Orchid

by Jayne Castle

  “Three,” he corrected softly.

  “What?” She shot him a quizzical glance.

  “All three members of your old research study group got mixed up with the case. Willis, Lambert, and you.”

  “I see what you mean.” Her brows drew together in a troubled frown. “It is sort of a weird coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “Very weird. And given the fact that one of the old gang is now dead and the second nearly got himself iced today, I think I’m going to keep a very close eye on you, partner.”

  Rafe left two more messages with Quentin Austen’s gum-snapping secretary, but Austen returned none of the calls. The investment ploy was not working as well as it usually did. Time to try a different approach.

  He was working on the new angle when the phone finally rang.

  It was not Austen. It was Hobart Batt.

  “I contacted Affinity Associates, Mr. Stonebraker,” Hobart said stiffly. “Apparently you were misinformed. There is no Miss Orchid Adams registered with that agency.”

  Rafe tightened his grip on the phone. “Are you positive?”

  “Absolutely. I spoke with one of the counselors. He very kindly double-checked the firm’s files. He assured me that he has no record of her registration. None of the three counselors who work there remember her, although--”

  “Although, what?”

  Hobart sighed. “One of the counselors who was with the firm until a couple of months ago left to take a position in New Vancouver. It’s possible, I suppose, that she was the one who worked with your Miss Orchid. But even if that were the case, the file would have remained with Affinity Associates after she left. Someone else would have been assigned to handle Miss Adams.”

  “Handling Miss Adams is easier said than done,” Rafe said before hanging up the phone.

  Interesting, he thought. What were the odds of Orchid’s file getting lost in a small agency such as Affinity Associates? Probably vanishingly small. Unless, of course, someone had deliberately seen to it that the file went missing.

  As far as he could tell, the only person who had a reason to lose Orchid’s marriage registration file was Orchid herself.

  He was still mulling over the problem of Orchid’s mysteriously missing file that night as he stood in the darkened hall outside the offices of Dr. Quentin Austen.

  Orchid watched as he used a pick to deactivate the ice lock on the glass-paned door. “Are you sure Dr. Austen is out of town?”

  “I found out late this afternoon that he suddenly canceled all his appointments for the next couple of weeks and took an impromptu vacation. His receptionist doesn’t know where he went.”

  “Hmm.” She glanced up and down the hall again. “What if there’s an alarm?”

  “There isn’t. I checked.”

  “How?”

  “Called the building manager’s office this afternoon. Pretended to be a sales rep for an alarm company. Said I’d make it worth his while if he’d supply me with the names of tenants in the building who might be potential clients. Austen’s name was on the list.”

  “Meaning that he did not already have a system?”

  “That was the obvious assumption.”

  “What if your assumption is wrong?” she asked.

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “My, this is an exciting hobby you’ve found for yourself.”

  “Beats the heck out of stamp collecting.”

  He heard the faint hiss as the jelly-ice dissolved temporarily inside the lock, releasing the bolt.

  He eased the door open and waited for a few seconds, listening with all his senses.

  Nothing. Austen’s offices were deserted for the night.

  “All right, here we go,” he said softly. “Watch your step. We don’t want to make any noise that would attract the night janitor’s attention.”

  “I’m surprised there is a night janitor. This isn’t exactly a high-rent office building. Guess Austen isn’t the world’s most successful syn-psych shrink.”

  Orchid followed him into the outer office and gently closed the door behind her. “What, exactly, are we going to look for in here?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll know it when I see it.”

  There were two sets of file cabinets in the outer office. The drawers in the one nearest the receptionist’s desk were not locked. Those in the larger cabinet on the other side of the room were. Rafe started with them.

  There was no trick to deactivating the simple drawer locks. He opened the one that contained the files of patients whose last names began with Q through Z. He played the narrow beam of the flashlight over the names on the folders.

  There was no file for Theo Willis.

  Orchid peered over his shoulder. “I suppose that would have been too easy.”

  “Probably.”

  He closed the drawer and walked into the inner office. It was furnished with two padded leather chairs, one of which had a side table standing next to it. There was a box of tissue on the table. The client’s chair, Rafe decided. The prints on the walls were nondescript designs in pale pastels. Probably intended to be soothing, he thought. They looked dull and lifeless to him. The rug was the shade of discreet gray that was guaranteed not to show stains for years. The desk was a cheap reproduction of an Early Exploration period piece.

  Rafe aimed the flashlight at the top of the desk. The only items on it were a telephone, a leather blotter, and a fountain pen in a wooden stand.

  “A little too neat, if you ask me,” Orchid said. “I never trust anyone who maintains a perfectly clear desk.”

  “I’ll remember that. Here, hold the flashlight while I go through it.”

  She stood over him and aimed the light while he quickly went through the desk’s four drawers. Nothing caught his eye until he opened the last one on the bottom left-hand side and discovered a stack of garishly colored magazines.

  “Well, well, well.” Orchid bent down for a closer look.

  Rafe glanced at the bulging nude breasts that filled virtually the entire cover of the first magazine in the stack. He lifted it and looked at the second one. It contained an enlarged closeup of a woman’s naked buttocks.

  “Looks like Austen has a few fixations of his own,” Rafe said.

  “Do you suppose the good doctor uses these magazines for therapy?” Orchid asked.

  “More likely he uses them to jack off with in the men’s room down the hall when he gets a break between clients.” Rafe closed the drawer. “Damn. They’ve got to be here somewhere.”

  “What?”

  “The billing records.”

  Ten minutes later, he found what he was looking for in one of the unlocked file cabinet drawers next to the receptionist’s desk. Satisfaction stirred in his gut when he found a file labeled Willis, T. There was a partially filled out billing log inside.

  “We’re in luck. Whoever removed the patient file on Theo Willis did not remember to take the financial stuff,” he said.

  “Or didn’t think that there was anything important in that file.” Orchid studied the log as Rafe removed it from the cabinet. “After all, what can you tell from it except that Theo was one of Dr. Austen’s clients? We already know that.”

  “But this is our proof. And the fact that Willis’s patient file is missing is a good indication that someone, probably Austen, did not want us to be able to link him to this office.”

  “In other words, the fact that there’s no file on Theo tells us more than if we had found one.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell. You know, I think you’re getting the hang of this detective business.”

  “I told you, I have a flair for it.”

  Rafe scanned the list of payments. “Two months of therapy. It fits with what we saw on his calendar. He was going five times a week during the last two weeks before he died.”

  “Poor Theo. He must have been in really bad shape there at the end.”

  “Looks like it.” Rafe started to drop the billing record back
into the drawer. Something caught on the edge of the file folder. He turned the record over and saw a small, pink sticky note.

  “What is it?” Orchid stood on tiptoe, trying to see over his shoulder. “What did you find?”

  “Nothing much. Looks like someone, Austen’s receptionist, probably, jotted a note to remind herself to send a thank you for the patient referral. It’s common practice for one doctor to thank another who refers a patient to him.”

  “Oh, right.” Orchid dropped down off her toes and turned away. “Well, that’s that. We know that Theo was getting some very intensive therapy shortly before he died. Looks like we’d better find Austen, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Rafe dropped the log into the file and shut the cabinet door. “I think the doctor will be able to tell us a great deal. The fact that he decided to take a sudden vacation today makes me even more interested in what he has to say about Willis.”

  “Rafe?”

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Orchid had walked back into the inner office. She had her small flashlight aimed at a row of framed certificates that hung on the paneled wall.

  “What is it?”

  “Dr. Austen’s diploma and professional certificates.”

  “What about them?” He went to stand in the doorway. “Most doctors hang their credentials on the walls of their offices.”

  “One of these papers is his paranormal talent certificate,” she said slowly. “Rafe, Austen is a class-seven hypno-talent.”

  He frowned. “That’s rather high for paranormal hypnotic ability, isn’t it?”

  “Extremely high. As a professional prism, I can tell you that it’s almost unheard of to have such a high level of hypnotic talent. A lot of syn-psych therapists have some hypno-talent, of course. It’s one of the things that makes them suited to the field of synergistic psychology. But the normal range is class three or four, at the most. Austen is no off-the-chart vampire, but he is exceptionally powerful.”

  “Strong enough to have manipulated Theo Willis with hypnosis?”

  Orchid lowered her flashlight and turned to look at him. Her expression was shadowed. “Theoretically, no one can be hypnotized into doing something against his will. But Theo had a lot of syn-psych problems. He was fragile.”

  “In other words, there’s no telling what a clever, powerful, trained hypno-talent could do once he got his hands on Theo’s para-psych history and figured out which buttons to push.”

  “Yes. Even working without a prism, a class-seven hypno-talent could do a lot of damage to a person as delicate as Theo.” Orchid’s eyes grew bleak. “I’ve been saying all along that Theo was no thief. But I hadn’t considered the possibility that he could have been hypnotized into stealing the relic.”

  “So now we have a means.” Rafe said. “Austen may well have hypnotized Willis and convinced him to steal the relic.”

  “We don’t know that for certain.”

  Rafe ignored her caveat. Things were finally starring to feel right. He had long ago learned to trust his hunter’s instincts at times like this. “What we need to do next is nail down the motive. I see a couple of possibilities.”

  “Austen either had Theo steal the artifact for him, which means the doctor is a secret, eccentric collector of alien relics--”

  “Or Austen acted as a broker. He could have arranged for Willis to steal the relic for someone else.”

  “There’s a third possibility,” Orchid pointed out.

  “What’s that?”

  “Dr. Austen has got an even more screwed-up para-profile than Theo had.”

  “Believe me; the fact that Quentin Austen may be crazy has not escaped me.”

  Chapter 12

  Orchid rolled onto her side, propped herself up on one elbow, and looked down at Rafe, who was sprawled on his back beside her. “Are you awake?”

  “I am now.” He curved one hand behind his head. The light of the twin moons pouring down through the glass dome revealed the faint curve of his mouth. “So are you, obviously.”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “By an odd coincidence, so have I.”

  She settled herself more comfortably. “You’re thinking about Quentin Austen, aren’t you?”

  “Among other things. I’ve been wondering all day why he chose to take a sudden, mysterious vacation. Now I think it’s safe to assume that he’s in this up to his syn-psych diploma.”

  “Do you think he might have arranged to have poor Theo murdered?”

  “I can’t say for certain yet.” Rafe drew one fingertip along the curve of her shoulder. “But my instincts tell me Austen is probably not the killer.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “Austen appears to be a novice at this kind of thing. If he had more experience, he would have done a more thorough job of getting rid of anything that linked him to Theo Willis.”

  “You’re saying he isn’t the brains behind the operation?”

  “I’m not sure yet. He was smart enough to panic when he got a call out of the blue from someone who wanted to talk to him about some so-called investments. And he did think to yank Willis’s file before he took off on vacation.”

  “What about that illusion-talent and prism team we keep running into?”

  “They’re not operating under hypnotic instruction,” he said with grave certainty. “They’re hired pros.”

  Orchid shuddered. “Yes.”

  “Austen must have sent them to keep watch on Theo Willis’s house and then ordered them to find Willis’s letter and get rid of your friend, Morgan Lambert.”

  “This is getting more complicated by the minute.”

  “No, we’re finally getting somewhere. We’ve got some firm leads to follow.”

  She felt the strat-talent energy vibrating through him. The hunter had caught the scent of the prey. She wondered if this aspect of his nature ought to disturb her. It did not. Perhaps because she could sense the control he wielded over his talent.

  “I’d like to know what it was in Theo’s file that made Austen think he needed to remove it,” she said.

  “Speaking of missing files,” Rafe said softly.

  “Hmm?”

  “Theo Willis’s is not the only one that seems to have disappeared recently.”

  Something in the low tenor of his voice alerted her. Orchid dragged her thoughts back from the problem of Theo’s connection to Quentin Austen and the missing relic.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Rafe turned onto his side, levered himself up on his elbow, and gently but firmly pushed her onto her back. He leaned over her, eyes gleaming in the darkness. “Your file at Affinity Associates is gone.”

  She was so surprised she could only gape for a few seconds. When she finally got her jaw working again, she swallowed twice before she asked very cautiously, “How do you know that?”

  “I checked.”

  “Why?”

  “Call it professional curiosity.”

  “Professional curiosity, my foot.”

  He ignored that. “Did you take it?”

  “Huh? Me?”

  “Yeah, you. Did you steal your own file so that you wouldn’t run the risk of a bad match?”

  “Steal my file? Are you nuts? Until I met you, I didn’t even know how to do stuff like that. There must be some mistake.” Orchid broke off when she caught the all but imperceptible trace of invisible psychic energy shimmering in the air between them. “Stop that this instant.”

  “Stop what?”

  “You’re trying to use your strat-talent to see if I’m telling the truth. Admit it.”

  “Everyone knows that there’s nothing to those old stories about strat-talents being human lie-detectors.” He lowered his mouth to hers.

  Orchid hesitated briefly, tempted to continue the argument. But when she felt the hard outline of his thigh against hers, she groaned and put her arms around his neck. She would save the lecture until later, she thought. And the mystery
of her missing file could wait, too.

  Right now, the heat of Rafe’s aroused body was warming her through the sheet that separated them. She was suddenly, desperately aware of his fingertips on her nipple.

  No one had ever touched her the way Rafe did. No one had ever aroused the exquisite, almost painfully intense sensations in her that he aroused. She shivered and felt his immediate response.

  When they came together like this, it was as if they had been made for each other.

  The joy of knowing that she had the same passionate effect on him infused her with a heady excitement. She kneaded the sleek contours of his shoulders.

  His mouth moved to her throat and then to her breast. She arched in his arms. His hand slipped beneath her. He clenched his fingers around her hip, squeezed gently, and then found the impossibly sensitive places between her legs.

  Heat swelled.

  “Rafe.”

  He rolled onto his back and pulled her down on top of him. When she opened her eyes, she saw that his face was set in unrelenting lines of fierce desire. She cradled the rigid length of him in her palm.

  “You don’t know what you do to me,” he whispered.

  When his hand moved up the inside of her leg, she cried out and stiffened. His finger, wet and slick with her own moisture, moved across her straining clitoris. A great tightness seized her. She sank her nails into his shoulders and gripped him with her thighs.

  He did not thrust into her until the first ripples of her climax began. And then, just when she thought she was at the pinnacle, he entered her, deeply, fully.

  The feel of him stretching her and filling her so completely at that moment was almost too much to handle on top of the already effervescent sensations that were sweeping through her.

  And then she felt his questing talent searching for her on the psychic plane. She responded to it instinctively, joyously, with a sense of absolute tightness.

  Power crashed through the perfectly tuned prism.

  She heard Rafe’s hoarse shout of release, but she could no longer even open her eyes. She was lost in the synergistic vortex of energy and sensation that engulfed her.