statement.
"It's coming."
And it had required all his willpower to allow her to leave his sight. To walk away from him, back up the well-lit paths to her cottage in order to change. Because that was exactly what Missy had said to him twenty-five years before.
The last time he had seen her alive.
Ellie Weeks ate a piece of plain toast and sipped hot tea, longing for the black coffee that was her usual morning pick-me-up. But pregnancy and black coffee didn't appear to go together, at least where she was concerned; drinking the tea was infinitely preferable to puking her guts out. Besides which, The Lodge's head housekeeper, Mrs. Kincaid, had been watching her very closely the last few days, and Ellie couldn't afford to do anything even remotely suspicious.
Not again, at any rate.
Hitching her chair closer to Ellie's in the staff dining room, Alison Macon whispered, "Did you hear? About last night?"
Ellie looked at her fellow maid blankly for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah. They found some old bones in one of the gardens."
Alison was clearly disappointed that she couldn't be the bearer of dramatic news, but nevertheless managed to make her whisper theatrical.
"It was a kid. A little boy, I heard. They found his watch buried with him."
Wrapped up in her own worries and problems, Ellie said, "Bad luck for him."
"But, Ellie, they're saying he was murdered."
"They're also saying it was years ago," Ellie pointed out.
"But aren't you afraid?"
"Why should I be?"
Alison appeared at a loss, but only for a moment. "There could be a murderer here at The Lodge."
"Yeah, and he could be long gone. Probably is. Why stick around and let himself get caught?"
With a visible shiver, Alison said, "Well, I'm scared."
"Be careful, then. Stay inside The Lodge. If you have to go out alone, don't wander off the paths."
"You're really not afraid, are you?"
"I'm really not." Not about that, at any rate. Some faceless killer that was maybe still hanging around years after his crime couldn't hold a candle to the very real worries gnawing at Ellie.
A baby.
I can't raise a baby. Not all by myself. I can't have an abortion. What else is there?
"You're so brave," Alison said admiringly.
"If you say so." Ellie drained her cup, hoping it would settle her jumpy stomach, and pushed back her chair. "Fifteen minutes before we're supposed to start work. I'm going out to get some air first. I'll meet you in the supply room."
Alison nodded, but absently, her gaze already directed across the room to another maid who might not have heard about last night's discovery.
Ellie got up, making a show of looking at her watch for the benefit of Mrs. Kincaid. A show of pausing, considering, deciding she had time. Then she left the dining room, moving briskly, someone with a specific place to go.
The staff dining room was in the lower levels of the South Wing, along with the kitchens and other maintenance areas. Also in that wing were the very few small suites reserved for those comparatively few employees on the housekeeping staff who lived as well as worked in The Lodge.
Ellie occupied one of those, at least for now. But not once everybody knew about the baby. When that happened, she'd be out on her ass. Mrs. Kincaid was hard-nosed about that sort of thing. An unmarried maid turning up pregnant? No, she wouldn't have it. Not at The Lodge. So Ellie would be lucky to get a week's pay and half an hour to pack her stuff and get out. No job, no home. And no one who gave a shit what happened to her.
She didn't go to her suite. Instead, she stepped out one of the service entrances to stand on the small concrete porch. A metal pail half filled with cigarette-littered sand stood more or less behind the door, mute testimony to the usual reason employees lingered in the area.
But there was no one here now, and when Ellie glanced around warily, she didn't see a sign of anyone in the area. She reached into the skirt pocket of her uniform and pulled out her cell phone. And a slip of paper with a phone number printed in shaky handwriting.
It hadn't been easy to get, this number. Contact information on the guests — the special guests — was kept in a locked file drawer in the manager's desk. Everybody knew that. Well, everybody as curious as Ellie and who had reason to wonder about those secretive VIPs. Good reason.
Ever since that first pregnancy test had been positive, Ellie had spent way too much free time lurking outside the manager's office. It was one reason Mrs. Kincaid was watching her so closely now, because there was no good reason for her to have been in the administrative section of the hotel except in passing.
She had passed through a lot. Luckily, she'd gotten her chance before Mrs. Kincaid became too suspicious. And her luck had held when Ms. Boyd had left her office door closed but not locked.
The file drawer had been locked, but desperation and panic had apparently lent Ellie magic fingers, because the metal nail file she tried had actually unlocked the thing.
And without telltale damage. She hoped.
Ellie wasted another precious minute wondering if that miracle heralded a change in her luck, then drew a deep breath and carefully placed the call.
She got his voice mail, which she'd been counting on, and left the careful message she had rehearsed half the night.
"Hey, it's Ellie. From The Lodge? I'm sorry to call you like this — I know I promised not to get in touch. But something's happened and I really need to talk to you. I don't want to make trouble, honest. But this is something you should know. So if you could call me back? Please?"
She didn't bother to recite her cell number, since she knew his would record it automatically along with her message. Instead, she merely added, "It's important. Thanks." And ended the call.
There. The ball was in his court.
All she could do now was wait.
"I don't blame them for not believing me," Diana said as she and Quentin stood watching Nate McDaniel, Cullen Ruppe, and Stephanie Boyd form a clearly tense huddle in front of the tack room. Ruppe was arguing angrily against the invasion of his domain, Nate was arguing for a search he couldn't legally justify or present any rational reasoning behind, and the manager of The Lodge was clearly annoyed and frustrated by the entire situation.
With a sigh, Diana added, "In the sane light of day, I don't really believe it myself."
Quentin was hardly surprised by that. As dramatic as her ghostly encounters had been thus far, he knew very well that she was struggling to overcome a lifetime of conditioning. Such radical shifts in thinking were seldom quick or easy turns.
"There's a difference, though," he said to her. "This time, you remember what happened. Right?"
"If it happened. It all seems like a dream now. And maybe it was. Maybe I was just walking in my sleep."
Instead of arguing with her, Quentin asked, "Did it feel like that? Like a dream? Or did it feel like you were someplace you'd visited before?"
She was silent.
"Diana?"
"Dreams feel that way sometimes, we both know that. Familiar even when they seem... different from most dreams."
"Were there shadows?"
That surprised Diana, and she looked up at him. "What?"
"Were there shadows?" His tone was steady, his gaze holding hers. "If there's any light at all in this world, there are also shadows. Even in the darkness, there are shadows, areas of deeper black. There's depth, dimension. It's one of the qualities we associate with our world. With its substance, its reality. Did you feel and see that last night? Were there shadows?"
Diana dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her light wind-breaker, wondering if she would ever feel warm again. The sun was up now, the air warming. That should have made a difference, she thought. She wondered why it didn't.
And she wondered how he could possibly know about the lack of shadows in the gray time. Had she told him? She didn't remember that.
He was waiting patiently, and finally she heard herself answer him. "No. No shadows. No dimension. No darkness, no light. Just gray."
"Where you were alone with Rebecca."
"It could have been a dream."
"It was real, Diana. A real place, apart from this one. Even if you don't want to admit it, somewhere deep inside yourself you have to know that." Without waiting for her to respond, he added thoughtfully, "You've obviously been there many times before. I wonder why you've remembered this time?"
"Because the drugs aren't in my system anymore." She grimaced slightly, wishing she hadn't answered that.
But Quentin was nodding. "That makes sense."
"None of this makes sense."
"Of course it does, given one simple fact. That you possess a mediumistic ability."
"And that there's an existence beyond death. Don't forget that part." She wanted her tone to be mocking, but to her ears it only sounded strained.
"Oh, that's a given." Quentin sounded utterly calm. "I've seen way too much to believe anything else."
"I wish I believed it," she murmured.
Quentin wished she did too. It would, he thought, make all this at least a bit easier. He wasn't aware that he was rubbing the back of his neck until he felt Diana's gaze on him.
"Headache?" she asked.
He merely nodded, unwilling to explain that he was coping with the painful results of a night spent watching her cottage.
She frowned, then said, "Give me your right hand."
Quentin did, wishing all his senses weren't so muffled; he could barely feel the cool touch of her hands as she held his between them, palm up. Her thumb moved near the center of his palm, massaging slowly in a small circle.
"One of the doctors I saw over the years," she said, "was very good at this. He said it was a form of acupressure, his own personal variation. I used to wake up with headaches sometimes, until he taught me to do this."
Quentin was about to tell her that neither acupuncture nor acupressure had ever had the slightest effect on his headaches when suddenly the pounding in his head lessened, his eyes stopped burning, and he actually felt his ears pop as his hearing cleared.
He was abruptly so conscious of her touch it was as if all his focus was there, held in her hands.
"It's supposed to open up blocked energy channels," she added, her tone a bit rueful. "New Agey stuff, I suppose, but—"
"Wow," he said.
"Better?"
"Much. In fact, the pain is gone."
"Good." For an instant, she seemed unsure, then let go of his hand and put both her own back into the pockets of her jacket. "I'm glad."
Even no longer touching her, his awareness of her remained so heightened that it was almost a tangible thing, as though she had channeled some of her own energy to heal his pain, leaving behind a faint impression of the energy's path between them. He felt it so strongly that he could almost see it.
Was she a healer as well? It wouldn't be unprecedented among psychics; Miranda's sister Bonnie was both a powerful medium and an amazing healer. And it made sense given the theories and experiences of the SCU. A brain hardwired to tune in to the specific energy signature of death and whatever lay beyond might be reasonably expected to also possess an affinity for the energy signature of life — and possibly be able to channel that energy to heal.
"You're staring at me," Diana said.
Quentin debated silently, but decided in the end that telling Diana she might be a healer wasn't important at the moment, and could even compromise her dawning acceptance of her mediumistic abilities. So all he said was, "Next time I get a wall-banging headache, I'll know who to come to for the cure. Thanks."
"You're welcome."
He wondered what she was thinking, and in wondering halfconsciously narrowed his focus even more, blocking out everything else around him to concentrate on her. It was surprisingly easy.
Even more strongly than the previous morning in the observation tower, he was aware of her scent, the sheen of her hair, and flecks of gold in her eyes. Aware of her breathing. Aware of —
"You're cold," he said.
Diana sent him a quick glance, hesitated, then said, "That's another thing about the gray time. It's cold."
"You're remembering more, aren't you?"
She nodded slowly. "It's — I'm different in the gray time. Comfortable, even confident. When I'm there, I understand. When I'm there, I have no doubts."
"You're the same person in both worlds, Diana. It's just that in this world you weren't allowed to explore and understand who you were meant to be. The medications prevented that."
"But they're gone now," she murmured.
Quentin wanted to continue the discussion, but it was cut off when Cullen Ruppe stalked angrily toward the opposite end of the barn hall and Nate and Stephanie Boyd turned and came to meet them.
The cop was triumphant but didn't let it show. Much.
The manager of The Lodge was merely resigned. "Well, he's not happy," she told them. "What do you want to bet he hits me up for a raise before the day is out?"
Diana shook her head. "I'm really sorry about all this."
"He'll get over it," Stephanie replied with a shrug and a sudden smile. "Anyway, I'd much rather there were no doubts in anybody's mind that The Lodge cooperated fully with the investigation into the discovery of that child's remains."
Uncomfortably, Diana said, "This might not be connected. I mean — I think it is. It's not something I can prove, though. And I'm not sure what we'll find. Or even if we'll find anything in there. It's just... I just believe..." She sent Quentin a frustrated glance. "Say something, dammit."
"Welcome to my world," he said.
Stephanie looked between the two of them curiously. "I gather from what Nate told me that this hunch of yours is of the psychic variety?"
Quentin lifted a brow at the cop, who responded by saying dryly, "Well, I couldn't think of anything else to tell her. It was the truth or no search of the tack room."
"I much prefer the truth," Quentin said. "Bizarre as it often sounds to those hearing it."
"I found it bizarre," Stephanie admitted. "But then, I found the discovery of a child's skeleton in one of our gardens bizarre. And in my experience, bizarre things are often connected in one way or another."
"In my experience as well," Quentin agreed.
"So let's see if there's a connection here. As manager of The Lodge, I'm hereby granting permission for Captain McDaniel to search the tack room — assisted by whomever he deems necessary and appropriate. I ask that you please not destroy property, but I do grant permission to open up the walls or remove floorboards, as long as it's done carefully."
"Which," Quentin said appreciatively, "is much more than we had any right to expect. Thank you, Ms. Boyd."
"Stephanie. And don't mention it. You'll find a toolbox in there somewhere you may use. You also have my permission, Agent Hayes, to go through whatever records and other paperwork are stored in the basement of The Lodge."
Quentin was about to ask that she drop the formality when Diana spoke.
"And the attic?" she asked.
Stephanie appeared mildly surprised, but shrugged. "I doubt there's anything useful up there; as far as I can determine, it's a dump for old furniture, outdated decorations, and decades of lost-and-found items. But feel free. Search to your heart's content. All I ask is that absolutely nothing be removed from the tack room, the basement, or the attic without my express permission."
"Agreed," Quentin said.
"Fine. Then you guys have at it. I've got to go up to the main building for a while, but I'll be back. Always assuming, of course, that you don't find very quickly that there's nothing in the tack room to interest you."
Nate checked his watch, and said, "We've got a couple of hours before anyone's expected to need the use of the tack and equipment in that room, right?"
Stephanie nodded. "And Cullen has been asked to go on with his daily routine rather than hover in there watching you. I'd take advantage of the time, if I were you." She half lifted a hand in a casual salute and left them.
"I say we listen to the lady," Nate said. "Quentin, I'm assuming you'd prefer we conduct the search ourselves?"
"Yeah. Time enough to bring in more of your people when we find something."
"You're very confident we will find something," Diana murmured.
"I know we will." And, suddenly, it was true. Quentin knew without a doubt that they would find something in this old barn, something important. But this time it wasn't a whisper in his mind that told him. It was an echo of that chill foreboding he had felt earlier.
It's coming.
He didn't know what it was, not yet. All he knew was that it was what he had sensed here during a childhood summer twenty-five years ago. What Bishop had sensed here five years ago. And what Diana had in some way touched only hours ago.
Something old, and dark, and cold. Something evil.
It was near. And for the first time, he could feel it.
Nate McDaniel had argued for the search because Quentin had asked it of him. But he never expected to find anything, not really.
Which made it all the more ironic that he was the one who found it.
The preliminary search of the fairly large, open room had been quick and simple. And revealed, as expected, nothing. So then it was time to begin tapping the plaster-over-lath walls in search of a hollow spot, with Nate and Quentin beginning at the same point and moving in opposite directions around the room. They used the handles of a couple of screwdrivers to more effectively sound out the walls.
"Think they could have a few more saddles in here?" Nate demanded in exasperation, stretching to reach around and above one hanging on a wall-mounted rack nearly as tall as he was.
"It is a tack room," Quentin reminded him dryly.
"There are maybe a dozen horses in this barn, and I've never seen one wear more than one saddle at a time; there must be thirty saddles in here."
Diana said, "It's easy to accumulate tack over the years. Different-sized saddles for different horses, changing styles, the preferences of different riders. Plus tack that gets worn or damaged and never repaired. Every tack room I've ever seen looks a lot like this one."
Surprised, Quentin paused to say, "For some reason, I didn't expect you to be a rider."
"Oh, yeah." She didn't elaborate.
He frowned slightly as he looked at her. She was standing in the center of the room, her gaze almost idly wandering from saddle to saddle, from bridle to halter to utility tray. Anyone watching her might suppose she was slightly bored, paying little attention to the search going on around her, even daydreaming.
But Quentin recognized the expression. He'd seen many psychics wear it in moments of quiet, that inward-turned, almost meditative waiting. The half-conscious stilling of the usual five senses so that the other ones could be heard.
Since she'd had no training, he didn't know whether someone else could help her focus or would merely be a distraction. He flipped a mental coin.
"Diana?"
"Hmm?"
"What do you hear?"
"Water. Dripping."
"Where?"
"Underneath us."
Before Quentin could question her further, Nate broke the quiet with a decidedly surprised exclamation.
"Holy shit."
Quentin turned to see that the cop had somehow managed to shift one of the heavy floor-standing racks nearly a foot to one side, presumably to better get at the wall behind it. But he wasn't staring at the wall. He was staring at the floor.
"What?" Quentin went to join him.
"Either I'm out of my mind, or else I'm looking at one side of a trap door."
"You're kidding."
"Take a look." Nate went down on one knee, tracing with one finger the clear break in the seemingly solid floorboards. "Here.
The edge was hidden by the base of this saddle rack. And I'm betting that if we move the rack on the other side of this one, we'll find the hinges."
The two saddle racks were back in an awkward corner, each piled with several old saddles and musty-smelling saddle blankets and that plus a number of cobwebs made it obvious that they were well out of the usual traffic pattern of the room. They might well have sat undisturbed for years.
Diana came over to join the men, watching silently as Quentin and Nate carefully pushed the two heavy saddle racks out of the way.
It was a trap door, the hinges that had been hidden by the second rack old, heavy iron. There was no handle, but when Quentin wedged one of the screwdrivers into the edge opposite the hinges, it lifted easily.
They all saw the rough round opening in the ground beneath the door, large enough for a big man to pass through. They all saw the heavy iron ladder bolted seemingly to the granite bedrock and disappearing into the darkness. And they all felt and smelled the wave of damp, chilly air that wafted up as soon as the door was opened.
"Water," Diana murmured. "Dripping."