Hector obeyed. He charged out onto the front step, leash flapping behind him.
She got Fletcher onto the floor and scrambled to her feet again. Smoke was billowing down the stairs now. She started to cough. This time when she seized Fletcher’s arms and hauled he slid forward a good foot and a half.
A shriek of rage came from halfway down the staircase.
“Let him go.” A slender woman dressed in a trendy black hooded track suit appeared at the foot of the stairs. Viewed through the pall of smoke she looked like the ghost of a crazed cheerleader. The glow of firelight from above danced on her blond ponytail and sparked off the gun in her hand. Her face was the only thing about her that was not impossibly cute. Her pretty features were twisted with rage.
“You can’t have him,” she screamed. “Fletcher is mine. We belong together. Leave him alone.”
Chloe recognized her immediately from Fletcher’s description. Madeline Gibson. Fresh splashes of wild energy burned on the treads of the staircase behind her. Demented obsession always produced a lot of raw psi.
“We all have to get out of here,” Chloe shouted, trying to pitch her voice above the shriek of the alarm. She managed to drag Fletcher a little closer to the door. “Don’t worry—you can have him as soon as we’re safe. Believe me, I don’t want him.”
“I told you to leave him alone.” Madeline aimed the gun at her. “He’s mine.”
“Come with us, Madeline,” she urged. “You can have Fletcher as soon as we get him outside, I promise.”
“No, he stays here with me. You can’t have him.” Madeline’s voice rose to a shrill screech. “No one else can have him. I told him that, but he didn’t believe me.”
Chloe sensed rather than heard the rush of movement behind her. Belatedly she realized that Hector was no longer barking. He slammed through the door, going straight past her. He was moving low and fast, heading straight for Madeline.
“Hector, no,” Chloe yelled.
But it was too late. Madeline, probably reacting more on instinct than intent, swung the barrel of the gun toward Hector. There was a deafening explosion when she pulled the trigger. Hector tumbled to the floor.
Stunned, Chloe looked down at the dog.
“Hector,” she whispered.
Madeline switched the barrel of the gun toward Fletcher, her face now terrifyingly calm and composed as she prepared to pull the trigger a second time.
“Wait,” Chloe said tightly. She dropped Fletcher and went slowly toward Madeline. She was forced to step across Hector’s still form to reach her. “Not yet. Fletcher is unconscious. If you shoot him now he’ll die without ever understanding that he was supposed to be with you. You want him to understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Madeline’s face crumpled with confusion. “He has to understand.”
Above the noise of the smoke detector Chloe was remotely aware of the sound of a car slamming to a halt in front of the house. She did not take her attention off Madeline Gibson.
“Right,” she said. “We have to wake him up so that you can explain everything to him. Why is he asleep?”
“The cookies,” Madeline said. “I ground up the pills and put them into the cookies. Left them on the back doorstep. I signed the note with her name. He should never have eaten them. It was a test, you see.”
“A test,” Chloe repeated.
“To see if he understood that she was all wrong for him. If he threw the cookies into the garbage I would know that he realized she was all wrong for him. But the bastard ate the cookies.”
“Got it.” She was very close to Madeline now, almost within touching distance. “That explains everything.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Madeline said.
“Don’t worry, I’m just leaving.”
She touched Madeline’s shoulder. Madeline did not seem to notice.
Jack loomed in the open doorway. Simultaneously, energy surged through the hall. Chloe sensed that the hot currents of psi were directed at Madeline, but she still had her hand on the young woman’s shoulder when the storm of nightmares struck.
It was like touching a live electrical wire. The physical contact with Madeline ensured that she took much of the shock, too. Horrors from the primordial darkness buried in the deepest regions of her psyche twisted through her. Phantoms and specters and things that go bump in the night rode the raging waves of energy that cascaded through the small space. Terrifying things flickered at the edge of her vision and slithered at her feet.
She heard a scream, the high, keening wail of a woman staring into hell. Not her, she thought. Madeline. With a gasp, she jerked her hand away from Madeline’s shoulder, breaking the connection. The nightmares receded immediately. Breathless, heart pounding, she reeled back against the wall.
Madeline finally stopped screaming. She went rigid, shuddered and collapsed. The gun clattered on the tile floor of the hall.
Jack Winters was giving orders.
“Rose, help her with this guy,” he said, moving past Chloe. “I’ll get the woman.”
Rose grabbed one of Fletcher’s arms. Chloe grabbed the other. Together they hauled him out onto the front step and down onto the lawn. Chloe looked back into the burning house and saw Jack emerge with Madeline slung over one shoulder. Hector’s limp body was tucked under his arm. He paused long enough to kick an object out the door. It landed on the grass near Rose.
“Oh, shit,” Rose said. “She had a gun?”
“Don’t touch it,” Chloe said. “It will be covered with her fingerprints. Evidence.”
She was still shivering in reaction to the icy sea of nightmares that had lapped at her senses for those few seconds. As bad as it was, she knew that she had not gotten the full blast. She could not begin to imagine what the experience had been like for Madeline.
She watched Jack come toward them, a dark and powerful figure carrying the unconscious woman and Hector from the burning house.
Avenging angel.
10
HE STOOD A LITTLE DISTANCE FROM CHLOE WHILE SHE talked to the police officer. Hector was alive. One of the medics at the scene had taken a look at him and bandaged the wound in the dog’s head and offered the reassuring assessment that Hector would probably live. A kindhearted neighbor had volunteered to take Hector to the nearest emergency veterinary clinic.
Rose pressed close to Chloe in silent support. Jack realized that he wanted to stand close, too, but that wasn’t his job. He was not part of her inner circle. He was just the client, the client who had burned her badly with a psychic blast of nightmares. It was a wonder she had not collapsed like Madeline. Probably a tribute to her own strong talent.