No Way Left (A Carly See FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 4)

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

Lyle growled under his breath as he drove onto the interstate and headed south to Quantico. Lights and reflections along the freeway buzzed around him like fireflies. Even before dropping Carly off at her apartment, he’d driven for some five hours straight. He was grateful that it would only be another twenty minutes to his apartment in Quantico.

Today had been long, hard, and dangerous. After he’d thwarted the attempted murder of his partner back in Pennsylvania, he’d wanted Carly to go to a hospital for a thorough checkup. But she had adamantly refused. They’d turned the captured serial killer over to the local cops and headed back to Virginia.

Letting Carly drive had been out of the question, and Lyle had been glad when she’d fallen asleep during the last leg of their trip. But he was shaken by what had happened when he dropped her off just now. She’d been crying, certain that her sister was dead—because, she said, that was what it meant “when I hear from somebody.”

He repeated his own objection under his breath.

“People just don’t talk to the dead.”

Over the four years they’d worked together, Lyle had come to realize that his partner had some kind of unusual ability. He’d long ago accepted that she had a way of seeing things that wasn’t at all normal. They’d had a sort of unspoken agreement not to discuss the matter. But during this last case in Pennsylvania, that agreement had frayed to a breaking point.

Among other odd insights, Carly had somehow gleaned not only a dead man’s identity but the location of his home. Although this information had been crucial in solving the case, Lyle had been exasperated by her secretiveness about the source of it, almost to the point of losing his temper. When he’d made a c***k about her having some kind of psychic abilities, she hadn’t denied it, but she hadn’t opened up about it.

Lyle considered himself a rational man whose whole career had been devoted to logic, observation, and deduction. He was very good at all of that. On the long drive back, he’d given the psychic issue a lot of thought, and he’d decided he could come to terms with his partner simply having a brain that was wired differently from most. He could accept that she would jump to conclusions with very little in the way of evidence and would often be right.

But now this new thing had come up about talking with the dead.

Of course Carly had hastened to deny such communications.

“Talking to the dead? Well, that’s just crazy, huh? That was just my nightmare talking.”

Lyle had seen right through that nervous denial. One thing seemed certain—Carly at least thought she talked to dead people. And now Lyle had to wonder, how often had that happened during the cases they’d worked on together?

He tried to push a lurking worry out of his head, but he failed.

Is Carly maybe not in her right mind?

Had Lyle been working all this time with a partner who had weird and dangerous delusions that sometimes only seemed to help them in their work? If so, had they both been better off when Lyle hadn’t known about it?

Steady, Lyle, he told himself. Don’t let your thoughts run away with you.

Maybe it was his problem, not hers, and he wasn’t quite thinking straight. He had to admit, he hadn’t been at his best during the last couple of days. Oh, he’d done good work on the case, but he’d been struggling with his own problems, and his frame of mind had left a lot to be desired.

He’d been quarrelsome and irritable toward Carly during their entire stay in Pennsylvania. Even now, he felt a flash of anger as he remembered how she’d yanked his go-bag out of the car trunk and opened it to find his f*******n vial of lorazepam. Her action had been a huge breach of their mutual regard for each other’s privacy.

But what else was she supposed to do?

Carly had known something was wrong with him, and he wasn’t being forthcoming about it. She’d figured that his emotional volatility had something to do with substance a***e.

Didn’t she have every right to call me out on it?

But even so, that spark of anger still stirred deep in Lyle’s mind. Had it been right of her to be so secretive about her “gift” during their entire working relationship?

He shook his head to quell his ruminations.

The freeway was almost clear of other vehicles, and Lyle soon found himself pressing the accelerator to go faster.

Or was this another self-destructive impulse?

The truth was, Lyle knew that he was far angrier with himself than he ever could be with Carly. He still blamed himself for his previous young partner’s death. Even now, he couldn’t help flashing back to that awful moment in the parking lot where the fatal gunfight had happened …

Lyle glimpsed the gunman through a broken hotel window.

“Get down!” he shouted at Dawn, raising his own weapon to fire.

But somehow, Dawn got between Lyle and the shooter at the very split second the deadly shot rang out. And then, when she lay dying at his feet, she seemed not to understand what had happened.

“Thanks, Lyle,” she said. “You’re always watching out for me.”

She died thinking he’d saved her life, not the other way around …

“Stop it!” he snapped aloud, blinking hard to drive away the memories.

But another memory crowded its way into his mind. Not long ago on a case in New Mexico, he’d almost lost Carly in an even more terrible way. Injected by a paralytic d**g, Lyle had fallen helpless while a killer threatened Carly’s life.

Small wonder he’d taken a dangerous step back into addiction. Lyle knew there was some part of himself—something deep down in the recesses of his subconscious—that hadn’t felt worthy to live ever since he’d lost Dawn in such a terrible way. He had to keep fighting that insidious, irrational, dangerous death wish with all his might.

And that meant no more alcohol—and no more pills.

And no speeding, he thought, easing the pressure on the accelerator and gently tapping the brakes and slowing back down to the speed limit.

And don’t fall asleep at the wheel.

After all, he still had a purpose in life and important work to do.

And he and Carly needed each other, maybe more than ever. But how were they going to get each other’s trust back? And how was he going to come to terms with what he was now learning about her?

Lyle wished he knew.

*

I should have let Lyle see me inside, Carly thought as she climbed under her covers after a long, hot shower.

I should have offered him a cup of coffee or something.

She knew she’d upset him terribly when she’d awakened from the dream about Megan. He must have been awfully tired from the long drive. Even though it was only a short trip from here to Quantico, Carly couldn’t help worrying about his safety.

But it’s best this way, she told herself.

If Lyle had come inside, they’d surely only have wound up upsetting each other, and they were both too upset already.

Now she worried about how she and Lyle were going to feel tomorrow when they had to be debriefed together at BAU headquarters. Carly hated the thought that a rift was growing between her and the man who was not only her partner but her best friend.

We can’t let that happen.

But there was nothing to be done about it now. She was in dire need of a good night’s sleep. But how was she going to get to sleep? She was not just tired, but also sore from having been drugged and falling down a flight of stairs to escape a killer’s clutches.

And then there was her worry about Megan.

Another thing to keep me awake.

For most of her life, Carly had thought she understood her gift. It seemed perfectly obvious that she got psychic messages from the dead, not from the living. But there had been something different about those contacts with Megan. Something she couldn’t quite identify.

After a few waking minutes, a thought occurred to her.

Why not try to reach out to her again?

Right now?

Carly breathed long and slowly, stretching out under the covers and relaxing all her muscles, starting at her toes and working her way slowly up to her shoulders and neck. It was a simple technique that sometimes helped her make productive contact with spirits.

But at other times, things didn’t go so well when she sought out the dead.

She soon realized that this was going to be one of those times.

“You have no right to be here,” whispered a hostile voice.

Then others began snarling in the darkest corners of her awareness.

“You bitch.”

“Who do you think you are?”

She’d heard these angry voices many times. One she thought might be a criminal who had been killed in one of her few g*n battles, another a murderer who had eventually been executed in a case she’d helped to solve. But she could never identify them all.

Now she began to glimpse their shadows, and their threats became louder and more distinct.

“Mind your own business.”

“We’ll teach you what’s good for you.”

“Stay away from here.”

“Do you want to wind up dead too?”

Whoever they were, the spirits meant her ill, and she sometimes felt as though they could put her in real physical danger. She knew that if she didn’t drive them away, she’d soon feel the threatening touch of dead fingers, possibly around her throat. Even now, Carly was finding it a little hard to breathe, as though the dark spirits could actually cut off her air.

As she’d done other times, she visualized a wave of pure blue light rolling over those spirits to wash them away. To her relief, she felt their presence growing weaker.

And now—might she be able to reach out and contact her sister?

Megan, are you there? she asked with her thoughts.

There was no reply.

Please, I want to know what happened to you. Where are you?

Again there was no reply.

I miss you so much. So do Mom and Dad. Why did you leave us?

No reply.

Carly waited silently for a few long moments. She could feel no one out there trying to speak to her—no one other than those malevolent spirits, whose voices she could still dimly hear in the distance.

Finally she was sure she wasn’t going to hear from her sister.

Might this mean that Megan was still alive after all?

Carly didn’t know. And she couldn’t imagine any way of ever finding out.

Maybe I’ll never know.

She sighed deeply as she felt a wave of exhaustion sweeping over her. Soon she’d be fast asleep. But she sensed that it wasn’t going to be the peaceful, refreshing night’s sleep she truly needed.

She could feel those angry shadows lying in wait to ambush her in her dreams.