Blood Dreams by Kay Hooper

people in it. Except for two of them.
    Dani was sitting in a chair not three feet away from the one Marc chose, but he thought she was nevertheless far away from him, despite the faint connection he could still feel. She seemed shut in herself, withdrawn, and he knew it was deliberate.
    Even as a kid she had done that, isolating herself from those closest to her when something went wrong. Not because she didn’t care, but because she felt things a lot more deeply than she ever wanted to show. Because she didn’t want to see some of the things her ties to people allowed her to see. And it was probably the twin thing, too, Marc had decided, the need to be her own person, apart from Paris.
    Maybe that was why she had grown up resisting anybody getting too close, resisting attachments. Marc had wondered many times since if, in trying to hold on to her ten years ago, he had actually driven her away by grabbing and holding too tightly.
    He caught a glance from Paris and realized that even Dani’s twin was worried about her. Which was not a good sign. The question in Marc’s mind was whether it was the situation that was affecting Dani—or the people involved.
    Was she still trying to pull away from him, him in particular, especially in light of his impulsive words on a very public sidewalk today?
    John Garrett said matter-of-factly, “You know I’m not psychic.”
    Marc didn’t even have to concentrate, though he did have to shift his focus back to the matter at hand, and it was more difficult to do that than he had expected. “I do know that. And yet you run an organization designed to make use of the psychic abilities of your people.”
    “My wife is an empath, and my best friend a seer.” Garrett shrugged with a rueful smile. “I’m the one with the business-oriented mind. Somehow it all made sense.”
    “I can understand that. What I can’t understand is what you’re doing here. In Venture. You or Agent Bishop.”
    A faint laugh escaped Miranda Bishop. “Miranda, please. Most people call my husband by his surname alone, so there’s really only one Bishop in the family. And in the unit.”
    “Okay, Miranda it is. I’m Marc.”
    She nodded, exchanged glances with Garrett, then said, “We’re here because of the predator hunting in Venture. You found the partial remains of one or more of his victims today.”
    “One or
more
?” It wasn’t as much of a surprise as Marc wished it was; the leaden feeling in his gut had been telling him for some time that both the missing women were already dead.
    “There are probably two victims so far,” Miranda said. “At least.”
    “Am I supposed to assume you know all this because you’re a seer?”
    “If you’re wondering whether I knew in advance that he’d strike here, the answer is no. We’d been tracking him from his last hunting field, using a network of agents and John’s people.”
    “A network?”
    Garrett said, “Bishop had the idea, the goal, of building a network of psychics, who could be activated at a moment’s notice in any given area to aid police in especially difficult investigations. He started with his unit—with federal agents—of course, and built on that base. There are other law-enforcement officers he’s reached out to, people scattered across the country, working their own cases but available and willing to help us if we need them. And I’ve been building the civilian branches of the network. Haven. We aren’t cops, but all of our active investigators are trained and licensed P.I.s.”
    Marc looked at Dani. “You’re a private investigator?”
    She looked at him directly for the first time since they’d entered the house, if only fleetingly. “No. I’m not an active investigator.”
    “Dani’s abilities,” Garrett said, “are specialized, as you know.”
    “Passive,” she said, with another glance at Marc. “Even psychics can have totally passive abilities.”
    Marc saw both Paris and Miranda frown slightly, but