In Too Deep

28

Shortly before midnight, Isabella stood with Fallon in the night-darkened gardens of the Vantara Estate. They were not alone. Julian and the Lucan agent who was posing as a security guard were with them. They all contemplated the theatrically illuminated mansion. With its pastiche of Baroque, Renaissance and Iberian architectural elements, the ornate structure looked like a fairy-tale castle.

"Got to admit, those old 1930s film stars knew how to do over-the-top," Fallon said.

Isabella smiled. "I like it."

"Let's go," Julian said. Urgency and impatience crackled in the atmosphere around him.

"I've got the code," the hunter said. "I'll let you into the house through one of the side doors. I turned off the alarm system just before you got here. You'll have the mansion to yourselves. You should be okay if you stick to pencil flashlights, but don't turn on any lights in the main rooms. There's not a lot of traffic out here at night, but the county cops run regular patrols every couple of hours."

"I don't need visible spectrum light to do my job," Isabella said.

The hunter led them through a section of gardens steeped in shadows. He wielded a flashlight, but Isabella knew that he did not need it for himself. His preternatural night vision allowed him to move through the darkness as confidently as if the path were lit with floodlights.

He stopped at a discreetly concealed side door and punched in a code. The door opened. He ushered Isabella, Fallon and Julian into a hallway.

"Got the floor plan?" he asked.

"Yes," Julian said.

"I'll leave you to it, then," the hunter said. "I need to check in with company headquarters. Don't want to break routine or they might send someone to check."

He closed the door, plunging the hall into darkness.

Fallon switched on a pencil flashlight. Julian did the same. Isabella raised her talent.

There were always secrets aplenty in old houses and the Vantara mansion was no exception. Traces of psi fog swirled in the hallway. Layer upon layer of wispy mists indicated decades of small, private secrets that were nobody's business but that of the individuals who harbored them. Isabella suppressed her awareness of the old radiation and concentrated on the newer mysteries. As usual in a space that had been well traveled, there was a great deal of fog, including some very hot stuff that she recognized as having been left by the hunter.

"Nothing here that looks like it ever had any connection to your broker," she said.

Fallon consulted the map. "According to the team, he entered the mansion on a regularly scheduled tour. All the tours start in the Grand Hall."

"To the left," Julian said.

He led the way around the corner and down a long, high-ceilinged corridor paneled in rich, dark hardwood.

Isabella lowered her senses, not wanting to waste energy that she might need later for more nuanced detective work. Still, even when perceived with only a fraction of her talent, there was an abundance of fog to wade through. There were no such things as ghosts, but sometimes she wondered if down through the centuries, others endowed with her kind of talent had started the rumors of spirits from the Other Side. It was easy enough to imagine phantoms in the eerie light.

She followed Fallon and Julian through another doorway and into a heavy sea of fog.

"Whoa." She stopped abruptly, adjusting her senses down another notch. "This, I take it, is the Grand Hall?"

Even in darkness lit only by moonlight slanting through high, Gothic-style windows and the two thin beams of the flashlights, the vast space glowed with gilded splendor. The walls were hung with huge ancient tapestries depicting medieval hunting scenes. Marble tiles covered the floor. Heavy, ornate furniture adorned the room. Couches and chairs covered in velvet and embroidered brocades were arranged in groupings around tables inset with lapis and malachite. Massive chandeliers hung from the ceiling.

"We know for certain that the broker was in this room," Julian said. "He was seen entering. He exited the house with the rest of the tour group through the kitchens."

"There's a high probability that your broker had some serious talent in order to survive as long as he did in his line of work," Fallon said. He studied the cavernous space, keeping his flashlight aimed at the marble-tiled floor and the richly woven rugs. "Probably a strategy-talent or an intuitive."

"He definitely had some juice," Julian agreed, "although he seemed unaware of it."

"Strats and intuitives often take their psychic side for granted," Fallon said absently. He crossed the room to examine a wall of glass-fronted bookcases. "Their abilities don't strike them or those around them as unusual unless they are extremely powerful."

"If he did have some talent, he would have been jacked when he entered this hall," Isabella said.

"Right." Fallon aimed the beam of the flashlight at a gilded red lacquer console table. "He knew that what he was about to do was dangerous. There would have been a lot of adrenaline, and that means his senses would have bounced sky-high."

"Which would heat up the fog," Isabella said.

Julian frowned. "What fog?"

"Never mind," Isabella said. "Just give me a minute to take a closer look." She opened her senses slowly. "Sheesh. There's a ton of energy in here."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Julian demanded.

"This place gets half a million visitors a year, according to the brochure," Fallon said.

"Well, no wonder the mist is so thick," she said. "There's so much stuff in this house that anything smaller than a refrigerator would be hard to find unless you knew where to look."

"Damn it, Isabella," Julian said. "Can you handle this or not?"

"Oh, shut up, Julian," she said. "I don't work for you anymore, remember? I'm a J&J investigator now."

Fallon's shadowed smile bordered on the macabre.

Julian shut up.

Isabella ignored them both and concentrated on calibrating her senses. She tuned out the older fog, concentrating on the brighter, more recent traces. Then she refined the search further, looking for only the very hot, icy light that she had detected on the broker's computer.

And suddenly, there it was, the unique trail of searing fog that could only have been laid down by the broker.

"Got it," she said softly. "You're right, Fallon, he was running very hot. He was definitely nervous but mostly he was excited, thrilled."

"No surprise there," Julian said. "It was probably the biggest deal of his career."

Fallon watched Isabella. "You're in charge here. We'll follow you."

"This way," she said, confident now that she had the trail.

She went quickly up the wide, curving staircase at the far end of the Grand Hall to the second floor. The river of fog flowed along another paneled passageway, past rooms and chambers and alcoves that gleamed and glowed and glittered in the shadows.

"Wouldn't want to have to pay the utilities bill for this place," she said.

"It would be the salaries for the staff required to maintain the mansion that would ruin you financially," Fallon observed.

"Could you two try to stay focused here?" Julian muttered.

Isabella ignored him. So did Fallon.

She followed the searing mist down another hallway, past a large ballroom. She hated to admit it, but at times like this she did feel a little like a dog that had picked up the scent. Fallon's words floated through her head. Born to hunt. Somehow that made her talent sound a lot more impressive.

She rounded another corner and came to a halt. Fallon and Julian stopped behind her.

"What do you see?" Julian asked urgently.

She studied the energy on the carpet. "He went into this room," she said. "But the others on the tour did not."

Fallon aimed his flashlight at the doorway of the room. A velvet rope blocked the entrance. "He hung back, waited until the tour group had moved on and then he ducked under the rope."

"Looks like it," Isabella said.

Julian moved to stand beside Fallon. Together they speared the shadows with their penlights.

Isabella stood on tiptoe behind the men, trying to peer past the barricade created by their broad shoulders.

"How sweet," she said. "It's a little girl's bedroom."

"Vantara had a daughter," Julian said. "She inherited this place. Couldn't afford to maintain it so she sold it to the historical foundation that runs the tours."

The bedroom was a frilly fairyland of pink and white. The small bed was adorned with ruffles and flounces and covered with a herd of stuffed animals. Lacy curtains bracketed the windows. A child-sized dressing table and stool stood in one corner. Dolls, rocking horses and stuffed pandas littered the floor.

"I don't see anything that even remotely resembles a weapon," Julian said.

"No," Fallon agreed. "But there's something of a paranormal nature in here. I can feel the energy."

Isabella tapped the shoulders of both men. "Excuse me. Mind if I take a look?"

Fallon stepped back. So did Julian.

She ducked under the velvet rope and stepped into the bedroom, concentrating on the trail of fog.

The mists led straight to the top of a pink-and-gilt chest of drawers. For the first time, Isabella took out her own flashlight and switched it on. She started opening and closing the drawers. Most were crammed with dainty petticoats, nightgowns and other items that had been made for a little girl.

The bottom drawer was filled with small pink and white socks and a cauldron of boiling fog.

"Got it," Isabella said.

"What is it?" Julian asked urgently.

"Hang on." Isabella dug beneath the neatly arranged socks and saw an elaborately wrought hand mirror. She aimed the beam of the flashlight at the object and caught her breath. The mirror was spectacular. The gold-and-silver frame was intricately worked in an elaborate Baroque design that subtly incorporated ancient alchemical symbols. Strange crystals glittered in the light. Although the object looked as if it had been crafted during the seventeenth century, the glass was not dark with age.

Captivated, she reached down to grasp the curved handle.

Electricity sparked through her. She flinched but she did not let go.

"This thing is definitely hot," she said softly.

"Are you okay?" Fallon asked.

"I think so."

She looked into the mirror, aware that Fallon and Julian had come up behind her and were doing the same thing. They were all fascinated, she realized.

It was like looking into a pool of liquid mercury. She could almost see her image but not quite. The seemingly solid glass of the mirror appeared molten. Silver energy swirled just beneath the surface, compelling her to look deeper.

"It's incredible," she whispered.

"Lower your senses," Fallon ordered.

The razor-sharp words snapped her out of the mini-trance. Startled, she hastily cut her talent. The surface of the mirror took on a more normal appearance. She could still sense the power in the artifact, but it no longer exerted the strong pull that it had a few seconds earlier.

Julian plucked the mirror from her hand. Energy whipped the air around him. His triumphant excitement was palpable.

"Damn, you did it, Isabella," he breathed. "This has to be the para-weapon that the broker left here."

"But what does it do?" Isabella asked.

She half expected Fallon to respond. He was always the one with the answers. But for once he had nothing to offer.

"I told you, I don't know exactly how it works." Julian examined the back of the mirror. "All I can tell you is that the black-ops folks who hired Lucan to make the buy are willing to pay a hell of a lot to get it off the market."

"Time to go," Fallon said. "We got what we came for. Let's move."

The chillingly neutral quality of his voice sent a shiver of awareness through Isabella. Something was wrong. In that moment she knew that he had recognized the mirror and had some knowledge of its power.

She looked at him, but in the deep shadows it was impossible to read his face. She heightened her talent a little and saw the heat in Fallon's eyes. It was not the kind she associated with their lovemaking. Fallon was jacked and dangerous.

"Jones is right," Julian said. "Let's get the hell out of Dodge."

He went swiftly toward the doorway. Fallon grabbed Isabella's arm, his grip uncharacteristically rough. She turned to look at him in surprise. But he was already shoving her across the room toward the bed.

She landed with a jolt and a shocked gasp. When she opened her eyes, she saw that Julian had spun around in the doorway. The mirror in his hand flashed white-hot.

The room was suddenly ablaze with a blinding paranormal fire. Isabella realized that although she could still see and hear and feel, she felt terrifyingly numb. It took her a heartbeat to understand that was because her para-senses were frozen.

She was vaguely aware that Fallon was in motion, launching himself through the raging storm of psi. He slammed into Julian. His momentum took both of them to the floor in the hallway. They landed with a sickening thud.

The energy storm cut off abruptly when Julian lost his grip on the mirror. But when Isabella tried to raise her talent, she discovered that her senses were still numb.

The sickening sounds of hand-to-hand combat brought her up off the bed. She found the flashlight she had dropped and staggered across the room to the doorway. She had to grip the frame to stay on her feet.

Fallon and Julian were locked in a cage fight because of the narrow confines of the hallway. The primal nature of the battle sent a nauseating wave of panic through Isabella. Fists rose and fell, smashing again and again into muscular flesh. Boots and shoulders struck the wall. She caught glimpses of blood as the two men heaved and rolled and collided again and again.

A lethally thin blade flashed evilly in the shadows. She could not tell which man gripped the knife. But in the next moment she heard a terrible crack. Fallon had slammed Julian's hand against the floor.

The knife dropped on the carpet. Julian howled, rolled onto his side and clutched his broken wrist.

"Bastard," he snarled. "You son of a bitch. You should be dead."

"You're not the first person to tell me that." Fallon got to his feet. There was blood on his face. He took his gun out from under his black leather jacket. "The Quicksilver Mirror can kill," Fallon said. "But only in the hands of a talent who is powerful enough to control the maximum amount of energy latent in it. You just weren't strong enough, Garrett."

"Shit." Julian groaned. He sat up, cradling his injured wrist. "The last thing I need is a lecture on para-physics from Fallon Jones. Just shoot me now."

"Good idea," Isabella said.

Fallon looked at her. "Are you okay?"

"Yes—no." Another flicker of panic shivered through her. "Fallon, my senses are frozen."

"So are mine." Keeping the gun trained on Julian, he picked up the mirror. "But they'll recover in time. If the mirror doesn't kill you, the effects are temporary."

"Oh, good. For a moment there I was a little worried."

Fallon prodded the groaning Julian. "On your feet. We're leaving before the maintenance people show up and start asking a lot of questions about the damage to the hallway."

Julian got to his knees. "How the hell do you plan to get me out of here? That's my hunter who's standing guard down there."

"Not anymore," Fallon said. "After he got us inside, he was replaced by a J&J agent. I called in some talent from L.A."

Julian's face twisted in disgust. "How did you figure it out?"

"I didn't know you were after the Quicksilver Mirror until I saw the damn thing," Fallon said. "But there were a few details that didn't sit right. You gave off the vibes of a guy who was working his own agenda. What pissed me off and made me decide that you were one of the bad guys was how you used Isabella and then sent that hunter team to grab her in Phoenix when you discovered that you needed her after all. That's no way to treat a lady, Garrett."

Julian shot Isabella a fulminating look. She gave him her most dazzling smile.

"I was following Lucan's orders," Julian said, turning sullen.

"I called Lucan again after you left the trailer today. Gave him a different theory of the crime. He agreed to play it out and see what happened."

"Whose theory of the crime?" Julian demanded.

"Isabella's. I've learned the hard way not to ignore the gut reaction of a trained investigator. She was sure you were behind the arms dealing in Department A."

"She's not an investigator—she's just a finder-talent," Julian muttered. "A technician."

"Who is now a full-fledged investigator at J&J," Fallon concluded.

Isabella picked up a flashlight and aimed the beam at Julian's battered face. "What's this all about Julian? What kind of operation were you running? And what really happened to Caitlin Phillips?"

Julian said nothing.

Fallon turned thoughtful. "I think you were right, Isabella. There was something going on inside Department A. Garrett and Caitlin Phillips were running a small, private arms-dealing operation. They had a buyer for the mirror, but I doubt that it was one of Lucan's black-ops clients. They set up the deal with the broker, Sloan, who chose the mansion as the drop point. But things fell apart when Sloan got shot before he could tell Garrett and Phillips where he had hidden the mirror. So they went looking for you."

"At that point you knew that you would need the resources of Lucan's company to find me, didn't you, Julian? And once you did grab me, you knew you would need my full cooperation. That wasn't likely as long as Lucan and everyone else thought I was guilty of arms dealing. So you changed your story to point the finger of blame at poor Caitlin Phillips. You killed her, didn't you? You planted evidence in her house to make Lucan believe that she was the guilty party."

"Have fun weaving your little conspiracy fantasy," Julian said. "You can't prove a damn thing. The worst you can do is get me fired."

"No," Fallon said. "That's not actually the worst thing I can do."

"We both know you're not going to murder me in cold blood and dump my body." Julian managed a hoarse chuckle. "Give me a break—J&J doesn't work that way."

"Don't be so sure of that," Isabella warned.

Fallon raised his brows. "We're supposed to be the good guys, remember?"

"Well, yes," she grumbled. "But we decided that there are exceptions to every rule, remember? And Julian constitutes a really big exception if you ask me."

"He is, but as it happens, Garrett isn't our problem. Max Lucan hired him. He can terminate his own employees. No reason we should do his job for him."

Julian went very still. "It will be your word against mine."

Fallon's smile widened. "Then you have nothing to worry about, do you? Go on, get out of here."

Julian looked flummoxed. "What the hell are you trying to pull, Jones?"

"You're right. I can't prove a thing, so get lost while I'm still in a good mood."

Julian scrambled to his feet. "What happens to the mirror?"

"It goes back to its rightful owner."

Julian grimaced. "Guess I should have seen that coming."

He half loped, half limped down the hall and disappeared around a corner. Isabella drummed her fingers on the side of the door frame.

"I really hate to see him go free like that," she said. "It's not right."

"Maybe not," Fallon said. With one hand he pulled a pristine handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his cheek. He used his other hand to take out his phone. "But letting him run might give us the answer to one lingering question."

Isabella speared the flashlight at Fallon. Blood glistened on his jaw and dripped down the front of his jacket.

"You're bleeding," she wailed.

He looked down at the handkerchief. "Yeah."

She rushed to him, took the handkerchief from his hand and gently blotted up more of the blood.

"You need to sit down," she ordered. "You could go into shock."

"I don't think so," he said. "Let's get out of here."

He started to bend down to pick up the mirror but stopped midway, groaning a little, and gingerly reached inside his jacket.

"I'll get it," Isabella said quickly.

"Thanks." Fallon spoke into the phone. "He's running. Don't lose him. He's injured and will probably seek medical help. Don't interfere. Just keep an eye on him until one of Lucan's people takes over."

He ended the call and punched in another number. "Max? Jones here. Isabella was right about everything. Looks like Caitlin Phillips is most likely dead. She was Garrett's partner, but he needed another fall guy after he realized he required Isabella's help to locate the artifact. What is it? The Quicksilver Mirror. Yeah. Worth a fortune in some quarters. We've got it and Garrett is running. I've got a hunter following him until you can get someone on it. I'll give you the whole story tomorrow. What? Of course we'll send you our bill."

He closed the phone.

Isabella picked up the mirror and took Fallon's arm to steady him, although he did not seem to be wobbly. She drew him carefully down the staircase.

"What's the one lingering question?" she asked.

"The name of the person who commissioned the Quicksilver Mirror."

"You let Julian run because you want to know the identity of his buyer."

"Well, that plus the fact that there wasn't anything else I could do with him except try to convince the local cops that he's guilty of breaking and entering and something tells me that wouldn't fly."

"But Garrett doesn't have the mirror to sell now. Why would he contact the buyer?"

"He might not," Fallon said. "But I'm thinking there's a high probability that the buyer will contact him."

"Why?"

"Because we are not going to let it be known that Arcane recovered the mirror," Fallon said patiently. "That will be our little secret."

A cold thrill of comprehension swept through Isabella. "You think that the buyer will believe he's been double-crossed. That Julian has sold the mirror to someone else."

"It's been my experience that not only is there no honor among thieves, but there's also not a hell of a lot of trust or mutual affection, either. What's more, that type tends to be vindictive."

"One more thing. You said the mirror is going back to the rightful owner."

"Yes."

"Who is that?"

"The Arcane Society. The Quicksilver Mirror was stolen from one of the museums."

"Oh, geez. That raises some troubling questions doesn't it?"

"Sure does," Fallon said.