arlie had just finished dressing the next morning when the heavy knock at the front door made her jump, then frown with both annoyance and alarm. She had no doubt who was pounding on her door at seven-twenty in the morning, and it didn’t take any special skills to figure it out.

The best way to deal with him, though, was to not let him know that she reacted to him in any way. He would see her anger as a weakness, and heaven help her if he should get even a hint of the unwilling attraction she felt. He was too aggressive to let either circumstance pass by.

She wasn’t about to invite him in. She had to get to work, and she had no intention of letting him make her late. She got her purse and had her keys in hand as she marched to the front door. When she opened it, he was standing almost in her face, leaning with one muscular arm braced against the frame and the other one raised to pound on her door again. The closeness of his body made her catch her breath, a reaction she hid by stepping out and turning to close the door behind her. Unfortunately, he didn’t move back, and she fetched up solidly against him, all heat and hard muscle. She was practically in his arms; all he had to do was close them around her, and she would be caught.

Grimly she concentrated on locking the door, trying to ignore the situation. The brief look she had had at his face told her that he was ill tempered this morning, but now she sensed an alarming male edginess beneath the temper. He was as fractious as a stallion scenting a mare in season.

The mental image was unfortunate, and so apt that her heart began beating wildly. With her back turned to him as she wrestled with the stubborn lock, she was suddenly acutely aware of the press of his body against her buttocks. An unmistakable ridge had formed, thick and hard, blatant in intent.

The lock finally clicked into place. She stood motionless, frozen with indecision. If she moved, she would be rubbing against him; if she didn’t move, he might take it as an invitation. She closed her eyes against the insidious temptation to simply turn and face him, giving him silent permission by giving him access. Only the certainty that it wouldn’t work, that she would freeze under the onslaught of a six-year-old horror, kept her from giving in. She couldn’t go through that again.

She forced her voice to work. “What do you want, Detective?” Then she could have bit her tongue. Bad choice of words, under the circumstances. With his erection insistently nudging her, what he wanted was obvious.

For two seconds he didn’t answer. She felt the lift of his chest as he slowly inhaled; then, thankfully, blessedly, he moved back a step. “I’m not here as a detective. I just came to see if you’re all right.”

The heavy sexual tension eased with the small distance between them, making her feel as if she had been freed from shackles. The relief made her light-headed, a reaction she countered with action. “I’m fine,” she said briskly, and went down the steps before he could stop her. Oh, damn. His car was blocking hers in the driveway. She stopped, and her self-control had returned enough that she hesitated only briefly before turning to face him. “I have to leave or I’ll be late to work.”

He glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s a fifteen-minute drive. You have plenty of time.”

“I like to leave early, in case of trouble.”

The explanation didn’t budge him. His heavy-lidded hazel eyes moved over her, their expression shielded. “Anything else scare you last night?”

“I wasn’t scared.”

“Couldn’t prove it by me.”

“I wasn’t scared,” she repeated, this time with her teeth clenched. His obstinance was already fraying her temper. She needed to get away from him, now.

“Sure you were. And you’re scared now.” His gaze raked over her again. “Though not for the same reason,” he said softly. This time when his eyelids lifted, she saw the predatory gleam of male awareness.

Marlie stiffened, a chill of apprehension touching her. He might not be psychic himself, but his male instincts were acute. It would be more difficult to evade him than she’d thought, for he sensed the response she couldn’t quite mask. He came down the steps toward her, and she swiftly retreated to her car. She jerked the door open and slid behind it, using it as a barricade against him.

He regarded her over the open door, his eyes sharp now, piercingly intent. “Calm down,” he murmured. “Don’t get in such a snit.”

She glared at him, agitated almost beyond endurance. If he didn’t leave soon, she was going to lose control and say something she knew she would regret. She clutched at the door for support, her knuckles white with the effort. “Move your car, Detective. And unless you have a warrant, don’t come to my house again.”

Great going, Hollister. Dane felt violent as he swore at himself. He glared down at his desk, ignoring the noise around him of overlapping voices and the incessant ringing of the telephones. He was raw with frustration, both sexual and professional. There were no leads in the Vinick case, no evidence. The investigation was going nowhere, and it looked as if his interest in Marlie Keen was rapidly headed in the same direction.

What else had he expected? That she wouldn’t notice his erection jammed against her ass? The wonder was that she hadn’t started screaming.

He should have moved back immediately when she had stepped out of the house, but he hadn’t. The first accidental touch of her body had frozen him in place, all of his senses painfully focused on the contact. It had felt so good that he had barely been able to tolerate it, but at the same time it hadn’t been enough. He had wanted more. He had wanted to strip her naked, to thrust inside her. He had wanted to feel her legs wrapped around his hips, wanted to feel her quivering beneath him as she came. He wanted to dominate her, smash her resistance, bend her so thoroughly to his will that he could take her whenever he wanted... and he wanted to protect her from everything and everyone else. That was why he had been on her front porch this morning. He hadn’t been able to rest all night, almost certain something had frightened her but totally certain that she wouldn’t welcome his concern if he’d called her again. When morning came, he hadn’t been able to resist. He’d had to see for himself that she was all right.

So what had he done? Alienated her even further. He had mishandled her from the very beginning, and he still had no idea what he was supposed to do about her. Officer Ewan had cleared her of being at the scene of Nadine Vinick’s murder, but she obviously knew something about it, and had come to the police with it. So what was she, a suspect or a witness? Logic said the former, some uneasy instinct said the latter, and his dick frankly didn’t give a damn.

“You’re in a piss-poor mood,” Trammell commented lazily, all tipped back in his chair and watching Dane’s expression.

He grunted. There was no denying it.

“Talked to Marlie lately?”

Annoyed, Dane shot him a glance. “This morning,” he said briefly.

“And?”

“And nothing.”

“Nothing? Then why did you call her?”

“I didn’t.” Restlessly Dane twirled a pencil. “I went over there.”

“Oh, ho. Keeping secrets from your partner, huh?”

“No secrets to keep.”

“So why did you go over there?”

Damn, all this interrogation was making him feel twitchy. Dane had a brief moment of sympathy for the suspects he and Trammell had questioned for hours. A very brief moment. “No reason,” he replied, blatantly stonewalling and not giving a damn if Trammell knew it.

“No reason, huh?” Trammell was having fun. His dark eyes were gleeful. He had never thought he’d see the day when his good buddy Dane would be so antsy over a woman, and he intended to enjoy every minute of it. Dane never had woman trouble; they had always cared about him far more than he cared for them, which gave him a tremendous advantage in his relationships. He’d never mistreated a woman, but at the same time their influence on him had been very slight. If they didn’t like his irregular hours, tough. If he had to miss a date, so what? He’d never given anything of himself beyond the physical to a woman, because the job had always come first. Dane was a damn good cop, one of the best. But he’d pretty much sailed unscathed through the rough seas of romance, unlike the rest of them who wrestled with the conflicts between job and relationships, so it was nice to see him squirming now.

Trammell prodded the beast again. “What did she say?”

Dane scowled, and darted another irritated look at his partner. “Why are you so curious?”

Trammell spread his hands, feigning innocence. “I thought we were working on this case together.”

“It didn’t have anything to do with the case.”

“Then why were you over there?”

“Just checking on her.”

Trammell couldn’t hold back a chuckle, and the telephone rang while he was still laughing.

Dane picked up the receiver. “Detective Hollister,” he barked.

“Finally turned up some stuff on the Keen woman you asked about,” a laconic voice said in Dane’s ear. “Interesting. Damn interesting.”

Dane had stiffened at the first mention of Marlie’s name, his entire body alert. “Yeah? Like what?”

“I’ll let you read it for yourself, pal. I’m faxing it to you. Didn’t know you went in for that kind of shit. Nice-looking woman, though.”

“Yeah,” he said automatically. “Thanks, Baden. I owe you one.”

“I’m marking that down in my little book,” Baden said cheerfully. “See ya.”

Dane hung up the phone to find Trammell watching him with sharp interest, all amusement gone. “What’s up?”

“Baden’s faxing me some information on Marlie Keen.”

“No kidding.” Trammell’s eyebrows lifted. “I didn’t think anything would turn up on her.”

“Well, it has.” The fax machine in the corner began to hum and spit out paper. Dane got up and went over to it, his face grim. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see this. Two days ago he would have loved to get his hands on some information about Marlie, but not now. Ever since she had called him the night before, he had stopped even trying to deny the effect she had on him. He wanted her, damn it. And he wanted her to be innocent. He wanted there to be some explanation of the things she had told them on Monday. Trammell came over to stand beside him, his dark gaze inscrutable as he watched Dane.

The first sheet came out. It was a photocopy of a newspaper article. Quickly he scanned the headline: teenage psychic FINDS MISSING CHILD.

Trammell whistled, the single note almost soundless.

Page after page followed. They all had a common theme: Marlie Keen’s psychic abilities. Some of the articles seemed to be from psychology magazines, or were papers on parapsychology. Several grainy photographs were printed, showing a younger, almost childish-looking Marlie. Most of them were newspaper articles, reporting how “noted psychic” Marlie Keen had worked with police to solve various cases. The articles were all from the Northwest, he noted. Oregon and Washington mostly, though there were a couple in Idaho, one in northern California, one in Nevada.

Sometimes she was described as a “youthful clairvoyant,” once as “lovely,” twice as “extraordinary.” It was a common theme in the articles that the local police forces had been, at the beginning, both skeptical and derisive of her talents, until she had done exactly what she had said she could do. Usually it was to find a missing person, though on a couple of occasions she had helped find kidnappers. Several times it was mentioned that, when not involved in a case, Miss Keen lived in Boulder, Colorado, at the Institute of Parapsychology. A Dr. Sterling Ewell, a professor of parapsychology at the Institute, was quoted several times.

Trammell was standing right beside him, reading each sheet as he did. They were both silent. Even though they had been forewarned, by Marlie herself, reading about it in black and white was unsettling.

Then one stark headline jumped out at them: killer attacks psychic. Dane grabbed the sheet, holding it taut as it was printed, and they began reading as it emerged from the machine.

There had been a series of child kidnappings in a remote area of Washington; one child had been found dead, two others were still missing. Marlie had been brought in by the local sheriff, with whom she had worked before in another town, to help find the children. Just before she had arrived, another child had disappeared. A big article about her had been printed in the paper the same day.

That night Arno Gleen had kidnapped Marlie from her motel room and taken her to the same place he had taken the most recent missing child, a five-year-old boy. He had been seen, though, and the sheriff alerted. It was a small town; they were able to identify Gleen and track him down. But the little boy was already dead when they got there, and though they were in time to save Marlie’s life, she had been severely beaten.

Her condition, “poor,” was reported in a subsequent article. Then there was nothing else. Absolutely nothing. Dane checked the date on the last article. A little over six years ago. For six years Marlie Keen had literally disappeared from the public eye. Why had she relocated to Florida? As soon as he had the thought, he pictured a map in his mind and knew why. Florida was as far from Washington as she could get and still stay in the country. But why, after six years of anonymity and a completely normal life, had she walked into the lieutenant’s office and told them about Nadine Vinick’s murder?

“It couldn’t have been easy,” Trammell murmured, his thoughts obviously following the same path. “To have involved herself after what happened the last time.”

Dane ran his hand through his hair. Part of him was elated, the last doubt demolished. There was an explanation for her knowledge. If he still couldn’t quite believe, at least now he had to suspend his disbelief. There was no longer any reason at all for him to stay away from her; he could go after her the way his body had wanted right from the beginning. But another part of him, perversely, didn’t want to accept what he had read. Half of it was the sheer unlikelihood of it, for it went against the grain with someone so solidly grounded in reality and facts. The other half was alarm. Shit, what if it was for real? He didn’t want anyone reading his mind, though after a moment’s reflection he had to admit that it would be convenient if a woman could tell how he felt and he wouldn’t have to talk about it.

But it was more than that. He was a cop. He had seen things, heard things, done things, that he didn’t want to have as common knowledge between him and his woman. It was something only another cop would understand. The job marked them, forever set them apart from civilians. Some cases would go with him to the grave, living in his mind. Some victims’ faces, he would always see.

He didn’t want anyone invading the privacy of his mind. Not even Marlie. His nightmares were his own.

He gathered up the sheets. “I’m going to check on some of this,” he said. “Talk to this Dr. Ewell, find out about the past six years.”

Trammell looked a little strange, a kind of amusement vying with sympathy. Dane scowled at him. Sometimes having a partner was like living with a psychic, you got to know each other so well. Trammell was sadistic enough, damn him, to enjoy seeing Dane squirm over a woman.

“What’s so damn funny?” he growled., Trammell shrugged. “It looks like we’ll be working with her, and I was just picturing you trying to get on her good side, after the way you two hit it off. Or didn’t hit it off, I should say.”

Dane went back to his desk and got on the horn. Wryly he remembered when he had put in for detective. He had pictured a lot of fieldwork, fitting obscure pieces of evidence together like Sherlock Holmes. Instead, he had spent a lot of hours on the phone, and he’d found out that a detective was only as good as his snitches. A smart detective cultivated a lot of contacts on the street, lowlifes who were willing to drop a dime on someone else. Too bad he hadn’t had any snitches in Nadine Vinick’s neighborhood.

A call to Information got him the number for the Institute of Parapsychology in Boulder. Less than a minute later he was being connected to Dr. Sterling Ewell.

“Dr. Ewell, this is Detective Dane Hollister, Orlando Police Department.”

“Yes?”

Dane frowned slightly. There had been a wealth of caution in that one word. “I’d like to ask you some questions about Marlie Keen. She used to be affiliated with the Institute.”

“I’m sorry, Detective,” the professor said coolly. “I don’t give out any information over the telephone about my colleagues.”

“Ms. Keen isn’t in any trouble—”

“I never thought she was.”

“I simply need some background information on her.”

“As I said, Detective, I’m sorry. I have no way of knowing if you are who you say you are. Tabloid reporters have often tried to get information by claiming to be with various police departments.”

“Call the Orlando Police Department,” Dane said tersely. “Ask for me.”

“No. If you want any information about Ms. Keen, you’ll have to apply for it in person. With the proper identification, of course. Good-bye, Detective.”

The receiver clicked in his ear, and Dane hung up with a curse. Trammell said, “No luck?”

“He wouldn’t talk to me.”

“Any reason why?”

“He said he doesn’t give out information over the phone. If I want to know anything about Marlie, I have to go to Boulder and talk to him in person.”

Trammell shrugged. “So what’s the big deal? Go to Boulder.”

Dane gave him an irritated look. “The LT is going to be tickled that she’s really a psychic, but there’s no way he’ll authorize a plane ticket just for a background check on someone who isn’t a suspect.”

“You won’t know until you try.”

Ten minutes later, he had the answer he’d expected. Bonness was indeed elated that his hunch about Marlie had turned out to be accurate, and he even gloated a bit that he must have a touch of psychic ability himself. Dane barely managed to restrain himself from rolling his eyes at that. But no way could the lieutenant justify the cost of sending Dane to Colorado to check out something that didn’t really need checking out. They already had all the verification they needed, didn’t they? He dismissed the six missing years as being unimportant. The budget was tight, and they needed all the resources they had to be used tracking down criminals, not snooping into the private lives of people who weren’t doing anything wrong.

But those six years were important to Dane. “Do you have any objection if I take off tomorrow and go on my own?”

Bonness looked startled. “You mean pay your own way?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Well, no, I don’t guess there’s any problem, except that you’re in the middle of a murder investigation.”

“This is related. And the investigation isn’t going anywhere. We have no evidence, no motive, no suspects.”

Bonness sighed. “Take off, then. But just tomorrow. I want you back here by Friday morning.”

“No problem.”

Dane returned to his desk and told Trammell what was happening, then got on the phone again. He had to call three airlines before he found an available flight. After booking his ticket, he called Professor Ewell again and tersely informed him when he would be arriving.

Dane felt naked without the Beretta, but since he wasn’t traveling in any official capacity, he reluctantly left it at home. He couldn’t make himself travel without any weapon, though; he carried a pocketknife that was only a little larger than normal, with nothing else about its appearance that was out of the ordinary, but which had a single blade made from an alloy stronger than steel. The knife also had perfect balance, a requisite for a throwing knife. Throwing a blade was an arcane little skill he had taught himself, on the theory that it might come in handy someday. The knife wasn’t the equal of a pistol, but it was better than nothing.

He was a nervous flier. It wasn’t the flying itself that got to him, but the strain of being trapped in a small space with so many strangers. He couldn’t leave old habits behind, couldn’t draw a boundary between on-duty and off-duty. He was the same man regardless. That meant he automatically watched everyone, subconsciously noting any erratic behavior, studying appearance, constantly evaluating the situation. The situation was boring, but that didn’t mean he could stop. Just as sure as he let his guard down, something bad would happen; it was an unwritten law.

He had taken the earliest flight out. Because of the two-hour time difference between Orlando and Colorado, he arrived in Denver well before lunch. He had no luggage, so all he had to do was go to the car-rental desk and lease a car for the day. Boulder was about twenty-five miles to the northwest, interstate all the way.

Once in Boulder, he stopped to look up the address of the Institute and ask for directions. With one thing and another, it was twelve-thirty when he drove up to the Institute. There were no fences, no gates; his policeman’s eye noted that the security measures were skimpy, at best. There was an alarm wired to the door, but nothing any third-rate burglar couldn’t disarm, institute of parapsychology was neatly painted in large block letters on the double glass doors. He pushed the doors open and noted that there was no tone to signal his entrance. It looked as if anyone could walk in off the street.

About twenty feet up the hallway was an office on the left, the door open. Dane approached it and stood for a moment in the doorway, silently observing a neat, middle-aged woman in front of a computer, typing a letter while she concentrated on what she was hearing through the headset plugged into her ears. Dane cleared his throat, and she glanced up, a smile breaking like sunshine. “Oh, hi. Have you been waiting long?”

“No, I just have walked up.” She had a very cheerful face, and he found himself smiling back at her. This place seemed to be as short on formality as it was on security. “I’m Dane Hollister, Orlando PD. I’m here to see Professor Sterling Ewell.”

“I’ll give him a call to let him know you’re here. He was expecting you, so he brought his lunch today instead of going out.”

The artlessness of that reply made him smile again. Her brown eyes twinkled at him. “He’s my husband,” she confided. “I can deflate his dignity if I want to, not that he gives a hoot.” She picked up a phone and punched two numbers. “Sterling, Detective Hollister is here. Okay.”

She hung up the phone. “Go on back to his office. I would take you myself, but I’m swamped today. Take the next corridor to the right, and his is the office on the right at the very end of the hall.”

“Thanks,” he said, winking at her as he left. To his amusement, she winked back.

Professor Ewell was a tall, barrel-chested man with thick white hair and a lined face that wore his years with grace. Like his wife, he seemed a very cheerful man, and he wasn’t very big on formality either. He was wearing an ancient pair of chinos and a faded chambray shirt, and his feet were clad in scuffed boots. Dane immediately felt a sense of kinship, for the professor evidently ranked clothing fairly low on his list of priorities. His blue eyes were bright with intelligence and humor, but he regarded Dane very sharply for a long minute before some hitherto unnoticed suspicion faded away.

With a jolt, Dane understood. “All of that about tabloid reporters was bullshit,” he said. “You’re... ” He paused, unwilling to accuse the professor of being something he didn’t really believe in.

“Psychic,” Professor Ewell supplied benignly. He waved a large hand at a comfortable-looking chair. “Sit down, sit down.” When Dane had complied, he resumed his own seat. “Not very much,” he said. “Nothing like some of the people I work with. But my one small talent is that I’m very good at reading people when I meet them in person. Because of that, I don’t give out any information over the telephone. My long-distance instincts are deplorable.” He smiled ruefully.

“No reading minds, or anything like that?”

The professor chuckled. “No, you can relax. Telepathy definitely isn’t one of my talents, as my wife will gladly tell you. Now, tell me about Marlie. How is she?”

“I’d hoped you would give me information about her,” Dane said dryly.

“You haven’t asked anything yet,” the professor pointed out. “I have.”

Dane was torn between impatience and humor. There was something in the good doctor that reminded him very much of an impudent six-year-old. He let humor get the upper edge, and gave in to the professor’s air of expectancy. “I don’t know what I can tell you. I’m not her favorite person,” he admitted, rubbing his jaw. “When I saw her yesterday morning, she told me not to set foot on her property again unless I had a warrant.”

The professor sighed blissfully. “That’s Marlie. I was afraid the trauma might have permanently damaged her. She can be very patient, when she wants, but sometimes she can be a bit testy, too.”

“Tell me about it,” Dane muttered, then latched on to what had just been said. “This trauma you mentioned; was it when Gleen kidnapped her?”

“Yes. It was horrible. Marlie was in a catatonic state for a week, and didn’t speak for almost two months. Everyone thought, including her, that she had lost all of her psychic abilities.” Bright blue eyes studied Dane. “I assume, from your interest in her, that those abilities have returned.”

“Maybe.” Dane didn’t want to commit himself to anything.

“Ah, I see. Skepticism. But you’re intrigued enough by what she told you to take a flight to see me. It’s okay, Detective; skepticism is not only expected, it’s healthy. I’d worry about you if you automatically believed everything you’re told. For one thing, you’d be terrible in your job.”

Dane firmly returned the conversation to the subject. “About the kidnapping. There was a newspaper article saying that she’d been beaten.” Ruthlessly he kept himself from imagining details; he’d seen too many results from beatings, and didn’t want to picture Marlie in that condition. “There’s been nothing else about her since then. Are you saying the injuries were so severe—”

“No, not that at all,” Professor Ewell interrupted. “I don’t mean to downplay the severity of her injuries, but she was fully recovered from them well before she started talking again. In this case, it was the mental trauma that did her the greatest harm.”

“What happened, exactly?”

The professor looked thoughtful. “How much do you know about parapsychology?”

“I know how to spell it.”

“I see. From that, I take it that most of your information about it is gleaned from television shows and fortune-tellers in county fairs.”

“Just about.”

“Well, discard all of what you think you know. I’ve always thought that the basis of it was very simple: electrical energy. Every action and every thought uses electrical energy. This energy is detectable. Some people are sensitive to bee stings; others are sensitive to energy. There are degrees of sensitivity, with some people being only mildly sensitive and a very few being ultra sensitive. I don’t see why the issue has to be confused with hocus-pocus, though of course, there are charlatans who wouldn’t know psychic ability if it bit them on the ass—” The professor broke off, and gave Dane a sheepish look. “Sorry. My wife says I get carried away.”

She was right, too. Dane smiled. “I understand. Now, about Marlie—”

“Marlie is exceptional. Most people have some extrasensory ability, and call it hunches, gut instinct, mother’s intuition, whatever they’re comfortable with. Their degree of ability is mild. Some are a bit sharper than that. A few others are even more sensitive, to a degree that can be tested. And then there are the rare ones, like Marlie. She’s the most sensitive receptor I’ve ever seen. To give you a comparison, most people are biplanes, some few are Cessnas, and Marlie is a high-performance fighter jet.”

“You’ve tested her, of course?”

“My God, Marlie’s been tested almost continuously since she was four years old! She could be fractious even then,” he said fondly.

“What exactly are her—er, talents?”

“Mainly, she’s an empath.”

“A what?”

“Empath. She’s empathic. She feels others’ emotions, so much so that an ordinary drive on a crowded street could make her scream with frustration. All those feelings bombarding her, from all directions. She described it once as a blend of screams and static, at high volume. The biggest problem she had was controlling it, blocking it out so she could function normally.”

“You said mainly. What else does she do?”

“You said that as if she’s a trick pony,” the professor observed, his tone disapproving.

“No offense meant. I won’t lie and tell you that I’m buying all of this, but I’m interested.” And that was an understatement if he’d ever made one.

“You’ll come around,” Professor Ewell predicted with a certain amount of malicious satisfaction. “All of you do, once you’ve been around Marlie any length of time.”

“Who is ‘all of you’?”

“Policemen. You’re the world’s most cynical people, but eventually you won’t be able to deny what she can do. Back to your question: She’s also a bit clairvoyant, though certainly not to the same degree that she’s empathic. She has to concentrate to block her empathic abilities, something she had never quite managed to completely do, while she has to concentrate to use her clairvoyance.”

“You mean she predicts that things will happen?”

“No, that’s precognitive.”

Dane rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache come on. “I don’t think I have all of this straight. I’ve always thought a clairvoyant is someone with a crystal ball, predicting the future.”

Professor Ewell laughed. “No, that’s a charlatan.”

“Gotcha. Okay, an empathic person is someone who receives and feels the emotions of other people.”

The professor nodded. “A clairvoyant senses distant objects, and is aware of events in distant places. A precognitive is someone who knows of events in the future. A telekinetic is someone who can move physical objects with the force of their minds.”

“Spoon benders.”

“Mostly charlatans.” The spoon benders were dismissed with a wave. “I won’t say that one or two don’t have telekinetic talent, but for the most part it’s just showmanship. None of the extrasensory abilities can be neatly categorized, because capability varies from person to person, just like reading ability.”

“And Marlie’s particular blend of talents made her good at finding people?”

“Mmmm. Extraordinary. Her empathy was so strong that, when she focused on one particular person, she would... well, she called them ‘visions,’ but I’ve observed her during the events, and I would use a stronger word than that.

A vision is something that can be easily interrupted. It was as if her mind would leave, though of course, it didn’t. But she would be totally taken over by the event, so completely in empathy with the subject that she was aware of nothing else. Terribly draining for her, of course. She would virtually collapse afterward. But while she was linked, she would observe enough about the surroundings to pinpoint the location, and she always managed to fight off the exhaustion long enough to pass the details along to the local law enforcement officers.”

“What else happened with Arno Gleen?”

Professor Ewell’s face changed, his expression that of mingled pain and hatred. “Gleen was a monster. A pedophile, a sadist, a murderer. Little boys were his favorite. He would kidnap them, take them to a remote place, abuse them for a day or two, then kill them. Unfortunately, there are no secrets in a small town, and when the sheriff called Marlie for help, the news was all over town before sundown. The next day there was a prominent article in the local newspaper about her, mentioning her successes and when she would arrive. Gleen was waiting. As soon as he caught her alone, he grabbed her.”

“But if she’s as empathic as you say she is, why didn’t she sense him?”

“By that time, she had learned how to block, and she automatically did it whenever she was in a town. It was the only way she could function. And there are some people who naturally block their own transmissions; maybe Gleen was one of them. Maybe he was simply a sociopath, and didn’t feel anything for her to pick up. She’s never said. In fact, she’s never discussed it at all.”

Dane was beginning to get an ugly feeling, one that was all too likely. “Did he rape her?” His voice was low and harsh.

The professor shook his head. “He couldn’t.”

Dane exhaled, his eyes closing briefly.

“But he tried.” The professor looked down at his hands, his mouth tight. “He took her to where he had his latest victim stashed. The little boy had been horribly abused. Gleen had him tied to a bed. I believe the child was about five years old. Gleen dumped Marlie on the floor, stripped her, and tried to rape her. She wasn’t a little boy, though, so he couldn’t achieve the necessary erection. Every time he failed, he would hit her, working himself into a greater rage. Maybe he thought inflicting pain would arouse him enough. But it didn’t, and in a frenzy he turned on the child. He stabbed the little boy to death in front of her. There were twenty-seven puncture wounds in the child’s face, chest, and abdomen. And all the while Marlie was linked with the child. She felt him die.”