“Uh-huh.”
“In fact,” Sierra said, injecting some emphasis into the words, “there are those in the community who are convinced the explosion that killed Stenson Rancourt and his son was not an accident.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard those rumors.”
Sierra took a deep breath. “Do you think Arganbright and Pine were behind the explosion?”
“Most people at headquarters are careful not to voice that theory aloud,” North said. “But the assumption is that there was some sort of violent confrontation between Victor and Lucas and the Rancourts. Victor and Lucas survived. The Rancourts did not. No one seems to think that was a bad outcome.”
“Okay, I get that. But why would Loring care about the Rancourts?”
“Good question.” North looked at her. “Remember that one small, interesting detail about the explosion that I mentioned?”
“Only one body was recovered—Stenson Rancourt’s. Harlan’s body was never found.”
“If Harlan were alive he would be about Loring’s age. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got another stop to make tonight.”
“Where is that?”
“The Riverview Psychiatric Hospital.”
Sierra followed him to the door. “We’re going to break into the hospital? That sounds awfully risky.”
“Shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I told you, the security there is decent but not exactly state of the art. It’s not like there are a lot of armed guards around the place.”
“Just some really big orderlies.”
“Who will probably be asleep.”
They moved outside and paused under the eaves. The storm was at full throttle. It charged the night with energy that spanned the spectrum from normal to paranormal. The wind-driven rain caused the limbs of the trees to creak and moan.
“We’ll stick to the center of the driveway,” North said. “We don’t want to risk getting struck by a falling branch. I’ll go first. Stay close.”
Sierra pulled up the hood of her parka. She had to hold it in place with one hand because the stiff wind threatened to blow it off. The rain lashed her face. North settled a baseball cap on his head and went down the steps. He headed off into the wet darkness, using the narrow beam of a penlight to navigate.
At least they didn’t have far to go, Sierra reflected. The SUV was parked in the trees a short distance down the road. North had chosen the location because the vehicle wouldn’t be seen by a passing motorist—not that there were many of those out at this hour.
The violent energy of the storm excited all of her senses but it also distracted them. She did not pick up the vibe of the man who leaped out from the cover of the side of the house until he wrapped an arm around her throat. He hauled her back against his big body.
“I got her,” he shouted.
Sierra fought a wave of nausea. The heavy jacket her captor wore offered a lot of protection but she could feel his unwholesome vibe all the way through the fabric.
“I really do not like to be touched by strangers,” she said.
“Tough, bitch,” the man growled.
She felt something sharp at her throat and realized he had a knife in one hand.
The beam of a flashlight suddenly speared the night.
“That’s far enough, Chastain,” Ralph said. “One more move and Joe will slit her throat.”
CHAPTER 21
Itake it you’re not here to sell me some information about Loring,” North said.
He spoke to Ralph but Sierra realized he was watching her very intently. She knew he was trying to determine if she was going to panic. She raised one hand slightly and unobtrusively slipped off a leather glove. Her captor paid no attention. Joe’s attention was fixed on North.
“We’ll ask the questions,” Ralph said. “What were you looking for inside Loring’s place?”
“I told you earlier today we’re trying to locate him,” North said. “That was the truth. We were hoping to find something inside the house that would tell us where he’s headed.”
“What did you find?” Ralph demanded.
“Not much,” North said. “Do you know where he is?”
“None of your business.”
“Why do you two care if Ms. Raines and I want to find Loring?” North said.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Sierra said. “They’re working for him.”
“She’s right,” Joe said. “We’re his private security team. It’s our job to protect him.”
Fierce pride rang in his words.
“Well, damn,” Sierra said. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a couple of Puppets.”
“In hindsight, I guess we should have seen this coming,” North said.
“I suppose so,” Sierra said. “By the way, don’t worry about me. I’ve got this one.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yep. Joe here is not my first Puppet.”
“Shut up,” Joe yelled.
“What the fuck are you two talking about?” Ralph demanded.
“You obviously think Loring has some serious psychic talent,” North said. “And maybe he does. But if he told you that he could give you paranormal powers, he was lying. That’s what guys like Loring always tell their Puppets. Doesn’t work like that.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ralph snarled. “Dr. Loring is fucking brilliant.”
“Puppets,” North said. “They’ll believe anything.”
“Are we done here?” Sierra asked.
“Yes,” North said. “You go first.”
“Stop talking,” Ralph shouted.
Sierra gripped her locket, got it open and sent a wave of destabilizing energy into Joe’s aura.
Joe went abruptly limp. His arm fell away from her throat. He dropped to the ground. The knife landed in the mud.
Alarmed, Ralph swung the beam of the flashlight toward his partner. The glow played across the unconscious man.
“Joe,” Ralph said. “What the fuck?” He aimed the light at Sierra’s face. “What did you do to him?”
“I told him I don’t like to be touched by strangers,” she said.
“You heard the lady,” North said.
Ralph appeared to remember he had another problem. He started to turn back toward North, but it was too late.
North was already spinning into him with a high-flying karate kick that sent Ralph to the ground.
North glanced at Joe.
“How long will he be out?”
“I don’t know,” Sierra admitted. She picked up the flashlight and aimed it at Joe. “I haven’t done this sort of thing often enough to collect a lot of data. It’s not exactly the kind of trick you can practice whenever you have some free time. Hard to find volunteers.”
Ralph groaned and started to pull himself up out of the mud. North gave him a swift chop that sent him onto his back. This time Ralph did not move.
North crouched beside him and quickly went through the downed man’s pockets. He confiscated Ralph’s wallet and keys, rose and crossed to Joe, where he repeated the pat-down and retrieved another wallet and more keys.
Joe groaned. North straightened. “Let’s go.”
“Are we just going to leave them here?” Sierra asked.
“Were you thinking of hauling them inside and making them a cup of hot cocoa?”
“Ah, no,” Sierra said. “No, I wasn’t thinking that.”
“Don’t worry, they’re not going to drown. We need to get on the road.”
“Shouldn’t we call the local police?”
“We don’t have time. It would take too long to explain this situation to a local cop.”
“You’re still planning to hit Riverview?”
“Yes.”
“What do you expect to find there?”
&nb
sp; North held up the key ring that he had taken from Ralph. “I would really like to get a look at Loring’s lab. I want to know what instruments and drugs he was using in his experiments.”
They reached the SUV. North climbed in behind the wheel. Sierra opened the passenger-side door and jumped up onto the seat.
“If you’re going in, I’m going with you,” she said.
North cranked up the engine. “Bad idea.”
“Maybe, but there is no other idea handy. We’re in this together. We’re a team now.”
North concentrated on navigating the driveway. When they reached the main road he evidently came to a decision.
“Yes,” he said. “A team.”
CHAPTER 22
Riverview Psychiatric Hospital appeared even more ominous and disquieting at night than it did by day. Dim lights illuminated some of the rooms, but most of the windows were dark. There were a couple of streetlamps at the front gate, one over the main entrance door and one at the loading dock behind the mansion. The parking lot in front was empty.
North led the way through the woods to the rear of the mansion, aware of Sierra following close behind. He knew they were both still wired from the violent confrontation at Loring’s house, and there was a risk that Ralph and Joe might figure out they were headed to Riverview. A couple of sensible criminals would cut their losses and run.
But it was clear that Ralph and Joe were Puppets. They had bought whatever wild promises Loring had made to them. The lure of serious paranormal power was enough to cause even smart bad guys to make poor choices, and there was no indication that Ralph and Joe had ever been particularly intelligent to start with.
The worst of the storm had passed but the ground was soggy and, in places, treacherous. A couple of vehicles were parked outside the rear gate.
“The night staff,” North said. “With luck, just the other two orderlies. According to the people we talked to in town, there are only four and they all sleep here. Victor said Marge told him the lab was on the top floor at the end of the hall. The night she escaped she went down what she called the other stairs, the ones the clones used—not the main staircase.”
“An old set of service stairs?” Sierra suggested.
“Probably. We’ll try for those.”
Sierra studied the rear of the mansion through the bars of the gate. “There’s a door beside the loading dock,” she said.
“Ralph’s key fob will probably work on the gate and the door. Ready?”
“Sure. We’re about to break into an insane asylum. What could possibly go wrong?”
“Keep that positive attitude,” North said.
He left the cover of the trees. Sierra followed, moving in the light, nearly silent way that fascinated him.
The second fob on Ralph’s ring opened the gate. North eased inside, waited for Sierra and then closed the gate.
They made their way past a couple of industrial-sized trash bins and what looked like a gardening shed.
One of Ralph’s other fobs opened the service entrance door. North moved into a large, unlit room. Sierra followed. He closed the door behind her and waited a beat.
There were no warning pings from the security box on the wall. No red lights flashed. They were in.
It would have been convenient to call on his talent to help navigate the pitch-black space. There was a time when he had prowled the dark as effortlessly as any night predator. But those days were, if not quite gone, fading fast. Using his talent would just hasten the blindness that was setting in. And then there was the risk of getting trapped in the ghost world.
He switched on the penlight instead and did a quick scan of the room. It was cluttered with a jumble of large cardboard boxes containing supplies and canned goods. Various items of cleaning equipment were stored in a corner.
The storage room was unlit, but a bulb glowed dimly over the entrance to a narrow staircase.
They climbed the steps, trying to make as little noise as possible. The muffled chatter of late-night television could be heard from the first floor. North hoped that meant the night staff was occupied and would not notice any small unusual sounds that emanated from inside the stairwell.
The door at the top of the stairs on the third floor was locked. North looked through the narrow, wired window. He saw twin rows of closed doors on either side of the hall. Each door was set with a small window. Midway down the corridor there was a nurses’ station, but no one was around.
If Marge’s description of the layout was accurate, the door to Loring’s laboratory was at the far end of the hallway.
North looked at Sierra. “The patients could be a problem. If we disturb them there will probably be a lot of noise. It might attract the attention of the night staff.”
Sierra opened her locket. “If one of them becomes agitated I might be able to keep him calm.”
“All right, but be careful. I know you’re good at doing whatever it is you do with that mirror, but we don’t know anything about these patients. Some of the auras up here might be pretty badly damaged.”
“I understand. I’ll be careful. Meanwhile, don’t make eye contact with any of the patients. I think they would find that alarming, especially if they can see our auras.”
“Understood.”
“Whatever else comes out of this, we have to find a way to rescue these people.”
“Don’t worry, now that we know this place is not a legitimate hospital, Victor and Lucas will take care of things here.”
North opened the door with Ralph’s fob. Sierra followed him into the hallway. A couple of faces appeared at the windows in the doors. North avoided looking at the people inside the locked cells. He wondered if all of them had been grabbed off the streets or if some were actual patients.
He and Sierra made it past the unstaffed nurses’ station without creating a disturbance. And then they were at the end of the hall. This time Ralph’s fob did not work.
“Well, damn,” North said quietly.
Sierra looked at him. “What?”
“Old-fashioned security. This lock takes a key. What do you want to bet that the only person who has it is Loring?”
“Are you saying we can’t get inside?”
“No.” North took a high-tech lockpick out of one of the pockets of his black cargo trousers. “But it’s going to take me a minute.”
In the end it took about fifteen seconds, not a minute. The lock was good but nothing extraordinary. It had been installed by a skilled locksmith, which meant that it could be broken by a skilled burglar or a reasonably proficient cleaner equipped with the proper tools.
He got the door open and they moved into an unlit room.
He closed the door and switched on his penlight. The light played over a couple of stainless steel workbenches laden with a variety of instruments and electronic gear. Much of the equipment looked new, but one device standing alone on a separate table appeared to be of an old-fashioned design.
Sierra headed straight toward it, stripped off a glove and touched it cautiously. She winced.
“Hot,” she said. She pulled on her glove. “Lab heat.”
North felt his pulse kick up. A thrill of excitement flashed through him. He moved across the room to get a closer look at the artifact.
The square black metal box measured about a foot on all sides. It was rusty in places. The cloudy display screen was dark. Instead of a computer keyboard, several rows of knobs and dials studded the front of the machine. Wires were attached to the top.
“Looks like it came from one of the lost labs, all right,” he said.
“I can tell you right now that, whatever it is, it’s worth a fortune on the underground market,” Sierra said. “I’m surprised Loring would leave it here.”
“It looks heavy,” North said. “Also, it’s awkward. Probably takes two hands just to
carry it. Why not stash it here? Who’s going to look for a valuable artifact from the Bluestone Project in a locked lab inside an asylum?”
“Gee, I don’t know. How about you and me?”
“Right.” North felt a visceral tug on his senses. Experimentally he reached out to touch the metal box. Familiar energy whispered through him. He smiled. “I think I know why Loring left this behind.”
“Why?”
“It’s infused with Griffin Chastain’s psychic signature. Got a hunch Loring couldn’t make it function correctly, assuming he got it to work at all. If he did try to activate it, he would have run the risk of damaging his own aura in the process.”
“I assume we’re taking that thing with us when we leave?”
“Oh, yeah. But first we need to see what else we can find here.”
Sierra walked across the room and stopped near a wall. “How about a vintage radio?”
She stripped off a leather glove again and bent down to gingerly pick up an object from the floor. She winced a little and transferred the artifact to her gloved hand.
“Well?” North asked.
“It’s a radio that looks like it dates from the era of the lost labs,” she said. “There’s definitely some heat in it, but nothing spectacular.”
“The radio Dad bought from Gwendolyn Swan?” North asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Sierra took a closer look. “The plastic is cracked and one of the knobs fell off. There’s some hot rage infused in it. Got a feeling Loring or someone hurled it against the wall in a fit of anger.”
“Because it wasn’t the artifact that he had been expecting,” North concluded. “Dad fooled him.”
“Do you want to take it with us?”
“No, it’s useless.” North got a familiar frisson of energy across the back of his neck. His intuition was warning him that it was time to leave. “Let’s go. I need both hands to carry Griffin Chastain’s machine. You’ll have to handle security until we get out of the building.”
“Right,” she said. “I’ll go first.”
She paused at the door long enough to check the view of the hallway through the small window. Then she cradled her locket in her ungloved hand.
All the Colors of Night Page 14