“We’ll be there in ten,” he assured her. “Lights and sirens all the way. You just stay inside the house. And don’t answer the phone.”
“Believe me, I won’t,” she assured him and disconnected the call.
She figured her mother would be calling any minute now, followed by her father and then Geoff, her brother. But they knew when the madness exploded to call her on her cell.
Whoever was ringing the doorbell was being persistent and someone was also knocking loudly. Lauren wanted to shut the bedroom door and put her hands over her ears. Instead, she forced herself to take some deep calming breaths and pulled out a t-shirt and jeans to put on. She had no intention of greeting the police in her pajamas.
She had just pulled her thick brown hair into a quick ponytail when her cell rang. She glanced at the readout. Her father. Of course. That meant he’d seen the early news, probably on the channel Mari’s boyfriend worked for. She let the call go to voice mail, planning to call back after the police arrived and the crowd of vultures was gone.
Her landline had been blessedly silent for a few minutes but as soon as she stepped into the kitchen to make some coffee it started to ring again. She lifted the receiver, disconnected the call, and then left the receiver lying on the counter. Her nerves couldn’t take any more noise.
Why, why, why? Why did they have to make such a big deal about what she did? Surely, with everything going on in the world today, there was enough to write about without focusing on her and making her life miserable. Yet somehow, since the first time an episode had been leaked, she’d been high on the media radar. She was glad that when she’d started her graphic design business she’d decided to use a pseudonym. She could just imagine the reaction of her clients if and when they saw all this craziness in the newspapers and on television. Not to mention the lurid tabloids.
As Sergeant Hurley had promised, less than ten minutes had passed when she heard the wail of sirens coming closer and closer. When the sound was directly in front of her house, she headed for the living room and peeked out through the drapes. Sure enough, there were three cruisers, lights flashing, parked in the streets, and uniformed cops moving the crowd away. And none too politely, she was happy to see.
Eventually, when all the vehicles and the people were gone she saw one of the uniformed men climb the steps to her porch and knock on her door.
“Miss Cahill? It’s Officer McLean. Sergeant Hurley asked me to speak to you personally. It’s safe for you to open the door to me.”
Double-checking to make sure everyone was gone, she unlocked the door to let him in.
“Thanks for taking care of this,” she said, digging up a smile. “I appreciate it.”
“The sergeant said for us to be sure and keep an eye out,” he assured her. “These reporters are nothing but bone-pickers.”
What an apt description.
Lauren shivered. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
“Is there someplace you can go, away from here?” he asked. “Until this latest business dies down? They’re gone today but they might very well come back. The sergeant isn’t so sure it will be safe for you here.”
Lauren tamped down the sudden rise of anger. “Tell the sergeant I appreciate his concern and his help, but I won’t let them chase me out of my own house.”
McLean shrugged. “He said you’d say that. Okay, just keep your doors locked and call us if these assholes show up again. We’ll be doing a drive-by every hour or so for a while.”
“Thank you again. Really.”
She locked the door after him, waited until all the patrol cars had left, then went to get her cell phone. Time to call her parents back.
* * * * *
Troy Arsenault lounged back in his chair at the breakfast table and sipped from his mug of hot coffee. He and another of the Phoenix Agency partners, Mark Halloran, had just completed a tense and complicated hostage negotiation and extraction and he had accepted Mark’s invitation to spend a few days kicking back with him and his wife, Faith, in San Antonio. Faith, a best-selling romance thriller novelist, was taking the morning away from her computer to fix a lavish breakfast for the two men.
“Want to catch the news?” she asked from the counter where she was whisking eggs. “Mark will be down in a minute and he always likes to catch up.”
“Sure. That would be nice. We’ve kind of been out of touch with the world.”
Faith picked up the remote for the television sitting on the counter and turned it on to a news channel.
“…in San Antonio, Texas,” the reporter was saying. “Rumor has it Miss Cahill has performed such so-called miracles before, but we’re having some trouble substantiating the facts. She seems to be a very private person who gives out no information.” His smile was a touch sarcastic. “Makes it a little hard to get proof when you can’t interview the subject. This morning reporters attempted to contact her at home…”
Behind her was a shot of a house on a residential street with news vans, cars and people crowded around it.
Faith dropped her whisk into the bowl. “Oh my god. Mark,” she called. “Come here! Hurry.”
“What is it? What’s the matter?” He was still pulling on his t-shirt when he hurried into the kitchen. “Troy giving you a hard time?”
“This is serious. Look.” She pointed at the television. “It’s about Lauren.”
“Again?” His face sobered instantly. “Those damn bloodsuckers just don’t want to leave her alone, do they?”
“This is the worst it’s been yet. I’m going to call her and see if there’s anything we can do.” Faith picked up her cell phone from the counter and walked into another room for privacy.
“Friend of yours?” Troy asked, puzzled by the whole thing.
Mark filled a mug from the coffeepot and sat down in a chair opposite. “Lauren Cahill and Faith have been friends for years. In fact, they both belong to kind of a psychic organization. Faith’s actually been trying to talk her into joining Phoenix’s Psi Department. Our wives have been a big help in some of our cases since we brought them in. We’d like to have more time to get the department fully up and running. Maybe in another few months. Meantime, we have a source we can tap if and when we need it.”
“Is she a telepath also?” Troy knew both Faith and Mark were. It was the only thing that had allowed Phoenix to rescue him when terrorists had captured him in the Peruvian jungle.
“No. She’s a psychic healer.” He cocked an eyebrow at Troy. “Ever have contact with any of them? I mean, as a medic.”
“Not really. I was only a medic with the SEALs and we didn’t run into much of anything off the straight and narrow. But I have heard of psychic healing. It takes many forms. Touch, thought, herbs, even crystals. Do you know which kind of healing Lauren practices?”
“Touch healing,” Faith answered, walking back into the room. “And it really takes a lot out of her.”
“So I’ve heard,” Troy agreed.
“Mark, the media was all over her this morning. I begged her to come and stay with us but she said they aren’t chasing her out of her home. And apparently her friend Sergeant Hurley cleared the area this morning and has a car driving by every hour. She thinks that will calm things down.”
“I’m not so sure. Like you said, these people seem more intense than usual.” Mark frowned. “Maybe you should try again. I don’t like the idea of her being there all by herself.”
“Neither do I.”
Troy’s curiosity was piqued. “What’s she like?”
“She’s very nice,” Faith said quickly. “Bright, funny. Very giving. She never takes money for any of the healings she performs.”
“Yeah? How does she make a living?”
“She has a great web design business, Mr. Skeptic. She builds and maintains websites, and has a very hefty client list, thank you very much.”
“Oops.” Troy tried to soften things with a smile. “I didn’t mean to say anything negative about her, Faith. I’m just curious.” He took a swallow of coffee and set the mug back on the table. “I haven’t worked with any healers, but I’ve met a couple. They interested me enough to read up about it. I found the subject very intriguing.”
“We’ll have to make sure you get to meet Lauren while you’re here,” Faith told him. “If we can just get her through this latest situation.” Her mouth quirked up in a slow smile. “Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just thinking, Lauren probably needs someone to check out her house, make sure everything’s secure. Maybe install some extra locks. Check her phone system.” She looked at Troy. “Isn’t that one of your areas of expertise?”
Mark raised an eyebrow. “I smell your brain burning. What are you cooking up now?”
“Well, Troy’s between assignments and he’s got downtime after the one you both just finished. I thought maybe he’d like to keep himself from getting rusty.”
Mark grinned. “Maybe we should ask Troy what he thinks about checking out the house of a gorgeous, single, unattached woman.”
“Wait a minute.” Troy looked from one to the other. “First of all, if she’s so desirable, how come she’s still single? And what makes you think she’d even let me into her house if she’s so jittery?”
Faith’s grin disappeared. “She’s still single because she’s learned not to trust people. Even when she’s tried to be so careful about the men she dates, most of them still see her as some kind of freak. And she’ll feel okay with you because we’ll tell her you’re safe.”
“I’m not sure ‘safe’ is the word a man likes to have best describe him,” Troy said, a wry note in his voice, “but in this case it’ll probably work best.” He finished his coffee and stood up to get a refill. “So exactly what am I supposed to do when I get there?”
“Exactly what I just said,” Faith told him. “Check the security of her house. Maybe see about doing something with her phone system. She’s had stalker calls before and it would make sense to try to trace them if she gets them again.” Faith gave a delicate shrug. “Spend a little time with her. Reassure her. Maybe even try again to talk her into coming here to stay with us for a few days.”
Troy had to admit to himself his curiosity was running at a high level. The more things Faith said about the woman, the more intrigued he became. And all efforts at so-called matchmaking aside, it would be an unexpected opportunity to learn more about psychic healing, a subject that had fascinated him since he first learned about it.
“All right. Call her. If she’s adamant about not having me come over, drop it. We’ll figure out something else. If she’s okay with it, find out what time would be convenient for her and I’ll do it.”
Faith gave him an impulsive hug. “Thank you. She’s a good friend and I really am worried about her. I’ll call her right now.”
* * * * *
He called himself The Cleaner, because he saw his mission as one of cleansing. This woman had brought her black magic into the sphere of his life and tainted it. Oh, everyone said what a miraculous thing she’d done. How wonderful it was. How truly gifted she was.
But he saw her skills as fashioned by the devil, creating an aura of false hope. Any day now he expected everything in his circle to disintegrate and then hope would be lost forever. There would be no relief this time.
The headaches had begun that time he witnessed her doing her mumbo jumbo. Casting spells.
They
could call it healing or anything they wanted to but only he, The Cleaner, knew the real truth. He had wanted to destroy her at the time but the others protected her and kept her shielded from outside forces. Since then he had tracked her activities.
She seldom traveled to perform her black magic. And when she did, she had a woman with her who clung to her like a barnacle. It would have been necessary to take both of them out and that would have been both dangerous and unnecessary. He wasn’t a killer by nature, nor did he see his plan as one of murder. He just wanted to cleanse the world of the she-devil.
Ridding society of her was taking careful planning on his part. It wasn’t just the idea of killing her. He wanted her to know who he was and why he was doing this. He wanted to look her in the eye and make her understand his mission was to eradicate her.
In the beginning, he had been satisfied with just the letters, imagining her reaction when she opened them. Hoping she would realize he was serious and stop what she was doing. When that didn’t work he began making the phone calls. Oh, she’d tried changing her number but enough money always bought the right information. He wanted to hear her fear on the other end of the connection. He wanted her to tremble at the sound of his voice and the impact of his messages and cease her vile practices.
But she hadn’t stopped her Satanic practices so each time he heard of another person she’d attended to he’d escalated the calls. Now, after three years, that was no longer enough. Not nearly. He’d come to the city where she lived to put his final plan together carefully. Even the media saw her for what she was. This latest turnout was larger and more demanding, as if they too knew she was evil.
Although he frequently scoped out her house, he was careful to dress differently each time and to do it when his appearance would be least likely to attract attention.
He thought it an omen when he’d found this little apartment in San Antonio. He wasn’t used to such cheap lodging, since money was not an issue in his life. But this suited his purpose perfectly, especially as all utilities except telephone were included, avoiding the necessity of having that kind of paper trail. Of course, he wasn’t using his own name. He had sources that provided him with false identification.
The tiny place even came with basic cable, which astounded him considering the low rent. Not that it mattered, since he seldom watched television. And he didn’t bother to activate the phone, as he only used burner phones that were untraceable.
So while he watched and waited for the perfect moment, while he tormented her daily, he could be completely anonymous.
Chapter Two
Lauren disconnected the call and shoved her cell phone in the pocket of her jeans, replaying the conversation with mixed feelings. On the one hand, she appreciated the concern her friends were showing. With her family split in their support of her—her parents wished she’d just make it go away, while her brother and sister-in-law supported her but tried not to piss off their parents—and nearly everyone else she came into contact with treating her like a freak of nature, her relationship with the Hallorans was something very precious to her.