In Too Deep lgt-1

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Vogel, stop right now,” Sylvia said sharply. “You take orders from me, remember.”

  Vogel ignored her. He reached down to grab Isabella’s arms and started to yank her to her feet.

  She got her focus and poured everything she had into an electrifying charge of energy.

  “Get lost,” she said softly.

  Vogel froze. He released her, his expression going slack. He turned toward the door and started walking at a steady, deliberate pace.

  “Vogel.” Sylvia was alarmed now. “Come back here. Where are you going? What’s wrong with you?”

  Vogel did not respond. He opened the door, crossed the porch and went down the steps.

  “Come back here,” Sylvia shouted.

  Vogel was in the yard. He disappeared from view, walking off into the driving rain. Somewhere in the distance dogs barked.

  Sylvia spun back around to face Isabella. Fury contorted her features. “What did you do to him? You’re just a finder-talent.”

  “I think he must have snapped,” Isabella said. “Sorry about that. Maybe he’s on drugs like Walker said.”

  Sylvia stared at Walker. “How did you know?”

  Walker rocked.

  Something went ping in Isabella’s head. It sounded a lot like the ping on Fallon’s computer.

  “Oh, crap,” she whispered. “You’re right, Walker.”

  “Tell me how you know about the drugs,” Sylvia hissed.

  “Leave him alone,” Isabella said.

  Sylvia moved toward her. “What did you do to Vogel to turn him into a zombie?”

  The storm was at nightmare pitch now. Lightning lit up the sky. It silhouetted the dark figure of Fallon. He came through the doorway on a floodtide of energy.

  “No.” Sylvia crouched directly behind Isabella and aimed the gun at Isabella’s head.

  “Make one more move and I’ll kill her,” Sylvia said. “I swear I will. Stay back.”

  Isabella sensed the rising heat in the atmosphere. She knew what Fallon was about to do. Sylvia must have sensed the threat as well.

  “Stop it,” she shouted. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I swear I’ll kill her before you can do anything to me. It only takes a fraction of a second to pull the trigger. She’ll be dead before I will.”

  Isabella looked at Fallon. “It’s okay. Trust me on this.”

  He stopped.

  “That’s right,” Sylvia said. She seemed to pull herself together. “That’s smart, Jones. Very smart. Isabella and I are going to leave now. She stays alive as long as no one follows us. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Fallon said. But in his eyes there was the promise of death.

  “Good.” Sylvia straightened slowly. “There’s a knife on the floor, Jones. Use it to cut her ankles free.”

  The dogs were closer now. To Isabella’s ears they sounded like a pack of hellhounds.

  Fallon walked across the room, picked up the pocket knife and slashed the duct tape that bound Isabella’s legs.

  “You’re sure you want to do it this way?” he said softly.

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  “Shut up, both of you,” Sylvia said. “On your feet, Isabella.”

  Isabella staggered awkwardly to her feet, aware of another kind of energy heightening the atmosphere. She knew then that Sylvia was going to try to kill Fallon.

  “Can’t stand,” Isabella gasped. “My legs are numb.”

  Sylvia put a hand on her back and shoved her violently toward the door. “Move.”

  The physical contact gave Isabella the focus she needed. She pulsed energy into Sylvia’s aura, more energy than she had ever used in the past. She was suddenly on fire with power. It roared through her, filling the room.

  The nexus energy, she thought. I’m drawing on some of the natural power in the vicinity.

  “Run,” she whispered. “Straight ahead.”

  Sylvia went absolutely still for an instant. The gun fell from her hand. Once again invisible lightning crackled in the atmosphere. Fallon had a fix.

  “No,” Isabella repeated.

  Sylvia launched herself through the door and fled into the pounding rain.

  The dogs were closer now, barking furiously.

  Somewhere out in the storm a thin, high scream rose above the roaring wind and waves. It ended abruptly a few seconds later.

  The dogs stopped barking.

  Fallon pulled Isabella into his arms and held her as if he would never let her go.

  A moment later Poppy and Clyde and the rest of the dogs rushed through the door of the cabin. They were delirious at the sight of Isabella. Henry and Vera and several other familiar faces raced up onto the porch and came through the door.

  “Everybody okay here?” Henry asked.

  Isabella raised her head from Fallon’s shoulder and looked at her friends and neighbors.

  “Yes,” she said. “Everything is okay now.”

  35

  Isabella and Fallon sat in the front of the black SUV. Walker rocked gently in the rear seat. They watched the sheriff and two deputies load Sylvia Tremont’s body into a van.

  In her mad flight from the cabin, Sylvia Tremont had fallen from the top of the bluffs onto the rocks below, breaking her neck.

  “You knew she would run off the top of the bluffs,” Fallon said quietly. It was not a question. “That’s why you told me not to stop her.”

  “Yes.” Isabella shivered. The full shock of what she had done was hitting her now. “I knew that would take her to the top of the bluffs.”

  Fallon took his right hand off the steering wheel and gripped her left hand very tightly.

  “First time you’ve ever used your talent like that,” he said. Again, it was not a question.

  “I told you, I’ve encountered my share of dead bodies.”

  “But you were never the one who made them dead.”

  “No,” she agreed.

  “You didn’t want me to do it,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Because you thought I’d have a problem with killing a woman?”

  “No.” Isabella shivered. “Because it was my responsibility. I’m the one who brought her down on us. If I hadn’t insisted on taking the Zander house case—”

  “She would have found another way to get J&J involved in digging up the cache of curiosities,” Fallon said. “The artifacts were highly volatile, unpredictable time bombs just waiting to go off. She needed us to get into the shelter, stabilize the objects and ship them safely back to the lab. Once they were well secured in L.A., she would have been able to arrange to steal them and let Rafanelli take the blame for the theft.”

  “Think so?”

  “I know so,” Fallon said. “Sylvia Tremont was a very determined woman. She killed Sloan in cold blood, and she was prepared to kill you and Walker, as well.”

  “Yes,” Isabella said. “You’re right.”

  “Should have let me handle it.”

  “No,” Isabella said. Time to change the subject, she thought. “Any sign of the bodyguard?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He’s probably still walking,” Isabella said. “I told him to get lost. He’ll do just that.”

  “Alien drugs,” Walker muttered. “Poison.”

  Fallon glanced at Walker in the rearview mirror. “What drugs?”

  “I told you, a-alien drugs,” Walker said urgently.

  Isabella looked at Fallon. “The bodyguard looked like a steroid freak. Walker thinks Vogel was using drugs.”

  “I knew it.” Fallon tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Nightshade.”

  36

  They sat side by side on the lumpy sofa, feet propped on the small coffee table, and drank some whiskey together.

  “We’re decompressing again,” Fallon said.

  “Yes.”

  “Twice in one week.”

  Isabella studied the contents of her glass. “It has been a very complicated week.”


  “It has,” Fallon said.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that one of the remaining Nightshade circles decided to try to acquire some para-weapons. When they got into that market they encountered the broker, Orville Stone.”

  “Who, in turn, led them to Sylvia Tremont,” Isabella said, “who was busily selling off para-weapons from the Arcane museum basement. It must have been obvious that if she was already willing to risk stealing from Arcane, she was ripe for recruitment. Someone in Nightshade made her an offer.”

  Fallon turned the glass between his palms. “Tremont was thrilled because her new business associate promised her a lab of her own and unlimited funding for her experiments in glass psi.”

  “Yep.”

  “Operating a state-of-the-art lab costs money. Sounds like at least one of the Nightshade circles is still going strong. We need to find it fast.”

  “Any idea where to look?” Isabella asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “You never say maybe.”

  “A connection to Portland, Oregon, came up not long ago when Jack Winters and Chloe Harper nearly got themselves killed in Seattle. One of the Nightshade people who died, a guy named John Stillwell Nash, was the CEO of a vitamin and health supplements company named Cascadia Dawn.”

  “A company that sells supplements and vitamins would make an excellent cover for an illicit drug lab. Did you check it out?”

  “I’ve had people watching it. A new CEO took over shortly after Nash died. She used another name, but I think she might have been Victoria Knight. Before that I think she was Niki Plumer.”

  “Who was Niki Plumer?”

  “A Nightshade operative. Figured in the case in which Zack and Raine were involved. She wound up in a psychiatric hospital. Supposedly she committed suicide but I’ve had my doubts.”

  “You think she became Victoria Knight.”

  “If I’m right, she’s the para-hypnotist who showed up in Las Vegas in the Burning Lamp case a few weeks ago. My talent tells me she was the new CEO of Cascadia Dawn. But the first thing she did was sell the company and disappear again.”

  “Why sell it?”

  “She probably realized that we were aware of the company. Also, she needs money. I think she sold a very profitable business, pocketed the cash and went somewhere else to fire up another circle. I’ve been waiting for her to pop up again. I believe she may have done just that.”

  “That fits. I told you that Sylvia mentioned that her new business associate was a woman who thought I should be neutralized.”

  “I realize it would have been very hard to poison you,” Fallon said. “You would have detected the bad energy in the vicinity of the stuff. But I am very grateful to Walker. I owe him.”

  “We all do.”

  “We lost Knight’s trail, but we know one thing for certain,” Fallon continued. “Like everything else that has happened in the Nightshade case, the weapons procurement operation was centered here on the West Coast. For whatever reason, the organization, or what’s left of it, appears to be based on this side of the country.”

  “Maybe because this is where Craigmore established it?”

  “That could be it,” Fallon said. “But I’m starting to wonder if perhaps it has something to do with the natural energy grids that run from Washington down through Oregon, California and Arizona. There aren’t many nexus points as strong as the Cove, at least not that have been mapped, but there are a number of vortex sites like those in Sedona. Maybe there’s one in Portland that hasn’t been charted.”

  “You think Dr. Hulsey is trying to use the power of the grid to enhance the formula?”

  “That’s how it feels. If I’m right, it narrows the scope of the search somewhat.”

  “Lot of country between Washington and Arizona.”

  “True. But over the years several of the hot spots have been mapped. And there are talents who are good at sensing nexus and vortex points. We might be able to construct a map of the most likely locations for a Nightshade lab.”

  Isabella sipped some more whiskey and lowered the glass.

  “Something happened today, when I put Tremont into the trance,” she said. “I don’t know how I did it, but I think that, just for a second, I tapped into the nexus energy in this area. I’m strong, but I’ve never felt anything like that before in my life. It was very strange.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time that a strong talent managed to pull some nexus energy. But it’s a very high-risk pastime. It’s like picking up a live electrical wire. The currents could short out your senses or even kill you. Promise me you won’t make a habit of it.”

  A chill went through her at the memory. “You have my word on it,” she said. “What’s our next step?”

  “If someone was running a research lab out of Cascadia Dawn, there has to be some trace of it left in the building. I’m going to send an agent inside to take a look around.”

  “Who?”

  “The same one who helped clean up things in Seattle a while back. He’s an illusion-talent. The guy’s as cold as ice, but he gets the job done. I’ve learned not to ask for details afterward, though.”

  She glanced at him and smiled. In spite of the exhausting day, he looked energized. Sherlock Holmes with a bunch of new clues and leads to sort out.

  “What do you think is going on inside Nightshade at this very moment?” she asked.

  “My gut tells me that things have changed drastically at the top of the organization. The command structure fell apart after the founder died, and it has not yet had time to reconstitute itself. I’m not sure it can. I am finally beginning to perceive the outlines of the new version of the organization.”

  “I take it that you’re not envisioning a kinder, gentler Nightshade?”

  “No, I think that, for the time being, we’re going to find ourselves dealing with a handful of mini-Nightshades, each one operating independently.”

  “Like a bunch of criminal gangs instead of one single mob?”

  “Right.” Fallon took his feet off the coffee table. He leaned forward, forearms braced on his thighs and cradled his glass in both hands. His eyes gleamed with a familiar intensity. “Which means that there is a high probability of outright warfare between some of the gangs. We’re talking the usual corporate politics. There will be shifting alliances. There will be power grabs. Backstabbings. Betrayals.”

  “You look like a kid who just got a big stack of birthday presents.”

  His eyes heated with a little psi. She could almost hear the spark and snap of energy in the atmosphere.

  “The infighting will work in our favor,” he said. “It will give us lots of cracks and fissures to exploit.”

  “What about the formula? From what you’ve told me, whoever controls it, controls Nightshade.”

  “The formula was being produced in a number of different locations before Craigmore was killed. From what we can tell, each lab functioned independently, conducting its own research on the original version of the drug.”

  “All in an effort to deal with the side effects?”

  “Yes. We took down five of the labs, but there are a few more out there that we haven’t found. We have to assume that the research is continuing and that new variations on the drug are in the pipeline. Some versions are no doubt more effective than others. Each drug producer will fight to keep its formula secret while trying to steal other, more effective versions.”

  “So, in addition to the infighting, betrayals and backstabbings, we’ll be seeing some corporate espionage among the remaining circles.”

  “We can work with that,” Fallon said. “Where there is espionage work to be had, there are any number of job openings available for double agents, traitors, thieves and spies.”

  “And killers?”

  “Yes,” Fallon said. He looked satisfied. “I think the illusion-talent in Seattle will fit right in.”

  37

  He woke up in Isabella’s d
ouble bed, aware that it was nowhere near dawn. He checked the glowing dial of his watch. Two in the morning. Isabella was neatly tucked into the curve of his body. He was suddenly, fully aroused.

  He eased one hand under the hem of her nightgown and moved his palm upward over her warm thigh. Levering himself up on his elbow, he kissed her shoulder.

  “Are you awake?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He slid his fingers between her legs. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I just wondered.”

  He pressed himself against her soft rear, nibbled on her earlobe and started to tease her lightly with his fingers.

  She sighed and turned onto her back. He felt energy heighten in the shadows. When he jacked up his senses, he saw the gentle heat in her eyes. She put her arms around his neck.

  “I’m awake now,” she said.

  “So am I.”

  “I noticed.”

  He moved over her, capturing her beneath him, and kissed her. With a soft, languid whisper, she opened for him, inviting him into her warmth. He made love to her, slowly, deliberately, until she was hot and shivery in his arms, until he sensed the escalating tension deep inside her. Only then did he thrust into her.

  “Fallon.”

  She came almost immediately and so did he.

  When it was over, he withdrew reluctantly and fell back onto the pillow beside her. Reaching down between them he found her hand and clasped it. He waited until both of them were breathing normally again.

  “Tomorrow we’ll drive up the coast to Eclipse Bay and find your grandmother,” he said.

  “You’re sure she’s there?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s all right to contact her now. You can call her in the morning. She’s no longer in any danger.”

  “Thanks to J&J.”

  He looked up at the ceiling, intensely aware of her hand in his. “You’re safe now, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can go anywhere,” he said. “You don’t have to hide out in Scargill Cove.”

  “I’m not hiding, not anymore. I’ve spent my entire life on the outside looking through the windows of people who actually have lives. Now I’ve got one of my own and I’m going to live it.”