Running Hot as-5

by Jayne Ann Krentz

He glanced at the cover of her book. The illustration showed the shadowed profile of a woman. She had a gun in her hand. The title was equally ominous.

  “Looks like a murder mystery,” he said.

  “Romantic-suspense,” she corrected.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning it’s got both romance and a couple of murders in it.”

  “You like books like that?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled. “Thought you said you weren’t a romantic.”

  “I’m not.” She turned another page. “Doesn’t mean that I don’t like to read about romance.”

  “What about the murders?”

  “They get solved by clever sleuthing on the part of the hero and heroine. It’s very satisfying.”

  “You know, in real life the motivation for murder is usually a lot more straightforward than it is in fiction,” he said. “Somebody gets pissed off, picks up the nearest gun and shoots the guy who pissed him off.”

  “Really?” She did not seem particularly interested.

  “What’s more, the majority of cases get solved because someone talks, not because of forensics or clever sleuthing.”

  “If I want real police work, I’ll read the newspapers, not a book,” she said.

  “Probably a good idea. Let me know how that one ends.”

  She turned another page. “I already know how it ends.”

  “You read the ending first?”

  “I always read the ending before I commit to the whole book.”

  He looked at her, baffled. “If you know how it ends, why read the book?”

  “I don’t read for the ending. I read for the story.” She looked toward the entrance, watching a cab that had pulled up in front. “Life is too short to waste time on books that end badly.”

  “By badly you mean unhappily, right?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, the two are synonymous.”

  “Okay, so how does that book end? Wait.” He held up a hand. “Let me guess. The butler did it.”

  She flinched visibly, her lips parting as though in shock. He could have sworn that the book shook a little in her hand. He raised the volume of his senses.

  The normal hues and colors of the world faded. The myriad shades of the paranormal spectrum shimmered into view. He was startled to see unmistakable spikes of fear in Grace’s aura. Before he could ask her what was wrong, he realized she was watching the lobby entrance.

  He followed her gaze and saw a man climb out from behind the wheel of one of the newly arrived vehicles. He had the heavy, overmuscled build of a weight lifter on steroids. His head was shaved and he wore a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

  But it was his aura that grabbed Luther’s attention. It was not only strong, there was something

  wrong with it. Sparks of dark energy flickered and flashed in the field. Wherever they rippled through the pattern, they created disturbing pulses.

  “What the hell?” he said softly.

  “Hunter,” Grace said quietly. “Sort of.”

  “Damn. So much for Fallon’s probability theory.”

  “It’s not just the odds that are bad here.” There was a shiver in her voice. She appeared transfixed. “The profile isn’t that of a normal hunter.”

  “How is it different?”

  “For one thing, it’s unevenly developed. It doesn’t reflect the full range of abilities that generally go with that type of talent. There are whole sections missing or blunted along the spectrum.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, for starters, I’d say he doesn’t possess the ability to detect the psychic spoor of violence, which is a common aspect of an above-average hunter talent. He’s got the night vision and the strength and speed, though.”

  “Anything else missing?” he asked. He did not take his attention off the man.

  “Yes. There’s usually a strong correlation between intelligence and a high level of any kind of psychic ability. A level-eight or -nine hunter like him should possess above-average intelligence.”

  “He doesn’t?”

  “No. He’s not stupid but he’s not an independent thinker, that’s for sure. You’re looking at a guy who can be easily manipulated by someone who knows how to handle him; a man who would never question orders.”

  “Not the brightest bulb on the tree, huh?”

  “No.”

  “Any chance that’s Eubanks?”

  She shook her head. “Not unless the profile I was given was very badly flawed, which I doubt.”

  Luther watched the driver open the rear door of the car. Another man climbed out. He looked to be in his late thirties, tall and square-jawed with a too-perfect tan that could only have come out of a spray can.

  Grace drew a sharp breath and tensed again.

  “That’s Eubanks,” she whispered. “High-level strat talent. Everything else fits, too.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “What’s with the rogue waves?” he asked.

  She turned her head very quickly, stunned. “You can see them?”

  “No offense, but I think they’d be hard to miss. I’ve seen some crazy people in my time. A lot of them have an erratic pulse in their auras. But not like those.”

  Eubanks left the luggage to the driver and the bell staff, ignored the lei offered by the greeter and walked quickly toward the front desk.

  “Junkies develop bizarre patterns, too,” Grace said hesitantly.

  He studied Eubanks, thinking about that possibility. “A heavy user will throw off a lot of weird vibes. But in my experience, junkies’ auras resemble those of the crazies. You get a lot of what look like misfires or short-circuiting going on. The pattern is inherently unpredictable and makes it hard for the normal wavelengths to resonate, at least not for very long.”

  “But this is a regular, repeating pattern,” she said, still speaking in that odd, soft tone. “A consistent rogue wave.”

  “Which sounds like an oxymoron.”

  “Why do you think Eubanks brought a hunter along?” she asked.

  “Probably for the same reason that I’m here with you. The hunter is a bodyguard.”

  He watched the way the hunter quartered the lobby, checking out each sector. The bodyguard’s gaze passed lightly over them and then moved on. There was no flicker of alarm in the pattern.

  Grace seemed to relax a little. “He didn’t pay any attention to us.”

  “Like you said, he’s not that sharp. Whatever the case, you’ve done your job. Time to get you off this island.” He hated the thought of sending her back to that little town on the Oregon coast, but he sure as hell did not want her anywhere near Eubanks.

  “We’re not done yet,” she said. “You need me to help profile that hunter we ran into last night, remember?”

  “The situation has become complicated.”

  “I can do complicated.”

  “You’re not going to do it here,” he said.

  “You need a partner,” she insisted. “And I’m the only one handy. Eubanks is a very, very dangerous man and so is that hunter.”

  “I know the cane doesn’t make a reassuring impression, but I do know how to do this kind of stuff.”

  “I am well aware of what you can do,” she said. “I saw you in action last night. But you’re not crazy.”

  That was interesting. “You think Eubanks is?”

  “I think,” she said carefully, “that there’s something more than a little off about him, just like there is something off about his bodyguard.”

  “The rogue waves?”

  “Yes. I think you should stay away from both of those men.”

  His first reaction was to start brooding over her obvious lack of confidence. Okay, so he wasn’t in the best of shape at the moment. Then it occurred to him that she was genuinely worried about his safety. He wasn’t sure how to take that. Go with the positive, he thought. She cares enough to be concerned.

  “I’ll be fine,” he
said. “You know, instead of flying home to Eclipse Bay, you could go back to Honolulu and wait for me there. I won’t be here long. As soon as I phone Fallon, he’ll make arrangements for Eubanks to be put under long-term surveillance. I’ll hang around, see if I can find that hunter and then—”

  He broke off because he realized she was not listening. Her attention was no longer on Eubanks, who had received his card key and was already striding impatiently toward the elevator lobby, the hunter by his side. Instead, she was watching another new arrival, a woman who had just gotten out of a white limo.

  An executive, he decided, watching the woman direct the bell staff with an authoritative air. She was accompanied by a muscular man dressed in an ill-fitting jacket.

  The woman ignored the proffered lei, just as Eubanks had done, and walked briskly through the lobby toward the front desk.

  “Look at them,” Grace said urgently.

  “I am looking at them. What is it?”

  “

  Look at them.”

  “Right.” Obediently he jacked up his senses again.

  The woman’s aura flared, a cold array of icy blues and glassy greens.

  “Wouldn’t be a good idea to get between her and whatever she happened to want,” he said mildly. “Had a captain like that once. All he cared about was getting into the commissioner’s office. He left footprints on the back of everyone who stood in the way.”

  “I doubt if your captain’s aura looked like hers.”

  And then he saw the pulses—short little stabs of darkness that crackled through the blues and greens, briefly altering the resonating patterns. The rogues were not identical to those in Eubanks’s and the hunter’s aura but there was a distinct similarity.

  He switched his attention to the woman’s companion and saw the same bad energy.

  “Hunter,” Grace said. “Incomplete, like the other one.”

  “Another bodyguard. That explains the bad jacket. He’s carrying.”

  “Carrying what?”

  “A gun.”

  “Oh, right.” She assumed a knowing air. “Definitely carrying.”

  Another vehicle halted at the entrance. This time two men got out. One of them supervised the unloading of a set of golf clubs. The other headed for the lobby.

  “High-level probability talent and his bodyguard,” Grace said. “Same dark energy spikes in their fields.”

  “What the hell is going on here? I’ve never seen anything like those weird rogue waves.”

  “I have,” Grace said softly.

  “I did get that impression.” He reached for his cane. “You and I need to talk.”

  FOURTEEN

  “What the hell is going on and what do you know about it?” Luther asked. He used his flat, unemotional cop voice.

  She’d had enough for one day. Her temper spiked. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m a suspect that you’ve got cornered in an interrogation room.”

  He looked at her, eyes veiled by his dark glasses, and said nothing. He waited the way cops and psychiatrists did sometimes, hoping you’d get nervous and start talking.

  They were standing in the shade of the very same tree that had concealed them the previous evening when he touched her for the first time. But it wasn’t the precious memory of what had happened the night before that slammed through her now. It was the fragment of the Martin Crocker dream that had awakened her that she found herself remembering.

  She concentrated on the ocean while she composed her thoughts. Luther had a right to know whatever she could tell him about the auras of the strange group that had just arrived. But she was under no obligation to confess all her secrets. It wouldn’t be the first time she had lied to a cop. She could do this.

  “I once knew someone else whose aura developed a similar disturbance,” she said quietly.

  “Go on.”

  “You know this would be a whole lot easier if you played Good Cop instead of Bad Cop.”

  “Talk to me, Grace.”

  “This man I knew, the rogue waves, as you call them, started to appear after he began taking a drug.”

  “What drug?” Luther did not stir beside her but she knew that he had heightened his senses. He was watching her with his other vision, searching for signs of anxiety, fear, anger or any other strong emotion that might signal to him that she was lying or evading.

  Let him look. So what if I’m scared? He should be scared, too.

  “I don’t know the name of whatever he was using,” she said, “but I’m very sure it was illegal. It had a weird effect on him. It gave him a new kind of talent, one he definitely did not have before he started taking the drug. It’s hard to explain, but—”

  “Shit,” Luther said, interrupting her very softly. “Nightshade.”

  Startled, she turned to face him, her own senses flaring. His aura flashed with a cold, controlled excitement that did not show on his face. She knew he was running hot, not just psychically but physically. Adrenaline.

  “What is Nightshade?” she asked warily. “Some new street drug?”

  “No. It’s the code name that Fallon gave to a new organization of rogue sensitives that has managed to re-create the founder’s formula.”

  “The formula?” She was beyond startled, she was stunned. “But that’s just an old Society myth,” she managed weakly.

  “Not any longer. Hunting down Nightshade operatives and identifying the group’s leaders is J&J’s number one priority these days. Everyone in the agency knows that.”

  “No one told me anything about Nightshade.”

  “Probably because Fallon considers you temporary help. But I’ve got a hunch your status in the firm just got changed but good. What do you know about Nightshade?”

  Careful. You don’t have to tell him everything.

  Who was she kidding? Her private Pandora’s box of horrors had just been opened. There was no stuffing the bad news back inside. Her survival instincts kicked in. She hastily assessed her options and decided there were two. She could disappear again, a risky proposition because she had a hunch that J&J would pull out all the stops to hunt her down. The second option was to cooperate in the hunt for Nightshade. It was a dicey maneuver but if she was very careful, she might be able to pull it off without revealing her own secrets.

  She straightened her shoulders, the decision made. She would give Luther the information that might be helpful to J&J. But she didn’t have to throw herself under the bus.

  She had one very big factor going for her in the equation, she decided. J&J clearly needed the data that she could supply. That gave her some negotiating power. If worst came to worst, she could work with that.

  “I told you that until I joined the Bureau of Genealogy, I worked as a librarian in a large corporation,” she said.

  “Crocker World.”

  “Right. A lot of my time was spent doing Internet searches that were commissioned by various executives, including Mr. Crocker. On a few occasions I was called into the executive suite to deliver the results of my research.”

  “Martin Crocker summoned a librarian into his office?”

  There was irritation and impatience in Luther’s voice. He didn’t believe her.

  “Mr. Crocker was a strat talent. People like that love background and research. The more facts and details they can gather before they make a decision, the better. I did a lot of work for him.”

  She was pleased with the way that came out. Let him look. Every word was true.

  “Go on,” Luther said.

  “During the years that I worked at headquarters in Miami, I saw Mr. Crocker many times.” More truth.

  “On your trips upstairs to the executive suite,” Luther said without inflection.

  Damn. Was he buying this or not?

  “What I’m trying to tell you is that I had several opportunities to examine his aura,” she said. True.

  “What made you do that?”

>   The question threw her for a couple of seconds. Why would the company librarian care about the boss’s aura?

  “I suppose,” she said simply, “because he was Martin Crocker. In the world in which he moved, he was a rock star. And he was my boss.”

  “I assume you profiled him?”

  She nodded and concentrated on the horizon. “He was a complicated man. Driven.”

  “Were you attracted to him?”

  “Not in the way you mean.” More truth. “But I suppose you could say I admired him. Everyone in the company respected his business abilities. He was Martin Crocker, after all. He built an empire.”

  “Go on.”

  “During the last few months of his life, Crocker was working on a major project. He requested a number of detailed searches.”

  “All of which were hand delivered by you?”

  “Yes. I made a number of trips to the executive suite and on several of those trips I saw Crocker. Something changed in his aura during that time. I noticed the dark energy waves. They were small, almost undetectable at first. But they grew stronger as the weeks went by.”

  “What did you think was happening?”

  She folded her arms very tightly. “It occurred to me that he might be developing some sort of mental illness that was psychic in origin. Something about his dark energy scared the living daylights out of me.”

  He considered that a moment. “Okay, it’s spooky stuff, I’ll give you that.”

  “One day when I was summoned to the executive suite, I noticed two men going into Crocker’s office. Both gave off bad vibes. You couldn’t miss them, not if you were an aura talent.”

  “You checked out their patterns.”

  “Sure.”

  “And?” he prompted.

  “And I saw the same dark energy patterns in their fields.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Started working on my résumé. What else? I’ve been around enough freaks in my life to know when it’s time to bail. But before I could land another job, the news broke that Crocker had disappeared while on a trip to his private island. There was a lot of speculation. If you followed the story, you know that everyone had a theory. There were rumors. Some of them hit the papers.”

  “What rumors?” he asked.