The Dark Gate (7 page)

As if hearing her inner shouting, the dad's gaze swung toward her, punching her in the gut with a fistful of guilt, then swung away.

Her heart thudded against her ribs.
Now!
But as she finally started forward, the dad handed over the tickets and the three disappeared into the theater.

Larsen blinked.
What had she done?

She grabbed her phone and punched the redial with shaking fingers. “Jack, answer your damn phone!”

The bell rang through the theater lobby, signaling the imminent start of the show.
They were going to die.
One chance to stop them and she'd blown it.

In the soaring hallway, Larsen paced in an agitated little circle, her stomach roiling like a boat in a summer storm. Maybe it wasn't too late. They were still alive. They'd stay that way for another few minutes, but she had to get inside that theater and the show was sold out.

Yanking the scarf off her head, she strode up the short flight of stairs, pinning her most haughty Ice Bitch persona firmly in place.

“Miss…excuse me.”

Larsen spared the slightly built retiree collecting the last-minute tickets a cool glance. “I'm checking something for Mr. Wright. I'll only be a minute.” Then, without slowing her pace, she brushed by him and into the dark passage that separated the lobby from the gilt splendor of the theater.

At the top of the aisle, Larsen paused and looked out over the sea of heads, the pulse thudding in her ears. They were in here somewhere.
He
was in here. Her gaze zeroed in on the area where she'd seen the albino in her vision. Sure enough, his stark white head shone at its center.

Dread rose from her pores to crawl over her skin like slithering, blood-sucking leeches.
He'd kill her.
If she stayed in this theater, she was going to die. A child's laugh pierced the hum of excited voices. If she left, two children were going to die.

The lights dimmed. The music rose.
She was out of time.

Larsen took a deep breath as she pulled the scarf out of her purse and laid it over her head, wrapping it around her mouth and nose.

Heart racing like a speedboat on the open river, she started down the aisle. “Ladies and gentlemen, there's been a report of a bomb in the theater. Please move quickly to the nearest exit.”

The people close enough to hear her over the music jumped up and began to fill the aisles. For one breathless moment she thought her makeshift plan was going to work. Then she forgot herself and glanced at the albino.

Their gazes locked. Recognition flared.

No.
She looked away, but not before she saw him open his mouth and knew it was too late. An eerie singing rose with the music, then became the only sound in the theater as hundreds of audience members, musicians and actors went suddenly, silently still.

Larsen stood trapped in the middle of an aisle clogged with human statues, fear crawling up her throat. Her premonitions, as horrible as they'd been, hadn't prepared her for the real thing, for the singing that tore at her eardrums and sent terror flooding her heart.

She had to get out of here.

As she turned to run, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.
The children.
They were staring at the singer just as they had in her vision.

“Run!” she shouted to their dad. “If you can hear me, run for your lives.”

But even as the words burst from her mouth, the audience around them rose. With a terrible dread, Larsen knew what would happen next. She'd seen this movie and hated the ending. But there was nothing more she could do. She'd failed. The children and their father were going to die. And she right along with them if she didn't run.

She pushed between a frozen couple and dodged a small knot of teens as she ran up the aisle. Three rows to freedom.
Two.

A beefy arm hooked around her neck, jerking her off her feet. A silent scream tore through her mind as she struggled in vain to free herself.
Too slow. Too late.
The pressure against her windpipe cut off her air.
She couldn't breathe.
Colored lights swam in her vision. Over the roar in her ears, she heard a child begin to scream.

And suddenly she was free.

The choking arm dropped away. Larsen sank to her knees, sucking in the precious air as the roaring in her ears slowly abated, leaving only the sound of the child's screams.

She pushed to her feet even as the statues collapsed to the ground like puppets cut from their strings. Only then did she realize the singing had stopped. Her gaze sought the source of the screaming, the place where she'd last seen the albino, and locked on Jack.

Jack.
He had the white villain by the hair and was shoving a gag in his mouth.

Thank God.
He'd gotten her message, after all. But the screaming went on, unchecked. Her gaze finally located the source, capsizing her heart. The little girl in the pink sundress writhed in her father's arms, raking her fingernails down her small face, leaving trails of blood.

The frantic father lunged for the albino, his unharmed son tight against his side. “What did you do to her?
What did you do to my daughter?
”

Jack caught Larsen's gaze and shook his head as if reading the question in her mind. “He touched her forehead,” he shouted to the father over the child's screams. “That's it. I saw him do it right before I grabbed him.”

He'd touched her.
What had he
done
to her?
What had
she
done by failing to keep them from going into that theater?

“Get out of here,” Jack shouted to the grieving father. “Take your kids and get out of here in case I can't hold him. Larsen, you, too.”

“Do you need help?” Larsen croaked, her throat raw.

“I've got backup on the way. Now get out of here!”

He didn't have to tell her again. She ran for the lobby feeling like she was still choking…this time on guilt.

 

“I'm going to kill you,
Sitheen.
”

Jack clenched his fists to keep from decking the white devil sitting across the table from him in the small interrogation room.

“You say that one more time and I'm going to kill
you.
Now,” Jack repeated, “I want to know how you hypnotized those people.”

The suspect, who'd identified himself only as
Baleris,
watched him with that faint smile Jack was growing to hate. A turn of the mouth that was little more than a sneer in a face that made his skin crawl. He'd never seen skin so utterly absent of color, nor so…perfect. Not a blemish, not a line, not a hint of beard stubble marred his flesh.

Jack had seen his share of weird characters over the years, but this one took the prize. He ran his palm over his own prickly jaw. Twenty-nine hours he'd been at this. Twenty-nine long hours and all he had was a name. A single name.
Baleris.
And what in the hell kind of name was that?

Jack's patience was gone. He needed a shower and a shave and about forty-eight hours' sleep. He was nearly dizzy with exhaustion. The last time he'd slept at all had been two nights ago, but he'd spent most of that night worrying about Larsen.

The one bright spot in this whole sorry mess was that she was safe. Thank God he'd been in time to save her. He hadn't realized he'd wrecked his phone and she'd been trying to call him, until almost too late. He'd heard Larsen shouting as he entered the theater, a second before the bastard had started to sing.

He'd been in time to save Larsen. But he hadn't been in time to stop whatever had been done to make that little girl scream. And for that he was more determined than ever to nail this guy to the wall.

Baleris shifted in his seat, the gold flecks in his Robin Hood costume catching the fluorescent light. Who
was
this guy?

“You will bring me a ewer of wine.”

Jack snorted. “You're getting nothing…
nothing
…until you tell me how you control these people.”

He'd been so sure the answers would be obvious once he caught the SOB. But he'd strip-searched him himself and found not one damn thing to explain his ability. Everything pointed to his singing. And that just wasn't possible.

Nevertheless, Jack had ordered the intercom into the interrogation room turned off just in case. And he was afraid to leave him. He'd been so
sure…

Now he was sure of nothing except that he couldn't leave the son of a bitch alone. Twenty-nine
hours.

He shouldn't have called for backup. He shouldn't have brought him into the station at all. As it turned out, the suspect had put up no fight. Jack had had the perfect opportunity to disappear with him and to deal with him in any way he found effective. Instead he'd played it by the book. He always played it by the book. That was just who he was. A damned good cop.

But after twenty-nine hours, he was beginning to think he was a fool. All he'd been able to get out of the man was a single name and constant threats.
I'm going to kill you, Sitheen.
And who in the hell was
Sitheen?

“What did you do to that little girl?”

Again, that miserable sneer.

Anger and lack of sleep were making his hands shake. “I'm going to learn your secrets, you bastard,” Jack snarled.

“I am going to kill you, Sitheen.”

Jack's temper snapped. He pulled his gun and aimed it at the man's crotch. The sudden flash of fear in the white man's eyes told him he had his attention at last.

“Answer my questions or I'll put another hole in your dick. Now!”

“Jack.”
The voice came through the intercom.

Dammit.
They weren't supposed to be listening.

“What?”

His captain's voice came over, hard and humorless. “Out of there. Now. I want to talk to you.”

Hell.
He lowered the gun slowly. He was so tempted to shoot the man right between the eyes. But he'd done that once—shot him in the head. And it hadn't done a thing.

“Who are you?”
he asked.

“I am going to kill you, Sitheen.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said that already.” Wearily, Jack rose to shove the gag back into the albino's mouth, then went out to meet with his police captain.

“Go home, Jack.” Captain Greg Wilkins, a tall wiry man with silver hair, clasped Jack's shoulder. “You're going to be useless to us if you collapse from exhaustion.”

“Captain…”

“That's an order, Detective. He's not going anywhere. This door will stay locked through the night. You'll be the first one in here in the morning.”

Jack clenched his jaw. “Turn off the damned intercom and keep everyone away from the door.”

His captain gave him a hard look.

“I mean it, Captain. The bastard's more dangerous than anyone we've ever had in here.”

“He looks like a pansy.”

“He'd deadly. He has abilities…he shouldn't have. Keep everyone away.”

Greg met his gaze, then slowly nodded and handed him a stack of notes. “Some guy by the name of Harrison Rand has been trying to reach you all day. Says he wants to know what in the hell happened to his daughter at the Kennedy Center.”

Jack sighed and took the messages. He tried to call the guy on the way home, but had to leave a message telling him to meet him at the station at ten tomorrow morning. As Jack crawled into bed, he glanced at the clock. He had twelve hours before he faced the father of that little girl. And he intended to spend every second of it sleeping.

 

Jack almost didn't hear the phone.

His eyes felt like sandpaper as he squinted at the clock. Ten thirty p.m. Thirty minutes of sleep.

Exhaustion pulled at him but the phone wouldn't quit its incessant ringing. He grabbed for it, then forced his bleary gaze to focus on the Caller ID. Hank.
Hell.
Something had already gone wrong.

He flipped open the phone. “What's up?”

“I'm sorry, man.”

Jack collapsed into his pillow in a tired heap. “What's happened?”

“I've got to kill you, man.”

He blinked, trying to clear his head. “Hank, are you drunk?”

“You've done a terrible thing, Jack. I've got to kill you.”