Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

crackling and spitting in the hearth. Then there was another sound: the sound of slow, deep breaths, six in total, and then a voice that was not recognizable. It was neither male nor female, but it was deep and resonant, and it came out of Jasmine.

“Jane not here.”

I looked at Dehan. She didn’t meet my eye. She was staring hard at Jasmine. Jasmine’s head flopped on one side, like she was deeply asleep, and a small snore escaped her lips. Then the voice again, with the weird impression that it did not belong to the body it was coming from.

“We have chosen Jane. But Jane not here.” Another thirty seconds of silence, then, “Paul.”

Paul sat forward. He looked drawn, ashen in the flickering light of the fire. He drew breath to speak, but Don raised a hand. Paul looked at him and he shook his head.

The voice came out of Jasmine again. “We have now chosen Paul. Paul will come to us. At middle of night, at twelve o’clock, he will come to the meeting of three paths, five hundred meters from here. He will know the place. We will give him message for the world.”

She seemed to slump again, taking long, slow, deep breaths. Paul was staring at Don. He looked scared. The voice spoke again.

“We have chosen Paul as our messenger. We have chosen Donald as the rock on which we build. There will be other messengers. The world will hear our message. The time has come, now.”

She began to tremble again, her legs kicked, and her head thrashed from side to side. I saw May’s hands go to her mouth and then Jasmine went still. After a moment, she turned away, toward the back of the sofa and suddenly, she was just a sleeping woman, and a shadow seemed to lift from the room.

Almost immediately, Paul said, “Don?”

Donald stood and went to the sideboard. He poured himself a brandy and returned to sit by the fire. “What do you want me to say?”

“Are they going to kill me?”

Don shook his head. “How should I know? I don’t…” He sighed and shook his head a second time. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

A spasm of irritation contracted Don’s face. “Danny was killed because he didn’t go…”

I interrupted him. “You don’t know that.”

He glared at me. “What? What are you talking about? It’s obvious!”

“No it’s not.” I gave a small, humorless laugh. “That’s an inference you’ve drawn. It’s part of the mythology of your group and your readers. But it was never established as a fact. You have no proof of that and, I’ll go even further, you haven’t even any evidence, let alone proof.”

May snapped, “Haven’t you just seen the evidence with your own eyes? Really, detective, it is like talking to the wall!”

I ignored her and turned to Paul. “If you are in fear for your life, Paul, don’t go. Let’s be clear about this. Two people have died: Danny, twenty years ago, and Jane less than twenty-four hours ago. What connected these two people?” He shook his head. I said, “Two things: this group and you.”

He swallowed. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“I’m offering you a reality check, Paul. Please think this through. Danny died in very peculiar circumstances which seemed inexplicable. That led you, amongst others, to conclude that he was killed by aliens. Twenty years later, precisely when we start up the investigation again, the woman you broke up with the night Danny died—because she was in love with Danny—gets murdered. That is one hell of a coincidence. But this time there is no indication of alien activity. This time it is clearly the work of a human being…” I paused, giving him time to process what I was saying. “Now you are being asked to go out into the middle of the forest, at midnight, to receive a message for humanity from the alleged aliens whom you believe killed Danny. What I am telling you is, be smart and don’t go.”

Stuart was staring at me like I had just told him Bugs Bunny was behind the murders. “I don’t believe what I am hearing. Are you seriously suggesting that Jasmine is somehow engineering this? Because that is the inevitable conclusion of what you have said.”

“At this stage, Stuart, I am not suggesting anything. What I am doing is pointing out that there are several factors connecting the victims with Paul, and I am saying that Paul would be wise to be careful. Can you argue with any of that?”

Don sighed loudly. “Paul, you must be guided by your own lights. There is a lot of common sense in what Detective Stone is saying, but equally I would say that every one of us here tonight knows that Danny was killed because he did not go to the rendezvous. I have lived with the guilt of that fact for twenty years and I am not going to make the same mistake again. You must do what you consider to be the right thing. And forgive me for being blunt, but the consequences of that choice will be on you, not on me.”

I watched Paul carefully. He sat forward with his elbows on his knees, staring hard at the flames wavering in the fire. Finally, he said, “What time is it?”

Don glanced at his watch. “It’s fifteen minutes before nine.”

Dehan was watching me, chewing her lip. She was about to speak when the colonel said, “Let me go with you, Paul.”

It was Don who answered. “No. None of you seems to understand! The reason Danny was killed was because he did not stick to the instructions!”

I cut across him. “Once again, Don, you have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. Now let me make something clear to everybody in this room.