Haven (7 page)

IT AMUSED HIM
to hunt on a Sunday.

Such a good little God-fearing town, with many a hypocritical ass planted in a pew come Sunday morning.

He wondered if they had any idea at all how many “secrets” were no such thing.

He saw it all. Knew it all. Who had financial problems. Who was sleeping with whom. Who lived in neat little houses disguising highly dysfunctional families. Who had committed crimes. And definitely who had committed sins.

He enjoyed knowing their secrets. Having that power. Knowing that he could destroy them if he chose.

He had been tempted, more than once, to do just that, out somebody with a secret. But that wouldn’t do, of course. That was just the sort of stupid mistake that was likely to backfire and cost him more than he wanted to pay. Because he had the biggest secret of all, and it was one he intended to protect at all costs.

But that was second nature, after all these years, and he didn’t worry about betraying himself as he hunted.

There were plenty of tourists about, uninterested in church, some marking time in the downtown restaurants and cafés until the Main Street stores opened up, while others were preparing to hike or ride up into the mountains. He found it easy to move among them. To blend in. He did not, honestly, expect to find his prey quickly; it usually took him several days of hunting at least, and sometimes weeks, before he settled on a target.

But he found her almost at once.

She was a hiker, carrying a big-ass backpack with the ease of someone who had carried it a long distance. She had that slightly grungy appearance of someone who had bathed in streams, if she had bathed at all, for at least some days and possibly weeks; her short reddish hair looked clean, but her jeans were worn and the cotton shirt she wore open over a tank top boasted a few rips and tears that didn’t seem like they were there for a designer look.

Most important, she appeared to be alone.

He managed to get close enough to overhear as she sat at a picnic table outside JP Mann’s place, two streets back from Main. JP owned and operated the largest stables in the area, and the one closest to the easiest access up into the mountain trails, so he got most of the tourist business. Being a sharp man, JP also had an arrangement with one of the cafés in town to supply box lunches and other goodies, and did a fair business selling maps and hiking supplies as well.

The target—whom he was already thinking of as his June Rose—had bought herself a box lunch and was eating it, exchanging what sounded like small talk with a couple of other hikers and two people who were excited because they were about to join a horseback ride up into the mountains.

He had an uneasy few moments as his Rose talked to the other two hikers, but it eventually emerged that she was heading north while they wanted to head west. She was meeting friends up near Virginia, she said, all of them hiking in from different directions: It was their Summer College Challenge, a version of some sort of physical contest that they dreamed up and executed during their summer breaks every year.

“But you shouldn’t hike alone,” one of the other hikers, a young
man, told her. “Find somebody else who’s heading north and buddy up. Much safer.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine.” Her voice was easy and confident. “Once I get up to the main trail, there’ll be other hikers and forestry people all over the place, plus rest stops and campsites. I’ve hiked that area before.”

“Okay, but that’s miles away. It’s the from-here-to-there part that’s a little hairy.”

“I’ll be fine,” she repeated. “I have plenty of rations, all the right equipment including pepper spray, and even”—she lowered her voice—“a little gun, just in case.”

“Bears don’t take much notice of little guns,” one of the other hikers said dryly.

“I know how to be safe from bears. The gun is for any two-legged trouble.” Her voice was still easy and confident.

He made a mental note about the gun, pleased rather than discouraged. It was usually so easy. Maybe this time it wouldn’t be. Maybe his Rose had a few thorns to make things interesting.

He noted how far she had progressed with her lunch, and decided he had time to go make a few preparations for the hunt.

As he moved away, he could feel his heart beginning to pump, feel the adrenaline flowing through his body.

He loved the hunt. It was almost the best part.

STUBBORN SISTER OR
not, Emma wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t tried. “Jessie, you can talk to me, you know. Even if we’ve never been close, we’re still family. And I know this town and its people better than you do, at least now.”

“
Well, when I figure out what questions to ask, maybe I’ll take you up on that. In the meantime, I’m more or less fumbling in the dark, just looking for something that sparks the right memories. I need to do that alone, Emma. You can’t help me.”

“Jessie—”

“I need time. And I’m asking you to give me that. Just…don’t tell anyone I’m trying to remember what happened that summer.”

“Because you know it was bad?”

“Because I don’t know. And I don’t know who was involved if it
was
bad. And we both know what a small-town gossip mill can do to reputations, especially if it only has speculation to work with. I don’t want anybody speculating about the past, not until I have a handle on it myself. They can be curious about why I came home, but I can make it look like it’s the property I’m interested in, my inheritance, and that should satisfy most people and won’t surprise anybody. I need you to go along with me on this, Emma. I’m asking you to promise me. I’m betting you still take your promises seriously.”

“I do. But—”

“Listen, I came back here to finally close the door on the past. I have to do that my own way. Promise me.”

“All right. Dammit. I promise.”

“Pinkie swear.”

Emma smiled for the first time, if a bit wryly, and held a hand across the table so her little finger could hook briefly with Jessie’s. “Pinkie swear.”

Jessie hadn’t realized she was so tense until she felt herself slump. She managed a smile in return. “Thank you. We all have to deal with our own baggage, you know. That’s just part of mine.”

Emma leaned back in her chair and sighed. “I’ve a feeling I’m going to regret that promise. I thought I heard you last night. Did you have a nightmare?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe. I have them sometimes.” She was gazing almost absently at Emma, and was surprised to see a fleeting reaction cross that familiar face. She wasn’t sure what it meant, and for the first time she wished she wasn’t trying so hard to keep Emma’s thoughts from slipping through her walls.

“About?”

“I don’t remember what they’re about,” Jessie said. “By the way, this house? Definitely haunted.” Her tone was matter-of-fact.

Emma recognized a deflection when she heard one, but she was too interested not to follow. “Seriously?”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen half a dozen of the dearly departed in various places, especially downstairs. Judging by the clothing, from more than one era, going all the way back to Civil War days.”

“So all the way back to when at least parts of this house were built.”

“Yeah. A couple of spirits in more recent dress, but I didn’t recognize them. Probably not surprising.”

“And they didn’t…communicate with you?”

“Not so far. Sometimes spirits don’t need help from the living; they just don’t want to leave, for whatever reason. But if it’s any comfort, they seem totally benign.”

“You used to say the place was haunted, but it was something you just felt; you never said you saw anything. You see ghosts all the time now?”

“I see them. But here…they’re clearer than I’ve ever been able
to see them before. Maybe because I grew up here; I don’t know. Still, it’s a little surprising, because I’ve never been unusually strong as a medium
and
because my walls are still up.”

“Walls you learned to build at this Haven place you told me about, where you work.”

Jessie nodded. “It’s a sister organization, privately run but also linked, unofficially, to a unit inside the FBI, and what those people don’t know about psychic abilities isn’t worth knowing. Neither the mainstream nor the fringe element has a clue, believe me.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, yeah. Way more things in heaven and earth than most people can possibly imagine. Things being studied and used in the field by the Special Crimes Unit and by Haven. And the first thing we’re taught, whether Haven operative or SCU agent, is how to build or use our walls—or shields, some call them. So we have some sort of control over our abilities and can protect ourselves.”

“Protect yourselves from what?”

“Negative energy. Usually from other psychics, bad guys. They’re as likely to have psychic abilities as the good guys are, maybe more so.” As her sister continued to look questioningly, Jessie went on. “It’s all based on energy, the energy the human body and the human brain produces. Think of psychics as having a receiver they can tune to certain frequencies. On one frequency, maybe you tune in spiritual energy, and so you see or hear spirits. On another frequency, maybe you tune in the energy of someone’s thoughts.”

“The way you do mine.”

Jessie nodded. “According to SCU research and experience, the reason no telepath can read a hundred percent of the people around
them isn’t because of anybody’s shields or even the strength and control of the telepath, but because every human mind is unique: tuned to its own frequency. And a psychic’s…range…of frequency is naturally finite. Limited, like any other sense, and varying from psychic to psychic. I can read you sometimes, but not always, and even that doesn’t mean every other telepath you encounter would be able to. And there are lots of people whose thoughts I’ll never hear. Really lots, in fact, since my range appears to be very narrow.”

“But you’re worried about how well your walls are working here. Or not working.”

“Well, they’re not working the way they’re supposed to. As tightly buttoned up as I thought I was, I shouldn’t be picking up your thoughts, but they keep slipping through. I shouldn’t be seeing spirits—and they’re everywhere. This really is a very haunted town.”

“Most of the ghost hunters who come here tell us that, but the locals generally seem to humor them rather than believe them.”

“I’m not surprised. What most
ghost hunters
tend to view as evidence is pretty damned thin. Once you get involved in the real thing, though, it stops being about proof and starts being about how you can control your abilities and use them productively.”

“So you build walls.”

Jessie nodded. “We build walls.”

“So why aren’t your walls holding things out?”

“That is the question. Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer. Yet, anyway.” She hesitated, then said, “Emma, have there been any murders in Baron Hollow?”

Emma started visibly. “What, recently? Not that I know of. You know there’ve been killings over the years—hence some of our
better-known ghosts. But crimes like murder don’t really happen in Baron Hollow, not these days.” She frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“Just…curious. Thought I might be able to help out the police chief if there were any local unsolved homicides. Who is the police chief, anyway? Anybody I knew?”

“He’s closer to Victor’s age than yours, I think. Dan Maitland.”

“Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“And he’s not crazy about ghost hunters, who we see a lot of and who he has to be polite to because they’re paying tourists. And he’s also not very fond of any kind of nonpolice investigators. So it might not be smart to tell him you’re basically a private investigator who’s also psychic.”

“I don’t plan to tell anybody that,” Jessie responded lightly. “Do me a favor, and keep it to yourself. In spite of the fleeting idea I might be able to help the local cops, I didn’t really come here for a busman’s holiday.”

Exactly why did you come? How do you mean to go about closing those doors on the past? And what are your nightmares about? Those parties you say you don’t really remember? Or something else?

But Emma didn’t ask out loud, and Jessie pretended that more thoughts from her sister hadn’t slipped through walls designed to hold them out.

THERE WASN’T A
lot to do in Baron Hollow on a Sunday, and Jessie was too restless to stay at Rayburn House, so she went out for another walk after lunch. She knew that virtually all the downtown businesses, excepting a couple of restaurants routinely open since
breakfast, opened up shortly after church let out, but were seldom busy, and she wanted to explore a bit in less crowded conditions than those she had experienced the day before.

As she strolled, pausing now and then to study the contents of a storefront window, she told herself that she neither expected nor wanted to encounter another spirit. Her walls, after all, were as solid as she could possibly make them, and at least half her concentration was fixed on keeping them that way.

At the same time, what the spirit had told her yesterday was also very much on her mind. A killer? Here? Jessie had been with Haven too long not to have learned that killers could be found in the most unlikely of places, often hiding in plain sight in unsuspecting little towns just like Baron Hollow, tourist towns, and her knowledge of that made it all the more worrisome.

And despite Maggie’s instructions for her to concentrate on why she had come here, Jessie was nagged by the possibility of a killer hunting in this small town, and nagged even more by the uneasy worry that if that was happening, it was somehow connected to all the buried stuff that had finally brought her back home.

If she had learned anything in recent years, working with Haven, it was that true coincidences were rare, and that the universe tended to put you where you were for a very good reason.

Was she here to uncover more than her past? Would uncovering her past also expose a killer?

Her imagination? Or trained psychic intuition? She wasn’t sure; that was the problem. Almost from the moment she’d hit town, she had been nagged by uncertainty and doubts.