In Too Deep

15

After a while, Isabella stopped crying. She raised her head and gave him a shaky smile.

"Sorry about that," she said. "Lately that's been happening to me without warning. I'm fine one minute and then I think about how she might actually be dead and that maybe I'm just fooling myself and all of a sudden I'm crying."

"It's all right," he said. He couldn't think of anything else to say. He realized that she was trying to step back. Reluctantly he opened his arms and released her.

She sat down, carefully refolded the damp handkerchief and handed it to him. She grabbed another tissue and blew her nose one last time. She tossed the tissue into the trash basket, drank some tea and composed herself.

He stood in the center of the office for a few seconds, unsure of what to do next. When nothing helpful came to mind, he went back to his desk, swallowed more coffee and forced himself to focus on the problem at hand.

"Using your line of logic," he began.

She gave him a wan smile. "That's a polite way of saying you don't believe me."

Out of nowhere anger flashed through him. "Damn it, don't put words in my mouth. I'm trying to gather facts here."

She sighed. "I know. I apologize. I've been a little emotional lately."

"Understandable," he said gruffly.

She nodded, very serious. "Yes, I think so. I've been under a lot of stress."

"That's certainly one word for it," he agreed. "All right, let's try this again. You said someone tried to kill you a few weeks ago in Phoenix?"

"Yes. Well, two men tried to kidnap me. I'm sure they planned to kill me."

"How did you escape?" he asked.

She moved one hand in a vague motion. "Turns out there's a flip side of my talent. I can find things and people, all right. But I can use my ability to conceal them, as well. I can tell someone to get lost. Literally. That's what I did with the two thugs they sent after me."

He ignored the pronoun. They was very popular with conspiracy buffs. There was always a mysterious they manipulating things from behind the scenes.

"How does it work?" he asked.

She blinked. "How does what work?"

"Your talent."

"How does any talent work?" She gave a little shrug. "I have to have physical contact to do it, that's all I know. They had me cornered on a mall roof. I sent them down an emergency stairwell and out onto the street. I don't know what happened to them after that. I assume they walked for a while until they came out of the trance."

"Or got run down?"

"I told them to only cross at the lights," she said. "When I put people into a get-lost trance, they tend to follow orders very precisely."

"Sounds like a form of hypnotic suggestion."

"I suppose so."

"Why did you tell them to only cross at the lights?"

"I assumed that if two guys from the company I used to work for got run down on a Phoenix street, it would create more problems than it would solve," she said. "Dead bodies have a way of causing trouble."

But the lack of dead bodies meant no police records or any other kind of evidence that would lend credibility to her story, he thought. He was starting to understand how Alice had felt when she fell down the rabbit hole. He had to deal with the very real possibility that Isabella was as lost in a conspiracy fantasy as the Sentinel. But one thing was clear, Isabella believed every word she was saying.

"Tell me about the conspiracy," he said.

"I used to work for Lucan Protection Services. Do you know it?"

He paused his coffee mug in midair, all of his senses crackling. "Sure. Max Lucan is a member of the Arcane Society. He runs a high-end art-and-antiquities security agency."

"I went to work for his company about seven months ago. At the time I felt very fortunate to get the job."

"Why?"

"Let's just say that the combination of my talent plus my family history gives me employment problems. The result is that I change employers the way some folks change their socks." She paused. "I get fired a lot."

"I understand the personal history issues. It could not have been easy growing up in a family that doesn't officially exist. But what's the problem with your talent? I would think being a finder would make you a natural fit for any kind of investigation or security firm."

She took another sip of tea and lowered the mug. "The problem is that I'm picky about what I find."

"Explain."

"A lot of security and investigation work involves locating people who don't want to be found. Often those who are lost have a very good reason for disappearing. Then there are the dead bodies. Sure, once in a while those kinds of jobs are okay. I understand that sort of work needs doing."

"Like yesterday at the Zander mansion?"

"Right," she said, very earnest now. "I mean, I'm all for getting justice for murder victims and closure for families. It's important work. Honorable work. Necessary work. But it is incredibly depressing to spend your entire working life, day in and day out, searching for people who are either dead or don't want to be found."

"Hadn't thought about it," he admitted. "Is that what you did?"

"Mostly. As soon as my employers realized I could find bodies and lost people, they kept giving me those kinds of cases. But Lucan Protection Services was different. I was one of the technicians there. I enjoyed the work. No one expected me to find dead people, just lost art and antiquities."

"What went wrong?"

"I was doing a really good job. I got promoted to Department A."

"What's Department A?"

"It's an elite investigation division within Lucan," she said. "Very hush-hush."

Fallon suppressed a groan. "Right. Hush-hush."

"I was doing okay, making good money. I was even thinking about getting vested in the company retirement plan. I had a nice apartment. It almost felt as if I was starting to get a life. Finally."

"You didn't have one before going to work for Lucan?"

"Not the normal kind," she said. "Do you have any idea what it's like living under fake names and IDs your whole life?"

"No," he admitted. "But I can see where it would start to wear on a person."

"After a while, you start to wonder if you really exist. But I was beginning to feel comfortable at Lucan, probably because people like me are considered normal there, at least inside Department A."

"You mean people with some talent?"

She nodded. "Lucan hires a lot of sensitives, especially in Department A. It caters to clients who are sensitives and deal in antiquities that have a paranormal provenance. All in all, I fit right in. Then I found out what was really going on."

The rabbit hole suddenly got a whole lot darker. I'm doomed, Fallon thought. I've fallen for a woman who has gone over the horizon.

"What did you stumble into?" he asked, resigned to his fate.

"One of the lead investigators in Department A, Julian Garrett, my old boss there, is running his own private business. He's an arms dealer. But not just any arms dealer. He specializes in paranormal weapons."

Isabella waited, watching expectantly for his reaction to her bombshell.

"Huh," he said.

"That's all you have to say? I thought Arcane frowned very heavily on that kind of thing."

"It does." Fallon put his fingertips together and gave the subject some serious thought. "Hard to imagine that something like that could be going on inside Lucan Protection Services, though. I don't doubt that Max Lucan has brokered a few shady antiquities sales in his time. And I'm aware that he specializes in art and artifacts with a paranormal provenance. But Lucan is no fool. He knows that if Arcane finds out that he's dealing para-weapons to bad guys with some talent, J&J will come down on him like a very big mountain."

"I don't think Max Lucan knew what was going on. But I think he must have been getting suspicious about Department A. Julian Garrett knew that. To save his own hide, he set me up to take the fall. Now Lucan thinks I'm the one who was dealing the para-weapons. I'm sure he told Julian to find me and bring me in, but Julian wants me dead so I can't talk."

"Let's go back a step. How did you discover that you were being set up by Julian Garrett?"

"I walked into my cubicle one morning and saw a whole bunch of really ugly energy around my desk and computer. It was not there the day before when I left work. The trail led straight back to Julian Garrett's office."

"What did you do?"

"I realized Julian had been in my cubicle, but I couldn't imagine why. I started going through my drawers. I didn't find anything, so I went to work running all sorts of virus checks and searches on my computer."

"You found something?"

"A hidden file," Isabella said. "It contained a record of the sale of a number of antiquities. At first glance there didn't seem to be anything unusual about it, but I couldn't understand why Julian put the file on my computer. So I started researching the individual artifacts."

"What did you find?"

"I soon discovered that all the objects had a few things in common. In addition to having the usual paranormal provenance, every single one of them should have been classified as weapons-grade artifacts according to the company guidelines."

"Anything else?"

"All of the transactions had been handled off the books. None of the sales were recorded in the company archives. What's more, they had all been obtained from a single source, a broker named Orville Sloan. He's a major player in the black market."

"Did you confront Julian Garrett?"

"For Pete's sake, of course not," Isabella said. She looked horrified. "It was obvious he was setting me up. It would have been my word against Julian's. Julian has worked for Lucan for several years. Lucan trusts him. What's more, Lucan would have been ruthless. He would have made certain that I wound up in prison or worse."

"So you ran."

"Yes. But I also called my grandmother and told her what was going on. She's the one who said that if Julian Garrett found me, he would very likely kill me."

Isabella was not inventing any of this, Fallon thought. Her interpretation of events might be skewed, but she was giving him the facts as she knew them. What the hell was going on here?

Fallon sat forward, reached for the computer keyboard and typed in a quick series of searches. He got a ping immediately.

"What did you find?" Isabella asked.

"A report of the death of an arms dealer named Orville Sloan." Fallon studied the data on the screen. "He was shot a month ago. No suspects."

Isabella's mouth tightened. "I'll bet Julian killed him to cover up more tracks."

"Arms dealers have a lot of enemies," Fallon said mildly.

He reminded himself that Isabella was the granddaughter of the Sentinel. Conspiracy theories were second nature to her. But he couldn't restrain his instinctive response. He slid deeper into the hot zone of his talent. The vast web was starting to brighten with a cold light. A pattern was forming. There was something here, something important.

"I don't suppose you have anything resembling proof of what you think is going on inside Department A, do you?" he asked.

Isabella hesitated. "It's sort of hard to prove that kind of stuff."

"Yes, it is."

"That's why Grandma thought that I should turn the problem over to Arcane. She said that policing the psychic bad guys was part of the Society's job."

He exhaled wearily. "We do what we can, but it's not our job. It's just that when you get guys like that crazy bastard at the Zander house yesterday, there isn't a lot regular law enforcement can do."

"Exactly."

"Isabella—"

She closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them, he could see nothing but stoic resignation.

"I was afraid of this," she said quietly. "You don't believe a word I've said, do you? You think I'm crazy, like the Sentinel."

"Damn it, Isabella."

"I thought maybe if I gave you time to get to know me, you would realize that I'm not a nutcase. That's why I delayed telling you the truth about myself. Maybe I should have waited a little longer before I tried to explain, but I needed to tell someone. Not knowing if my grandmother is dead or alive is just so hard to deal with. She's the only one I've got left and if she's gone—"

"Isabella." He got to his feet, rounded his desk, reached down and closed his hands over her shoulders. He hauled her to her feet for the second time. "I don't have enough information to make an informed decision on the subject of Julian Garrett's involvement in para-weapons dealing, let alone decide if your grandmother actually was murdered."

"I understand."

"But what I do know," he said, "is that you believe every word of what you're telling me. And as long as you believe it, I'll do whatever it takes to get your answers for you. If your grandmother was murdered, I'll find the killer."

"Fallon," she whispered. Her eyes glistened again. She reached up to touch his jaw. "I don't know what to say, except thank you." She stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly.

It was a damn gratitude kiss, he thought. The last thing he wanted from Isabella was gratitude.