Hunting Fear by Kay Hooper Page A

mind?”
    “No.”
    Tony sighed as he turned away. “You’re a lousy liar, boss.” But he didn’t ask Bishop to explain what he knew or didn’t know. Because it would have been useless, and because Tony wasn’t at all sure he wanted to know what the worst might be.
     
    Samantha was aware of being in a vision, as she was always aware, but this one was different. Try as she might, she couldn’t turn her head and look around the room in which Lindsay Graham was held captive. It was as though she were a camera fixed on Lindsay’s seated, hooded self, on the spotlight illumination that cast everything around the captive woman into deep shadow.
    Sam could hear his voice, hear Lindsay’s. Hear, somewhere, a faucet dripping. The hum of the fluorescent lights. And she knew what Lindsay was thinking, feeling.
    Which was new and more than a little unsettling.
    So was the deep cold she felt, a chill so intense it was as if she’d been dropped into a freezer. The sensation was so powerful and her response so visceral that she wondered how Lindsay and her captor couldn’t hear her teeth chattering.
    “If I’m going to die,” Lindsay was saying steadily, “then why not get it over with?”
    “I don’t have the ransom yet, of course. The good sheriff could demand to see proof of you alive before he pays up.”
    Samantha knew that Lindsay was thinking about the investigators’ conclusion that this wasn’t about money, and she felt immensely relieved when the detective didn’t mention that.
    Instead, Lindsay said, “Okay, then why do I have to die? Why did any of your victims have to die? The ransom was always paid. I certainly can’t identify you, and if a cop can’t it’s not likely any of the others could have.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    “You just like killing, is that it?”
    “Ah, Lindsay, you just don’t get it. I don’t kill—”
    Samantha opened her eyes with a gasp, so disoriented that for a long moment she had no idea what had happened. Then she realized she was looking at Lindsay’s cruiser, the driver’s door open, from a distance of several feet. And from ground level.
    “What the hell?” she murmured huskily.
    “Take it easy,” Lucas said. “Don’t try to move for a minute.”
    Ignoring that advice, Samantha turned her head to look up at him, realizing only then that she was sitting on the pavement and that he, kneeling half behind her, was supporting her. Baffled, she looked down to see that he was holding both her hands, his palms covering hers.
    “How did I get out of the car?” It was the only specific thing she could think of to ask.
    “I pulled you out.”
    “How long was I—”
    “Forty-two minutes,” he told her.
    “What?” She realized she was stiff, cold. “It can’t have been that long.”
    “It was.”
    She frowned down at their hands, vaguely aware that her thoughts were scattered, that she wasn’t quite back yet. “Why are you holding my hands like that?”
    He released one of her hands, and she found herself staring at a ragged white line across her palm. “What the hell is that?”
    “It’s called frostnip,” he said, covering her hand again with his own warm one. “The first stage of frostbite.”
    “What?” Was that the only word she knew? “It must be eighty-five degrees out here.”
    “Nearly ninety,” Sheriff Metcalf said.
    Samantha jerked her head around in the other direction to see the sheriff and Jaylene standing nearby. He had his arms folded across his chest and looked both skeptical and suspicious. Jaylene was, as usual, serene.
    “Hi,” Samantha said. “Almost ninety?”
    He nodded.
    “Then how the hell do I have the beginning of frostbite?”
    “You don’t know?” he demanded sardonically.
    “I’m cold, but—”
    “You were holding the steering wheel,” Lucas said. “The frostnip is exactly where it would have been if the wheel had been frozen.”
    She looked back up at him, then swore under her breath and struggled to sit