Twisted Miracles (24 page)

“Can you still see anything? Get back into that guy’s head!”

Thankfully, he didn’t question me. His eyes dilated and went dark as he slipped into the other deputy’s mind, and then his lips went thin. I leaned my head back on the side of the boat and closed my eyes, willing my heart rate back down. After a moment, Shane spoke.

“He’s just knocked out. They’re calling paramedics.” He paused. “He’s giving the last three rooms a quick check—they’re just closets.”

“Yeah, right. Could you tell what he was thinking? Was he suspicious?”

“Mostly just concerned for his partner,” Shane said. “And grateful to Geary for helping. Geary’s a pretty good actor—he really looked shocked.”

“So much for getting the cops after him. No telling what he would have done if they’d actually seen something. What now?”

“We go back tonight and we get her out.”

* * *

At half past midnight, Shane, Lionel and I got into Shane’s Camaro and drove south to Briny Point. Bruce stayed back to watch the B&B. He hadn’t been happy about our plan, but he’d known better than to argue.

A storm rolled in as night fell, and the rain was coming down hard. Visibility was low, which made the drive down slower, but we all agreed it was probably better for sneaking into the church undetected.

“We should have borrowed Bruce’s car,” Lionel said. “This one is so conspicuous.”

“It’ll be fine,” Shane said. My heartbeat got faster and shallower, and Shane reached over from the driver’s seat and squeezed my hand. “It’ll be fine,” he said again.

We parked behind the church, but even the few yards between the car and the back door were enough for us to get soaked. At least the sound of the rain masked the crunch of shells and gravel under our feet, and there was certainly no one else out for a walk in the moonlight.

The church was dark and locked, but it was pathetically easy to feel the other side of the entry door for the deadbolt. So much for not worrying about “the bad sort.” The good reverend apparently wasn’t as trusting as his flock. I swung the door open, and Shane and I stepped into the same narrow hallway Maryanne had led us through that afternoon. We’d agreed beforehand that Lionel should wait outside and alert us if anyone approached, so we nodded to him and closed the door carefully behind us.

I nodded down the hall, and Shane nodded back. We were trying to use minimal mindspeaking in case Geary lived onsite and could pick it up in his sleep. When I let my awareness reach out down the passage, I could sense the woman I’d felt earlier. Without all the noise of an audience, it was easier to pick up on her quiet presence. She was sleeping. I hoped.

We started down the hall, and I searched behind the doors to the left while Shane checked those on the right. We passed the kitchen we’d been in earlier, a couple of rooms that felt like classrooms, a pair of bathrooms. When I found what we were looking for, it was obvious. Shane gave me a glance that said, “Go ahead.”

I hesitated. What if Geary was behind that door? Or someone else, a guard? I reached through carefully and felt only the same mental signature I’d picked up before. I took a deep breath and opened the door from the inside. It was a storage closet.

“I can feel her,” I whispered. “She’s got to be here.”

Shane’s brow furrowed. “I feel her, too.”

We stepped inside and closed the door behind us. Shane called up a light ball and illuminated the walls, which were covered with shelves filled with cleaning supplies, paint, tools. I searched for a doorknob, a lever, anything.

“She’s close,” Shane murmured. “Past this wall. There’s got to be a way in—some other entrance.”

He ran his hands along the sides of the shelves, holding the light aloft with his mind. I did the same on the opposite wall, conjuring up a small light ball so I could see. Shane noticed and gave me an approving smile, then his face froze.

“Here.” He tugged at a narrow bookshelf full of paint cans and dried-up brushes. The whole thing swung away from the wall, revealing a crude wooden door secured with a combination lock.

“Shit,” I said.

“I can pick it. Don’t worry.”

“That piece of slime. What if there was a fire?”

“Come on, you think he’d care?” He held the lock in both hands and closed his eyes.

The dial turned, very slowly. Shane was perfectly still. I didn’t want to breathe. The dial spun and spun, then stopped.

“Eighteen,” he whispered, then started spinning the dial the other way. He didn’t get it on the first try and had to go back, turning the dial to eighteen again and looking for the second number. It took him three tries before he figured out it was twenty-two, and then he started on the third. I stood and watched him, his eyes closed, his mind focused utterly on the inner movements of the locking mechanism. It took forever, and I started thinking I should break it and get on with it when something went
snick
and the lock fell open.

Shane grinned. “Eleven.”

“About time.”

He gave me a look and pushed open the door.

It was a dead-zone between the manicured sheetrock of the hallway and the cinderblocks forming the outer wall. Pink insulation had been hacked away around the doorway. Shane sent his light bobbing into the space, and as its glow bathed the dust-coated walls, we both gasped. Several feet in, slumped against the cinderblock, was a woman.

“Oh my God.” Shane rushed toward her. She was blindfolded and gagged with duct tape. Her wrists were handcuffed behind her back, the chain laced through ropes binding her ankles. She didn’t stir as we went to her and lifted her into a sitting position, but she was definitely breathing.

“Knocked out,” Shane whispered.

“That fucker.” I wanted to take off the duct tape, but I was afraid of hurting her. She smelled terrible, like urine and old sweat. There was a bucket in the corner, and empty water bottles and energy bar wrappers littering the damp floor.

“How long has she been here?” I said, feeling sick. He’d obviously been keeping her alive to drain her. Shane was studying the handcuffs. “Can you get them off?”

“Handcuffs are easy.” Even as he said it, the cuffs fell from her wrists. Shane pulled out a pocketknife and began sawing through the ropes at her ankles. The skin beneath was raw and bleeding.

“Come on,” I said as the rope fell away. “Who knows what kind of security he’s got in this place.” I looked around for cameras, blinking red lights. Nothing, but that didn’t mean we were safe.

Shane lifted the woman and carried her out of the cell, locking the door behind us. I risked contacting Lionel to let him know we were coming with a guest, and I felt rather than heard his grim promise to be ready at the front door.

We carried the woman up the center aisle of the church. Seeing all those empty chairs, I couldn’t help remembering the spectacle we’d observed twelve hours before. All those people, ecstatic, thinking they were seeing miracles. All while this poor woman was being drained of life in a freezing, stinking concrete cell. My resolve to take Geary down strengthened. Outside, the rain was still coming down, and Shane shifted the woman in his arms to shield her face.

“Is she coming around?” he asked. “I can’t feel anything.”

It would’ve been an inconvenient time to have her wake up and start screaming. I searched for any sign that she was rising out of the sea of unconsciousness, but she was out cold, not even a flutter of her eyelashes. I shook my head. I was starting to worry Geary had sent her into a coma, and what we were going to do if he had.

Lionel didn’t even blink as Shane settled the woman in the back seat of the car. Rain pooled on the seat beneath her, washing days of sweat and piss onto the vinyl.

“Get us out of here,” Shane said, and then we were flying back to the B&B.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Bruce was waiting for us in the kitchen, pacing. He was wearing pajama pants and a torn-up LSU T-shirt. His hair—what he had left of it—was sticking up, and he was holding a cup of coffee that looked like it hadn’t been touched. As we walked in, he set the mug down on the table and advanced on Lionel.

“Doesn’t anyone in this family answer their goddamn cell phones? What the holy hell is going on?”

“That—that
preacher
down in Briny Point was keeping a woman tied up in his church.” Lionel was a religious man, and I knew Geary’s crime was worse in his eyes for having taken advantage of a flock of faithful.

The screen door banged, and we all turned to watch Shane walk in with the woman in his arms. In the gold light of the kitchen, I saw that she was younger than I’d first thought, maybe early twenties. I ran to the hall closet and got an armful of towels and laid them on the floor. Shane set her down carefully, supporting the back of her head.

Bruce stared. “Lionel, what the hell are thinking—you brought her here? She needs to be in a hospital!” He knelt down and brushed damp, dark hair out of her face. “Is she—is she—”

“She’s alive,” I said. “And we can’t bring her to a hospital. That’s the first place he’ll look.”

“Jesus Christ.” Bruce ran thick fingers through his hair.

Shane arranged her arms at her sides and stood up, rubbing his temples. “I haven’t been able to get through to her.”

For the first time, I noticed what she was wearing—black pants and a red halter top edged with black lace, the kind of outfit you’d wear to a club. She might have had on heels at some point, but they were long gone, and her feet were black with grime. Her clothes looked loose on her, as though she’d recently lost weight. How long had she been in that room?

“I didn’t know what to do about the duct tape,” I said, near tears.

“I’ll get some cooking oil. That may help.” Bruce stood, knees creaking as he walked to the pantry, and came back a moment later with a bottle. Shane was pacing the length of the kitchen, and Lionel was kneeling by the woman’s head. I could tell he was trying to make contact, but he wasn’t getting through.

Bruce handed me the bottle, and I went to work on the duct tape, easing it off millimeter by millimeter, my fingers slick with oil. It took me almost fifteen minutes, but eventually I was able to pull it away from her mouth. It still took patches of skin away with it, but it was better than it could have been. Shane brought a warm, damp washrag, and I wiped the oil and blood from her face.

“We should put her in one of the guest rooms,” Shane said. “We can call Bunny in the morning.”

“I’ll get her cleaned up,” I said, and the men nodded in agreement. Shane carried her up to the guest room in the southwest corner and left me to it.

The girl’s clothes were soiled beyond reclamation. I stripped them off of her, silently apologizing for it but deciding I’d want someone to do the same for me. She had a belly button piercing and a quarter-sized birthmark on her right thigh. I sponged her off as best I could and put her in a pair of Shane’s old sweatpants and a T-shirt. She was much taller and fuller-figured than me, and nothing I had would have fit her.

It seemed almost too much of an invasion to slip into her head on top of everything else, but if we could find anything out about where she was from, it might be useful. Unfortunately, all I got was a tangle of frightened images, mostly of the cell where we’d found her—the darkness, the sound of rats, the terror she felt when the happy chatter of churchgoers filtered through the walls. The cold. I clenched my fists so tightly my fingernails bit into my palms. I was going to find this guy.

I left a stack of clean towels and some of the mini-toiletries we kept for the guests on the chair by the bed, then went back downstairs. If she woke up, I didn’t doubt we’d know it.

“You can’t keep her here,” Bruce was saying as I came down the stairs. “She needs a doctor. And what if this maniac comes looking for her?”

I stopped in the doorway, and Shane and I exchanged a glance.

“We’ll just have to go looking for him first,” he said.

* * *

Dominic Geary had a nice place.

Shane parked on the street in front of his house, and we both took in the neat brick two-story with its two-car garage and professional landscaping. Through the fence I saw a fancy built-in barbecue pit in the backyard.

“Is he home?” Shane asked.

“Give me a sec.” I reached through the walls and felt for warm bodies. Only one, thank God. At the moment, it was about 4:00 a.m. and he was asleep. Who knew what time unscrupulous telekinetic preachers got started? He might stay in bed until noon.

It had been shockingly easy to track him down. His number had been unlisted, but I figured a guy like Geary probably didn’t skimp on personal luxuries. He had to at least have cable, maybe satellite TV. I’d called around until I got a hit. Geary, it turned out, was a satellite man. I’d told the overworked service rep that I was Mrs. Geary and we hadn’t been getting our bill in the mail, and could she please tell me what address they had on file for us? It had taken longer to drive to his place in the Garden District than it had to get his street number.

I unlocked the front door telekinetically, and we slipped into the dark foyer. In front of us was a flight of stairs, and beyond it, a huge carpeted living room with a flat-screen television and a fireplace with one of those fake gas-lit logs. The couch was cream leather.

“Likes the simple life, this guy,” Shane whispered.

“Shh.”

We crept up the stairs, wincing when one of the steps creaked. Upstairs, Geary stirred in his sleep. We froze.

“
Can you start pulling?
” Shane asked.

“
I
can try.
”

I reached for Geary. He wasn’t dreaming, and his mind was quiet and still. I started, very carefully, to pull, focusing hard on Geary and avoiding Shane. I connected to him in his sleep, grabbing tiny pieces of his power, but then my concentration wavered and the pull latched on to Shane.

“Back up,” I hissed. “You’re too close.”

“I can’t feel anything.”

“
I
can!
”

“
You managed fine out on the lake.
”