She couldn’t recall having ever met him—and she was certain she would remember a man this evil if their paths ever had crossed—but everything he was saying seemed to indicate this was personal, that everything he was doing was about her, and her alone.
She racked her brain, trying desperately to think, but her brain wouldn’t cooperate. It felt like mush. The panic that threatened to overwhelm her made concentrating difficult. She knew this was her long-lost brother, the twin she had not even been aware existed until yesterday; that much she had already deduced, even without the benefit of a Flicker.
Could it be he was aware of their relationship? If so, could his barely controlled rage be somehow related to that knowledge? And more importantly, could she figure out a way to use that knowledge to her advantage? Dammit, think!
She reached the couch and turned to sit on the dingy material but Milo stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “No,” he said. “We can’t very well put on this performance with you still in your street clothes, can we?”
The panic threatened to mushroom again. What the hell did he mean by that? The situation was bad enough without this madman speaking in riddles. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, a lump forming in her throat, tears on the verge of returning.
Cait longed to be wrapped in Kevin’s arms, his muscular body pressed to hers. It was an almost visceral need. She glanced at him, still unconscious, duct-taped to the chair, and forced herself to focus. He was dying and he needed her, and falling to pieces from terror and confusion would do nothing to help him. “So I need to change my clothes?” she asked, amazed at the steadiness of in her voice. She had no idea where that was coming from.
“Well, not change, exactly,” he said with a smile. It made him look like a shark about to strike.
“May I undress in the bathroom?”
The crazy bastard actually laughed at that one. “Oh, sure,” he said. “No problem. You go right ahead into the bathroom, where there are probably no more than a couple of dozen potential weapons you could use against me! Scissors, tweezers, nail files, maybe a toothbrush to jab into my eye. How fucking stupid do you think I am?”
Cait dropped her head. Her eyes swept the floor, taking in the damage from the smashed chair. She sighed. She knew where this was going. She raised her head resolutely and began unbuttoning her blouse. She hesitated only a moment before shrugging it off her shoulders and down her arms. She shook it onto the floor where it fell, inside out, atop a jagged splinter of broken chair. Then she unsnapped her jeans.
Another moment’s hesitation and then she pushed them over her hips and down her legs, stepping out of them, and then they joined her blouse on the floor and Cait Connelly was standing in front of her assailant—her brother!—in just her matching black panties and bra and socks.
She reached behind her back to unhook her bra and to her surprise, Milo shook his head. “That’s enough,” he said, his voice husky, “at least for now.”
Cait let her hands drop to her sides and the two of them faced each other and Cait waited for the next awful instruction from this awful man and suddenly she felt it again—that little push she had first noticed when she was kneeling over Kevin’s body trying to stanch the bleeding while the lunatic with the knife was preoccupied with carving up the police officer.
The little push was familiar. It was the sensation of an image being forced into her brain without any effort on her part to accomplish it. Cait had tried to describe the sensation to Kevin once and had likened it to an inflation needle being inserted into a basketball—the air that was already inside the ball stayed there, but once the needle forced its way inside, more air could be pushed into the ball.
There was one very significant difference, though. She had never been able to stop a Flicker. Once that little push started, the Flicker was coming and there was not a damned thing she could do about it. But when she had experienced what she believed to be the onset of a Flicker a few minutes ago—twice—while occupied with trying to stop Kevin’s bleeding, she had managed to successfully block it out.
At the time she had not given it too much thought; things were happening fast and she was in a panic and there were other, more critical issues to consider. Now, though, as she felt the relentless push in her brain, she wondered if she could do it again. It was absolutely imperative that she keep her wits about her. The last thing she wanted was to disappear insider her mind under the influence of a Flicker and allow this maniac even more control over her than he already enjoyed.
Kevin needed her, he was dying because he had tried to protect her, and she represented his only chance at survival. She willed herself to ward off the Flicker, concentrating with everything she had, rejecting the push. The lunatic with the knife—her brother—was talking to her, he was saying something, she could hear him and knew she should answer him, but her concentration was focused entirely on rejecting the Flicker and so for the second time in just a few minutes she risked everything by ignoring him.
And it worked.
After a few seconds the push eased off, started pulling away, made a last-ditch final effort to invade her mind and then was gone. Cait felt a trickle of sweat roll down her cheek and brushed it away with her hand. She was exhausted but thankful she had been able to repel the ill-timed Flicker. She glanced at Kevin—he was still unconscious and seemed to have gotten even paler—and noticed her mother staring at her with a look of intense concentration, she seemed almost to be pleading with her expressive eyes.
Then she shrugged her shoulders and returned her attention to the crazy man named Milo. She waited to see what was coming next.
CHAPTER 44
Everett Police Captain Lynn Talmadge punched the flashing yellow button on the ancient console phone taking up an almost comically large portion of her desk. An audible clunk told her she was now connected with the outside caller, Lieutenant Bruce Miller of the Boston Police Department. Miller had insisted to the dispatcher that he be connected immediately with the watch commander at the Everett station, that he had critical information to pass along regarding potentially a life-and-death situation. “This is Talmadge. How can I help you, Lieutenant?”
“Hello, Captain. Thanks for taking my call.”
“Well, you made it sound pretty important. What’s going on?”
“We’re investigating a homicide here, a very bad one. Another ‘Mr. Midnight’ killing. The victim has been dead just a few hours. It’s a young woman, probably a prostitute. She was stabbed, slashed, had her fingers broken and…”
Miller hesitated on the other end of the line and Talmadge prompted him. “Yes?”
The lieutenant took a deep breath and it sounded like he was working to keep a tremble out of his voice, but that seemed absurdly unlikely. The Boston Police Department investigated murders routinely. Bruce Miller had probably seen hundreds of victims during his career and had undoubtedly become detached and clinical when investigating murders years ago.
Finally he continued, his voice subdued: “…and she had entire sections of skin stripped off her body. She was literally peeled like an apple. Someone’s into some seriously weird shit with a knife.”
“Oh, God,” Talmadge muttered, not saying what she was thinking—that she was glad the nutcase had chosen Boston to go off in rather than Everett.
“You and me both,” Miller agreed, a little more vigor returning to his voice. “But there’s more.”