Sizzle and Burn

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “I think that answers my question.” She glanced at the envelope he had tucked under one arm. “What else does the file say about me?”

  “Let’s see. You own a costume design and rental shop in Oriana and you have one full-time employee. You like to shop at Nordstrom and you go through a ton of peanut butter.”

  “At breakfast,” she clarified. “I eat peanut butter on whole grain toast for breakfast almost every day.”

  “Okay, that explains the peanut butter.”

  “And if you live anywhere near Seattle, you shop at Nordstrom. It’s sort of a rule.”

  “I’ll be sure to annotate the file.”

  She shoved her free hand deeper into the pocket of her raincoat. “Is everything you know about me contained in that file?”

  “Yes. There wasn’t a lot of background data available on you and only twenty-four hours to collect it. Most of what was in the J&J files pertained to your father, not you and your aunt.”

  There was no apology in the words. Just a statement of fact.

  “I realize,” she said coldly, “that these days there is no such thing as a guarantee of privacy. Nevertheless, I have to tell you that knowing that J&J had the utter gall to create that file makes me furious.”

  “Figured it would. That’s why I told you about it up front. I wanted to get it out of the way so we could talk about other things.”

  “Like this investigation you say you want my help with?”

  “Right.”

  He pushed open the glass door to the restaurant and held it for her. She swept past him, long coat swirling.

  Fifteen minutes later, with dinner ordered and a glass of red wine sitting on the table in front of her, she felt better equipped to deal with the man from J&J.

  “Do you ever take off that jacket?” she asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  She decided to let that go. There were, after all, more pressing issues.

  “Tell me about this investigation you say involves my family history.” She kept her tone as brisk and businesslike as possible.

  He did a quick survey of the restaurant. She realized that he was double-checking to make sure there was no one seated nearby who could overhear their conversation. They had been lucky to get a booth at the back because the restaurant was crowded. Raine was pretty sure that most of the tables were filled with members of the media and maybe a couple of out-of-town cops, not local residents. Cell phones rang constantly. There was a lot of loud conversation involving the subjects of airtime and how to get interviews with Chief Langdon. The background din provided ample cover for a private conversation.

  She heard Doug Spicer’s name mentioned a couple of times but no one looked twice at her. Evidently Langdon had kept his word at the press conference. By now the entire town of Shelbyville undoubtedly knew that she had been with Doug Spicer when the girl was found but the out-of-town media was happily unaware of that bit of trivia.

  Zack looked at her across the table. “Truth is, all I’ve got to work with is one hell of a coincidence.”

  “What’s your coincidence?”

  “Last month a researcher named Dr. Lawrence Quinn disappeared. Quinn was employed at an Arcane Society lab located in Los Angeles.”

  Her fingers clenched around the stem of the wineglass. “Like my father?”

  “Yes. In fact, Quinn worked at the same lab where your father worked and he was in the same field. He’s a biochemist who specializes in researching psychotropic pharmaceuticals.” Zack drank some of his wine and lowered the glass with an expression of mild surprise. “This stuff isn’t very good, is it?”

  “You don’t come to Shelbyville for fine wine and gourmet food.”

  “In that case, why did your aunt have a house here?”

  “She liked the tranquillity of the mountains. Tell me more about Lawrence Quinn and his work.”

  “You probably already know that a lot of the standard antidepressants, tranquilizers and painkillers have unpredictable side effects on people who possess high-level parasenses.”

  She sighed. “We found that out when the doctors tried to treat Aunt Vella. Most of the drugs they used made things worse.”

  “Not an uncommon situation. Psychotropic meds, in general, have unpredictable effects on sensitives. The Society does a lot of work in that area, trying to determine which meds are effective and which are dangerous. And any sensitive who decides to experiment with illicit crap is really asking for nightmares.”

  “I see.”

  “Getting back to Quinn, it took a surprisingly long time before anyone noticed that he had vanished.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “There was some confusion initially because he had requested a large block of extended vacation time. It was only about a week ago that the lab director finally realized that Quinn wasn’t coming back to work. No one else missed Quinn, either. He was a loner. No close friends or family. Eventually the director decided that something was wrong and notified J&J. By then a couple more days had passed. An investigation was launched immediately, but Dr. Quinn seems to have fallen off the face of the earth.”

  “I assume that made your boss extremely suspicious,” she said.

  He smiled slightly. “Fallon is a suspicious man by nature.”

  “Probably why he’s running J&J.”

  “Probably. In any event, it didn’t take him long to leap to the conclusion that Quinn may have been connected to an organization called Nightshade. The group has created a new version of the founder’s formula.”

  She froze. “My father was expelled from the Society on the rumor that he was conducting research on that damn formula.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “The formula?” She set her glass down in the exact center of the cocktail napkin. “Very little. Just hints that I picked up from Aunt Vella over the years. I got the impression that the formula had the potential to greatly enhance a person’s natural psychic talents.”

  “Theoretically it can boost a mid-range talent up to a level ten. It can kick a level ten like you or me right off the charts.” He paused. “It would, in effect, make us very, very powerful sensitives.”

  She shivered. “I don’t think I’d like that very much. The voices are hard enough to deal with as it is. I don’t want them to get any louder.”

  “Smart woman. I’m with you. But ours is an unusual and inherently difficult talent to handle. Trust me, there are a lot of intuitives, hunters and others who would kill for a drug that could jack up their talents. And Nightshade is happy to do just that.”

  “Kill?”

  “It has already done so on several occasions that we know of during the past year.”

  She stared at him, nonplussed. “All because of that stupid formula?”

  “It has caused trouble ever since it was recovered from Sylvester Jones’s tomb.”

  “Why is the formula off-limits as far as the Society is concerned?”

  His brows rose. “Aside from the fact that no rational person wants to see a whole bunch of superpowerful psychically enhanced criminals created, you mean?”

  She winced. “Aside from that.”

  “The formula is inherently unstable and has always had one hell of a downside,” he said.

  “What’s the downside?”

  “Sooner or later, everyone who has ever taken any version of the drug has wound up dead or insane, invariably after turning into a ruthless killer first.”

  She cleared her throat. “I see. Okay, that definitely qualifies as an annoying side effect.”

  “We don’t know a lot about the long-term effects of the latest version of the formula that Nightshade has cooked up but one thing has recently become clear. It’s seriously addictive.”

  “How?”

  “Insanity followed by suicide ensues within two or three days if the individual is deprived of the formula. From what J&J has been able to figure out, Nightshade uses that nifty little feature to control its opera
tives.”

  She shuddered. “I can see where the tactic would be an effective way to keep discipline in the ranks.”

  “There haven’t been any defectors or informants from the organization, that’s for sure.”

  “What does Nightshade want?”

  He shrugged. “What most bad actors want. Power and money.”

  She smiled. “Total world domination, huh?”

  He didn’t respond to her teasing. “Let’s take one small example. Just think what you could do if you had the ability to slip a few very powerful parahypnotists, sensitives with the ability to install hypnotic suggestions in almost anyone, into various corporations and agencies of the federal government. We’re talking the potential to control CEOs, governors, senators and the president.”

  She jumped a little, spilling a few drops of wine. Grabbing a napkin, she hastily blotted up the liquid. “Okay, I can see where that might be a very bad thing. You said the Society has had this problem before?”

  “There haven’t been many organized attempts to re-create the drug and use it for illicit purposes, but over the years there have been any number of individuals who were unable to resist the lure of experimenting with the formula.”

  “People like my father?” she said coolly.

  Zack folded his arms on the table and fixed her with an unrelenting expression.

  “Judson Tallentyre was the most notorious renegade scientist of his generation,” he said evenly. “When he disappeared with the formula, the Master and the Council made finding him and destroying his lab and his research notes J&J’s top priority. There was a collective sigh of relief in the higher echelons of the Society when Wilder Jones reported that he had completed his mission.”

  Well, he hadn’t tried to sugarcoat that.

  “I should probably give you points for honesty,” she said, “but I don’t feel like it.”

  “I understand.”

  She took a fortifying swallow of wine and slowly lowered the glass. “I didn’t realize the Tallentyre name was so…so infamous within the Society.”

  “If it’s any consolation, the name is well known only at the highest levels.”

  “Oh, gee, that’s a relief.”

  “The reason that the Tallentyre name is not notorious throughout the Society is because the Master, the Council and J&J have deliberately tried to establish the notion that the founder’s formula is a myth. It’s part of the overall plan to discourage men like your father from deciding to become modern alchemists.”

  “My father wasn’t an alchemist.” Anger shot through her. “He was a scientist. And he was brilliant.”

  “He was brilliant, all right. No argument there. That’s why when he went rogue, he became a serious threat. The Council had no choice but to deal with him.”

  “Murder him, you mean.”

  “There is nothing in the file that indicates Wilder Jones murdered your father,” he said flatly. “By all accounts the car accident was just that. An accident.”

  “Just a dose of bad psychic luck?”

  “It happens.” His brows rose slightly. “And don’t smile at me like that.”

  She blinked and stopped smiling. “Like what?”

  “Like you’re telling me to go screw myself. Pisses me off.”

  “Wow. I’ve managed to piss off the man from J&J. What’s the penalty for that?”

  “Keep it up and you’ll find out. Now, do you want to continue playing games or would you like to hear why Lawrence Quinn’s disappearance involves you and your family history?”

  “Tell me about Quinn. If I get bored, I can always go back to pissing you off.”

  “I can promise you that you’re not going to be bored. Yesterday Fallon Jones finally got a lead on the missing Dr. Quinn. Turns out Quinn popped up in Oriana last month.”

  She frowned. “He was in my town?”

  “For about twenty-four hours, as far as we can determine. Then he vanished again. Now, here’s the really interesting part. Lawrence Quinn paid his one-day visit to Oriana on the same day that your aunt died. You’re a hotshot psychic. You tell me. What are the odds that confluence of events is a coincidence?”

  Ten

  Later he walked her back to the inn, exulting in the sensation of having her so close. In spite of the occasional bursts of fireworks at dinner, or, hell, maybe because of them, he was intensely aware of her femininity. It compelled and challenged him in all the ways that a man could be compelled and challenged. It felt very, very good to be with her, enveloped by the intimacy of the night and the rain and the subtle emanations of overlapping waves of psychic energy. It was like nothing else he had ever experienced.

  “That’s really all you have, then?” she said when they reached the top of the stairs and went down the hall. “Just the fact that Lawrence Quinn showed up in Oriana the day my aunt died?”

  “That’s all I’ve got at the moment, but you have to admit it’s an interesting starting point.”

  She stopped in front of her room, a somber serious expression on her intriguing face. He didn’t have to jack up his mirror talent intuition to sense that she was about to confide one of her many secrets.

  “Everyone thinks that Aunt Vella died of natural causes,” she said quietly. “A heart attack. But I couldn’t believe it at first. She was only fifty-nine and she was in good health. So I paid for a private autopsy before she was cremated.”

  “That wasn’t in the file.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that J&J is not all-knowing and all-seeing.”

  “You’re doing that smile again,” he warned.

  “Sorry. Can’t help myself.”

  “What did the autopsy show?”

  “Nothing sinister.” She dug her key out of her purse. “No evidence turned up to indicate that her death was due to anything other than a heart attack. When you think about it, why would Quinn or anyone else want to murder her after all these years? She was no biochemist. She was an artist. She painted pictures and designed a lot of the masks I sell at Incognito.”

  “I’m not saying anyone killed her. I agree with you, there’s no obvious motive. But the coincidence remains and it bothers me. Bothers Fallon Jones, too.”

  She opened the door, stepped inside and turned to face him. “I’ve made my decision. I’ll cooperate with your investigation.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  She folded her arms and lounged against the door frame, studying him through the lenses of her black-framed glasses.

  “You knew I would say yes, didn’t you?” she said.

  He shrugged. “Figured you’d have a personal interest in the case. I would if I were in your shoes.”

  “You figured right. But I want to make one thing very clear. It’s true I’ve agreed to cooperate with you, but we don’t share the same agenda.”

  The hair stirred on the nape of his neck. “Meaning?”

  “Your objective and that of J&J is to find out what happened to Dr. Quinn. All I care about is my aunt. If she was murdered, I want the killer caught and punished. So long as you’re willing to help me do that, we’re a team.”

  He braced one hand on the outside of the door frame. “Deal.”

  “Good night, Mr. Jones.”

  She unfolded her arms, plucked the file out of his hand and closed the door quietly but firmly in his face.

  Eleven

  Son of a bitch,” Fallon Jones said.

  Zack cranked back in the chair, stacked his heels on the hassock and spoke into the phone. “Look on the bright side. Her goal and ours are aligned, at least for the moment. As long as that holds true, we’ve got her cooperation.”

  “And if it turns out there’s no connection between Quinn’s disappearance and Vella Tallentyre’s death?”

  “Then I think you can pretty much forget the whole cooperation thing. Raine has no fond feelings toward the Society and she doesn’t trust J&J as far as she could throw you and your office. She thinks Wilder Jones murdered her father befo
re he destroyed the lab.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Fallon growled again. “Show her the damn file. It says that the accident was just that.”

  “She’s in her room, reading the file as we speak. Doubt that she’ll believe every word in it, though. I wouldn’t if I were her.”

  “It’s the truth, damn it.”

  “How do you know? You weren’t running J&J when the Tallentyre situation went down. We both know that good old Uncle Wilder wouldn’t have blinked twice about a little thing like shading the facts for the record. They didn’t call him Wild Wilder Jones for nothing.”

  “Huh.”

  They both contemplated that piece of family history in silence.

  Wilder Jones had gone out the same way he lived, in a blaze of reckless glory. He had been working for J&J’s unnamed government agency client at the time. He succeeded in taking down the bad guys and rescuing a number of people but it cost him his life.

  In a family studded with individuals who often got involved in high-risk ventures, Wilder had been frowned upon for his penchant for taking outrageous chances. He had been addicted to fast motorcycles, fast women and cigarettes.

  There were those in the Jones clan who held that he had always been unstable. Others maintained that, while it was true that he was born addicted to adrenaline, he did not go over the edge until the last few months of his life. That faction claimed that something dramatic happened to Wilder before he left on what amounted to a suicide mission. Zack’s mother had always maintained that a woman was involved but that didn’t ring true because everyone knew that Wilder changed lovers almost as often as he changed his shirts. Legend had it that he never looked back. Whatever the truth of the matter, Wilder took his secret with him to his grave.

  “Do whatever you have to do to keep Raine working with you,” Fallon said eventually. “I still think she’s the key to this thing.”

  Zack didn’t argue. There was no point. Everyone knew that Fallon’s hunches had an accuracy rating well over ninety percent.

  Didn’t mean that he was always right, though.

  Twelve