Thirty minutes later, she exited the program and shut down the computer again.
Zero. If she’d ever met Lisa, it hadn’t been when she was in school.
Maybe it will come to me, she thought, discouraged. Sometimes if you focused too hard on something, you ended up putting up roadblocks.
But you’ll have to do a little more than show me your face, Lisa. You may think I’m a prime candidate because of Cira, but she was a hell of a lot more helpful.
Don’t be stupid. She was dead. I’m not dead. It’s different.
Jane went rigid. That thought out of nowhere had been defiant and angry and come as a complete shock.
Lisa?
Nothing.
Imagination?
Maybe. Jane knew she might be so tired that she was putting words to the faces in those sketches. She’d been talking to Lisa all day as she’d been working, but she’d certainly not expected an answer.
But it might be that Lisa was becoming desperate and trying to break through to her. So concentrate and try to send a message to her, too.
Which one, Lisa? Imagination or desperation?
Nothing.
But that single bolt of thought had been as if Lisa was monitoring her thoughts and knew all about Cira. And she had expressed one other thing that was filling Jane with profound gratitude.
I’m not dead. It’s different.
Somewhere deep inside her the uncertainty that Lisa might possibly be dead had been tormenting Jane.
That was a bit rude, Lisa, but I’m glad you set me straight. Anything else?
Nothing.
Okay, have it your way. She closed her eyes. I have a couple hours before we land in Edinburgh. I’m going to try to take a nap. You work on it and find a way to let me know what you’re trying to tell me.…
SAN LEANDRO
“Bitch!”
Lisa’s head jerked back at the force of Santara’s blow.
Pain.
“Did you think you’d get away?” Leon Santara wiped the blood from his wrist, where she’d just bitten him. “You can’t last, you know.” He hit her again. “You’ll have to give in and make the damn call.”
She hated him.
She shook her head to clear it of the dizziness. “I almost did get away. Next time I will.” She glared at him. “And you’re wrong: I’ll never make that call. I don’t care what you do to me.”
“You’ll make it.” He jerked her to her feet and pushed her ahead of him through the hall and up the stairs. “I have my orders, and even if I didn’t, do you think I’d let a vicious little snake like you get the best of me? I don’t know why they don’t let me just cut your throat.”
“You know why. You’re afraid. You’re all afraid.”
He muttered a curse as he jammed her hard against the wall while unlocking the door. “You’re the one who should be afraid,” he said through his teeth. “You’re nothing. You’re just a weak, stupid girl who’s going to end up dead if you don’t keep your mouth shut. I don’t care if you make the call or not. I’ll tell them you killed yourself climbing down that cliff.”
“No, you won’t.” Her eyes were blazing. “Because then they won’t pay you. Who’s stupid, Santara?”
He hit her again.
Darkness.
Lisa was vaguely aware of him pushing her into the room and slamming the door behind her as she fought to remain on her feet.
For an instant she couldn’t breathe. Her heart was beating hard.
Stop it. She couldn’t let them make her afraid. That would be a victory for them. She was strong and she would only show them strength. So stoke the fierceness and the rage that will keep any fear at bay. Remember every moment of how they have tried to subdue and weaken you since you’ve been here.
She looked down at her wrists, which were raw and bleeding from the ropes with which Santara had bound her to drag her back up the cliff.
And the healing rage returned in full force.
She would kill them all!
No, she couldn’t do it. She’d been forbidden to do it. It was against the rules.
What did she care? He wasn’t here. She was alone. She was always alone. He’d made her promise, and then he’d left her. Didn’t she have the right to do what she had to do to stay alive?
It would be so easy.…
Why should he care if she broke the rule? They wanted to kill him, too. This was all about him. It had always been about him.
But he’d forbidden it. She’d given him her word.
So she couldn’t kill them … yet, she thought grudgingly. She had to find another way, and that meant trying to reach out again to that Jane MacGuire and make her understand what was important. It was frustrating and she didn’t always know what she was doing. The frustration alone made her impatient and angrier.
You listen to me, Jane MacGuire. Hear me!
Or I’ll have to break my promise.
*
Done.
Jane drew a deep, shaky breath and dropped her pencil on the drink tray next to her airline seat. She sat there gazing straight ahead. She didn’t want to look at the sketch she’d just drawn for a moment. As usual, she needed to catch her breath.
And she was afraid of what she’d see.
When she’d awakened from that short nap, it had been like being caught up in a tornado.
Hear me!
The compulsion had been far stronger, more violent, more demanding than the other times.
Oh, I heard you, Lisa.
And now I have to see what I’ve heard.
She slowly looked down at the sketch.
She flinched.
Darkness.
Anger.
Fierceness.
And the background was no longer a sunlit garden. She was inside a room that was also dark, with only meager light coming from a window across the room. Wooden shelves. Books. It appeared to be a library. Some kind of ebony artifact on the wall. A distressed rough wooden table in the very forefront of the sketch.
She looked back at Lisa’s face.
Passion. Fire. Darkness.
And pain.
She had been so shocked by the force and fever of the woman’s expression that she had not noticed that there were ugly bruises on her left cheek. First the cut lip, now the bruises.
“What have you gotten yourself into, Lisa?” she murmured.
And then her gaze moved down and she saw the words written in blood in small block letters on the wooden table in front of Lisa.
He must not come.
Only you.
Fine, nothing like responsibility. Where was she supposed to go? And who the hell was he?
Well, she probably wasn’t going to be told anything more by Lisa until the next contact. It appeared that Lisa wasn’t able to reach her unless she was sleeping, and it wasn’t as if Jane could drop off by sheer will alone.
But at least Lisa was trying to be more forthcoming, if that message was any sign. However, she was not being overly diplomatic about it, demanding and angry, not asking, but commanding.
What was she thinking? She was being too hard on a girl who was obviously being abused. And how would she have behaved if she’d been faced with a situation fraught with violence, like Lisa’s? She’d always had trouble asking for help, even from the people she loved. What if she’d had to beg a stranger to believe her, perhaps even save her?
Not easy. She might not have been quite so rude, but she could identify with the frustration. Eve had always said don’t judge until you walk in someone’s shoes.
And maybe this Lisa had never had an Eve or anyone like her. What would Jane have been like if Eve had never come into her life?
She instinctively reached for her phone and started punching in a number. Two minutes later, Joe Quinn picked up the call. “You can’t be in Scotland yet, Jane.”
“No, about forty minutes out of Edinburgh. I just wondered if you’d been able to access that database yet.”
“Give me a break. It takes time. I’m working on it.” He paused. “But I keep looking at that sketch and I see what you mean. I feel as if I know her.”
“I thought you might. You deal with facial recognition all the time in your job. It’s part of your training. But you didn’t recognize Lisa?”
“No, and she has a very memorable face. It’s beginning to bother me.”