by Jayne Castle
“Right,” Lyra said. She crumpled her napkin and got to her feet. “You’ll be needing me, then.”
Cruz gave her a hard look. “And why is that?”
“Even if you do manage to track the killer through the catacombs, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to find the relic. But if it is anywhere in the vicinity, I’ll be able to sense it.”
“Huh,” Jake said and looked at Cruz. “She’s a Dore. She knows what she’s doing when it comes to amber.”
Chapter 28
CRUZ JACKED UP HIS SENSES AND STUDIED THE JAGGED tear in the glowing green quartz wall. At once the whispers of violence—hot, ravenous, haunting and, yes, darkly thrilling—lifted the hair on the nape of his neck and sent a shot of adrenaline through him. The dirty little secret of every man in the family was that it felt good, really, really good. Until he had met Lyra, the sensations of the hunt had always ranked as the most enthralling rush he had ever experienced. Now it was the second most enthralling rush.
Vincent, perched on his shoulder, made a low, rumbling sound. He was still fully fluffed, but he seemed to understand that they were engaged in some kind of hunting game. He was having a good time, too. What’s more, he obviously did not feel the need to try to appear politically correct about it.
“The killer came this way, all right,” Cruz said. “And he used the same route out.”
He moved through the ripped quartz into the dense darkness of the underground cavern. Jeff followed. They both used their flashlights.
“Hot when he arrived,” Jeff said. “He was planning the kill. Hotter when he left.”
Jeff was doing his best to hide the effect the spoor of violence was having on him. His voice was so unnaturally level and uninflected he sounded as if he were making an observation on the weather.
They were both fully rezzed, fighting the same battle to maintain a facade of cool control, not only because control of one’s talent was considered priority number one in the Sweetwater family, but also because of Lyra. She was strong and she was gutsy, but even strong, gutsy women had been known to run screaming in the opposite direction when they found themselves in the presence of men whose talents predisposed them to be stirred and deeply aroused by violence. Couldn’t blame the ladies, Cruz thought dourly. Just the old survival instinct kicking in.
There was only one way a woman could come to trust such a man with absolute certainty, and that was if she experienced and accepted a psychic connection with him. That was the only way she could comprehend at the very core of her being that he would never be a threat to her, that he would die to protect her.
“The first question that comes to mind,” Jeff said, “is how did the killer know about this entrance to Fairstead’s gallery?”
“He wouldn’t have discovered it by accident,” Cruz said. “Fairstead must have shown it to him.”
Lyra stepped through the torn quartz and rezzed her flashlight. “Maybe the killer had a long-standing business relationship with Fairstead, and this is how he came and went from the gallery on a regular basis.”
Cruz and Jeff looked at her. She did not appear to notice. Her attention was on the cavern.
Jeff cleared his throat. “If he was a regular business associate of Fairstead’s, why would he come and go underground?”
“He probably supplied Fairstead with artifacts that had what you might call somewhat murky provenances,” she continued. “Fairstead had an image to uphold in the high-end antiquities trade. He would not have wanted his clients or his competition to see him buying antiquities or valuable specimens from a tunnel rat or a low-level independent like, say, me.”
Jeff’s cool demeanor slipped a little for the first time. He was torn between astonishment and laughter.
“No offense, but you seem to know a lot about the underground amber market, Miss Dore,” he said.
“I do,” she agreed. “Just ask the boss.”
Jeff looked at Cruz.
Time to take charge, Cruz thought.
“We are not going there,” he said. “And that’s an executive decision. Back to our problem here. The killer may or may not have been a regular supplier of illegal amber to Fairstead, but it’s a good bet either way that Fairstead knew him.”
“The police have that much, already,” Jeff said. “They’re going with a falling-out among thieves scenario.”
Cruz glanced at him. “Is that from your buddy in the Frequency PD?”
“Uh-huh.”
Cruz nodded, impressed. “Nice work. Always good to have contacts like that inside regular law enforcement.”
Evidently encouraged, Jeff kept going. “They’re talking to low-end dealers throughout the Quarter, trying to find out who might have been selling to Fairstead. What they can’t figure out is why nothing was taken from the vault.”
“In other words, they still don’t know about the relic,” Cruz said.
Jeff shook his head. “No.”
“That’s something, at least. Let’s see if we can pick up anything else here.”
The cavern was a natural cave, but at some point in the past two hundred years, someone had constructed a steep flight of stone steps that led upward into the darkness, presumably ending in the basement of the Fairstead Gallery.
Cruz walked to the staircase and touched the handrail. The miasma of recent violence washed through him again. This time he rezzed a little energy through his newly tuned ring, trying to see if he could get any more details.
He was expecting the escalation of the intensity of the psychic traces. What caught him off guard was the way the violent energy came into sharp, clear focus.
“What the hell?” he asked. Automatically he looked down at his ring.
Jeff grinned. “Told you. It’s that special precision tuning thing that Lyra does. Makes a difference, doesn’t it?”
Cruz glanced at Lyra. “Yes, it does.”
She smiled. “I usually charge extra for that.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that you could do that with amber?” Cruz asked.
“You never asked.”
“Got any more tuning secrets?”
“Certainly. But a tuner never tells all her secrets. What are you finding there on the stairs?”
“One man,” he said, going back to the business at hand. He glanced at Jeff. “Do you agree?”
Jeff seemed briefly taken aback at having been asked for an opinion. But he recovered quickly.
“Yes,” he said. “Just one going up the stairs and one coming back down. The same guy, I think.”
Cruz touched another section of the railing. He rezzed a little more energy and was once again amazed by the clarity of what he sensed. “He was excited, but he was also a little rattled.”
“He knew he was taking a big risk killing Fairstead,” Jeff offered. “That was bound to produce a high-profile murder investigation.”
“Something I’m not getting here,” Lyra said. “We’re talking as if the same guy who sold the relic to Fairstead came back later to murder him and retrieve the artifact. But why would he do that? He and Fairstead had done the deal.”
Cruz looked up toward the top of the steps. “Given the timing of Fairstead’s death, I think the killer may have heard about your dramatic little scene in Fairstead’s gallery yesterday afternoon. He panicked after he found out that I was there in the same room as the relic. He doesn’t believe in coincidences.”
“Makes sense,” Jeff said. “If he knew that you were not only at the gallery but also in the vault chamber where the amethyst was hidden, he might have freaked. Figured you were getting too close.”
“So he goes in last night and kills the one person who could identify him,” Lyra said. “Valentine Fairstead.”
“And while he’s at it, he retrieves the artifact,” Cruz concluded, satisfied with the logic. “Let’s go; we’ve seen enough.”
“Where are we going?” Lyra asked.
“Now that we have his psi spoor, we might be able to follow t
he killer’s path through the catacombs. Normally the heavy psi inside the tunnels makes it very difficult to track someone underground, but with this new tune-up job on my amber, things may be different.”
Jeff grinned. “I think you may be right.”
“Are you serious?” Lyra asked. “You can actually track a person by following their psychic spoor?”
“Only if he’s still riding the waves of energy that accompany acts of violence,” Jeff explained. “Once he’s calmed down, the traces become indistinguishable from other kinds of psi.”
“Tuners aren’t the only ones with a few secrets,” Cruz said. “Sweetwaters have some also.”
“I’ve got to tell you that does not come as a huge surprise,” Lyra said.
Cruz focused through his amber. The currents of violent psi leaped into clear definition immediately.
“Got him,” he said quietly to Jeff.
“Same here,” Jeff said.
Vincent rumbled excitedly and leaned forward so far, Cruz wondered if the dust bunny would fall off his shoulder. But Vincent did not seem the least bit worried about that possibility. He stared straight ahead with all four eyes, riveted.
“It’s like he knows we’re hunting,” Jeff said. “Like he’s hunting with us.”
“He’s a good dust bunny to have at your back in a fight,” Cruz said. “Trust me. I saw him in action last night.”
“Oh, great,” Lyra said. “I sense male bonding and a pack mentality developing here.”
An uneasy jolt sliced through Cruz. Maybe she was making a joke. Maybe not. Either way, he did not want her to start classifying him as some kind of predatory beast. Her opinion of his character was shaky enough as it was.
“Think of the three of us as a team,” he said, “not a pack.”
“Whatever,” Lyra said.
The killer’s spoor led through three disorienting intersections, each with multiple connecting hallways, past countless vaulted chambers and anterooms. It dead-ended in front of a solid wall of quartz.
When they all stopped, Vincent chittered impatiently and bounded down to the floor. He scampered eagerly to the wall. A dust bunny-size hole in the quartz opened. Vincent went through it and promptly vanished. The hole closed.
“Well, that answers that question,” Lyra said. She studied the wall. “The killer escaped into the jungle. He’s long gone.”
“Damn,” Jeff muttered. “We’ll never be able to track him down in the rain forest, not even with our new, improved, highly tuned amber. You can’t track anyone in the jungle unless you’ve got their locator frequency. The psi in there is just too heavy and way too freakish.”
Cruz studied the blank quartz wall. “He’s gone, and you’re right, we can’t track him. But I’d really like to have a look around on the other side of that wall.”
“Why?” Lyra asked.
“Last night after the murder he was in a real hurry. Maybe he got careless and dropped something.”
Vincent reappeared. He made encouraging sounds and promptly disappeared again.
Jeff contemplated the wall. “We need to get someone down here who can open a people-size jungle gate.”
“That would be me,” Lyra said.
Chapter 29
SHE MOVED TO STAND IN FRONT OF THE BLANK WALL. She could feel Jeff’s intense scrutiny and curiosity.
“The boss never mentioned that you could open this kind of gate,” he said.
Lyra looked back over her shoulder at Cruz. “He was trying to protect me.”
Jeff frowned. “From what?”
“Whoever killed the lab tech and stole the relic was believed to have disappeared into the jungle, using a gate he had opened,” Lyra explained. “That person was also doing his best to set me up. If it got out that I could open jungle gates, it would be one more piece of evidence against me.”
“Right,” Jeff said, obviously satisfied.
She gave him a quick, sidelong look. He did not appear the least bit startled, let alone appalled, by the knowledge that Cruz had deliberately concealed evidence that might have been used against her. Just the opposite, in fact. Jeff was acting as if such an action was perfectly normal, the sort of thing he would have expected Cruz to do under the circumstances. It was enough to make you wonder if there might be something to all that nonsense about the deeply romantic nature of the men of the Sweetwater family.
Jeff’s eyes lit with sudden excitement. “Hey, that means the killer probably knows you can open jungle gates. Right? How many people are aware of that?”
“Not many,” she assured him.
“Well, that could narrow the list of suspects,” he said, glancing at Cruz for support.
Cruz moved forward to stand beside Lyra. “Maybe, maybe not. It may have just been a coincidence.”
Lyra and Jeff looked at him. Neither said a word.
“Okay,” he said. “Probably isn’t a coincidence. But either way, we know one thing for sure about him now.”
“Right,” Jeff said. “He can open them.”
Vincent reappeared and bounced up and down at Lyra’s feet, red beret flapping wildly. He was impatient to get on with the game.
She concentrated for a moment, rezzing energy until she caught the latent patterns within the quartz wall. They became crystal clear to her senses almost immediately. She went to work tuning the wavelengths with her amethyst charms until they resonated in such a way that she could control them.
A large section of wall dissolved, revealing a luminous, almost impenetrable mass of green. Warm, humid air and the sounds and smells of the verdant world on the other side greeted them. Vincent dashed forward and tumbled up onto a fallen log, all four eyes open. Cruz and Jeff followed more cautiously.
“Don’t forget the killer has a mag-rez,” Lyra reminded them quickly.
“Guns are like any other high-tech gadget,” Cruz said somewhat absently. “They won’t work in the rain forest, just like they won’t work in the catacombs, because of the heavy psi.”
She relaxed a little. “Right. For a moment there I forgot.”
Vincent muttered and hopped off the log. He disappeared into a maze of green vines.
“He’s onto something,” Lyra said.
“Looks like it,” Cruz agreed. He slipped a jungle knife out of its sheath on his pack and went toward the vines. “But it’s going to be tough to follow him.”
Jeff freed his own knife and went after him.
Lyra followed the rough path the men created. Vincent was no longer in sight, but she could hear him chortling excitedly.
A few minutes later, Cruz and Jeff came to a halt. Lyra heard the roar and splash of water. She pushed aside a veil of green orchids.
“Careful,” Cruz said. He put out a hand to keep her from moving forward. “It’s slippery up here.”
They were standing at the top of a waterfall. Vincent was on a nearby rock, all four eyes fixed on the pool below. Cruz and Jeff were studying the bottom of the falls, as well. There was the same air of fixed intensity about them. Hunters, Lyra thought, all three of them.
She took a cautious step closer to the edge and looked down. A body floated in the grotto pool at the foot of the cascading water. Shock reverberated through her. There was no mistaking the standard-issue Amber Inc. jungle uniform.
“Good grief,” she whispered. “Who is it?”
“Let’s find out,” Cruz said.
He and Jeff made their way down the rocky incline to the pool. Wading knee deep into the water, they caught hold of the body and hauled it back to the edge of the grotto. When they got the man onto dry ground, they turned him onto his back. His neck flopped at an unnatural angle. Several hours of soaking had taken its toll, as had a bad gash in the forehead, but the features were still recognizable. So was the distinctive goatee.
“That’s Dr. Webber,” Lyra said. “The head of the AI lab. The one who kept calling me, demanding that I assist with his experiments.”
Cruz crouched beside th
e body and went swiftly through the pockets. Within seconds he withdrew a drenched mag-rez gun. “What do you want to bet this is the weapon that was used to kill Fairstead?”
“That would be a sucker bet,” Jeff said.
Lyra collected Vincent and scrambled down the rocky incline. “What happened to him?”
“Looks like in his hurry to escape, he didn’t see the grotto until it was too late,” Jeff said. “He fell, hit his head on the rocks, and drowned.”
“That’s sure what it looks like,” Cruz said, straightening.
A familiar tingle fluttered Lyra’s senses.
“It’s here,” she said.
“What?” Jeff asked.
“The amethyst artifact that was taken from Fairstead’s vault. It’s somewhere nearby.”
Vincent made excited little sounds and wriggled free of her grasp. He hopped onto the rim of the pool, jumped into the water, and promptly disappeared beneath the surface. A moment later he reappeared, the relic clutched between his two front paws. He paddled with his other four feet to the edge of the pool. Cruz leaned over and took the relic from him.
“Thanks, Vincent.” Cruz examined the softly glowing block of carved amethyst. “This is it, all right. The one that went missing from the lab.”
“Looks like that’s a wrap,” Jeff announced. “Webber stole the relic. He didn’t have the kind of connections needed to sell such a valuable artifact, so he took it to Fairstead. Fairstead tried to sell it to Wilson Revere yesterday, but you showed up, and everyone involved got nervous.”
Lyra frowned, thinking. “Dr. Webber got scared because he thought that Cruz was closing in on Fairstead and that Fairstead would lead straight back to him. So he retrieved the relic and killed Fairstead, the one person who could identify him. He escaped through the gate. But he was in a rush. He didn’t see the waterfall until it was too late. Broke his neck.”
“Works for me,” Jeff said.
Cruz studied the relic. “Doesn’t work for me.”
“Why not?” Lyra asked.
Cruz looked up. “It’s just too damn neat.”
“Got another theory of the crime?” Jeff asked.