“Urged?” Archer managed.
She stared at him. “Sam Bowers blew his brains out, leaving a note that said, ‘Just me, not them,’ as if arguing with someone who wanted him to kill the rest of his family too. Leslie Gardner slaughtered her entire family and then went to sleep and remains asleep; I’d say she lost the argument, and it might just have broken her mind. For good. Elliot Weston shot and killed two clients—and can’t seem to remember a thing about it. Or care at all. Please tell me you don’t believe things like that are just happening, randomly in a single day in your nice little town, without being driven by something external.”
* * *
? ? ?
KIM LONNAGAN STUDIED her husband rather anxiously across the supper table. She hadn’t been a cop’s wife all that long, and in a normally peaceful little town like Prosperity the job wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it would have been somewhere else, so anything other than brief worry was somewhat alien to her. But this day had been unsettling and more than a little frightening.
Talk had been flying ’round all day, carried by mail carriers and the checkout people at the grocery store and neighbors, and even if nobody was clear on details, it was definite that people had died today, died horribly.
So Kim was worried and anxious, and not a little bit scared.
Her husband’s preoccupied air and expression weren’t helping things.
“Jim?”
He looked at her, his normally clear gray eyes sort of . . . odd. Holding a kind of flat shine. For no reason she could have explained, a cold shiver rippled up Kim’s spine.
“What is it?” he asked politely.
“You’ve hardly touched your supper.” It was the only thing she could think to say, the only thing that seemed normal.
He looked down at the plate of spaghetti, the crisp garlic bread, the nice salad on the side. Then looked back at his wife. “I’m sorry. You went to all this trouble. And it looks great. I’m just not that hungry right now. I’m sorry.”
Kim had the scary feeling that he wasn’t really apologizing for not tasting his supper, or for the “trouble” she’d gone to fixing it for him. As she did every single night.
“Jim, you don’t sound like yourself,” she said a bit unsteadily.
He blinked, then smiled. “Do I sound like somebody else?” he asked in that odd, polite tone.
“What?”
“Do I sound like somebody else?” The flat shine that seemed a veil over his gray eyes increased. “Do I sound like your lover?”
Kim literally felt the color drain from her face. Not from guilt, because she’d done nothing to feel guilty about. But because infidelity was something she was abnormally sensitive to; she’d watched her parents’ marriage break up because of her father’s chronic cheating. But not before they’d torn each other to emotional shreds and hurt their children dreadfully in all the turmoil.
And Jim knew that.
Finally, she managed to force words out, hearing them shaking. “Jim, I don’t have a lover except for you. I love you. I would never betray you like that. I couldn’t. You know I couldn’t.”
His head tilted slightly, and though his strangely veiled gaze was fixed on her, he seemed to be listening to something else. “How could I know that?” he asked almost absently. “I’m at work all day. Sometimes all night. And you’re here alone.”
“Jim—”
“Alone. And so tempting. Tight jeans and a blouse I can almost see right through.”
“Jim, sweetheart, listen to me.” She held her voice as steady as she possibly could. “I love you. I don’t want anybody else. I swear to you, I don’t want anybody else.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. “I have to work tonight. I have to leave you alone. For hours and hours. But you won’t be alone, will you? Because I’ve seen them watching you. The men in the neighborhood. I’ve seen them. They want you.”
“Jim, I would never cheat on you. You have to believe that.” It was just a whisper, all she could force through a throat clogged with fear and misery.
He rose slowly from the table, almost as if every muscle hurt, and his distant gaze saw right through her. “I have to go to work,” he said. “But . . . I can’t leave you here alone, can I, Kim? I can’t trust you here alone.”
She was on her feet as well, moving instinctively to put herself between the kitchen and his work gun belt and service weapon, lying on the living room coffee table. Even though there was a small gun safe on his nightstand for his service revolver, something required by his job, they didn’t have to be so careful with his other guns when it was just the two of them in the house, he had explained to her. Not yet. Not until they had kids.
“Jim, you trust me. Just like I trust you. It’s so important to both of us, that trust. You know it is.”
He moved around from his side of the small table, stopping less than an arm’s length away from her. “I don’t think I want to leave you here alone,” he said. “I don’t think I can trust you. Or them. The men all around, watching you with their lustful eyes.”
It took all the courage Kim had not to back away from him, and her own fear of him hurt her. “No, Jim. None of them watch me. And I don’t care about them. I love you. I love you so much.”
She had come home from afternoon errands full of horrified gossip and speculation.
He had come home from his own afternoon errands with something unusual, with more guns, saying only that they couldn’t be too careful with all the craziness going on in Prosperity, that he planned to buy a big gun cabinet and keep it in the basement, safely locked. While she had gotten supper ready, he had spent nearly an hour in his den with the guns, saying he had to clean them.
Kim had been only vaguely surprised then.
Now she was terrified.
“Jim—”
He stared at her, his hands coming to rest lightly on her shoulders. “You love me?”
“You know I do. More than anything.”
His hands slid upward until they closed gently around her throat, and he smiled almost sadly. “I wish I believed that, Kim. I really wish I did.”
* * *
? ? ?
ARCHER DREW A breath, trying to fight against the insanity of this. “External. Okay, I’ll buy that. Maybe it’s . . . some new kind of disease, making people crazy. Something that’s contaminated the water or the food supply. Something only some people are affected by. I could call the CDC, and—”
Hollis cut him off. “And before they did anything else, they’d ask Jill and your local doctors about symptoms, and they’d be told that Leslie Gardner appears to be fine, normal bloodwork, just sleeping. That bloodwork on Sam Bowers came back normal. That Elliot Weston, when his bloodwork is done, will also appear perfectly normal. No drugs. No pathogens. No signs of any organic disease or infection.”
She held her voice level. “It isn’t a disease, Sheriff. It isn’t something in the water or the food supply. The CDC is no more equipped to handle what’s happening here than you or your excellent deputies are. Because what’s happening here is nothing natural. Not even some new disease. What’s happening here is weird and crazy. And that’s our specialty. It would help a lot if you could believe that.”
“I don’t know what I believe,” he said, holding his voice quiet with an effort that showed. “Just . . . tell me you and your team can do something about this.”
“We’re going to do our best,” DeMarco said. Then he surprised Archer somewhat when he reached out and took his partner’s hand, holding it firmly.
Hollis immediately looked less tense but frowned up at her partner. “You shouldn’t—”
“I know it’ll interfere with what you can pick up, but you need a break,” he said. “And if whoever you’ve sensed is still struggling, maybe we have a little time.”