The Sinister Touch

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Mason nodded. “Got it. I spend a lot of time right here in the studio during the day. I’ll keep an eye on things. Gwen says you investigate security problems for people. Does this mean you’re taking me on as a client?”

  “I don’t seem to have much choice.” Zac took Guinevere’s arm again and led her toward the door. “Why is it,” he complained to her, “that you always manage to get me into these situations?”

  “You’re not so good on your own,” she told him cheerfully, as the door closed behind them. “Just remember what happened to you tonight at Queen Elizabeth’s party. Your genes were about to be summoned for royal service.”

  Zac went a dull red in the dim hall light. “If you had a charitable bone in your body, woman, you wouldn’t remind me of that incident. It was one of the worst moments of my entire life. I had no idea that all that talk of biological clocks was leading up to that . . . that proposition she made.”

  “Poor Zac. Now you know how a woman feels when her boss gives her all sorts of encouragement and support and then expects her to pay him back with a few bouts in bed. You’ve just been the victim of job harassment.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” Zac muttered as they walked down the street to Gwen’s apartment.

  “If I were you, I’d finish up the Gallinger project very quickly and get your fee. That woman didn’t get where she is today by being anything less than tenacious.”

  “It was probably just a terrible misunderstanding.”

  “The hell it was,” Guinevere retorted spiritedly. “That woman wants a stud, and you’re the chosen male.”

  “Do all women become that . . . that forceful when they decide they have to have a baby?” Zac asked in subdued tones.

  “I don’t know.”

  Zac slid an assessing glance at her as he walked beside her up the stairs. “Are you sure, Gwen?”

  She heard the genuine concern in his voice and wasn’t certain how to interpret it. What was Zac trying to say? That he might be looking for a woman who was interested in having babies? Someone other than Elizabeth Gallinger? She wished desperately that she knew more about his feelings for her. The desire to be a father might be as sudden and strong in some men as the need to be a mother was in some women. Guinevere felt as if she were walking on eggs. One misstep and she might crush the fragile relationship that existed between herself and Zac.

  “I’ll let you know if I ever change my mind,” she tried to say lightly as she opened her door.

  “You do that,” he said behind her. “You make sure you do that. I don’t want you going hunting the way Elizabeth Gallinger is hunting.”

  Fortunately the shattered mirror provided a timely distraction. Guinevere walked across the floor and looked at it once again. “What now, Zac?”

  He tugged at his tie. “First we pick up the pieces and then we go to bed.”

  “No, I mean, what happens next in this case?”

  “I don’t think of this as a case exactly,” he told her as he unbuttoned the first button of his shirt. “I see it as more in the nature of a damned nuisance.”

  “But what are we going to do next?”

  “I think,” Zac said thoughtfully, “that I’ll go take a look at that old house on Capitol Hill for starters.”

  “But Mason said it had been sold six months ago,” Guinevere protested impatiently.

  “We’ll see.”

  “Now, Zac, don’t go all enigmatic and cryptic on me. Tell me why you want to take a look at that old place.”

  “Simple curiosity. And because it’s a starting point. Probably a dead end, but you never know.”

  Guinevere eyed him thoughtfully, aware of the first faint ripple of excitement she always got when she was involved in one of Zac’s more exciting investigations. He claimed he didn’t like this kind of thing, and she was inclined to believe him. He was cut out to be a staid, plodding, methodical analyzer of other people’s security problems. But occasionally other people’s security problems had a way of blowing up into intriguing, sometimes dangerous situations. And Zac coped. Very well.

  “When do we go take this look?” Guinevere demanded.

  “Don’t look so excited. You’re not going with me.”

  “But, Zac—”

  “I mean it, Gwen. I’m not taking you along. I have no way of knowing what I’ll run into, and whoever clobbered Mason last night might have gotten a good look at you through the window. If there is someone interesting still hanging around that old house, I don’t want him to see you. It would only tip him off.”

  “But you said that going to the old place is probably just a dead end,” she reminded him as she scooped up broken bits of mirror and put them in a paper sack.

  “I’m not taking any chances. Not where you’re involved.”

  She heard the steel in his voice and reluctantly stopped trying to argue. There were times when you had to go around Zac because you certainly couldn’t go through him. “So when are you going to take this look?”

  “In a few hours. I’ll set the alarm for three.”

  “Three in the morning? Isn’t that a little early?”

  Zac shrugged, taking the paper bag from her and putting it carefully into the hall closet instead of into the garbage. “It’s a good time to have a look around. Not many people up and about at three in the morning.”

  Guinevere went toward him, aware of a growing sense of anxiety. “I’d feel better if I went along.”

  “No, Gwen. Not this time.”

  She sighed as her arms went around his neck. “Sometimes you can be a very stubborn man.”

  “We all have some strong points,” he agreed philosophically. His hands wrapped around her waist. “Have I thanked you for coming to my rescue tonight at Gallinger’s house?”

  “I wasn’t sure for a while if you wanted to be rescued.”

  “Believe me, I wanted rescue.”

  “She’s very beautiful and very rich, Zac.”

  “I want to be loved for myself, not my genes,” he said as he began undoing the fastenings of the red silk dress.

  Did he mean it? Guinevere asked herself silently as the red dress slipped to the floor. Did he really want to be loved, or was it only one of those throwaway remarks people make when they want to lighten a situation? She wished she knew for certain. There was a great deal she did not yet know about Zachariah Justis. Some things she might never know. But he was here tonight, and that would do for now. She lifted her face for his kiss and closed her eyes as she felt the familiar male hunger reach out to enclose her.

  Zac felt the soft swell of her breasts against his chest and forgot about biological clocks and embarrassing confrontations with clients. When Guinevere was in his arms, she was all that mattered. The extent of her response to him filled him with a heady satisfaction that wiped out everything else in the vicinity. This was one element of her nature that he could read with certainty. She was the most responsive, the most honest woman he had ever held.

  “If you ever want my genes,” he told her thickly as he put her down on the bed and came down beside her, “you can have them for free.”

  “I’ll remember that.” Her eyes gleamed up at him in the shadows as she took him into her waiting softness.

  Three hours and fifteen minutes later Zac awoke with the alertness he felt only when things were getting nasty. He didn’t like the feeling, but he had learned to respect it over the years. He was ahead of the alarm clock and reached out carefully to switch it off before it could ring. Five minutes to three.

  Quietly he got out of bed, hoping not to wake Guinevere. But as he pulled on his slacks he realized that she was watching him.

  “I’ll have coffee waiting for you when you get back,” she promised.

  He grinned in spite of himself. “If you’re plann
ing to use that red-and-black monstrosity to make it, you’d better start early.” He leaned over her, planting a hand on each side of her on the bedding. Then he kissed her. “See you by five.”

  Guinevere wanted to say something else, but there wasn’t time. He vanished silently through her bedroom door.

  Her staid, plodding, methodical Zac was once again on the hunt.

  Chapter Six

  The house had once been a stately, if rather overwrought, home for a successful businessman during the first part of the century. Now it was what real estate people liked to call a fixer-upper. The streetlight directly in front of the sagging porch was out, but with the fretful moonlight Zac could see that the plump wooden columns that flanked the steps were badly chipped, as if someone had idly carved on them with a pocketknife. The place had once been painted gray, if one could judge by what remained of the old paint. The porch wrapped most of the way around the aging two-story structure, and the weeds in the uncared-for garden were as high as the railing in some places. The screen door appeared to have given up the ghost long ago. It hung lethargically on its hinges. Someone or something had kicked a hole in the bottom part of the screen. No one had bothered to repair it. There was no light in any of the windows.

  Zac quietly walked through the backyard of a vacant house next door to what had once been the Sandwick place. He assumed the house was vacant because of the FOR SALE sign in the front yard, but he didn’t take any chances. About half the houses in the neighborhood had FOR SALE signs in the front yards. So far he had been lucky enough not to arouse any dogs in the area, and he was hoping to keep it that way.

  The neighborhood was one of the streets near Capitol Hill that had not yet been rehabilitated by the upwardly mobile types who had been moving into the district in droves during the past few years. The Sandwick house was slightly more run-down looking than its neighbors but not significantly so. Whoever had paid cash for it several months ago had obviously not had a lot left over to effect even minor repairs.

  Moving quietly and without the aid of a flashlight, Zac made his way around to the rear of the house Adair and his friends had once used for their occult games. When he reached the back steps, he paused and glanced up at the unlit windows with a certain morose resignation.

  This wasn’t, Zac decided, the kind of investigation he thought appropriate to the newly emerging image of Free Enterprise Security, Inc. It was his firm’s mission to cater to the security needs of sophisticated businesses. He was supposed to be a consultant, for God’s sake. One who charged very large fees in return for reports bound in genuine simulated-leather binders. This business of sneaking through decaying neighborhoods to spy on an old house that once might or might not have been used for witchcraft definitely came under the heading of tacky. Very low class. And it was all Guinevere’s fault.

  He thought of Guinevere as he had left her over half an hour ago. She had been lying in the tousled bed, her dark hair tumbling around her bare shoulders, eyes wide and a little worried in the shadows. Zac admitted to himself that he rather liked it when she became anxious on his behalf. He couldn’t remember anyone else in recent history who had ever really worried about him. Already he was looking forward to the coffee and concern that would be waiting for him when he returned from this sortie into the wilds of Capitol Hill. A man could get used to the idea of someone waiting for him.

  No use putting off the inevitable. The sooner he was finished here, the sooner he could collect both the coffee and Guinevere. Silently Zac started up the back steps of the house. At the rear door he paused and let the tiny sounds and nuances of the night infiltrate his heightened sense of awareness.

  Zac could usually tell when a place was occupied. There was a sense of presence about a room or a house or a building that made itself felt. It wasn’t anything concrete, just a kind of instinctive awareness. There had been times in the past when that kind of awareness had kept him alive. There had also been occasions when it had let him down at awkward moments. He hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those moments. Zac didn’t fool himself. He wasn’t psychic; he simply had fairly well-developed survival instincts. But they weren’t infallible.

  Still, there was nothing to indicate that anyone was at home here tonight. Zac slipped into the deeper shadows of the porch and examined the lock on the back door. Piece of cake. He pulled the small twist of metal out of his pocket and, a moment later, let himself into what proved to be the kitchen.

  As he eased the door shut behind him, he stood still for another few seconds, trying to pick up any new vibrations that might indicate the presence of another person.

  The house was silent. Perhaps too silent. Zac frowned thoughtfully and walked through the kitchen. The refrigerator was turned off, and there were no dishes standing in the chipped sink. He was about to make his way into the next room when he saw the Styrofoam hamburger containers in a paper sack by the stove. Someone had made a recent foray to a fast-food restaurant and brought the results back here to eat.

  Zac considered the possibilities. A transient might be using the place to bed down at night. A workman might have been commissioned to do some repairs and had brought a fast-food lunch with him. Neighborhood kids might have been using the old house as a hangout. There were a variety of potential answers to the questions raised by the burger container. Zac didn’t like most of them.

  The floor beneath his feet was hardwood, and it was in better condition than most of the rest of the house. Zac was cautious as he moved into the breakfast room, but there were no squeaks or groans.

  There were a few pieces of furniture in the breakfast room and also in the parlor he found on the other side. None of them were in decent condition. No one had even bothered to cover the few chairs, tables, and the sofa. Zac could smell the damp, dusty odor emitted by disintegrating fabric in every room. The only reason he could see at all was because the drapes were in such tatters that the vague streetlight could filter in through the large windows.

  He found the staircase in the front hall. It was broad, heavily banistered, and still sturdy. The shadows were thicker on the second floor because the windows were smaller and allowed less moonlight and light from the street to enter. There was no more evidence of recent habitation, but Zac found himself using more caution than should have been necessary under the circumstances. It was a good thing he’d had the sense to make Guinevere stay behind. She would have been running around, exploring and investigating like an eager puppy. Guinevere tended to be both impulsive and a little reckless, Zac thought with indulgent disapproval. He wondered if he was going to spend the rest of his life getting himself dragged into a series of adventures such as this one.

  The odd part was that in the beginning, when he had first contacted her, he’d entertained a few notions of using Guinevere on certain kinds of cases. Her temporary-help business provided an ideal cover for planting an observer in almost any sort of firm. Everyone needed secretaries and clerks, and no one paid much attention to them, not even when they were temporary replacements. But lately, Zac noted wryly, he seemed to be the one getting involved in Guinevere’s adventures, rather than vice versa.

  The upper floor was as empty as the first. There was an old, tilted bed in one room with a lumpy, stained mattress. Zac didn’t get the feeling it had been used in the past several years. If some transient was using the house at night, he wasn’t sleeping in the bedrooms.

  Getting up at three this morning had probably been a waste of time and energy. He could just as easily have stayed in bed with Guinevere and learned as much. Zac headed back downstairs, still moving cautiously.

  In the kitchen he glanced around once more and idly opened a few cupboard doors. Most of the shelves were empty, although there were a couple of grungy mugs in one cupboard.

  He was hunting for the broom closet when he opened the door that revealed a flight of stairs down to a basement. The door had
a key-activated bolt on it, but no one had locked it that night. Perhaps not for a long time.

  Zac paused on the threshold and tried to analyze what it was that seemed different about the dank odor wafting up from the dark pit at the bottom of the steps. He couldn’t see a thing past the first two or three treads.

  For the first time he removed the small, pencil-slim flashlight from the pocket of his Windbreaker. Closing the basement door behind him so that light wouldn’t escape back into the kitchen, he flicked on the narrow beam.

  At first he could see nothing but a few more steps. The utter darkness of the basement seemed to crowd in on the small band of light as if trying to devour it. For the first time since he had entered the house, Zac felt a tiny frisson of awareness. Grimly he shook it off. He was letting his imagination take over. Not a common state of affairs. Once again he thanked his lucky stars he’d held the line with Gwen and refused to let her accompany him. Her imagination would be having a field day down here.

  Slowly he started down the steps. The flashlight fought back bravely against the overpowering darkness, and Zac followed in its wake. It seemed a long way down to the concrete floor, but eventually he reached the last step. His imagination was not settling down, he noticed.

  Methodically he turned to the right at the bottom of the steps, prowling along one wall. He didn’t see the heavy black drapes until he nearly blundered into them. One moment he was feeling his way along a cold, damp surface, and the next his hand tangled with thick velvet cascading from the low ceiling all the way to the floor. Startled, Zac stopped and shone the light along the entire surface of the black drapes.