Blood Dreams

eventing. Some timber was being cut to the west of the town, but not on a large scale despite the proximity of the paper mill. He spotted a couple of tobacco fields, but most of the agriculture he saw consisted of little more than backyard vegetable gardens intended only to supplement or supply much of the diet of the families that owned and worked them.

'Where's the money coming from,' he murmured.

You're a suspicious bastard.

'Yeah. Yeah. It's my job to ask the tough questions.'

Actually, it isn't. It's your job to find that warehouse. Or at least eliminate as many dead ends as we can.

Gabriel visually swept the area again, and sighed. 'This used to be a major stop for at least two railroads, and one very large textile mill operated in the area for generations; there are abandoned warehouses, deserted buildings, and defunct storage facilities all over the damn place.'

Defunct?

'Yeah, don't you like that word?'

I'm just wondering how come such a prosperous little town hasn't torn down all those abandoned buildings.

'It does give one pause, doesn't it?'

They don't seem to clutter up the landscape too much. Maybe that's why.

'If it ain't ugly, leave it be?'

Well, even demo costs money.

'You calling me a suspicious bastard again?'

No, I'm sharing your suspicion. But I don't know that it gets us anywhere.

'Now you're just being a pessimist.' Gabriel continued to study Venture through his binoculars, sharpening the focus on the neat and very attractive downtown area. 'Huh.'

What?

He sighed and lowered the binoculars. 'Either the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing-No, that's not it, that's never it, even when it looks that way.'

What are you muttering about?

'I think we're dealing with that need-to-know shit again. We aren't alone in Prophet County.'

Well, we knew that.

'I'm not just talking about Dani and Paris. Or Hollis Templeton.'

Who, then?

'Somebody unexpected. Somebody who really shouldn't be here, not for this one.'

Who do you-Oh. Oh, shit.

'Exactly,' Gabriel murmured, raising the binoculars to his eyes once again to watch a surprisingly inconspicuous figure strolling along the quaint downtown sidewalk. 'I guess he's taking the predicted threat to Miranda very, very seriously.'

Chapter Ten

MARC DIDN'T HAVE any logical reason for taking Dani with him when he went to talk to Marie Goode in his office, so he didn't bother trying to invent one.

He was just relieved Dani didn't ask.

That emotion lasted only until they went into his office, and Marie Goode rose from one of his visitor's chairs.

She was petite, almost waifish, with short dark hair and big dark eyes, and looked almost childlike in her waitress uniform.

Shit.

Marc exchanged a quick glance with Dani, and then they continued on into the room and he introduced the two women, offering no information as to who Dani was or why she was part of the interview.

Marie Goode was clearly too upset to worry about it. 'Sheriff, did Deputy Walker tell you? About the necklace and the flowers? About somebody following me last night?'

'He told me, Ms. Goode. But I haven't had a chance to read your statement, so if you wouldn't mind going through it all again for me now? You believe someone began following you when you left work last night?'

'Well, I thought it was my imagination at first, but…'

Dani watched the younger woman continue to relate her experience to Marc, but a chill shivered over her skin when she realized that Marie's voice had faded, within a matter of seconds, into silence.

It had happened to Dani before-but only in her vision dreams. Then, while she slept, her mind seemed to accept these abrupt silences of the people and places and things around her, because something deeper than her dreams, deeper than her visions, understood that it needed to listen to whatever was happening far beneath the surface. To something more important. And it was almost always something vital to her understanding of the vision dream's true meaning.

But now her waking mind scrambled in panic, the knee-jerk, fearful reaction so quick that she very nearly missed that whisper of sound beneath the voices in the room, beneath the light, beneath what she could touch. Beneath what seemed real.

I want you.

She went still inside, the instinctive focus barely holding panic at bay. Her gaze shifted to Marc, and she wished desperately that it was his whisper she heard in her head. That she could believe it was his whisper.

It wasn't.

It was cold. It was hard. It was implacable.

And it was evil.

I want you, Dani. I'll have you. Even if you run. Even if you hide. No matter what he does to protect you. No matter what you dream. No matter-

'Dani?'

She realized she was on her feet in front of Marc's desk, half-turned toward the door. She also realized that Marie Goode was gone, that Marc must have just shown her out, because he was coming back from the door, frowning at her.

Dani sat down abruptly and fought to pull air into her lungs, as though she had been holding her breath for a long, long time.

'Dani, what the hell's wrong?'

'I-I don't-' She pulled herself together and did her best to hold her voice steady. 'I thought I heard something, that's all. Did you assign a guard for Marie Goode? She's the right type, and if he's already watching her-'

'Of course I assigned a guard.' He sat down in the other visitor's chair, still frowning at her. 'What did you hear?'

'I said I thought I heard-' Again, she got a grip on herself, on the panic that was doing its best to overwhelm her.

'I'm not sure. Maybe my imagination. I thought I heard a whisper, that's all.'

'A whisper? Someone trying to reach you? Psychically?'

'My abilities don't work that way.'

'Just because they never have,' he said slowly, 'doesn't mean they can't. Psychic ability grows and evolves just like any other human ability does. What did the whisper say?'

'Marc, I don't-'

'What did it say, Dani?'

She didn't want to answer, but things were already so strained between them that she didn't want to make the situation worse. 'He said… he wanted me. That he'd have me.'

'Who?'

'I don't know who. Even if I'd heard his voice before, who can recognize a whisper?'