Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(32)

“Detective.” He nods his head. “Harper, you along for the ride tonight?”

“I am.”

Barnie peers around Harper’s side at Ida. He lifts the sign-in sheet attached to a clipboard and sets it down on the counter in front of them. “Does your friend there have ID?”

“I’m afraid not,” Raley says. “But you’re due for a quick bathroom break, aren’t you?”

Barnie stands up behind the desk and stretches for effect. “You know, I think I am. And I should walk the perimeter of the building to make sure there are no unsavory characters milling around. That should take ten minutes or so. Sign yourselves in while I’m gone?” He hands Raley a clipboard and a pen, then walks down the hall toward the restroom.

Stu follows Harper and Ida through the door.

Down a corridor, and through a door at the very end, Harper leads them into a room with chilled cabinets on either side. They have metal doors that open outward, revealing a sliding gurney. She locates the one for the latest victim, but pauses for a moment.

“Ida, are you okay so far?”

Ida gives her a sharp nod but doesn’t speak. Harper wonders what she might be picking up on in there—what auras must surround the cold bodies in the walls.

She pulls the gurney out on its runners. The body is covered in a sheet. She peels it back to reveal the girl. Ashen faced now, a distinct blue tinge to her lips, her eyelids. Stu shifts uncomfortably as Ida approaches the body, extends her hand, and brings it to rest on the girl’s icy skin. Her face tightens with revulsion, but she keeps her hand there, powering through the urge to recoil.

Harper moves back to stand with Stu, to give Ida space.

“I’m still not sure about this,” Stu hisses in her ear. “If we’re caught bringing her in here . . .”

Harper fixes him with a sharp look. “Not now.”

Ida throws her head back, her whole body rigid, one hand on the girl’s forehead, the other arm outstretched at an angle. A deep moan rises from her throat, as if she’s being electrocuted. Stu goes to help her. Harper grabs his wrist. “No. Let her do this.”

The already-low lighting in the room dims even more, and the temperature seems to jump up a few degrees.

The moan rises in pitch. It sounds as if Ida is in agony. “I can’t . . . I don’t believe this . . .”

Harper’s grip tightens. “Leave her.”



The connection is different. A living being has warmth, the reassuring rhythm of its heart, the flow of hot blood through miles of veins. It has the marriage of mind and spirit, united in forming a whole.

Ida relishes such connections. They bring insight, allow her to experience the bond of humanity she has missed out on. Tapping into memory, into feelings. Touching a pregnant woman’s stomach, hearing the hum of the tiny life within . . . all of it a wonder.

With the dead, it’s different.

It is not a merging of psyches, but an electric shock, a charge of energy fusing her to the spirit locked within the lifeless body. The voice howls like the wind: unbalanced, completely open. Pulling her in, forcing her to see, to hear, to feel . . .

Waking in a car. The door opening, getting pulled out under the armpits. It’s dark.

Cold.

The dark sky is heavy with clouds and rain. Her feet drag in the wet earth. She is pulled back through rows of green, and when she is lowered to the ground, her senses come alive. She tries to scramble away, but he has her pinned. His face is a white mask; his eyes float in darkness. She tries to fight, to get loose.

He holds her, hits her. She can feel him wrestle with her underpants, tearing them apart in his fury. She tries to push him back; he hits her again. All she can do is grab at the mud, hold on to fistfuls of it as he breaks his way inside her, the pain radiating up her body despite the grogginess of whatever he injected her with.

Then his hands are around her throat. They are pressing; she pulls at his wrists, but they won’t be moved. His arms are heavy steel, pushing down, crushing her. There is a throbbing light; it pulses, growing stronger, coming, going.

Ida knows this is her only chance.

What’s your name? she asks the girl in the last moments. We don’t know your name. We need to know.

Nothing comes. She is getting pulled back; the connection is coming apart, the fibers holding it in place breaking one by one.

Please. Tell me your name.

The darkness fades; the light creeps in around the edges like a false dawn and Ida hears a whisper. The last sound of the girl’s soul. A final word.

“Gertie.”



The lighting flickers above them. Ida is thrown back, stumbles on rubbery legs, and falls.

Stu rushes forward before Ida can crack the back of her head on the hard linoleum, catching her in his arms and lowering her slowly to the floor. Harper drops to her knees beside her and checks for a pulse.

“She’s okay. Just out cold,” she says. She looks up at Stu. “Now do you believe?”

“This could be an act,” he says.

Harper taps Ida’s face. There’s no response, so she does it again, this time a bit harder, shaking her shoulders. Ida’s eyes crack open, then try to close again. Harper shakes her. “Don’t go back to sleep. Wake up.”

“Huh?” Ida groans.

Harper looks at Stu. “Does this look like an act to you?”