Slater glanced at her, frowning a little. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
I can do this.
Slater took out his flashlight.
“You’re the expert here,” he said. “Do you want to take the lead?”
And suddenly she knew that she had been fooling herself all along. She could not do this.
“I can’t,” she whispered, sliding into her vision voice. “Can’t go in there.”
She could hardly breathe. Her heart started to pound. The vision coalesced. She saw herself falling, falling, falling forever into the bottomless depths of the ice-cold water.
No. You can’t go in there. The nightmares will overwhelm you. You’ll go mad. You will throw yourself into Fogg Lake and drown.
“Catalina?”
Slater’s voice came to her from another dimension. She stared at him.
“What are you doing to me?” she asked in her vision voice.
“Catalina, wake up.”
Slater moved forward, clamped his hands around her arms and pulled her hard against his chest. His aura flared, enveloping hers. He was an icer, one of the monsters. She should be going cold, freezing to death. Instead there was heat. A lot of heat. Her own aura welcomed it as if it were a lifeline.
“Catalina,” he said. “Talk to me.”
She wrapped her arms around him and let him pull her back to the surface. To safety. She could breathe again.
With an effort of will she managed to drag herself out of the last vestiges of the vision of herself drowning in Fogg Lake. She took a deep breath. Her senses steadied. So did her nerves.
“Sorry,” she said. “Had a bad flashback. An old nightmare that I’ve had for years. It just welled up out of nowhere.”
“You don’t have to tell me about nightmares. I’m familiar with the subject.”
She managed a shaky smile. “I know.”
“Will it be easier if we keep physical contact on the way in?”
“Two auras are stronger than one,” she said. “Yes, I think that might help. I’ve developed a phobia about going back into the caves. So did Olivia. I feel that if I can just get past the entrance I’ll be okay. More or less. If I try to fight it, I want you to force me through it.”
“Not sure that’s a good idea.”
“This is for Olivia. Promise me you’ll do it.”
Slater studied her for a moment and then nodded once. “All right, let’s give the two-are-stronger-than-one theory a shot.”
He held out his hand. She took it. His fingers gripped hers very tightly. He started to take the lead.
“No,” she said. “I need to go first.”
Clutching his hand, she cranked up every ounce of raw willpower that she possessed and broke into a run. If she could just crash through …
Slater ran with her. She shot through the opening in the rocks at full speed. Icy water closed over her head. She was going down, drowning …
She would not give in to the cold darkness. She was not alone. She fought her way back to the surface.
She flew past the entrance, Slater’s hand in hers. His flashlight blazed, lighting up the stone walls of the cave tunnel.
And then it was over. They were safely on the other side. She was not going mad and she was not about to throw herself into the lake.
She scrambled to a halt and discovered that she could still breathe. Encouraged, she clamped down on her frazzled senses. Back in control.
Exhilaration shot through her. Memories returned in a disorienting flood. Not nightmares. Not hallucinations. Real memories.
“I’m okay,” she said, still a little amazed.
“Let’s go take a look at the crime scene,” Slater said.
CHAPTER 23
Slater set a battery-operated camping lamp on a rocky outcropping and aimed his flashlight at the jumble of rocks in the center of the big cavern.
“That’s where the murder took place?” he asked.
“Yes,” Catalina said. She pointed at a boulder near the deeply shadowed entrance of a side tunnel. “Olivia and I were hiding over there.”
He was about to ask if she could still sense the energy of the crime scene, but the tension in her shoulders and the shadows in her eyes rendered the question unnecessary. He knew it had taken a lot of raw nerve for her to get past the entrance of the cave complex. She needed a little time to steady herself.
“Walk me through it,” he said. “Just as you would any other crime scene.”
She slanted him a quick, searching glance. “I’ll try, but it’s been fifteen years. Also, keep in mind that I was a witness. I saw it all happen.”
“That makes a difference?”
“Of course it does. My memories were not all that clear afterward, and neither were my senses. It was the same for Olivia. The combination of our panic and the hallucinations and, later, the nightmares really did a number on us. We both had trouble sleeping. We frequently woke up in the middle of the night with screaming nightmares. Scared our parents, and us, too. Eventually we recovered from the trauma, but Olivia and I both have throwback dreams occasionally.”
“I understand, believe me.”
Catalina slanted him an unreadable look. “That kind of thing can really complicate a romantic relationship.”
“No shit.”
Catalina’s brows rose. “I thought that was my line.”
“I borrowed it because it seemed appropriate.”
“Right.” She straightened her shoulders, raised her chin and walked to a large rock. “All these years, every time I tried to think about the details of that night I got an anxiety attack. But now I remember very clearly that this is where the short man with the glasses was standing.”
“If Uncle Victor is right, the guy with the glasses was John Morrissey.”
“If you say so. He took a clunky-looking instrument out of a black case and set it up here.”
She was standing several feet away from him, but he could sense the energy rising in the atmosphere. The powerful currents of her aura were as distinctive as her scent and just as addictive. He would always know if she was nearby, he realized. He had already figured out that he wanted her, but the electrifying kiss in the kitchen had sealed his fate. No matter what happened, whether they made it into bed or not, he would never forget her.
But they would make it into bed, he promised himself.
“Can you be a little more specific about the device Morrissey brought with him?” he said.
“It looked like something you would see in a laboratory,” Catalina said. “But it didn’t have the appearance of an instrument or a piece of equipment that had come off a production line. I think it might have been handmade.”
“It probably was. I’ll bet Morrissey built it himself.”
“I remember that he told the other man the thing had to be properly tuned. It was clear Morrissey was having a problem doing that. Even a lot of low-tech gadgets don’t work well in the caves, or anywhere else around Fogg Lake. Flashlights and a few other old-fashioned battery-powered devices are about it.”
“The paranormal radiation is too strong,” Slater said absently. He thought about that for a moment. “It sounds like the two men came in here with a clear objective. They were planning to search for something. They were hoping that the gadget Morrissey had brought along would help them locate whatever it was they expected to find.”