“She thinks someone broke in? She’s not sure?”
“She says nothing was stolen and only a couple of small things looked out of place. But she’s almost certain that someone went through my trash and my desk.”
“And probably your office computer.” He was on his feet, fishing out his wallet.
“I don’t think there’s much danger of anyone accessing any of my files.” She slid out of the booth and got to her feet. “My cousin Abe is a high-end crypto talent. He has all of my stuff locked up with some industrial-strength encryption.”
“Nothing a J&J crypto couldn’t hack into. Let’s go.”
28
HER EYES WIDENED. “YOU REALLY BELIEVE THAT IT WAS SOMEONE from Jones & Jones who broke in?”
“They’re the only folks I can think of who would have an interest in this case.” The adrenaline-charged sense of urgency was riding him hard now. He picked up the duffel bag and the computer case and went toward the door. “Tell Rose to forget the cops. You and I need to move.”
“Okay, okay.” She hurried after him. “Rose? Got to run. I’ll call you back later. Meanwhile, hold off notifying the cops. Jack thinks Arcane is involved, which means it wouldn’t do any good to report it, anyway. There won’t be any evidence to find. I’ll call you later.”
Jack reached the door and opened it for her. She went quickly past him. He followed her out onto the sidewalk and checked the street. There were no new cars in the motel parking lot, but that didn’t mean much. They started across the street.
“Jack, what do you think is happening?” Chloe asked.
“I think Fallon Jones somehow tumbled onto the fact that I went looking for a dreamlight talent and figured that there was only one reason I’d do that. He’s concluded that I’ve started to change. He’s got people looking for me.”
“I can’t believe that he would hire someone to murder you just because you might be developing another talent. I’m no fan of J&J, but the agency doesn’t go around killing people. Arcane can be very annoying, but it isn’t that bad. Besides, murdering a wealthy man who is as well connected as you are would draw a lot of attention. That’s the last thing the Society would want.”
“We have some time. I know Fallon Jones. He’s got his own agenda. He’ll want to play this out before he makes his move.”
“What do you mean?” she demanded.
“Everyone has a vulnerable point. You know what they say, your greatest weakness is always linked to your greatest strength.”
“From what I’ve heard, Fallon Jones’s greatest strength is his ability to see patterns and connections in situations where others see only random facts or coincidences. Something to do with his unique form of intuitive talent.”
“Technically, he’s some kind of chaos-theory-talent, but that’s just a fancy way of saying that he’s a world-class conspiracy buff. He could give lessons to the black-helicopter folks and the Area Fifty-one crowd. The problem with Jones is that, unlike other conspiracy buffs, he’s usually right.”
“You said he has a major weakness.” Chloe walked briskly beside him. “What is it?”
“To a true conspiracy theorist nothing is the result of random chance or coincidence. Everything fits into the grand scheme of things. The trick is to figure out what goes where.”
“So?”
“That means Jones’s greatest weakness is his curiosity. He needs answers the way other people need food and oxygen.”
“Got it,” Chloe said. “He’ll want to know if the lamp actually works and what effect it has.”
“Right. And he needs me to run the experiment.”
“Think he knows we’re in Vegas?”
“If he knows I hired you, then we have to assume he also knows we’re here and that we’ve got the lamp. With luck he hasn’t found us yet because we didn’t use any ID at the motel. But it won’t take him long to track us down. We need to get off the grid altogether.”
“Hmm.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking Uncle Edward,” she said.
“Your uncle who specializes in antique furniture here in town? What good can he do us? I’m not in the market for a Louis the Sixteenth commode at the moment.”
“Uncle Edward operates a little sideline with his son, Dex, and Dex’s wife, Beth. You could call it another traditional family business.”
“From what I’ve heard, the Harper family businesses usually involve fakes and forgeries.”
“Turns out one of the things Cousin Dex and Beth have a talent for is producing fake IDs,” Chloe said.
“That is very good news. The one I commissioned last year may not be good now. I wouldn’t put it past Jones to know about it.”
“Assuming you’re reading him right,” she said.
“I told you I know him, or, at least, I did at one time.”
“What went wrong with your friendship?” she asked.
“A few years ago Fallon started showing some quirks. He was never what you’d call a real social kind of guy, but more and more he began to withdraw. He’d disappear into an Arcane lab or one of the Society’s museums for weeks at a time. When he took over J&J he pretty much vanished altogether. Went to live in a small town on the Northern California coast. Lately he’s become obsessed with some shadowy conspiracy he calls Nightshade.”
“What in the world is Nightshade?” she asked.
“From what I could gather, it’s an organization run by a bunch of psychic bad actors. Apparently they’ve re-created the founder’s formula. Fallon thinks J&J is the only agency that can stop them.”
“Good grief. A group of criminal sensitives hyped up on Sylvester’s drug? Sounds like Fallon Jones has gone over the edge, all right.”
“Don’t bet on it,” he said. “This is Fallon Jones we’re talking about. I told you, he’s almost always right when it comes to his conspiracy theories. But whether or not there is such a thing as Nightshade is not my problem. All I care about is the lamp.”
He urged her through the glass doors of the motel lobby. The desk clerk leaned around the corner of the office door, gave them a bored once-over and went back to his centerfold.
There was only one player sitting in front of the slots now, not a senior citizen this time, but a man in his early twenties who looked like he spent a lot of time pumping iron and injecting steroids. He was dressed in jeans, heavy boots and a leather jacket. He didn’t pay any attention when Jack urged Chloe toward the stairs. He punched the play button.
Wheels of fruit whirled, bells clanged. The bulked-up biker had just won. Probably all of ten bucks, Jack thought. No telling how much money the guy had poured into the machine before getting the pay-off. But it would probably be enough to make him hit play again. He would feed all ten dollars back into the slot. That was how gambling worked. You only had to win occasionally to keep you coming back for more: the theory of intermittent reinforcement in action.
On the landing, he brought Chloe to a halt and looked back down into the lobby. Instead of hitting play again, the heavily muscled man in leather and denim was collecting his winnings. He walked outside and disappeared from view. So much for the theory of intermittent reinforcement.
Jack put his mouth close to Chloe’s ear. “Take a look at the slot that guy was using.”
She peered down into the lobby. “What about it?” she asked, equally soft. “Looks like every other slot machine I’ve ever seen.”
“Use your other sight.”
“Oh, right.”
Energy swirled delicately in the atmosphere around him as she slipped into her other senses. Like some subtle, exotic perfume, it aroused him and stirred the hair on the back of his neck in a very intimate way. A man could get used to this feeling real fast.
“Oh, geez,” Chloe whispered.
She shivered and stepped back quickly, coming up hard against his chest. He steadied her.
“What did you see?” he asked.
“Heavy splas
hes of dreamlight all over the machine. The man is definitely a talent and he was running hot, but the colors are very strange.”
“Define strange.”
“Abnormal. Sick. Wrong. I can’t explain it. It reminds me of the unwholesome energy I’ve seen in the footsteps and handprints of some mentally unstable people on the streets. But it’s not quite the same. I’m guessing the guy who was playing that slot is using some major pharmaceuticals. Judging by all those muscles, probably steroids.”
He thought about that for a few seconds. “Not the kind of operative Fallon Jones would hire. Maybe there are such things as coincidences. You’re sure the guy is a talent?”
“I can’t tell you what kind of sensitive he is, but, hey, this is Vegas. Maybe he’s a probability-talent who makes his living playing the odds here. If he’s got a gambling addiction, that might explain the sickness I saw in his energy.”
“I don’t like it.” He turned to continue down the hall, reaching for his key. “Let’s go. I want us out of here as soon as possible.”
She halted abruptly.
“Jack,” she whispered, her voice strained.
He stopped. “What?”
She wasn’t looking at him. Instead she was staring at the floor of the hall with an uneasy expression.
“More psi prints,” she said softly. “Same bad energy.”
“He was up here?”
“No. Someone else.” She looked toward the far end of the corridor. “The prints came from the direction of the emergency stairwell, not the lobby stairs. But it’s the same kind of sick dreamlight. This is so creepy.”
“So much for the coincidence theory,” he said.
They both contemplated the doors of the adjoining rooms.
“He went into number fourteen,” she said quietly. “No exit footsteps. He’s still inside.”
29
“FALLON JONES, YOU SON OF A BITCH,” JACK SAID.
He kept his voice very low, barely audible, but he felt rather than saw Chloe flinch in response. In a heartbeat he was in the zone, his senses operating at full throttle. He knew she could feel the energy that he was pushing although it was still unfocused.
“What now?” she whispered.
He looked at her. “Put your key into the lock of number fourteen and make some noise. Pretend you’re having trouble opening the door.”
“Jack—”
“Just do it.”
He set the duffel bag and his computer case on the floor beside her and went down the hall toward the door of the adjoining room.
She took her key out of her pocket and went to fourteen. She made a production of trying to unlock the room.
“There’s something wrong,” she said loudly, rattling the doorknob. “The key isn’t working. We’ll have to go downstairs and get another one.”
Jack shoved his key into the lock of the second room. He was running hot, but until he located a human target he could not use his power effectively. The laws of para- physics were hard-core when it came to using talent. To make it work you had to focus on another person or, as in the case of Chloe’s talent, on the residue of psi left by that individual. You couldn’t just broadcast a field of energy and use it as a shield or a weapon of mass destruction. Anyone passing him in the hall at this moment would probably have been aware of a strange, unsettling sensation in the vicinity, but that was about it.
He slammed open the door and went into the room, moving as low and fast as possible.
The bastard was in the adjoining room, gun aimed at the door. When he heard Jack he whipped around with lightning speed, aiming through the opening between the rooms.
Hunter, Jack thought. The guy was seriously bulked up on steroids like the biker downstairs.
He sensed the intruder was starting to pull the trigger, but he had a fix now. He slammed the full force of his talent at the gunman, hitting him with a river of focused energy.
The man stiffened, as though electrified. His eyes bulged as he stared into the abyss of his own nightmares. His mouth opened in a silent scream, but he was already going unconscious.
He managed to get off one shot before he fell to the floor. Jack heard a pffft and a thud as the bullet plowed into the bed behind him. Silencer. The guy had come prepared.
The intruder crumpled, unmoving, to the carpet.
Jack got to his feet and went cautiously forward. He crouched beside the gunman and started going through his pockets.
Chloe appeared in the doorway of the connecting rooms. She had her satchel in one hand, the duffel slung over her shoulder and his computer case tucked under her arm.
“Is he—?” she whispered.
“No. Unconscious.” He abandoned the clothing search, picked up the gun and got to his feet. “But I don’t know how long he’ll be out. Now we really need to move fast.”
“Okay.”
She gave him the duffel and the computer case and rushed across the room to where her carry-on stood open. She started to zip it closed.
“Leave it,” he said. “A suitcase will slow us down.”
“But my stuff.”
“Throw what you can into your satchel.” He went back into the adjoining room to get his overnight kit. “We’ll buy whatever you need.”
She came to stand in the opening, her satchel in her hand.
“He was going to kill you,” she said.
“Looks like that was the plan.” He picked up the duffel, opened the door and checked the hall.
“Clear,” he said. “Ready?”
“Yes.” She took another look at the man on the floor as she hurried toward the door. “What about him?”
“Fallon Jones can clean up his own mess,” Jack said. He headed toward the lobby stairs. “Serves him right for using sloppy talent.”
She rushed after him. “Aren’t we going to use the emergency exit?”
“No. Odds are the other man will be waiting for him out back with the getaway car.”
“What other—?” She broke off abruptly as comprehension set in. “Right. The one we saw playing the slot in the lobby was the lookout.”
“I think they were both hunters of some kind.”
“Sick,” she replied. “Really, really sick. I can see it in the prints.”
“Jones must be desperate for agents if he’s using psychos.”
“I thought you said Fallon Jones wouldn’t do anything drastic until this so-called experiment had run its course.”
“Looks like I was wrong. He must have decided that all he cares about is getting his hands on the lamp.”
“No offense, but you don’t sound totally convinced.”
“I’m not,” he admitted. “The thing is, no matter how I come at it, my strat-talent is telling me that the whole scene just doesn’t look like Fallon’s work. On the other hand, I don’t know if I can trust my first talent anymore. No telling what the nightmare energy is doing to it. Or to me.”
30
JACK HEARD THE MUFFLED GROWL OF A MOTORCYCLE JUST as he pushed open the lobby door. A big Harley with two men on board shot out from the alley behind the motel, cut across the parking lot and roared off down the street. There was no license plate visible.
He put on his dark glasses and watched the bike disappear.
“The guy we left behind in the room recovered fast,” he said. “Probably his hunter reflexes.”
Chloe gazed after the speeding bikes. “Low-rent muscle, all right, but hunter muscle.”
“You know, the more I think about this the more I think this just isn’t Fallon’s style.”
“But who else would have sent them?” Chloe demanded.
“Good question.”
“Now what?” Chloe glanced around. “Something tells me there won’t be a lot of cabs cruising this neighborhood.”
“We’ll call one from the casino,” he said.
They started back across the street. He took out his cell phone and punched in a number that he hadn’t called in a very long time.
Fallon Jones answered on the first ring. “My screen says this is Jack Winters, but that can’t be right. I haven’t heard from him in nearly a year.”
“If Chloe had gone through that door first, she would probably be dead, and I would be on my way to Scargill Cove to kill you,” Jack said. “We had a deal, Jones.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Chloe give a violent little start. Her head snapped around. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open. He ignored her.
There was a great stillness on the other end.
“What are you talking about?” Fallon asked finally.
Jack studied the handful of vehicles in the casino parking lot, looking for anything that seemed off. “I’m still alive. What’s up with that? Getting careless or just having a hard time finding good help?”
“I’m in no mood for twenty questions. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
“There was a para-hunter with a silenced gun waiting for us in our room at the motel here in Vegas. Another guy downstairs acting as lookout. I’ve got one question: Why now? Why not wait until after we know for sure that the lamp won’t work for me?”
There was a short, heavy silence.
“Let me get this straight,” Fallon said. His voice was an ominous rumble emanating from a dark cavern. “Are you telling me that you’ve got the lamp, that you’re in Vegas and that someone just tried to kill you?”
“You’re good at a lot of things, Fallon, but playing the innocent isn’t one of them.”
“Pay attention, Winters, I’ve got good news and bad news.” Urgency thickened the bearlike voice. “Good news is that I didn’t send anyone after you. I know you’re paranoid when it comes to this particular subject, but I’m telling you that I have not been tracking you.”
“No lies, Jones. That was part of the bargain, remember? Right up there with your guarantee that you wouldn’t go after anyone connected to me. That includes my employees. Chloe Harper is working for me. She’s a civilian as far as you’re concerned.”
“I gave you my word,” Fallon said. “I’ve kept it.”
Jack exhaled slowly. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
Fired Up Page 16