The Vanishing

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Slater watched her very intently. “No blood was found at the scene. There was no evidence of blunt force trauma. Cause of death was heart attack.”

  “Let me take a look.”

  Catalina wrapped her arms very tightly under her breasts and made herself move back into the seething currents. Cautiously she heightened her talent.

  Once again the vision began to take shape, fading in and out, never quite coming into sharp focus. She tried to describe what she was seeing, vaguely aware that her voice took on an eerie, otherworldly note. She could not help it. She was, after all, trying to communicate from somewhere deep inside a nightmare.

  “The victim is standing here where I’m standing now,” she said in her dream voice. “He is not alone. There was another person. The victim is startled by something . . . A sharp pain. He is not frightened, not at first. Then he realizes that something terrible is happening to him. He can’t breathe. His heart is beating too fast, pounding. He knows that he is dying. Fear. Rage. Panic.”

  The terrible energy left by the victim’s mounting horror was a palpable force sending waves of violent dread through her, threatening to shatter her own senses. She fought for control, struggling to overcome the urge to run for her life; to hide.

  Strong hands closed around her shoulders, hauling her out of the pool of death energy.

  “It’s all right, Catalina.” Slater’s voice shattered the vision. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, enveloping her with his aura. “I’ve got you. It’s over. Done. You’re safe.”

  She shut down her other senses and found herself once again in the world that most people defined as real. Her normal senses took charge. That was when she realized Slater was still holding her. She could not resist the temptation to burrow deeper into the warmth and energy of his embrace. Just a few seconds, she promised herself. Just long enough for me to catch my breath.

  It had been a very long time since anyone had comforted her after a vision.

  She was pretty sure the last time had been when her mother had come into her bedroom to calm her after she had begun to experience the nightmares that had heralded the onset of her talent. The era of parental sympathy and concern had not lasted long. Once the true nature of her new senses had become apparent, her mother and father had immediately begun to emphasize the necessity of gaining control over her strange new ability. You’ve got to learn to handle the visions or you’ll never be able to live a normal life in the outside world.

  She knew they had meant well and that their insistence on control was for her own good. Nevertheless, neither of them could see the things that she saw. They could not comprehend how disturbing the dreamlike visions were. They imagined them to be waking dreams but the truth was that they were so much worse because, in a sense, the visions were all too real.

  “Most people who see me like this want to get as far away from me as possible,” she said, her voice muffled by Slater’s leather jacket.

  “What did you say?” Slater asked.

  Mortified, she raised her head and took a step back. His hands fell away from her shoulders.

  “Sorry,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t usually get that disoriented. I think the heavy atmosphere in here made the vision a lot more powerful than it would have been otherwise.”

  “That’s not surprising.” Slater gave it a beat before he continued. “Do you think it affected the accuracy of the vision?”

  She managed a wry smile. “You know, that’s one of the things I’m starting to admire about you, Mr. Arganbright. You’re very good at going straight to the bottom line. No, the energy in here didn’t affect the accuracy of the vision. It just made it stronger. Someone was murdered in here. Given that it was Royston’s body that was found, I think it’s safe to conclude he was the victim. I also picked up the hot prints of one other person.”

  “Any chance there might have been two other people?”

  His focus on the crime made it easier for her to pull herself together. He wasn’t freaking out. He wasn’t looking at her as if he was wondering if she should be locked up in an asylum. He was treating her as a qualified, professional investigator. That realization warmed her almost as much as the feel of his arms around her had a moment ago.

  “You’re thinking about Marge’s clones, aren’t you?” she said. “I’m almost certain that there was only the one other person here inside the vault,” she said. “But there wouldn’t have been room for two killers.”

  “Good point. It would have taken only one to do the job.”

  Catalina opened her senses again and moved around the vault. “The killer was . . . excited.”

  “By the kill?”

  She hesitated, trying to analyze the energy. “No, that was an act of cold-blooded violence. I think he was excited because he found whatever it was he was looking for.”

  “And three days later Olivia gets kidnapped.”

  Catalina looked at him. “I think you’re right. Olivia was taken because of something the killer found here inside Royston’s vault. That means there is some connection to what happened in those caves fifteen years ago. But how could Royston have been involved?”

  “Looks like he had the bad luck to acquire the wrong artifact,” Slater said. “So much for his safe room.”

  “What safe room?”

  Slater indicated the latch on the heavy steel door. “Collectors usually design their vaults to function as safe rooms in the event of a home invasion by freelancers or thieves. But that concept doesn’t work well if you invite the killer right into the vault. Evidently that’s what happened here.”

  “That would seem to indicate that Royston knew his killer.”

  “Not necessarily. The murderer may have forced him to open the vault.”

  “How?”

  “Something as simple as a gun to the head would probably do the trick.”

  Catalina thought about that. “I don’t think so. Royston wasn’t afraid, not at first. He was . . . elated.”

  “In my experience there are only a couple of things that get an obsessive collector like Royston excited—adding a new artifact to the collection or showing off a particularly valuable acquisition to a rival.”

  “Maybe the killer posed as a collector or the representative of a potential buyer.”

  “That might have worked,” Slater said. “But he would have had to be a very good actor to convince Royston. Collectors tend to be secretive and suspicious. We need to get to Fogg Lake.”

  “What? That’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive. Four hours if the weather turns bad. We don’t have time to go to Fogg Lake. The kidnappers won’t be hanging out there.”

  “We’ve got to find out what that original crime scene can tell us.”

  You can’t go back into the caves. You will go crazy. You’ll throw yourself into the lake and drown.

  Catalina pushed the old nightmare to the back of her mind and struggled to come up with a logical reason for avoiding the caves.

  “If we go to Fogg Lake today we’ll be stuck there overnight,” she said. “You can’t get in or out of town after dark because of the fog.”

  “We have to start at the beginning,” Slater insisted.

  “There’s no way a couple of murderous sociopaths like those two clones could hide in Fogg Lake. That is still one very small town. Everyone knows everyone else. Strangers stand out.”

  “I don’t expect to find them there,” Slater said, impatient now. “But with luck we’ll get some sense of whoever is running those clones.”

  “But—”

  “We don’t have time to argue, Catalina. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to trust me.”

  “Trust you? Just because you’re from the Foundation? We should be looking for those two men who grabbed Olivia.”

  “I’m not going to ignore those damned twins. I’ll have Vic
tor send someone to Seattle today to run down any leads that originate here in this gallery. The Foundation cleaners are good.”

  “Yes, but they work for your uncle.”

  “Believe it or not, I know what I’m doing here,” Slater said.

  She had to give him that much, she thought. He was the expert when it came to chasing old artifacts, and it looked like they were after one. She had to trust him. Olivia’s life might depend on it.

  “All right, I agree that you’re the expert,” she said. “If you’re convinced there are answers to be found in Fogg Lake, then I guess we’d better get on the road. It’s a long drive. We have to arrive there before it gets dark, otherwise we’ll end up sleeping in the car overnight while we wait for the fog to lift.”

  Slater did not look thrilled by the reluctance of her capitulation, but he gave her a brusque nod.

  “Thanks,” he said. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we can conduct the investigation. We’ll stop by your apartment so you can grab whatever gear you think you’ll need. I don’t suppose your hometown ever got around to allowing a hotel or a B and B to open?”

  “Of course not. Fogg Lake has a long and proud tradition of discouraging tourism.”

  “Yeah, I heard that.”

  “Relax, we can stay in my parents’ house. They have a home here in Seattle and a condo in Scottsdale but they still spend some part of each summer at the lake. I think they held on to the Fogg Lake house in case I, uh—”

  “In case you what?”

  “In case I, you know, have kids and need to raise them in a safe environment.”

  “Right.” Slater nodded. “Kids. Speaking of parents, where are yours now?”

  “They’re away on a world cruise.”

  “What about Olivia’s mother and father?”

  “Olivia’s father died when she was just a baby. Her mother was killed in what the authorities called a hiking accident about a year and a half ago.”

  “Sounds like you and Olivia aren’t so sure about that.”

  “Olivia thinks she was murdered but we’ve never been able to find any proof. When you die in the mountains, nature has a way of concealing the evidence.”

  “True.”

  “We can’t even establish a possible motive. If she was killed, it was probably a random act of violence. Maybe she surprised someone who was running a drug lab. We just don’t know.” Catalina cleared her throat. “We’d better get moving. Long drive.”

  “Yes,” Slater said. He still had the old phone in one hand. “Grab that tray of index cards for me, will you?”

  “All right.”

  She picked up the file and followed him out of the vault. He moved swiftly toward the stairs. She had to hurry to keep up with him.

  He reached the concrete steps and started up to the ground floor of the big house. He stopped so suddenly that she almost stumbled into him.

  “What?” she said, grabbing the handrail to steady herself.

  He hit the light switch, dumping the basement into deep night. He closed and locked the door, spun around and aimed a small flashlight at the steps.

  “Under the steps,” he said. “Hurry.”

  Clinging to the rail with her free hand, she bounded back down the stairs to the floor of the basement. Slater was right behind her.

  Heavy footsteps echoed in the hall at the top of the stairs. Two men.

  “We’ve got ’em,” one man said.

  There was a series of dull thuds, followed by a grinding noise and a sudden crack of sound. A couple of seconds later the door crashed open.

  Slater leaned out from the shelter of the concrete stairs and fired two shots in crisp succession.

  “Fuck,” one of the men yelped. “Nobody said he was armed. Use the damned fog.”

  Slater fired another round at the doorway and ducked back under the staircase.

  The lights came on just in time to reveal two glass objects that looked like snow globes sailing through the air. But whatever was inside didn’t look like snow. It looked like fog.

  The glass balls shattered on the floor of the gallery. The heavy door at the top of the steps slammed shut.

  Slater reached out and grabbed Catalina’s hand.

  “Whatever you do, don’t let go,” he said.

  She was trying to comprehend his meaning when the tsunami of fog engulfed her senses. The hallucinations struck an instant later. She was plunged into the kaleidoscope from hell.

  CHAPTER 19

  Blinded.

  Panic splashed through her, acid-hot. All her senses roared into the red zone, mental sirens screaming. Gray fog formed in the gallery. The hallucinations rapidly worsened. Paranormal flames leaped. Visions of the dead and dying that she had conjured at old crime scenes descended upon her in a storm of nightmares.

  “Just hallucinations,” she whispered.

  “Yes.” Slater tightened his grip on her hand. “We’ve got this.”

  “Good to know,” she gasped. “For a minute there I was a little worried.”

  The hallucinations got more intense. Now she could have sworn she felt the heat of the flames that surrounded them.

  “I think this fog is acting like a stimulant to our senses,” Slater said. “It’s throwing us into overdrive. Go dark. Now.”

  Shutting down her other vision while she was under assault went against all her survival instincts. It was like closing her eyes when confronted by a snake or a tiger. Her mind and body were both screaming at her to call on all available weapons, telling her she needed everything she had to do battle with her attacker.

  But the harder she fought the hallucinations, the worse they got. She sensed that Slater was shutting down. It was worth a try. She pulled on all her control and managed to lower her sparking, snapping, flaring senses a couple degrees. The hallucinations did not vanish, but they faded. She thought the fog had thinned a little, too. She was able to make out Slater standing beside her.

  Encouraged, she dampened her senses a little more. Some of the hallucinations retreated. The fog continued to thin. She could see a nearby row of shelves now.

  “You’re right,” she said. “But we can’t just walk out of here. They’ll be waiting for us.”

  “We’re not leaving the way we came in. We’re going into the vault.”

  “Okay, I understand it can function as a safe room, but we’ll still be trapped. For all we know, those two will wait us out.”

  “Collectors are well aware that their safe rooms can become traps, so they make sure they’ve got an exit.”

  “Huh. You do know a lot about collectors.”

  “I am one, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.”

  They made their way back through the fog and moved into the vault. Slater released her hand at last to pull the thick steel door shut. He slid the massive bolt into place.

  Next he began a careful scrutiny of the glass walls. It did not take him long to find what he was looking for.

  “Here we go,” he said.

  She watched a panel slide open, revealing a narrow, unlit tunnel. When Slater aimed the flashlight into the darkness, she saw the gleam of tiles. The passage was just barely large enough to accommodate one person.

  “I’ll go first,” Slater said. “Here, take the phone. I’ll need one hand for the flashlight and the other for my weapon.”

  She realized she was still clutching the card file. She gripped the phone in her free hand. “You’re expecting trouble at the other end?”

  “I no longer know what to expect in this screwy case.”

  “I doubt if anyone heard those shots you fired a few minutes ago, because there are no close neighbors, and the concrete in here will have muffled the noise. But if we come out of this tunnel aboveground and you start shooting at those clones, we’re going to attract
attention. The police will be here before we know it, and by the time we finish explaining what happened, it will be too late to drive to Fogg Lake.”

  “I promise not to shoot anyone unless there is no other option.”

  “Well, okay, I guess.”

  Compromise. She reminded herself that good relationships were founded on such things.

  Slater moved into the tiled passageway—the very narrow, very dark tiled passageway. Clutching the phone and the contacts file, she took a deep breath and followed. Memories of the nightmarish flight through the Fogg Lake cave complex fifteen years earlier rose up in a choking wave. The claustrophobia hit hard and fast.

  You will drown in the lake . . .

  She could do this. She had to do this. The other option was to retreat back into Royston’s gallery and wait for the clones from hell to take her. That was no option at all.

  Desperate not to succumb to full-blown panic, she cautiously jacked up her senses. Doing so helped suppress the panic. Up ahead she could see Slater’s fierce aura. She found the sight reassuring.

  She was also relieved to discover that the hallucinations did not return. The atmosphere might be stale, but it was free of the fog.

  “I see the exit up ahead,” Slater said.

  “Thank goodness.”

  Something in her voice must have alerted him.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sure. Peachy. I have a little problem with tight, enclosed spaces. Just get us out of here.”

  Slater came to a halt in front of a steel panel. He switched off the flashlight and slid the door aside.

  More darkness spilled in through the opening, bringing with it a stale, musty odor.

  “I think we’re in the basement of the house next door,” Slater said. “I noticed that it was vacant. I’ll bet Royston owned it as well as the one he lived in. No surprise. Collectors like their privacy.”

  He led the way out of the tunnel and swept the flashlight around the room. Catalina took in the damp concrete floor and walls.

  “You’re right,” she said “Another basement.”

  She was amazed to discover that she was still clutching the file tray and the phone. Slater went quickly toward a flight of steps.