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“Officer,” Katie called and got an instant response from one of the uniformed cops near the gate. “Can you lend me your jacket?”
He slid it off and handed it over; Katie draped the police-issue jacket around Jazz’s thin shoulders. “There,” she said. “Better?”
“Yeah,” Jazz agreed softly. “Thanks. Hi, Katie.”
“Hi, honey. So, bad day, huh?”
“Pretty bad.” Jazz swallowed hard and glanced again at her mother, who was watching her with so much love and concern it made Katie’s heart turn over. “They almost got me, but Teal and Lena, they made sure I got away. I didn’t want to leave them, Katie. I didn’t!”
“I know you didn’t. Here. Sit with me.” She took a seat on the cold concrete bench and patted the empty spot next to her. “Maybe your mom can get you something to drink? Some water?”
It was a pretext, but a necessary one; she couldn’t just tell Kayla to leave, and Kayla needed an excuse to go. When Jazz nodded gratefully, the two women exchanged a quick glance, and Kayla reached down to hug her daughter before walking off in search of refreshments.
Katie waited until she was sure Kayla was out of earshot.
“You don’t have to be brave with me,” she said, and Jazz crumbled, sobbing against her. Katie put her arms around her, wincing as Jazz hugged back, but she bit her lip and stood the pain. She stroked the girl’s soft, silky hair with slow movements. “You’ve been brave all day, haven’t you?”
“I had to.” Jazz gulped. Her voice was more like a little girl’s now, shaking and high-pitched. “Everybody was counting on me. I had to remember, and tell people, and—”
“And you did that, you did. But you were scared, too, and that’s okay. It’s okay, you understand?”
Jazz pulled back, eyes swollen and streaming tears. She gave Katie a pleading look. “Mom never is.”
“Your mom is scared a lot, but she tries not to let it show.” Katie gave the girl a smile, a small one, appropriate to the mood. “Like me. But you need to break down sometimes to be stronger later. You understand that? I’ll bet your mom cries later.”
“She—” Jazz gulped air and looked more thoughtful. “Sometimes, I guess. She closes the door. I hear her crying, but only when things were really bad at work or something.”
“Well, today, they’re really bad at work and she’s afraid for you, too. So give her a break. Let her take care of you, okay?”
Jazz nodded. Her body language was slowly uncoiling from the wire-tight posture it had been, and Katie breathed a cautious sigh of relief. The last thing the kid needed was to bottle all this up. It was traumatic, and Jazz was—like all Athena students—advanced for her age. A recipe for emotional disaster.
“You feel like telling me the story now? One last time?”
Jazz bent her head and sat up again, hands braced on either side on the cold concrete bench. Her voice was soft, and still a little unsteady, but Katie heard every word. “We decided to go to the movies. It was—we had the day off.”
“Why didn’t you ask for transportation? Call a cab?”
Jazz didn’t look up. “We wanted to walk. It was a nice day.”
Girls her age didn’t want to walk, they wanted to get where they were going fast, and have fun even faster.
“Jazz, if you lie to me, you’re putting Teal and Lena in danger. You know that, don’t you?”
Jazz’s head jerked up in outright astonishment. Katie raised an eyebrow and waited as Jazz found words. “I didn’t lie!”
“I’m afraid you did. And you lied to your mother, and to the police, and now you think you can’t change your story. But you can, Jazz. Nobody thinks you’re at fault here.”
“But—”
Katie let a little hardness creep into her voice. “You weren’t going to the movies. You didn’t take the school transportation service because you didn’t want anybody to know where you were going, and you didn’t take a cab because you didn’t want any record. Right?”
Jazz looked as bewildered as if Katie had just pulled a rabbit out of her ear. “How—?” She swallowed the question and flushed pale pink under her matte-tan skin. “I didn’t lie. We would have gone to the movies. We were planning to do it late afternoon.”
“So where were you going in the morning?”
“It’s supposed to be a secret. Teal made me promise.”
“Teal made you promise.”
Jazz nodded slowly. “There was someone from the school in trouble. She needed help. Teal and Lena promised to meet her. I wasn’t really supposed to go along, but I followed them and caught up after I overheard. Besides, I wanted to go to the movies.”
Precocious didn’t half cover it, Katie thought. She wondered if she’d been so difficult at Jazz’s age, thought back and decided that it was entirely possible. “Where were you going? And who were you meeting?”
“We were going to the mall. It’s only a couple of blocks away. I don’t know who we were meeting, it was a secret. Teal and Lena didn’t want to talk about it.”
This didn’t sound nearly as innocent as Jazz probably thought it did. “Could it have been boys? Somebody they met in town, maybe?”
“I— No. No, they told me it was somebody from the school.”
“There are men working at the school.”
Jazz shook her head. “They said she.”
It couldn’t be an accident that Teal and Lena had been off-campus and picked off so neatly; somebody had set it up. Somebody had set a place and a time for them to be, and they’d walked right into it. Jazz had been an unexpected ride-along. No wonder they’d allowed her to escape.
“Okay, walk me through what happened. You were walking—”
Kayla returned midway through the recitation of the facts, but that was all right. The secret had been revealed, and Katie could see from the kid’s body language that she had nothing more to conceal. She’d told everything she knew.
Nevertheless, just for clarity, Katie walked Jazz through the rest of the story, start to finish, stopping her for details that seemed unimportant but might be vital later on. She made illegible scribbles in her own fluid abbreviations and listened for any false notes.
Nothing.
When silence fell, Katie checked her watch. It was sliding toward evening, and the chill was getting sharper in the air. The desert didn’t hold in the heat poured over it during the day, and it was going to get bone-shaking cold tonight. “Right,” she said. “I think that’s it, Jazz. You’ve been wonderful. I’ll check in on you when I can, okay?”
“Wait.” Jazz caught her hand. “You’re going to find them, right? You promise?”
Katie Rush never promised. It was unprofessional; it was hurtful and it added complications the job didn’t need. She’d learned that hard, and she never broke the rule.
She did now. “Yes,” she said. “I promise. They’re coming back safe.”
She walked off a little distance with Kayla, who was anxious and trying hard not to look it. “Anything?” Kayla asked.
Katie didn’t answer directly. “I need to go up to the school. Can someone give me a ride?”
“Of course. I’ll take you—”
“No, you need to take your daughter home. I’ll keep you fully briefed on what I find out—if anything. Be with Jazz right now.” She remembered the tall detective they’d passed, who’d looked at Kayla with such outright concern and longing. “And…anybody else you might need to see.”
Kayla flushed, just like her daughter. “It’s my case, I can’t just drop it!”
“It’s not your case,” Katie said and turned to face her. Cold air blew over them, reminding them that night was falling, that darkness was coming. “Your daughter was an assault victim. Two of her friends are missing. Nobody in their right mind is going to keep you in charge of this case, you know that. Phoenix PD is going to follow their own course. But me, I’m independent. I can follow leads they can’t, especially leads that come up inside of the Academy. Let me do this for you.”
Katie stared her down. It took a long time, but then Kayla always had been strong-willed, tough-minded and determined.
But she knew when to quit.
“All right,” she said. “But you keep me in the loop. Daily. Hourly, if there’s breaking news.”
“Of course. Now go home.”
“Not before I get you a car.”
It took more than that, of course, but it wasn’t more than fifteen minutes before Katie had her ride—a plain white Ford, police issue, complete with radio, siren, dashboard light and the lingering smell of old coffee.
Katie backed her new wheels out of the police barricades and through a tunnel of people that the uniformed officers kept open for her. As she applied the brakes, prior to turning around, her headlights swept across the faces of the reporters, the cops, the bystanders—fewer now than before, of course, but still a respectably sized crowd.
One stood out. She jammed the brakes harder, bringing the car to a full halt, and then slowly allowed the car to roll forward until she stopped next to the man on whom she’d focused.
He leaned down to rest his forearms on the frame of the open window and cocked his curly dark head. His eyes were as bright and curious as a raven’s.
“Agent Rush,” he said pleasantly. She didn’t smile.
“Are you following me?” Because he was, unquestionably, the man from the airport. The man from the cab.
“No.”
“You just ended up here by accident.”
He had the good grace to look uncomfortable. “Not—exactly, look, can I get in the car and talk to you? I—”
“No,” she said flatly. “I appreciate that you’re persistent, but you need to stop now. Following a federal agent is a risky business, do you understand me? So please. Look for a date at your hotel bar.”
He straightened up, obviously surprised and maybe a little bit angry; there was something in his eyes that flashed like lightning. But she hit the accelerator and left him behind, just a dim and distant figure that disappeared into the falling night.
Weird, she thought. He must have had the cab follow her from the airport, and then he’d spent the entire afternoon just…waiting. That was more extreme than she liked, no matter how attractive he was.
She impatiently shook off the memory of his eyes, his smile, and followed the road to Glendale, and the Athena Academy.
Chapter 4
Stefan Blackman stared after the glaring red taillights of Agent Rush’s car, temporarily stunned into stillness. He’d expected skepticism, but not outright dismissal—especially that kind of dismissal. Frankly, he wasn’t used to rejection. It stung. And it made him angry, too, because he had something to say, didn’t he? Something useful.
Something not at all about how lovely she was.
“Great.” He sighed and shook his head. Stuck in Phoenix, no transportation, no way to get the attention of anybody who would listen. He’d already tried to find a sympathetic officer to get to the good-looking brunette detective with the kid, but no go…. They’d taken his name and probably his photo, but they wouldn’t let him near her. Or anyone. And he wasn’t sure it was a good time to cause a scene—it would only make him look crazier.
What, then? Back to the airport? Back home? It was starting to have a powerful allure, getting the hell out of here and back to the warm, familiar cocoon of his life. He didn’t like how all this was making him feel, not at all.
Yes, that was what he was going to do. Clearly, the police didn’t need him; they had a massive presence here, and with the FBI descending, as well, surely they had more than enough leads without the admittedly not-very-specific visions of a psychic. Cops usually liked to resort to that sort of thing last, not first. And hell, there were phones, right? He could always call.
Maybe he could catch the red-eye back home….
The vision hit him with sudden, wrenching force, sending him sagging against the wooden police barricade and grabbing for support. He sensed all that distantly because this vision was even more visceral and immediate than the previous.
Still in the van. Driving. The girl was feeling the vibration through her body, facedown on the floor of the van. Muscles aching, hands and feet numbed from the tight bonds. Fear slowly receding, simply because she couldn’t continue to be afraid forever…
The girl next to her, the blonde with punk-purple streaks, had mastered her own terror and was doing something with her fingers. She was slowly, clumsily signing letters….
Stefan felt the girl try to sign back.
A hand reached down from somewhere above in the darkness and grabbed the first girl’s hair, yanking it painfully up and pulling her to her knees. She was breathing hard through her nose and trying not to cry. If her nose clogged up, she’d smother. The duct tape on her mouth wasn’t giving, no matter how she tried to work her jaw to loosen it.
“Hey,” said a rough male voice. “I told you not to move, get it? Don’t move. I can always drug you if you give me trouble. You want to avoid that, you stay still. We need one of you, not both. Either one of you gets cute, you get to watch the other one get hurt. Bad. Understood? Nod.”
The girl nodded, breathing hard. On the floor, the blonde nodded, too, eyes leaking furious tears.
The pressure on the girl’s hair released, and she overbalanced and fell hard, banging into the floor face-first. The impact stunned her, and she tasted blood, coppery and hot….
Stefan jerked out of the vision, swallowed, and could still taste the blood. He felt like vomiting. Whoever the girl was, she was controlling her fear, but it was real and immediate. Either one of you gets cute, you get to watch the other one get hurt. He hadn’t been able to sense her thoughts at all, only visuals and sensations, but that was enough. More than enough.
He still didn’t know where she was, or even if the visions were real time; it could have been something that happened hours ago, or would happen an hour into the future. No time sense to any of it. The van was dark in the interior, and the girl hadn’t been able to see….
Wait.
He realized he was still hunched over, clutching the police barricade in both hands, and forced himself to let go and straighten up. He felt sweat trickling down his face, despite the cool night breeze, and wiped his forehead with shaking hands.
As her abductor had jerked the girl up to her knees by the hair, she’d been able to get a brief glimpse out of the front window. The headlights had spilled over a dark empty road, a brilliant yellow line…
…and a road sign.
“She’s on Highway 347,” he said to himself. “She’s there now.” Because the view had still been washed with a faint tint of sunset, the far horizon not yet completely dark.
He needed to tell somebody. Anybody.
Stefan pushed through the crowd of bored reporters to the edge of the crime scene, where the uniformed officers were looking even more bored. Forensics was packing up, and the floodlights were going off. They were leaving.
No sign of the brunette detective and her girl; long gone, he guessed. Out the other side, where there were fewer reporters.
“Sir,” he said, and then louder, “Officer!”
The nearest cop, who’d been speaking with two others, turned to look at him with a dead-eyed stare. “Stay behind the tape, sir,” he said.
“I am behind the tape. I have—”
“You’re leaning over.”
“This is important, I know where they are! The girls!”
He had all their attention now, an uncomfortable weight of it. “How do you know that, sir?” “I saw them.”
“Where, sir?”
“In a van, traveling on Highway 347. I don’t know if they’re going north or south…”
“Back up, sir. How exactly did you see inside the van?”
Oh boy. “I just know, okay? I know. You need to look for them on Highway 347, and hurry. They probably won’t be there long, and those girls are in danger. They’re going to get hurt.”
He didn’t have to be a psychic to get the sense that the cops were not pleased with his explanation, although they dutifully took down all his contact information—home address, cell phone, everything but his brand of underwear. The male cop stepped forward and looked at Stefan from a height well above six feet. “You just know,” he said. “As in, what? You had a dream?”
“A vision, actually,” he said. “Look, I need to talk to the detectives. I can help!”
The cop nodded, but his face had shut down into an expressionless mask. “I see. I’ve got your name and contact information, sir. I’ll make sure it gets to the detectives.”
“Highway 347—”
“Yes, sir. We’ll follow that up.”
The cop was humoring him. No question about it. Stefan felt a hot burn of rage, but it wouldn’t do any good to let it out; he’d get to talk to the detectives, all right, in handcuffs. Not so much a talk as an interrogation, probably.
He needed to talk to Agent Rush.
“Fine,” Stefan said and held up his hands in surrender. “Just check Highway 347. You know how to find me if you need more information.”
Not that he had any more information, really. The glimpse of the road sign had been a pure gift of luck. It wasn’t exactly breaking news that the girl was terrified, or that she was in a van. Or that her friend had purple-streaked hair.
Or that they were in real trouble.
Stefan moved away, furious and frustrated, and tried to decide on his next move. He had no idea where Agent Rush had gone, and had no way to track her down. And he needed to talk to her, he just sensed it. She would listen to what he had to say, if he could just get past that thick defensive shell.
And to do that, she had to want to talk to him.
“Cops giving you a hard time?” asked a cool female voice at his elbow. He turned and saw a petite blonde dressed from the waist up in an expensive silk shirt and tailored jacket, and from the waist down in blue jeans and flats. She looked styled and coiffed and perfectly made-up.
Television reporter, beyond any doubt.
“A little,” he said.
“I’m sorry, but I overheard what you said to him. You said you had information about the missing girls…? Something about Highway 347?”
He smiled at her. She smiled back. It was purely a professional exchange; there was something about her that put him on his guard, maybe the slightly harsh glitter in her eyes, or the ambition he sensed coming off her in waves. Not a bad person, he sensed, but a driven one. Compulsively needing to win.
He had no idea what game she was playing, but she clearly saw him as some kind of pawn.
“How do you know I’m not one of the kidnappers?” he asked. Her eyebrows rose, and those brown eyes sparkled even more.
“Are you? Because that would be one hell of a story.” She hastily tamped down her excitement. “Provided the girls were returned unharmed, of course.”
“Of course.” He tried to keep the irony out of his voice. “I heard they’re both students at a local girls’ school.”
“Private school,” the reporter said. “What do you know about the Athena Academy?”
“Athena Academy?” he repeated blankly. He’d never heard of it. He knew about the goddess Athena, of course— “Nothing.”
“You weren’t called in? Maybe by one of the alumni to help with the investigation?” She seemed to be fishing for something, dangling bait, but he had no idea what she meant.
He shrugged. “I’m a private citizen. Not called in by anybody. How about you?”
She gave him a knowing smile. “I have my sources. I got a tip early in the investigation.” Some of the light went out of her eyes. Too bad. They’d been quite pretty for a while, and now they were narrowing and hardening again. “But you’re just a guy who listens to the police band and hangs around crime scenes? Wastes the time of the police with false leads?” She was in pursuit of a completely different story now, one potentially damaging to him both personally and professionally. He needed to establish credentials, quickly.
“No,” he said and stepped forward, forcing her to meet his eyes. “My name is Stefan Blackman, and I’m a psychic well known in Los Angeles, and if you want to put me on the air, I’ll tell you everything I know about the abduction of these girls. Including where the van was as of five minutes ago.”
Her eyes widened, and her lips parted, then smiled. She held out her hand to him, and when he automatically took it, shook briskly. “Shannon Connor, ABS. I’ve certainly heard of you, Mr. Blackman. Don’t they call you the Network Psychic?”
He hated that idiotic name, but he nodded. “I work for the broadcast networks, but not as a psychic. What I do for them really doesn’t involve psychic ability,” he said. “I just read the concepts for the shows and pick the ones I think will be most successful.”
“But everybody says that your track record is extraordinary. Something like ninety-five percent, right?”
He shrugged. “That part’s not visions. It’s just good sense.”
“I like that. Save that for the camera, okay?” Shannon turned and waved at someone in the crowd, then made a pointing gesture toward a large panel van decorated with the ABS logo. A broadcast van. Stefan recognized the heavy extendable antenna mounted to the top of it. “Ten minutes to get set up, then we can tape. I can’t promise when it will air, though. Probably in rotation at the next news break. We’re in luck that Tory Patton’s off on maternity leave—I’m getting premium time, thanks to her getting knocked up. Next thing you know, I’ll be the anchor.” She winked, letting him know it was all in fun. Sort of. “Sound okay to you?”
He hadn’t expected to land a full interview, not so quickly, but time was ticking away, and if he didn’t attract the attention of that cool, dismissive FBI agent soon, it would—he knew—be too late.
“Ready when you are,” he said and gave her a full, charming smile to seal the deal.
Chapter 5
Coming back to the Athena Academy was like coming home for Katie—but a home that had new occupants. The buildings all looked gracious and eternal, but there were signs of subtle changes: different paint on the trim of the outbuildings, new trees here and there. Hardy, drought-resistant native plants where she remembered an English herb garden. And had the driveway always been this long?
Her headlights swept a new building, adorned with a brass plaque, and she remembered that a new science wing had been dedicated to Rainy Miller. She hadn’t been able to attend the ceremony, but Kayla had told her about it.
There were a few older students outside, dressed in casual clothes since the school day was over. Casual clothes far more fashionable than those Katie had worn during her school days. Or wore now, for that matter. Most were studying, nodding their heads in time with the music on their iPods, but a few were talking. One group was playing soccer in the fading light, squealing and laughing. If you didn’t know what the Athena Academy was, you wouldn’t have much of a clue to look at the scene. Maybe, if you were very observant, she thought, you’d notice the advanced nature of the texts the girls were studying. Or the fluid speed and grace of the ones playing soccer.
Even as she thought it, one girl slid feetfirst across the grass and executed a devastating sideways kick. The goalie deflected the shot, but it rebounded with force, hit a tree and caromed into Katie’s unmarked police car as she pulled it to a stop.
“Sorry!” the goalie yelled, and jogged over to grab the ball and send it back into play. Katie watched her with a strange mixture of affection and dread—the affection was for the girl; the dread was for herself. Dread that she wouldn’t do what everyone expected from her—that she wouldn’t be able to find the girls, or save them. It was a dread she always felt, every time, and she mastered it with a few moments of concentration. Focus on the facts, Katie. Facts and procedure were what got you through the tough emotional moments in a job like this. And she had no doubt that there would be a tough emotional moment coming soon; the women she was about to sit down with were formidable, to say the least, and it was entirely possible that she was going to have to suggest—maybe more than suggest—that someone they knew and most likely trusted was involved in the abduction of two students.