CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Kate let out a weary sigh as she latched the deadbolt on her front door. All she wanted to do was fall into bed and go to sleep.

The day before, she’d gotten up early to catch the flight back from Dallas, only to come home to see Wilma in a coma in the hospital and then to be dropped into the middle of her brother’s murder scene. Later that evening she had been shaken by AJ’s revelations of what John could do, and further, by the revelation of what she could also do.

After such a terrible day she had gotten little sleep. She couldn’t help imagining how terrified John must have been, all alone and helpless. She couldn’t help feeling guilty.

Her first day back at the office, as always, had been busy, long, and tiring—and upsetting, when she learned that Wilma had died. Two people she knew, murdered. She changed that to three people—her Uncle Everett made it three.

She was also concerned about a hacker going after executive information—after her information. She wondered who had the file with her name, and why. Kate didn’t like unexplained connections.

It felt like events were rushing headlong at her. Besides the things she needed to catch up on at work, her brother’s funeral was going to be in a few days. The people at the Clarkson Center had liked John. Kate was sure that some of them would want to go to his funeral.

On top of all that, she hadn’t realized how draining it would be to look through all the photos at AJ’s house.

Or to look into the face of so much evil.

In the back of her mind she was also upset over learning that John had been working with AJ to identify murderers. She could certainly understand AJ’s reasoning, yet despite the precautions AJ had taken, Kate knew that it had somehow put John into the clutches of a killer.

She remembered that AJ said she had learned from the book by Jack Raines that not only were there rare people like John and Kate who could look at a killer and know them for what they were, there were equally rare predators who were able to recognize people with that ability, and they wanted very much to eliminate them.

The fact that the killer had removed John’s eyes was no coincidence. She didn’t know how he had found John, but Kate knew that it had to be that kind of killer who had murdered her brother—one who was able to see John’s ability. But how had he found out about John?

A sensation of icy dread suddenly washed through her as she realized what had been nagging at her.

The photos of Kate that had been on the refrigerator at John’s house were older photos that John had taken himself with his old, simple film camera. He’d had the negatives developed at the nearby drugstore. When Kate had gone through the house with AJ the night of the murder, those photos had been missing.

There were predators who could recognize her ability to see them for what they were.

Kate felt as if her heart had come up into her throat.

If she could see evil, then evil could see her.

And the photos of her that had been on the refrigerator at her brother’s house were now missing. It had to be that the predator who had recognized and killed John for his special kind of vision had taken those photos because of what he also saw in Kate’s eyes.

The devil had her picture.

The lamp on the side table beside the couch suddenly clicked on. Kate jumped.

She put a hand over her hammering heart as she realized that the lamp was on a timer. With the shades drawn it was meant to look from the outside like someone was home. In the gloom, she saw the red light still blinking on the answering machine. She hadn’t bothered to stop long enough to check that message and erase it. She saw that there were now three messages.

Kate just wanted to brush her teeth, take off her makeup, maybe take a quick shower if she could muster the energy to stand that long, and go to bed. She knew that she needed sleep in order to be able to think clearly. She headed for the kitchen to set down her laptop and plug it in to charge for the night.

As she walked into the kitchen, out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of something moving outside the window over the nook. She set down her computer case and peered out the window, but with the under-counter lights on she couldn’t really see much out the window. She wondered if the door on the shed had come unfastened. The wind sometimes worked the latch loose.

She flipped open the deadbolt, thinking she ought to run out back and secure the shed door. She opened the kitchen door enough to stick her head out, trying to see better. She couldn’t really tell if the door on the shed, at the far end of the backyard, was closed or not.

Fitful gusts of wind clattered branches together, sounding like bones rattling. She hated windy nights. She debated whether the shed door was important enough for her to go stumbling out in the dark and risk breaking her neck tripping over a tree root. The light over the back door had burned out and she hadn’t gotten around to changing the bulb. She tried to remember where she’d left the flashlight last, but she was too tired to think.

The shed door might bang around a little if the wind picked up, but it wasn’t going to blow off. She decided to go to bed instead. She shut the kitchen door and turned the deadbolt.

Curiosity, or maybe it was merely an ingrained sense of obligation, finally got the better of her on the way out of the kitchen. She pressed the play button on the answering machine.

A mechanical voice reported the time and date. The first message had been from several days before Kate had returned from Dallas.

“Miss Bishop,” a voice said, “my name is Jack Raines.”

Kate was instantly wide awake.

“I’m … an acquaintance of your Uncle Everett. As I’m sure you must know by now, he was murdered a few weeks ago. I only just found out that Everett had relatives. If no one has informed you yet, then I apologize for being the one to bring you the news this way.”

It was a bad cell connection and it was hard to hear. Kate leaned closer to the phone. “Miss Bishop, I’d really like to talk to you as soon as possible.” There was a pause, as if he wanted to add something, then changed what he had intended to say. “Please call me as soon as possible.”

Kate stood stiff and wide-eyed as he gave his name again and his phone number.

Why would Jack Raines be calling her? AJ said that it had been difficult for her to contact him.

“Please,” he added, “call me as soon as you can.”

She wondered if he wanted to tell her something about her Uncle Everett. Or possibly about his murder.

Kate had intended to talk to AJ about Jack Raines after dinner and after looking at the photos. Kate had wanted to ask about the reviews from law enforcement personnel that said Jack Raines was a phony, or a detective wannabe, and that he didn’t know what he was talking about. AJ had seemed to think a lot of him. Kate wanted to know why there was such a discrepancy. But the photos had been the priority and then AJ had left in such a rush there hadn’t been time to bring it up.

She thought from what AJ had told her that Jack Raines might be able to provide better explanations, or at least context, for what she and John were able to do, but the reviews had caused her to dismiss Jack Raines as a legitimate authority.

Kate pressed the play button for the next message. It had been left the day before. It was also from Jack Raines and nearly identical. The connection was much better this time. His voice struck her as intelligent and sincere.

Kate had dealt with people who sounded intelligent and sincere, but turned out to be con artists of one sort or another. People who were stealing from KDEX, or up to no good of some kind, could almost always make their excuses sound perfectly reasonable. That type of person was good at sounding convincing, much the way serial killers were often charming.

Maybe that had been what fooled AJ. Maybe the reviewers, who were real criminal profilers, were right about the book. Or, maybe they were the ones deceiving readers.

With trembling fingers, Kate pressed the play button for the final message. It had been left earlier that day but it started a little differently. “Miss Bishop, I realize that I must sound like a crackpot or something, and that’s probably why you’re not returning my calls, but it’s very important that I speak with you. I don’t want to explain why on an answering machine. Please call me as soon as possible.”

She could read the stress in his voice.

He again left his phone number. Kate played the last message over so she could write the number on the back of AJ’s business card. After thinking about it a moment, she pulled out her phone and also added it to her contacts list. Her name and number were blocked, so if she did decide to call him on her cell, he wouldn’t be able to see her number.

Because of the nature of her security position, her number and home address were unlisted. The people she dealt with knew to give out her office phone number, and not her cell number. If someone called KDEX wanting to speak with her and she was away from the office, they connected the call to her cell rather than give out her number, or they took a message. She usually returned calls on the landline in her office.

KDEX computer-security people had seen to it that the cell number had never appeared on the internet search sites where such information was typically available. Brian, ever watchful over her, had gone to even greater lengths to insure that she was invisible and to a certain extent off the grid.

That was probably why Jack Raines had called her home phone—it was an old number that he might have gotten at her Uncle Everett’s place. She hadn’t spoken to her uncle in years and he wouldn’t have known her cell number, but he might have had her home phone number.

It also occurred to her that the hacker who had lifted her personnel file had gotten garbage information. Her cell phone in that file was wrong, so whoever stole that file wouldn’t have been able to call her cell. But they might have been able to find the old number of her landline.

Kate reminded herself that Everett had been murdered.

John had been murdered.

She unlocked her phone and with her thumb scrolled through her contacts list. She stopped at a listing under S and pressed the cell number.

After it rang half a dozen times, he answered.

“Jeff Steele.”

“Jeff, it’s Kate Bishop.”

“Kate—good to hear your voice. Kind of late for you to be calling. Are you checking up on your friend from Dallas?”

“No. This is about something else.”

Because Jeff Steele had occasionally pulled off the seemingly impossible for her, Kate sometimes called him her “man of steel.” He was the one she called with difficult security situations. She had one of those now.

His tone immediately changed. “What is it? You sound upset.”

“I need a favor.”

“Anything. I owe you more than one. What can I do for you?”

“Can you please find out what you can about a man named Jack Raines. R-a-i-n-e-s.”

“Jack Raines. Got it. What’s this about? What kind of trouble is he causing for KDEX?”

Kate hesitated. “It’s nothing like that,” she said. “Could you please just find out what you can for me?”

“Not a problem.”

“The sooner the better.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble? Is this guy causing you—”

“No, it’s not that,” Kate said as she paced across the living room, holding the back of her neck with her free hand. She cleared her throat. “My brother was murdered.”

“John? John was murdered?”

“Yes, just yesterday. I found out about it when I got back into town yesterday.”

“Good lord, Kate, I’m really sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do? Anything at all, just name it.”

“Yes, find out what you can about Jack Raines for me.”

“Do you think he’s involved in the murder somehow?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. This is about something else. I’ve become friends with the detective working on my brother’s murder. She told me about a book called A Brief History of Evil written by Jack Raines, but I don’t know if the guy is legit. She only mentioned it because she thought it might explain some things about my brother.”

“What kind of things?”

Kate pressed trembling fingers to her forehead, doing her best to hold back tears. “Jeff, I’m exhausted. Can we talk about it once you see if you can find anything on Mr. Raines?”

“Sure. Sorry, Kate. You get some rest. I’m on it. I’ll call you.”

“Thanks Jeff,” Kate said before pressing the END CALL tile.

With the back of the hand that held her phone, she wiped a tear from her cheek on her way down the hallway.

She turned off the hall lights, then sat on the edge of her bed and opened the bottom drawer of the nightstand. She slid her fingers into the recesses of the safe and let her muscle memory quickly press each finger in the correct sequence. The safe door popped open.

She reached in for her semiautomatic handgun. As she lifted it, she slid her trigger finger over the raised indicator behind the ejection port, confirming that it had a round chambered. She always kept it loaded and ready to fire, but she still always checked.

It had been Jeff Steele who suggested she get a gun, a Glock 19 in particular. It was difficult to legally possess a gun in Chicago, but Jeff had helped her get through the tangle of legal requirements so that she had all the proper permits. He had also used his contacts to get her proper instruction on using the weapon.

She set the gun on her nightstand before going into the bathroom to get ready for bed.

She knew. The devil was on the hunt.