Photographs.
“Of me,” Hollis said.
“Yeah.” Jordan looked at her steadily. “He apparently had a little workroom across the hall where he liked to cut up the pictures. I found this lying on a table in there, all ready for him. Notice anything unusual?”
But Dani saw it first. “They’re dated. All taken with a digital camera. And…some are dated more than a year ago.”
“The bastard hunted me for over a year?” Hollis was too bewildered to be angry about it. For now, at least.
“I don’t think so.” Jordan showed them the envelope. “This was mailed to him at a post office box here in Venture. Mailed from Washington, D.C. Postmarked two days ago.”
“He was here two days ago,” Marc said slowly.
“Yeah. There are also several empty envelopes in there. D.C. and New York postmarks. Different dates, but all during the past month.”
They looked at one another, several things and possibilities falling into place.
“A trained monster,” Bishop said. “Or maybe just…a tool. A puppet. But not the puppetmaster.”
“That’s why it felt different,” Dani said slowly. “Why I didn’t feel the same energy in his—his torture chamber that I felt out in the hallway. Because he wasn’t responsible for the attack. Marc was right, the killer was never psychic. His wasn’t the voice in my head.”
“He was bait too,” Bishop said slowly.
Dani nodded. “The bait to draw us. If you want to trap the monster hunters, you have to provide a monster. Find one. Uncage one. Or create one. Every time we hit a wall in the investigation, another little fact or detail or possible lead would be dangled in front of us. To keep us asking questions, to keep us off balance. To keep us moving, always toward the trap.”
“He didn’t catch anything in his trap,” Jordan pointed out. “Did he?”
“He didn’t get Paris’s ability,” Dani said. “But this attack…it was different. It was stronger, more focused. He may have gained something, even if it wasn’t a new ability. The experience alone could have given him something of value to him.”
“You said you thought you hurt him,” Marc reminded her.
“It felt like I did. A sense of pain, of frustration. But…it wasn’t a crippling injury. There was still the echo of a very strong, distinct presence, a personality—especially right at the end, when I discharged all that energy. He knew he’d lost…this round.”
Jordan said, “Shit. This round?”
“It isn’t over,” Marc said.
Epilogue
Boston
Bishop said, “The monster who killed your daughter will spend the remainder of his pathetic life screaming at the walls, babbling about some prophecy he probably created when his own acts became too evil even for him. We may never know; whatever was left of his mind got broken there at the end. Or maybe a long time before the end.”
“And the monster who pulled his strings? The cold, calculating mind behind him?”
“We never saw him,” Bishop said. “Even though we believe he was close enough, more than once, to watch. Close enough to affect some of us. Close enough to hunt and possibly even capture the…prey…for his pet killer.”
LaMott’s mouth twisted. “Like feeding a spider.”
“Yes.”
“So who spun the web?”
“So far we haven’t found so much as a trace of evidence that he even exists. Except, of course, that we know he does.”
“What else do you know?”
“I believe I know where to start looking for him.”
Senator LeMott smiled. “That’s good, Bishop. That’s very good indeed.”
BANTAM BOOKS BY KAY HOOPER
THE BISHOP TRILOGIES
Stealing Shadows
Hiding in the Shadows
Out of the Shadows
Touching Evil
Whisper of Evil
Sense of Evil
Hunting Fear
Chill of Fear
THE QUINN NOVELS
Once a Thief
Always a Thief
ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
Amanda
After Caroline
Finding Laura
Hunting Rachel
CLASSIC FANTASY AND ROMANCE
On Wings of Magic
The Wizard of Seattle
My Guardian Angel (anthology)
Yours to Keep (anthology)
Golden Threads
Something Different / Pepper’s Way
C.J.’s Fate
The Haunting of Josie
BLOOD DREAMS
A Bantam Book / December 2007
Published by Bantam Dell
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2007 by Kay Hooper
Bantam Books is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hooper, Kay.
Blood dreams / Kay Hooper.
p. cm.
1. Bishop, Noah (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Serial murderers—Fiction. 3. Government investigators—Fiction. 4. Serial murders—Fiction. 5. Boston (Mass.)—Fiction. 6. Suspense fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.O587B58 2007
813'.54—dc22 2007034564
www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-553-90392-8
v3.0