“Those people in Fogg Lake,” Marge said. “Are they okay with people like me?”
Victor snorted softly. “Trust me, in Fogg Lake, everyone is comfortable with people who see auras. Tell me where you are. I’ll have Olivia LeClair and a couple of cleaners there within fifteen minutes.”
“Okay. Thanks. I figure the Foundation is the only outfit that can handle Loring and Garraway and those damned clones. Tough bunch there at Riverview.”
“I understand,” Victor said. “Fifteen minutes. If Olivia is not with the people who come to pick you up, stay inside. Don’t leave the shelter. Call me back immediately.”
“Got it,” Marge said.
CHAPTER 16
Victor ended the call to Marge and phoned Olivia LeClair. She was eating breakfast in her apartment.
“Someone from Riverview is trying to grab Marge?” Olivia said. “She’ll be terrified. Getting sent back to the hospital is her worst nightmare. I know where that shelter is located. I’m on my way.”
“I’ll have the team that’s stationed in Seattle meet you at the shelter. They will drive Marge to Fogg Lake.”
“I’ll be in touch as soon I know Marge is safe and on her way to Fogg Lake with the cleaners.” Olivia paused. “You’re worried about this doctor from Riverview, aren’t you?”
“Got a bad feeling about him. Why would a doctor personally take the time and effort to search the shelters for a harmless woman like Marge?”
“Good question,” Olivia said. “I’m with you. It doesn’t sound right.”
Victor ended the call and looked at Lucas. “Did you get all that?”
Lucas had two mugs of coffee in his hands. He set one of the mugs down on the table in front of Victor.
“Sounded like Marge, the street lady who helped Slater and Catalina track down those kidnappers a while back, believes she’s in danger.”
“According to Catalina, Marge was held involuntarily at the Riverview Psychiatric Hospital for several months. The hospital is over on the coast. Marge escaped. Last night she picked up rumors that someone was looking for her. She says she spotted him yesterday. His name is Loring. Evidently he was the doctor in charge of her case while she was at Riverview. Marge is terrified of him. Says he used her as a research subject for his experiments.”
“I did a routine check on Riverview after Slater told us about Marge. The place appears to be a legitimate private psychiatric institution. Given her aura talent, it’s not surprising the staff at Riverview would have concluded she was delusional. Most doctors would have come to the same diagnosis.”
Victor grunted. “Technically speaking, she is delusional. She’s concocted a conspiracy theory that explains her time at Riverview. She thinks the hospital staff kidnap people like her off the streets, lock them up in Riverview and do experiments on them. Says the whole operation is run by extraterrestrials who are planning to invade Earth.”
Lucas drank some coffee while he considered that. “The staff was probably using drugs to try to cure what they considered her delusions. But she’s hardly a risk to herself or others. And she went missing a couple of months ago. Why would someone go looking for her now?”
“Shortly after Chandler Chastain is attacked because of an artifact,” Victor said. “It’s a coincidence, and you know how I feel about those. Take another look at Riverview, particularly a doctor who works there named Delbridge Loring.”
“Do you have a theory?”
Victor contemplated one of the Oracle paintings. All the pictures he had collected over the years had an eerie, ominous quality, suited to the subject. But this one never failed to raise the hair on the back of his neck. He had picked it up for just a few dollars at an auction. It wasn’t what anyone would call high art, but he was sure it was the most important painting in his collection.
Unlike many of the images on the walls of his office, it was a relatively modern work—mid-twentieth century. The Oracle was dressed in the traditional flowing white robes, a hood pulled up over her hair, obscuring her features. She was surrounded by a group of anxious onlookers, who appeared to realize that she was about to deliver a terrifying prophecy. But that was as far as the similarities with the classical pictures went.
The setting of the painting was not a cavern. It was a vintage twentieth-century laboratory. The uniforms, lab coats and eyeglasses worn by those gathered around the Oracle were clearly in the style of the late 1950s or early 1960s. But the most arresting aspect of the picture was the wealth of detail the artist had inserted into the scene.
Just as the Old Masters had used classical iconography to make certain the viewer understood the story the artist was depicting, whoever had painted the mid-twentieth-century Oracle scene had added symbolic elements that made it obvious the setting was one of the lost labs.
Victor recognized that much of the equipment and many of the instruments were standard-issue, clunky-looking mid-twentieth-century technology, but much of it had been radically modified. A chart on the wall was labeled Paranormal Light Spectrum. The logbook on a workbench was titled Determining Resonance of Waves Produced by Crystals with Paranormal Properties.
The most disturbing element in the scene, however, was a pyramid-shaped structure composed of glowing crystals. The pyramid was large enough to accommodate one individual. There was a door. In the picture the door stood open, revealing an interior that was lit with ominous energy. It was obvious that something very dangerous was about to emerge.
Victor was convinced the picture was an artist’s rendering of one of the lost labs—the only such image he had ever found. The details in it made him certain it had been done from a sketch or a photograph, or quite possibly from memory. The Oracle’s prophecy was written in elaborate calligraphy across the bottom of the picture: Here there be monsters.
There was no signature, at least not a traditional one. But the painting resonated with a paranormal vibe. He was certain the artist had been a strong talent who had infused the picture with a psychic signature.
When the labs were closed down the order had been given to destroy all the official photographs, drawings and related records. But an unknown artist who had evidently had access to a lab had succeeded in capturing and preserving a small bit of truth.
Victor was convinced the scene was the Vortex lab.
He turned away from the painting. “You know me, Lucas. I’ve always got a theory.”
“You’re thinking maybe Vortex wasn’t the only lab that may or may not have succeeded in weaponizing paranormal energy. You’re wondering if Griffin Chastain and Crocker Rancourt also managed to produce some weapons.”
Victor rose and walked to the window. He gazed down at the hotels and casinos that lined the Strip. It was early morning. The town was never closed, never completely silent or dark. But this was the quietest time of the day. It was the one time when a man could appreciate the vastness of the surrounding desert. It had a way of putting things into perspective.
“Tell me the truth,” he said after a while. “Think I’ve finally gone down the rabbit hole? That I’m a full-blown conspiracy theorist? That I’m ready to sign up for one of the Puppet cults?”
“No,” Lucas said. He got to his feet and joined Victor at the window. “I don’t have your computer brain but I’ve got damned good intuition. Given what happened in Fogg Lake a couple of weeks ago, and now this situation with the Chastains, I agree with you. We’ve got good reason to worry.”
“We’ve always believed that if the weapons development project was successful it was in the Vortex lab, not in Fogg Lake or elsewhere. But say Chastain and Rancourt were able to produce some lethal machines that operated on paranormal principles. That would have provided Crocker Rancourt with a motive for murder.”
“He killed Griffin Chastain in order to control the weapons?” Lucas nodded. “I’ll buy that. But if Rancourt made it out of Fogg Lake w
ith paranormal weapons, where have they been all these years? You can’t just keep artifacts like that a secret, not for decades.”
“You could if they were well hidden.”
Lucas shook his head. “If the Rancourts had possessed serious paranormal weapons they would have used them to maintain control of the Foundation. Hell, they would have used them against us when we went after them.”
“You’re right. But what if Chastain was the one who hid them?”
“And took his secret to the grave?” Lucas considered that for a long moment. “Okay, that is an interesting theory. Either way, it looks like someone has found the artifacts.”
“We’ve got to get on top of this situation, Lucas. We’re running out of time. Right now we need to focus on Delbridge Loring and the Riverview Psychiatric Hospital.”
Lucas reached for Victor’s hand. Their gold wedding rings glinted in the early morning light. They stood quietly for a time, drawing strength from each other as they always did in a time of crisis.
“Give me ten minutes,” Lucas said.
He squeezed Victor’s hand and then he crossed the room to a desk and fired up a computer.
CHAPTER 17
North’s phone rang while Sierra was slicing avocados. She glanced at the device. It was lying on the end of the dining counter. She was pretty sure she knew what was coming next, so she took the precaution of slicing a lime in half and squeezing the juice over the avocados so that they wouldn’t turn brown.
North’s phone stopped ringing. A couple of beats later the bells that she used for a ring tone chimed. She wiped her hands on a towel, picked up the phone, glanced at the area code and took the call.
“North can’t come to the phone right now,” she said. “He’s in the shower.”
“What the hell? This is Victor Arganbright.”
“Believe it or not, it didn’t require any psychic powers to figure out you would try my phone after you got dumped into voice mail on North’s. I’ll tell him you called.”
“I want to speak to him immediately. This is critical.”
He sounded sincere. Worried.
“All right,” she said. “Hang on.”
She traipsed down the hall and cracked open the door of the bathroom. Steam poured out.
“Las Vegas is calling,” she yelled over the roar of the shower.
“Hang on. I’ll be right there.”
The shower abruptly fell silent. Sierra held the phone through the narrow opening. North’s damp fingers closed around it. She caught patchy glimpses of his reflection in the steamed-up mirror. His aura looked much more stable. The rest of him looked interesting. Extremely interesting.
He angled his head around the door and smiled faintly. Light glinted on his mirrored glasses. She was stunned to realize that he even wore them in the shower.
“Seen enough?” he asked a little too smoothly.
She felt the heat rise in her cheeks. Hastily she turned away and hurried back toward the kitchen.
North arrived in the kitchen a short time later. He didn’t appear to be a new man, but he was certainly in much better shape than he had been yesterday. It helped that he’d shaved and showered, of course, but the real change was in his overall vitality. She knew he was no longer drawing on his psychic senses to keep himself awake and alert.
He wore a fresh pair of dark cargo trousers and a black crew-neck T-shirt that emphasized his sleek, strong shoulders and flat belly. He sat down on the other side of the counter. She poured a mug of coffee and pushed it toward him. He put her phone down on the counter and wrapped both hands around the mug.
“That was Victor,” he said.
“I know.” She sprinkled coarse salt across the avocados and arranged them on large slices of toasted sourdough bread. “Was it about your father?”
“In part.” North’s jaw tensed. “The doctors think that Dad’s condition is deteriorating.”
“Oh, no. I am so sorry, North.”
“He’s still able to communicate a little through my mother but he doesn’t seem to know any more about what happened to him than he did when I saw him at the airport. Mom says she thinks he’s afraid of losing his mind. He feels trapped.”
“He is trapped,” Sierra said gently. “He’s probably terrified and trying not to show it to your mother. His anxiety levels must be through the roof.”
“The doctors are afraid to medicate him until they know what’s wrong. Dad is strong but time is running out. No one knows what will happen. He might die or remain in a coma forever. The Halcyon experts are convinced the only hope of reversing the damage is to find the artifact that caused it in the first place. They need to know how the damage was inflicted. They have been able to establish that he was not drugged.”
Sierra gave that some thought while she used a spatula to lift the four fried eggs out of the hot pan. She placed one egg on each avocado toast.
“Call Victor back and tell him he needs to get my mother to Las Vegas as soon as possible,” she said.
North lowered his coffee mug, startled. “Why?”
“My mother’s talent is the energy of singing. She does a lot of music therapy. She might be able to help stabilize your father’s aura and buy us some time to find the artifact.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Sierra poured cream over a bowl of raspberries. “My mother has a gift for helping people who have problems with their paranormal senses. She’s done a lot of research. There’s enormous power in music, and she knows how to use it. Call Las Vegas.”
North picked up his phone. “What the hell. It’s not like we’ve got anything to lose.”
He called a number. “Lucas, it’s North. Sierra Raines is with me. She is convinced her mother might be able to stabilize Dad’s aura and maybe buy us some time. Mrs. Raines lives on an island in the San Juans. You can arrange to have her flown to Vegas within a few hours, right?”
“Let me talk to him,” Sierra said.
He handed the phone to her.
“Hello,” Sierra said, wary now. It was one thing to hand out advice to the man who had spent the night in her bed. It was another to find herself dealing with the husband of the powerful director of the Foundation.
“You believe Mrs. Raines might be of some help in this situation?” Lucas said.
“Yes,” Sierra said. “At the very least it’s worth asking her to consult.”
“I agree,” Lucas said. “If you’ll give me her number—”
“I’ll call her and ask her to contact you,” Sierra said.
“Is that your way of telling me your mother won’t be thrilled with the idea of talking to someone from Foundation headquarters?”
“I’m sure you’re aware the Foundation has some serious work to do when it comes to public relations.”
“It’s been five years since we kicked out the Rancourts,” Lucas said. He sounded frustrated. “How long will it take the paranormal community to trust the new management?”
“I have no idea,” Sierra said. “Do you want me to ask my mother to call you or not?”
“Yes, please,” Lucas said. “I would be extremely grateful.”
“I’ll get in touch with her right now,” Sierra said. She realized she almost felt sorry for Lucas Pine. “Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll speak to you.”
“Thanks,” Lucas said. “By the way, between you and me, how is North holding up?”
Sierra watched North wolf down one of the avocado toasts. “He’s doing fine now that he’s had a good night’s sleep.”
“A good night’s sleep?” Lucas sounded baffled.
“He was sleep deprived,” Sierra said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll call my mom and ask her to contact you.”
“Wait, what do you mean when you say North was sleep deprived? We didn’t know h
e wasn’t sleeping.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Pine.”
She ended the call and handed the phone back to North. She managed to eat a couple of bites of her own breakfast while she placed the call to her mother.
Allegra Raines answered after about three rings. “Sierra? Is something wrong? You don’t usually call at this hour.”
“I’m working a new contract, Mom. Don’t faint. It’s with the Foundation. Here’s the problem: My client’s father has suffered some kind of trauma. He’s awake but almost unresponsive. They’ve got him at Halcyon Manor. The doctors there in Las Vegas have concluded that his aura has been destabilized, but aside from that they are baffled. They haven’t seen anything quite like it. I suggested they ask you to consult.”
“Victor Arganbright wants my help?” Allegra asked. She sounded astonished. “I thought he believed that your father and I are a couple of lightweight con artists.”
“Well, specifically, Lucas Pine requested the help. They’ve run out of options. Would you be willing to call Foundation headquarters and discuss the problem with Pine or Arganbright?”
“Yes, of course. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to help your client’s father, though. I haven’t even examined the patient.”
“I’m sure Pine will be delighted to fly you to Las Vegas for a consultation,” Sierra said.
“Give me the number. I’ll make the call and we’ll see how things go. But no guarantees. Oh, and dear, we’re all looking forward to seeing you at the Moontide celebration.”
“Looking forward to seeing you, too, Mom. Got to run.”
On the other side of the counter North poured himself a second cup of coffee. It was a small sound, an insignificant little noise, really. Just the splash of coffee into a cup. Sierra figured she could easily explain it, but North chose that moment to take another healthy bite out of the avocado toast. The crunching was audible.
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