Hunting Fear by Kay Hooper

a blank.
    She wasn’t worried about it. In fact, she wasn’t worried about anything, and had the suspicion that it was because she’d been drugged. This groping-through-the-fog sensation was one she recalled experiencing years before while being heavily dosed with Valium before a minor medical procedure.
    Okay, so she was drugged; she knew that much.
    She was lying on a hard, chilly surface, on her belly. She also seemed to have something dark loosely covering her head, a hood or something like that. And her wrists were taped together behind her.
    An experimental twitch—all she could really manage—told her that her ankles were not bound, but she couldn’t seem to make her muscles work well enough to roll over or try to free her hands. She wasn’t even sure she could feel her hands.
    Bound, hooded, drugged.
    Oh, Christ, I’ve been kidnapped.
    Her strongest emotion just then was sheer incredulity. Kidnapped? Her? Jeez, if he wanted ransom money, then he was sure as hell out of luck. She had part of her last paycheck in the bank, but beyond that—
    Wait. Sam had said it wasn’t about money. That it was all just a game, a broken, brilliant game—No. A man with a broken, brilliant mind wanted to play a game. A twisted game. With Lucas Jordan. To see who was smarter, faster. To see who was better. Like a chess game, Sam had said.
    Which made Lindsay a pawn.
    And she didn’t have to grope through the fog for long to remember what had happened to virtually all the other pawns.
    Dead.
    “Oh, shit,” she heard herself whisper.
    She half expected someone—him—to reply to that, but even with her brain fogged she had a strong certainty that she was alone here. Wherever here was. Alone, bound, drugged.
    Even through the muffling, quieting effects of the drugs, Lindsay began to feel the first faint twinges of anxiety and fear.
     
    They went out the back way to avoid the media camped out front and encountered Deputy Glen Champion before they could leave the building.
    He hesitated for an instant, looking at Samantha, then blurted, “Thank you. The dryer was—I had it checked out. The electrician said it was a fire waiting to happen. So thank you.”
    “My pleasure. Take care of that baby.”
    “I will.” He sort of bobbed his head. “Thanks again.”
    Gazing after the deputy, Lucas said, “Well, you made a friend there. See something in the baby’s future?”
    “Yeah. She’s going to be a teacher.” Samantha led the way out of the building.
    Lucas didn’t say anything until they were in his rental car and safely out of the parking lot without drawing the attention of the media. Then, thoughtfully, he said, “Aside from Bishop and Miranda, you’re the only seer I know of who can see that far ahead. The baby becomes a teacher in—what?—twenty-five years?”
    “About that.”
    “And you saw her as a teacher.”
    “A good teacher. A special teacher. And her sort of teacher will be needed more than ever then.” Samantha shrugged. “The bright moments of seeing something good I can help bring about are generally outnumbered by the dark moments I see tragedy or evil that I can’t do a damned thing to change.”
    “Which is why you warned Champion.”
    “I warned him because it was the right thing to do. Just like warning Carrie Vaughn when I thought she was going to be a victim, and Mitchell—”
    Lucas shot her a quick look, then fixed his eyes on the road again. “You warned Callahan? You said you’d never seen him in the flesh.”
    “I said I hadn’t seen him . . . before I had the vision about him.”
    “Splitting hairs,” Lucas muttered.
    “I can be very literal-minded, remember? And, anyway, I didn’t see him, I just talked to him.” When Lucas didn’t respond, Samantha said, “It was obvious Metcalf didn’t take me seriously when I went to talk to him about a possible kidnapping, so I called Callahan and warned him to be careful. I doubt he took me seriously either, and it obviously