“And that was one of the reasons I was going in there, wasn’t it? I was trying to find the locations of his victims, you know, for the families.”

  He nodded. “Yet what happened to you was something so horrific that nobody really understood.”

  “No, they sure didn’t. I did, but I couldn’t do anything about it,” she said calmly. “At least not at the time.”

  At that, he got up, sat on the couch with her, and asked, “What do you mean, at the time?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, without really saying anything.

  He stared at her suspiciously. “You wouldn’t try it again, would you?”

  “With him? Not if I don’t have to. Believe me. He’s not someone I want to spend any time with. I would never want to share his headspace.” He nodded but stared at her questioningly, and she smiled. “I don’t have a death wish. You can count on that.”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but definitely something is off.”

  “Something’s always off,” she said gently. “Unfortunately that appears to be a fact of life in our world.”

  He pondered that, then shrugged. “I guess you keep coming up against new frontiers.”

  She laughed at the Star Trek reference. “We absolutely do, and, for the most part, it’s exciting. It’s different. It’s amazing. It goes well beyond the accepted capacity of our abilities as humans,” she stated. “Only when you come up against somebody, like Rodney, do you realize how dangerous some of these people are.”

  “Go ahead.”

  She frowned, depressed about seeing how excited and energized he was.

  He stared at her. “What’s the matter?”

  “You’re filling me with dread,” she said. “If my latest attack and all this mess does have anything to do with Rodney, it completely changes the game.”

  “In what way?”

  “He had the ability to make people do things, and you don’t have any idea how that can impact a facility like that. I also know that there’s absolutely no way anybody else can deal with him. It’ll have to be me.”

  He shook his head. “No way. You fought that demon enough. We’ll handle it.”

  She snorted. “You really aren’t hearing me, are you?”

  He grimaced, then asked, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

  “He could make you shoot Grant, for example,” she suggested. “You wouldn’t have a bit of a say in it. Without a thought, you would pick up that gun, point it at your best friend, and pop him one, without a thought.”

  He slowly sagged against the couch and stared at her in horror. “Really?”

  “Of all the things that I’ve ever said to you, you need to take heed of this one.”

  *

  Gray found it hard to believe, but the look on Cressy’s face confirmed that she believed it entirely. And, if she believed it, he would have to be a complete fool to ignore it. He also knew that, once he told Grant what was going on, or what Gray suspected was going on, then Dr. Maddy was likely to get involved, and so would Stefan. Gray got up, noting that Cressy was almost in a dazed, blind, and numb state. Then he walked into the bedroom, closed the door, and phoned Grant.

  When he explained what she’d just told him, Grant said, “Jesus, please, not that.”

  “I know. I mean, we’ve come at it from different angles from time to time, looking at doctors, looking at orderlies. Then I suggested to Cressy how this was all about patient care, so who would want to stop you from dealing with patients. She just laughed and said, Nobody. Then I had the audacity to ask who was the absolute worst-case patient she had ever had and what was the result. So she reminded me about Rodney, and we all remember how that had ended up.”

  “Yeah,” Grant replied. “That’s one of those cases that makes you think you’ll never want to sleep ever again,” he muttered.

  “And again I missed a lot of it in progress. I came in at the end, finding Rodney beating her face, sitting on her, and she was out cold. I’d been around earlier, but I wasn’t actually in Rodney’s room at the time.”

  “And it wouldn’t have mattered if you were because there wasn’t a whole lot to see. Everything that happened, happened out on the ethers.”

  “God, I hate it when people say that because it makes me think it’s a place I can actually go and access.”

  Grant laughed at that. “You can give that thought up for good because you can’t. Or maybe not yet.”

  “Apparently. Still makes me wonder how Rodney ever got to be so strong.”

  “How did Cressy ever get so strong doing what she does? How did Stefan ever get so strong? How did Dr. Maddy get so strong? They all have the ability to do stuff that most of us can’t even imagine, and then we come across people who can do it at will and don’t want to be nice about it, and that’s what we’re up against with this Rodney guy. He’s an asshole, always was. He likes to play mind games, and, if he thinks he can win at something like this, he’d be all over it.”

  “And now I have to wonder if that’s what he’s doing at the hospital right now,” Gray said. “In a way it makes a sick kind of sense.”

  “It also means that he has healed and that he’s out there, ready to cause all kinds of chaos.”

  “Is that possible? Then, of course, it is, as Cressy healed herself.”

  “I guess it’s time I talked to Dr. Maddy and to Stefan,” Grant suggested. “I’ll get back to you soon.” And, with that, Grant hung up.

  Gray walked back out to the main part of the hotel room to find Cressy still sitting on the couch. “How about some fresh coffee?” he asked gently.

  She looked up at him. “Maybe.” She sounded like she was being led to the gallows.

  “I don’t want you dealing with him again,” Gray stated. “You lost a big part of your life, and, even now, people are trying to damage your career, probably because of this guy.” She just nodded and didn’t say anything. “You could at least tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “What’s to think?” she asked, looking up at him. “He always had my number. I never quite understood that, but he always seemed to know what made me tick.”

  “Did you have an interest in him or something? … I don’t know quite how to put it, but was there something between you two beforehand? Did you know him before all this in any way?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’d never met him, never had anything to do with him, until he arrived there. There was a lot of secrecy about everything going on in his life, and I was asked to come take a look to see if anything could be done to help him. And, of course, in my world, there’s typically something that can be done to help any patient.”

  “Was there for Rodney?”

  “No, absolutely not,” she declared, with a sad sigh. “Still, that didn’t mean I was ready to give up. I did think we could try something, but I just had no idea at the time what that would be.”

  “Of course not.” Gray winced. “In your world there’s always something to try, isn’t there?”

  She smiled. “I was sure hoping there would be, and I was trying hard, you know? What can I say? Healing people is what I do, and I had never come across anybody like Rodney before.” She wrapped her arms around her chest and sank back into the couch.

  “He terrifies you, doesn’t he?”

  “He does,” she agreed, with a nod. “And I have no problem at all saying that. If you took the worst nightmare of your life, put it on steroids, then make it a never-ending nightmare, that’s what this guy is. And he loves it. Rodney absolutely loves the fact that he can terrify us.”

  “Terrify you,” Gray corrected.

  She looked over at him and smiled. “I get that you probably think you’ll be completely immune, but I can tell you right now that you won’t be.” He hesitated, and she nodded vehemently. “Seriously, you need to let that one go.”

  “It’s not that I’m trying to be better than you or anything else. I’m just looking for answers that will keep you away from him.”

  “You do realize that distance isn’t a thing in something like this, right?”

  At that, he froze. “Meaning?”

  She winced. “Meaning that, if he wants to get at me, I don’t have to be at the hospital or even on this continent. He can come at me from where he is right now.”

  “Ah, hell. I really didn’t want to hear that.”

  “No, I’m sure you didn’t,” she muttered, “but that does appear to be where we’re at right now.”

  “So, if he wanted to, he could reach out here and get you?” he asked.

  “In theory, yes, though I’m hoping he doesn’t know that. I’m hoping he hasn’t got the strength for something like that. Before we panic and go down this road, you need to check and see if he’s even cognizant and awake.”

  “Would it matter?”

  She hesitated, then slowly shook her head. “In many ways, no. He could do what he wanted before, even in the much-depleted state he was in. In theory, he could be doing this from his place right now.” She groaned. “I don’t even know where he is. I did see a Rodney assigned to a room in the maximum security area, but it wasn’t him.”

  “I’ve set Grant on that, and the team’s working it too. So, it shouldn’t be too long before we get answers.”

  She looked at him and gave him a half smile. “Yeah, but now that you’ve brought it up, this recent craziness feels very much as if it could be Rodney.”

  “Yeah, but didn’t you say something about signatures, about being able to recognize him?”

  “Yeah, so remember that part about somebody potentially having the ability to sound like Stefan, to sound like the boss, sound like whomever? I’m wondering whether he also learned to mask his energy, or at least make it look less dominant, so that somebody looking and expecting to see a specific signature doesn’t, so doesn’t question it.”

  “I think I understand what you mean,” Gray replied.

  “Good, since I’m not completely sure that I do.” When he frowned at her, she shrugged. “I’m not sure about any of this at the moment.”

  “I get it. So, let’s just hole up here, and, as soon as we get answers, we’ll take the next step.”

  “The next step is talking to him and sorting out what he’s doing and how much he’s aware of.”

  “Which is not a good answer for anybody,” he murmured.

  “It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter,” she muttered, staring at him. “Because, if it is him, he has to be stopped, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

  “Sure, but that doesn’t mean it has to be you who does it.”

  She shook her head, giving him a sad smile. “I’m afraid it does.”

  “Why? What about Stefan and Dr. Maddy?”

  Again she shook her head. “No, it’s always been about me.”

  “Maybe this time it needs to be about somebody else,” Gray declared, his tone harsh.

  Cressy sighed. “No, that won’t happen.”

  “Dammit, it has to happen,” Gray snapped. “I can’t have you going back into that scenario again.”

  She gave the tiniest hint of a smile. “I get that you think you’re in control and that you think you have some idea of what’s happening here, but honestly nobody really does. And, if this is what Rodney’s doing, it’ll have to be me who goes in there. I don’t know anybody else who can.”

  “You told me that there are other people who have these skills.”

  “I can get help … and use you as a ground, for instance. I could use Stefan’s help, but he can’t go in there. It’s not a case of opening a door and going in. It’s a case of being let in. And, of all the people Rodney’s dealt with before, if he will let in someone, it’ll be me.”

  “Why? Why you?” Gray was beside himself in frustration.

  “Because he wants to destroy me, and he can’t do that, unless he opens the door and I walk into the room, into his playground, the playground where he spent all that time killing everybody.”

  *

  Rodney couldn’t understand how humanity had survived, not when it was so low on the food chain. Sure, humanity thought it was doing just fine, but apparently it had no clue what was going on, and that just blew him away. What kind of a place was this that they could be taken in so easily? He knew that most people wouldn’t understand what he was saying, and that was fine, but he did miss Cressy.

  She had the ability to talk to him like nobody else ever had before. He knew that the two of them would have been perfect together, but she hadn’t been interested. She’d only wanted to stop him from his games and his fun, and that wasn’t something he was prepared to do. He had tried to teach her a lesson, and somehow things had gotten beyond crazy. Even now he was still hesitant about stepping out fully because he didn’t know what had happened last time—or whether it would happen again.

  If she’d planned on curtailing his activities, she’d succeeded in a big way, and it just made him angry. He’d gone dark for a long time, and it’d taken him forever to even get back out again, and now that he was back out, he was hesitant and cautious. He didn’t want to be sucked into the vortex of nothingness, the way he had been before. He also didn’t know if she’d done it to him, and, if she had, had she done it intentionally?

  If she had, that was a different story. Nobody would be allowed to curtail his life like that, not if he was capable of stopping it. But the idea of meeting her again was compelling. She’d been such a light in his darkness, such hope that somebody was out there like him, someone he could talk to and be with. He didn’t know if she understood just how important she was to him, to his plans, but, when things had blown up, he hadn’t known what to do or who had been responsible.

  He’d heard people say that Cressy had been badly injured from the whole thing too, and that had bothered him. But then he’d started to wonder if she’d had a part in it. Had she actually been the one who had done this to him? In that case, no punishment was strong enough. But he needed to know, and the only way to find out for sure was if she came back.

  When he’d seen her in the hallways, he’d been so excited that he’d struggled to maintain form and had lost it very quickly. His host at the time had been completely confused and had left, taking a few days off. But a few days away had turned into more than Rodney could handle, and, without his host close, it had been very hard for Rodney to get some kind of connection with someone else. Rodney needed a connection; he needed to know that he wasn’t going crazy and that it had been Cressy, always Cressy, who could actually talk to him.

  She’d been such a light, such a joy, and such a hope, … the only hope that he would ever get out of this place. He’d been working on the doctors to write him up in a much better light, to explain away his aberrant behavior. He had been working on the board as well. People weren’t willing to listen to excuses. It’s a good thing they didn’t know about all his victims, but they did know about some.

  Apparently that had been enough to stop people from finding any kind of sense of the world he was in and the things that he could do. He didn’t understand that, except that it was all back to that fear again. So maybe it was a good thing that they were afraid. He didn’t know.

  He still had so many things to figure out, yet how? He needed Cressy. He’d never been as powerful as he had been when she was there, supposedly treating him. He laughed at that because he had treated her instead. He’d treated her to show her just what he could do, and, when she’d tried to escape from him, he’d proven what he could do. He was even more powerful with her, which had been such a heady experience. Yet somehow it had all come apart, though he still didn’t understand how or why.

  She shouldn’t have had the ability to get away from him, but somehow she had. He thought he could do something about it this time, but he needed her back, and now he didn’t know what was going on. Some of his energy had been erratic, as he had tried to get it back in control, but control was a hard thing to actually manage without her.

  He thought he was stronger—at least he wanted to believe he was stronger—but maybe he was weaker and somehow something had broken inside. And, if that were true, he needed her more than ever. He wanted her back, where he could talk to her, where he could figure out if she really did have something to do with this.

  He still didn’t know what he would do about it because she was special, but he had to find a way to stop her from doing anything to hurt him. Once she understood how important she was to him, he was sure she would be easier to control. Yet, in the meantime, he couldn’t do anything until she came to him.

  At that, the doctor walked into his room, smiled at him, and asked, “How are you doing, Rodney?”

  He smiled back. “Doing fine. I thought I saw Dr. Cressy here.”

  At that, the doctor asked, “Was somebody talking? I mean, I’m presuming you didn’t see her. She didn’t come in here, did she?”

  Rodney hesitated, wondering what was the right answer, then shook his head.

  At that, the doctor nodded with relief. “Good, she was only here for a few days, but she won’t be back now.”

  “Why is that?” Rodney asked. Inside, he hated the fact that this guy was telling him that she wasn’t coming back to him anymore.

  “She didn’t adjust well after her sabbatical, so you certainly don’t have to worry about that.”

  “I would like to see her,” Rodney said immediately.

  “That won’t happen,” the doctor said, with a bright smile. “We have to look after all our patients, and she wasn’t a good fit for this facility.”

  “She was great,” Rodney declared, staring at the man, desperately trying to hold his hatred inside. “She’s been the best person I’ve ever talked to.”

  The doctor frowned at him. “I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about her.”

  “Absolutely I do. I know I’ve talked to my mother about it several times.”

  At that, the doctor nodded slowly. “Your mother has made it very clear that she would like to see your treatment with Dr. Cressy continue.”

  He nodded. “Absolutely, nobody else has had the same effect.”