Gwendolyn Swan paid well and Sierra appreciated the additional income. The money she made as a go-between for the Vault was good, but Jones couldn’t keep her busy all the time. Agents were free to take outside contracts. She could certainly use one to make up for the lost commission tonight.
The last message was from her father. She hit Call Back. Byron Raines answered on the first ring.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She smiled. Her father had the voice of a poet—probably because he was one.
“How did you know?” she asked. “A delivery went bad.”
“How bad?”
“The client tried to kill me. I had to use my locket to escape.”
“Honey, I know you can take care of yourself. But your mother and I really don’t think this go-between business is your calling.”
“I know, Dad, but I’m good at it. Usually. And after what happened at Ecclestone’s, I agree with you—the normal business world isn’t a good fit for me, either.”
There was a short silence.
“Need a poem?” Byron asked.
“Yep. I could use one.”
Some kids were raised with bedtime stories. She had been brought up on bedtime songs from her mother and bedtime poems from her father.
“I think I know of one you might find helpful,” Byron said.
“One of yours?”
“No, the poem I’m thinking of was written by someone else. Give me a few minutes to find it. I’ll e-mail it to you.”
“Thanks, Dad. Love you. Love to Mom.”
“Love you, too, kiddo. See you soon when you come home for the Moontide celebration. Oh, and don’t forget your grandfather’s birthday.”
“I won’t. Looking forward to seeing everyone.”
Sierra ended the call and sat quietly, drinking the wine and trying to decompress.
The poem popped into her inbox a short time later. She read the first few lines and smiled. Her father had a gift for finding or crafting a poem that went straight to the heart of the problem.
“I don’t know who I am,” you say,
“Or why my hands deal dust,
As though the lot of cards I hold
Have crumbled as I play.”
She finished the poem and then she finished the wine.
“Message received, Dad,” she said to the empty room. “I’ll keep listening for my calling.”
CHAPTER 3
The Fogg Club was not the most exclusive nightclub in Las Vegas—far from it. Anyone willing to pay the reasonable cover charge was welcome. However, the location, a couple of blocks off the Strip in a dimly lit alley between two massive hotel and casino parking garages, guaranteed that very few tourists stumbled into the place.
From the outside the club looked like a typical low-end Vegas venue, complete with an acid-green LED sign that spelled out the name of the establishment and the slogan Get Lost in the Fogg. It was something of an inside joke. The owner, Hank Sheffield, was from Fogg Lake, Washington.
North Chastain pushed open the door, nodded a greeting to the beefy bouncer and went to stand at the railing, surveying the crowd on the lower level. He tried to make it appear that he was just checking out the scene, searching for friends and acquaintances on the dance floor. But the truth was he had to give his eyes a moment to adjust to the low light and the flashing strobes. The damned glasses he was forced to wear prevented him from accessing his preternatural night vision.
The glasses had been designed to look like mirrored, wraparound sunglasses, but the lenses were unique—high-tech crystals that had come out of a Foundation lab. According to the doctors, they were all that stood between him and the hellish hallucinations. The lenses might save his sanity but they could not halt the steady deterioration of his talent. The experts had warned him that eventually, probably within a month or so, he would be psi-blind.
Until a few weeks ago he had taken his special vision for granted. For him the world at midnight had been a dazzling place, one he could navigate with the same ease he used to move around in daylight. His talent had enabled him to see the energy that was only visible after dark. Paranormal auroras flooded the skies. Currents and waves of light illuminated the world in an array of hues and shades and shadows that had no names. The colors of night were magic, the real deal.
It wasn’t just the thrill he got from the experience of viewing the world after dark that he would miss for the rest of his life. His ability had made him a damn good cleaner, one of the best. He could track the psychic monsters through the darkest night. When he was in his other vision, the tracks of the bad guys seethed with violent heat.
Going psi-blind would soon cost him his job, the one thing he had been good at—hunting monsters. It had been his way of proving to everyone associated with the Foundation that the Chastains were trustworthy, honorable and loyal; his way of living down his grandfather’s reputation as a traitor.
When he lost his talent completely he would not belong here at the Fogg Club. Hell, he wouldn’t be any good to the Foundation. He would be looking for a new path out in the normal world.
Okay, time to stop feeling sorry for yourself.
The lenses in his glasses had adjusted to the low light level of the club. He made his way along the mezzanine to the bar. Hank Sheffield was pouring drinks. When he saw North he grabbed a bottle of whiskey off the top shelf and a glass.
“I was wondering when you’d get here,” Hank said. He put the glass on the gleaming bar top and poured some of the expensive whiskey into it. “The rest of the team rolled in a couple of hours ago.”
“I stopped off at Area Fifty-One to play some blackjack,” North said. He picked up the whiskey and took a healthy swallow.
“Any luck?”
“Some,” North said. He had pocketed a few hundred bucks. He probably could have won more but he never played for high stakes. Gambling was just a game, after all. Winning was certainly better than losing but he never got a genuine rush out of the experience.
Hank got a shrewd look. “Good crowd at Area Fifty-One?”
For the first time that evening, North felt a spark of amusement. Hank’s ex-wife, Jeanie, owned the Area 51 club. It was no secret that the two were still sharing the same house and, no doubt, the same bed, but they had concluded they did not make good business partners. After the divorce, Jeanie had opened Area 51 and become Hank’s chief competitor. They both catered to the same clientele—the employees, consultants, museum staff and researchers associated with the Foundation. The secretive organization devoted to all things paranormal was headquartered in Las Vegas.
“The place was busy,” North said, determined to remain neutral. “Jeanie said to give you her best, by the way.”
Hank snorted. “Bullshit. Jeanie has never once in her entire life told anyone to give me her best.”
“Okay, what she actually said was that if you ever decide to give up running this hotdog stand she will consider hiring you to tend bar.”
Hank nodded. “That sounds like my Jeanie. I talked to some of the other cleaners on your team tonight. They said the takedown went well today.”
“We found the guy we were looking for,” North said. “A serial killer who was using his psychic vibe to attract his victims.”
No need to mention that the case was probably the last time he would go out into the field with the team. If he stayed with the Foundation, he would end up behind a desk. That wouldn’t go well, not for him.
“So you took down one of the monsters. Good job.” Hank folded his arms on the bar. “In that case, why aren’t you out on the dance floor or buying drinks for one of the nice ladies who come in here to have a little fun?”
“Give me time,” North said. “The evening is still young.”
“It’s one o’clock in the morning.”
“I thought it
was always midnight here at the Fogg.”
The atmosphere inside the Fogg was mostly the same as it was at any other Vegas nightclub—a lot of intimate shadows, high energy, pulsating music and a dance floor lit with dazzling strobes. There was also some fake fog that glowed a fluorescent green. But the real vibe, the one that brought in the regulars, was created by the array of paranormal artifacts displayed in a floor-to-ceiling clear plastic vault in the center of the room.
The objects inside appeared ordinary enough. Mid-century office chairs, ashtrays, a metal filing cabinet and a couple of old-fashioned, black landline telephones were arranged on the tiered glass shelves and illuminated with the glowing green fog. All the artifacts were standard-issue vintage government surplus. But at some point in its history, each antique had been associated with one of the lost labs of the Bluestone Project. Each had absorbed some kind of paranormal radiation, enough so that someone with a degree of psychic awareness could sense the energy.
He might be losing his unique night vision but the rest of his senses were still working. The fact that he was wired from what he suspected was his last field op made him especially aware of the heat in the atmosphere. He was restless, on edge and, okay, maybe depressed. He needed something to take the edge off. Sex might offer a temporary fix, but he knew most of the people in the room tonight. They were colleagues, coworkers and friends. Sex with someone you worked with was usually a mistake, although everyone knew that particular mistake happened a lot within the Foundation. He had made it himself on more than one occasion, although he had been careful to get together with women who worked in the labs or the museum, not someone on his own cleaner team.
Sex with someone who had heard the rumors about his prognosis, however, would be a full-on disaster. It was a good bet everyone in the Fogg tonight knew what was happening to him. The last thing he wanted was a pity fuck.
And when you got right down to it, he wasn’t especially interested in sex these days anyway. He was living under a sword of Damocles, waiting for the last of his night vision to disappear entirely. It didn’t help that he didn’t dare let himself fall into a deep sleep. He was getting by on short naps, setting alarms so that he woke up frequently to make sure the glasses hadn’t fallen off.
There were other reasons why he didn’t want to sleep soundly. Deep sleep brought dreams, and in his dreams he was always on the verge of falling into the absolute darkness of an abyss.
He did not dare remove the glasses for more than a few seconds at a time. He even wore them in the shower. The doctors had warned him that every minute he spent with his eyes unshielded, the greater the risk of getting lost in the ghostly hallucinations.
“About time you got here. Where have you been?”
North turned and saw Jake Martindale. They were both on the same team of cleaners. They were more than colleagues; they were friends. He trusted Jake and he was certain Jake trusted him. Jake didn’t give a damn that North was the grandson of the notorious Griffin Chastain, a man believed to have betrayed his country. Sure, everyone else at the Foundation pretended the past didn’t matter. The sins of the fathers were not supposed to be visited on the sons and grandsons. But North knew the reality was that there were a number of people affiliated with the Foundation who questioned the integrity of Griffin’s descendants.
“Spent a little time at Area Fifty-One first,” North said. “Looks like the party is just getting started.”
“It is. Most of these folks will be here until dawn.” Jake raised his bottle of beer in a toast. “We did good work today, pal.”
“Yes, we did.” North clinked his glass against Jake’s beer. “So why are you drinking alone here at the bar? What’s the matter? Won’t anyone dance with you?”
Jake looked across the room. “I don’t feel like dancing.”
North lounged against the bar and followed Jake’s gaze to a booth that was occupied by a man and a woman. The two sat very close together, sipping cocktails. Grant Wallbrook and Kimberly Tolland were scientists who worked in one of the Foundation labs. Wallbrook was a smart, ambitious researcher with a lot of degrees after his name. North was pretty sure Kimberly was every bit as intelligent as Wallbrook—she had a few degrees herself—but she lacked the charismatic energy of the man sitting beside her. She was an attractive woman with serious glasses and a quiet, studious air. Jake had been secretly lusting after her for months.
“Okay,” North said. “Now I understand why you’re drowning your sorrows here at the bar.”
“Wallbrook is using her for some purpose,” Jake muttered. “I know it. He doesn’t care about her. He’s a self-centered narcissist.”
“Give it time. She’s a smart woman. She’ll figure it out.”
“Sure. But probably not before she gets hurt. And even if she does see him for what he is, she’s not going to turn to a guy like me. She’ll go for someone else with a PhD after his name. I’m just a college dropout who hunts bad guys for a living.”
“You really are in a mood tonight, aren’t you? Have another beer.”
“Good idea.” Jake raised his hand to signal Hank.
“Look on the bright side,” North said.
“What side would that be?”
“Got a feeling Victor Arganbright is going to put you in charge of a cleaner team one of these days. You’re good, and he knows it.”
Jake narrowed his eyes. “You’re talking about me taking over your job, aren’t you? That’s not the way I want to advance my career.”
“We both know it’s not going to be long before Arganbright removes me from the team. I won’t be any good to him once I’m totally psi-blind.”
“Shit, man. I can’t believe this is happening to you.”
“If you had to wear these damn glasses day and night, you’d believe it.”
“I think we both need another drink.”
“A brilliant plan,” North said.
Being pulled from the one job he was good at was going to be bad enough. He had not told anyone—not even the doctors or his parents—his deepest fear. He was terrified he was losing his sanity as well as his talent. He worried that even the special lenses in his glasses could not save him. The hallucinations were getting worse.
No one wanted to work with a talent of any kind who might be mentally and psychically unstable. That went double if the talent in question happened to be the grandson of Griffin Chastain, the man who was believed to have sold some of the secrets of the Bluestone Project to the former Soviet Union. The fact that Griffin had disappeared altogether after betraying his country had convinced everyone that he had been quietly executed by the Soviet spy who had recruited him.
Griffin Chastain had vanished not long after North’s father, Chandler, was born. North knew that his dad had carried the burden of the dishonor that Griffin had brought upon the family name all of his life. North had also understood from a very young age that the weight of that dishonor had fallen on him as well.
“Some good news headed your way, at least,” Jake said.
North watched a long-legged brunette in a snug red dress emerge from the crowd. She stopped in front of him and gave him an inviting smile.
“How about a dance?” she said.
Her name was Larissa Whittier. She worked in the Foundation museum. She was smart, talented and ambitious. They had dated a couple of times but it had quickly become obvious to both of them they were doomed to remain friends.
North managed a smile. “Thanks, Larissa, but I’m beat. Long day.”
And an even longer night lay ahead. He knew he was seriously sleep deprived. Relying on his psychic senses to supply the energy he needed to maintain the inner balance required to keep from falling into the abyss was weakening him on several fronts. He had a hunch that when he finally went down, he would go down hard. And when he woke up, he would be psi-blind. Or insane. Or both.
&nbs
p; “I heard you and the team took down that serial killer they called the Spider,” Larissa said. “Congratulations. You cleaners are usually ready to party after a successful case.”
“Hate to admit it but there is the faint possibility that I’m getting too old to party after a takedown,” North said.
He kept his tone light and easy but Larissa gave him a knowing look.
“Everything okay?” she said gently.
Shit. This was not good. If the people who knew him were starting to notice a change in his mood or behavior, he was sailing into real trouble.
“Just tired, that’s all,” he said. “Rain check on the dance?”
“Of course.” Larissa grinned and patted his arm. “Go home and get some sleep, old dude.”
“I’m going to do that.”
Larissa started to turn away but she paused. “I forgot to tell you my good news.”
He smiled. “Let me guess. You got assigned to the Fogg Lake project.”
The recent discovery of one of the lost labs in the caves near the rural town of Fogg Lake had sent a shock wave of excitement through the Foundation. Every ambitious researcher wanted in on the excavations.
“I’m so excited. I leave tomorrow with one of the museum teams. We’ll be there for a couple of months. This is the biggest find in the history of the Foundation. There’s so much waiting to be recovered in that old lost lab. I can’t wait to get started.”
“Congratulations,” North said. He meant it. “You deserve to be on that team.”
“Thanks.” Larissa laughed. “I hear conditions at the site are a little Spartan. No nightclubs, cell phones don’t work and there’s only one restaurant in town. Most of the Foundation crew is being housed in trailers.”
“You’ll love it,” North assured her. “You’re going to be uncovering incredible secrets. So much history was lost when they shut down the Bluestone Project. There’s no telling what’s waiting for you in those caves.”
All the Colors of Night Page 3