"Maybe. I hate not being able to handle this ourselves, though."
"Um… isn't that sort of the way our Luke is thinking?"
He stared at her. "Christ, you're right. You'd think I'd have learned by now to yell for help when I need it."
"John could help, I'll bet," she suggested. "I think Maggie could as well, the way the chief feels about her. And you know both of them would in a heartbeat if it means we'd have a better chance of stopping this monster. I'll bet neither one has yet only because they don't want to step on your toes."
"Yeah, probably."
"I don't know if these agents can help us," Jennifer said steadily. "But from all John said, they have a hell of a lot of experience in tracking monsters, and both of them are profilers. They may be able to tell us something we'd never come up with ourselves. I think we need to hear whatever they've got to say."
"I think you're right." Andy nodded and turned away from the conference table, adding, "I might try Maggie first, mostly because I think both the chief and Drummond would take that a bit better. But we'll see."
Jennifer didn't want to admit either to him or to herself how relieved she felt. It wasn't that she didn't feel herself or her coworkers capable of solving a string of brutal attacks, it was just that she was afraid that without help the solution might well come at a very high price.
And with six women attacked so far, three of them dead, the price was already too high.
Maggie knew she had no business talking to Hollis, not tonight. The previous day had been an emotional ordeal, and today had not been much better; discussing the unbelievable, even the unthinkable, with John had demanded such absolute mastery of her own emotions that the aftermath left her feeling drained and incredibly weary.
So she was feeling more than a little vulnerable when she knocked, pushed open Hollis's door, and went into the hospital room where the other woman was sitting as usual in one of the two chairs near the window.
As soon as Maggie came in, Hollis said, "The nurses are pissed at me. They want me in bed, or at least ready to be there. Can't understand why I won't at least get undressed."
"Why won't you?" Maggie asked, sitting down and absently opening her sketch pad to a clean page.
"Because I don't feel so defenseless, I suppose." Her hands were gripping the arms of her chair, knuckles whitened tensely. "Or maybe just because I'm sick of that damned bed."
"I can't say I blame you for that. You must be sick of being here at all. Will your doctors let you go home after the bandages come off on Thursday?"
"They aren't saying, but I gather it depends on how the operation turned out. If I can see, I'll be ready to go home. If I can't…"
Maggie didn't need to hear the rest. If she remained blind, then Hollis would need further medical help to adjust to that fact, especially after having her hopes raised by the operation. She hesitated, then said, "I don't know how you feel about the so-called paranormal-"
Hollis gave a peculiar little laugh. "Funny you should say that."
"Why?"
"I'll… explain later. I feel fairly open-minded about it, all things considered. Why?"
"Because someone I trust, someone who happens to have the ability to see the future, told me that whether you see again is entirely up to you."
"That sounds fairly enigmatic." Hollis didn't sound either convinced or unconvinced, merely neutral.
"I know. I didn't understand it myself, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced he meant that while the operation could be an unqualified success, there's a lot the mind has to accept before everything works as it should."
"These borrowed eyes in my head, you mean?"
"Not borrowed. Gifted."
"The eyes of a dead woman."
"The eyes of a woman who wanted someone else to see if she couldn't."
Hollis drew a breath and let it out slowly. "Yeah, I keep telling myself that. But I wonder what it'll feel like if the eyes do work-and when I look into a mirror a stranger looks back at me."
"Still your face. Still you."
"But I'm not who I was the last time I looked into a mirror. I've changed-so much. With all that and someone else's eyes as well, how will I even know me?"
Hearing and responding to the lost note of pain in the other woman's voice, Maggie leaned forward and put her hand over Hollis's tense one. "You'll know who you are, Hollis. Your mind will look through those eyes."
"Will it?"
"Yes." Maggie almost withdrew her hand, but then something flashed into her own mind, a quick, sharp image that caused a strange jolt of pain and even an aching sadness. The image was gone before Maggie could identify it, but she was left with the odd and inexplicable feeling that there was someone else here in the room.
"I hope you're right," Hollis murmured.
Maggie looked around quickly, uneasy, then said, "Hollis, why did you want me to come here tonight?" She felt the hand beneath hers tense even more.
"What you said about the paranormal sort of touched a nerve," Hollis said slowly. "I've been more open-minded about it lately because of something that's been happening to me ever since the attack."
"What?" Again, Maggie felt that flash of something, so vivid that it was almost as though for a split second she caught a glimpse of someone standing just behind Hollis. It was eerie and definitely not anything she had experienced before, yet somehow not really frightening.
"I thought it was my imagination at first." Hollis laughed under her breath. "Hell, maybe it is. It started when I was-it started right after the attack. A voice in my mind urging me to keep trying to pull myself out of that building where he'd left me. It knew my name, that voice. It helped give me the will to live, might even have saved my life. They told me afterward that if I hadn't pulled myself out of the building just then, it probably would have been hours before anyone found me. And I would have been dead."
"That doesn't sound like your imagination."
"No. I don't think I ever believed that, not really. She has such a distinctive voice, it's easy to feel she's a separate and distinct personality."
"Does she have a name?"
"Her name is Annie. Annie Graham."
It didn't sound familiar to Maggie-and yet it did somehow. Again, she caught that flash of an image, a slight figure standing behind Hollis, and this time thought to herself, Dark hair, sad face. But then it was gone.
"Maggie?"
"Sorry. I was… thinking."
"Thinking I'm out of my mind?"
"No-far from it. Do you know who she is, Hollis? Or-who she was?"
After a moment, Hollis said, "You figured it out more quickly than I did. I guess it's not easy to accept the fact that a ghost is talking to you."
"I would imagine not. I've never had any mediumistic abilities, so I don't know how it feels." Except that she could feel it now. She could feel Hollis's uneasiness and doubt, feel the slight chill of being touched by something inexplicable, the peculiar sensation of gazing into an open corridor linking the living and the dead.
"Mediumistic? The ability to talk to the dead, I suppose. Odd, somehow, that it has a name." She barely paused before saying, "But you do have paranormal abilities, don't you, Maggie?"
Maggie hesitated, then said, "They call what I can do an empathic sense."
"Empathy. You feel the pain of others. And, sometimes, you blunt the edges of the hurt or even take some of it away, don't you?"
"If I can."