In Too Deep

34

Isabella dreamed . . .

She was waltzing with Fallon, wearing her lovely midnight-blue gown and her black crystal shoes. Fallon was resplendent in his black-and-white tux, the ultimate power suit.

They circled the glittering ballroom to the strains of the relentless beat. She should have been deliriously happy, but everything seemed wrong.

The ballroom was painfully bright, lit up with paranormal radiation from the most disturbing sectors of the spectrum. The senses-dazzling glare made it impossible to see the other dancers or the musicians. On top of that, the music was extremely annoying. She found herself wishing that it would stop.

And Fallon was not being at all lover-like. He looked at her with eyes that were hot and dangerous with psi fever.

"I'm on my way, Isabella. You do whatever you have to do to stay alive until I get to you. Do you hear me?"

"Yes," she said. "I hear you. But what about the music?"

"Find the source and turn it off."

"How do I do that?"

"That's your problem. You're a J&J agent. You're supposed to figure these things out on your own."

She frowned, thinking. "But you're not really here with me, are you?"

"No."

"Then how can you be talking to me? There's no such thing as telepathy."

"True," Fallon said. "But you know me well enough to know what I'd be saying to you if I were there with you."

"Right."

She looked around, trying to bring the ballroom into focus, searching for the source of the music. She could do this. She had a talent for finding things.

She came awake to the muffled sound of pounding rain and booming surf. It took her a moment to realize that she was lying on a hardwood floor. She was cold and stiff. When she tried to move, she discovered that her hands and ankles were bound with duct tape. Mercifully, there was no tape across her mouth. Unfortunately, the obvious conclusion was that the kidnappers were not worried about her screaming. That, in turn, implied that the cabin was a long way from any source of help.

The music was still playing, but it was fainter now. She turned her head and saw the still shape of Walker lying beside her. He, too, was bound hand and foot.

She finally spotted the Victorian music box. It sat on a nearby table. The dancing figures were barely turning. The clockwork mechanism was winding down. Probably the reason she had awakened, she thought.

First things first. She rolled awkwardly across the floor until she reached the table. She levered herself onto her back, brought her knees up into a bent position, planted her feet against one leg of the table and pushed out with all of her strength.

The old table went over easily enough. The music box slid off and landed on the floor with a satisfying crack of glass and a clunk. The last notes of the waltz stopped abruptly. The dancing figures popped off and rattled across the floorboards until they fetched up against the wall.

To make certain the device was inoperable, she inchwormed her way to the broken artifact, turned her back to it and managed to grasp it in her bound hands. She slammed it against the floor a few times. Pieces of the mechanism fell out.

"That takes care of that problem," Isabella said softly. "Walker? Are you awake?"

There was no response.

She studied the shadowed interior of the cabin again, looking for anything she might be able to use to hack through the duct tape. She considered the small kitchenette. The place had obviously been uninhabited for a very long time, but with luck someone might have left a knife in one of the drawers. She started to work her way across the small room.

"Walker?"

This time she got a groan in response

"Walker, it's me, Isabella. Wake up."

Walker groaned again and stirred. His eyes opened. He looked straight at her.

"It's okay," she said gently. "Fallon will find us."

To her surprise there was no panic in Walker's eyes, just a bleak acceptance.

"She got p-past me, didn't she? I tried to s-stop her."

"I know, Walker. But she used a secret weapon on both of us."

"One of the alien weapons?"

"Yes, but don't worry, it's out of commission. I smashed it. Now we have to get free. I don't suppose you carry a pocketknife."

"Found a real n-nice one in the trash out behind Jones & Jones a few months ago," Walker said. "You wouldn't believe w-what people throw out."

"Do you have it on you?"

"In my new c-coat. Inside pocket. Can't imagine why anyone would throw away such a good coat."

"That's wonderful, Walker." She changed course and started to work her way toward him. "Turn onto your side. Maybe I can get the knife out of your coat."

He did as she instructed.

"Left pocket," he said hoarsely. "Hidden zipper."

It was tedious work trying to manipulate the interior zipper with her hands tied behind her back but she managed to get the pocket unzipped.

Footsteps sounded on the front porch just as she was probing for the knife. She froze, aware that Walker had done the same.

The door of the cabin opened. Norma Spaulding came into the room, a gun in her hand. A heavily bulked-up man who looked like he ate steroids for breakfast, lunch and dinner loomed behind her.

"Let me take a wild, flying leap here," Isabella said. "Your name isn't Norma Spaulding, and you're not in real estate."

"Good guess. I should introduce myself. Sylvia Tremont. I'm a curator at the Arcane museum in L.A."

"Well, that certainly explains a few things," Isabella said. She looked at the man. "Who's this?"

"His name is Vogel. Sort of an odd-jobs specialist. He was assigned to me a couple of days ago by my new associate when I said I was going to need a little assistance cleaning up a few loose ends."

"I s-saw you," Walker said urgently. "I s-saw you both last night. You were t-trying to sneak into the Cove."

Sylvia glanced at him. "I know you saw us. That's why you're going to take a very long swim this evening."

"What were you doing trying to sneak into the Cove?" Isabella asked.

"My new business associate concluded that you were going to be a problem because you are an unpredictable factor at Jones & Jones. She thought it would be best to neutralize you, as it were. She gave me a vial of a new experimental drug that affects the psychic senses in such a way as to make an individual behave in a dangerous and erratic manner. Jones would have assumed that you were going crazy. You would no longer have been any use to him. But when you showed up to check on this nutcase today, I realized that plan was no longer viable. Now I have no choice but to get rid of both of you."

"Killing us will be the biggest mistake you ever made," Isabella warned.

"It wasn't my first choice, believe me. I know Fallon Jones will search for you. That is not a good thing. But I've been very careful. I'm sure that, in the end, he will conclude that you just took off as you have been known to do in the past."

"He'll find you," Isabella promised. "He won't stop looking until he does."

"When this is over, I will disappear so completely that not even Fallon Jones can find me." Sylvia glanced at the pieces of the music box. "You would have to break it. I don't suppose you have any idea what that thing was worth in certain quarters?"

"Speaking of money, you owe Jones & Jones five hundred bucks," Isabella said.

Sylvia smiled. "And you're here to collect?"

"That's right."

"Good luck with that." Sylvia glanced at her watch. "It will be dark in a few hours. You and he will be going over the bluffs into the sea as soon as night falls. I was planning to wait until midnight to make sure no one notices, but I don't think there's any need to hold off, not with this storm. No one will notice one more tourist stopping at the blowhole turnout to dump a couple of bags of trash."

"Since we've got all the time in the world," Isabella said, "mind telling me how you located the Bridewell curiosities?"

"I've been looking for them for years," Sylvia said. "To some extent, I was able to use the resources of the museum, but I had to be extremely discreet. I did not want to draw the attention of my colleagues or J&J. But after a certain point, I decided to fund my own search."

"And to do that, you needed money. A lot of it."

"More than I could afford on my salary from the museum, certainly."

"You set up a profitable little sideline selling off the odd paranormal weapon to Julian Garrett and Caitlin Phillips, using Orville Sloan as the broker."

"Sloan knew the world of paranormal arms dealing," Sylvia said. "It's a highly specialized field, as I'm sure you can imagine. He was the one who suggested that we work with Garrett and Phillips. The arrangement was quite successful for several months. Then I got a solid lead on a cache of curiosities."

"You found one of the two men who survived the explosion in the shelter, didn't you? Was it Kelso? That's the name of the family that used to own the lodge."

"His name was Jonathan Kelso. He was the last member of his family, and he was not mentally stable. By the time I tracked him down he was living in an institution. He told me a fascinating story about how he and two colleagues had discovered a number of Bridewell's clockwork curiosities. They wanted to find out exactly how they worked, but they knew the objects were dangerous. Kelso remembered the old bomb shelter behind the lodge and decided it would be a good place to run their experiments."

"They brought the curiosities here, tuned them up and then things went wrong."

"According to Kelso, there was an explosion. It killed one of the three outright. The second man's senses were severely affected by the heavy dose of radiation. He took his own life a few months later. Something about incessant nightmares. Kelso, himself, as I said, wound up in a psychiatric facility. But he was able to tell me about the commune that was going on in Scargill Cove at the time of the experiments. I started doing some research."

"You found Rachel Stewart."

"By the time I tracked her down she was dying of cancer and using serious pain meds. Her story was somewhat confused, but I was able to put the facts together into a coherent picture."

"She was a Seeker," Isabella said. "The woman everyone thought ran off with Gordon Lasher."

"Well, that was the plan. But Lasher was only interested in Rachel because it turned out she had a strong affinity for glass psi. Not only was she immune to the effects of the curiosities but she also intuitively understood how they worked. Furthermore, she could sense them at a distance."

"That was how she found the tunnel entrance to the bomb shelter."

"Yes," Sylvia said. "Lasher intended to use Rachel to remove the relics from the bomb shelter."

"She got one out for him, the clock."

"Yes. The idea was to store the devices temporarily in the Zander mansion until Lasher could figure out how to transport and sell them. When he and Rachel Stewart went back into the shelter to get another artifact, however, they quarreled. In the heat of the argument Rachel discovered that Lasher did not love her and was only using her. Surprise, surprise."

"So she crushed his skull with a tire iron."

"No," Sylvia said. "There was someone else there that night. Rachel said something about him not being right in the head."

"I hit him," Walker said. He rocked urgently, tears glistening in his eyes. "He hurt Rachel. He hit her and called her names. S-said he was going to take all the alien weapons. Rachel started to c-cry. So I hit him. Then she screamed and ran away through the tunnel and never came back."

"It's okay, Walker," Isabella said gently. She looked at Sylvia. "Thanks to Rachel Stewart, you knew the clock was somewhere in the Zander mansion and that the rest of the curiosities might still be in the shelter."

"Exactly. I set up as a real estate agent in Willow Creek and used my cover to search the mansion. I could sense the clock in the house but I couldn't find it."

"Because it was hidden beneath the new floor the killer had constructed in the basement," Isabella said. "He stored it there."

"I knew that even if I did locate the clock, there was no way I could get into the bomb shelter to get the rest of the curiosities. It was too well guarded by the good folk of Scargill Cove, not to mention a pack of dogs and a very serious lock. I could not find the tunnel entrance, either. I lacked Rachel's talent for sensing the glass psi at a distance."

"So you called in Jones & Jones," Isabella said. "You knew that Fallon would probably sense the clock if he went into the house and that he would tear the place apart to find it."

"Jones & Jones has a history with the Bridewell curiosities. I was quite sure that once Fallon Jones was on the trail, he would keep going until he turned up the rest of the artifacts in the shelter. I was prepared to drop a few hints about the events in the Cove twenty-two years ago if necessary, but as I expected, Jones was inside the shelter within twenty-four hours and the artifacts were trucked off to L.A. twenty-four after that. He's good."

"He wasn't working alone," Isabella said. This was hardly the time to get defensive, but an investigator had a professional reputation to consider, even when looking down the barrel of a gun.

"I'm well aware that you're a strong talent in your own right," Sylvia said. "Jones would never have hired you otherwise. If it's any consolation, I didn't know a serial killer was using the house as a dumping ground."

"Thanks for that. It's a wonder he didn't catch you inside the mansion."

"I was only in the Zander house once."

"You plan to return from your sabbatical and join Rafanelli in his research on the curiosities," Isabella said. "After a discreet amount of time has passed, you will arrange for the gadgets to disappear from the museum vault."

"I'm afraid poor Dr. Rafanelli will get the blame when the Joneses discover that the artifacts are gone," Sylvia said. "Can't be helped, though. Someone has to take the fall. I will eventually resign in due course and disappear."

"Why on earth are you so obsessed with the curiosities?"

Sylvia blinked at the question. "Of course, I forgot, you have no idea, do you? I'm a direct descendant of Millicent Bridewell, and my talent is similar to hers. I can handle the psi in those artifacts."

"You mean you hope you can handle it. According to Fallon Jones, no one understands what Bridewell did with glass and psi."

Sylvia was clearly annoyed. "Now that I have access to a large number of her original creations, I can reverse-engineer them. My goal is to learn enough from them to be able to construct modern versions that will work even better than the originals. Instead of clockwork mechanisms, my curiosities will be powered by state-of-the-art technology."

"That kind of project would be a very expensive undertaking."

"Yes, it will be." Sylvia's expression tightened. "It is also an undertaking that Arcane would refuse to fund, given its ridiculous prohibition against weapons research. But my new associate has very deep pockets and is willing to finance a first-class lab for me."

"Where did you get the music box?"

"Family heirloom," Sylvia said. "Created by Millicent Bridewell herself."

"Why couldn't you just study that artifact to learn what you want to know?"

"It's not that simple," Sylvia said. Anger simmered in the words. "The music box was one of the more complicated examples of Bridewell's work. I've studied it for years and never figured out how she infused the energy into the glass."

"I'll bet you don't have any more luck with the other gadgets, either. How is your new business associate going to like it when she finds out you can't deliver?"

Outrage flashed across Sylvia's face. "All I need is time and a decent lab."

"Alien technology," Walker said. He rocked some more. "Too dangerous. Can't let the g-government have it."

Sylvia glanced at him, irritated. "Don't worry, the Feds will never get their hands on those curiosities."

For the first time Vogel spoke.

"Dogs," he said. He looked toward the window.

Sylvia frowned. "I don't hear anything."

Walker concentrated hard on Vogel.

"You're using a-alien drugs," Walker announced. "Poison."

"What the hell?" Vogel swung around, his face flushed a dark red with sudden fury. "Shut up."

"Yes, you are." Walker rocked fiercely. "You're on a-alien drugs."

"If you won't close your mouth, I'll do it for you," Vogel snarled. He pulled a roll of duct tape out of his pocket.

"Oh, wow," Isabella said. "Is this what they mean by 'roid rage? I've heard it's a major problem with guys who use steroids. No self-control whatsoever."

"Shut up, bitch." Vogel's voice rose. Face twisting, he changed course and went toward her.

"Vogel, stop right now," Sylvia said sharply. "You take orders from me, remember."

Vogel ignored her. He reached down to grab Isabella's arms and started to yank her to her feet.

She got her focus and poured everything she had into an electrifying charge of energy.

"Get lost," she said softly.

Vogel froze. He released her, his expression going slack. He turned toward the door and started walking at a steady, deliberate pace.

"Vogel." Sylvia was alarmed now. "Come back here. Where are you going? What's wrong with you?"

Vogel did not respond. He opened the door, crossed the porch and went down the steps.

"Come back here," Sylvia shouted.

Vogel was in the yard. He disappeared from view, walking off into the driving rain. Somewhere in the distance dogs barked.

Sylvia spun back around to face Isabella. Fury contorted her features. "What did you do to him? You're just a finder-talent."

"I think he must have snapped," Isabella said. "Sorry about that. Maybe he's on drugs like Walker said."

Sylvia stared at Walker. "How did you know?"

Walker rocked.

Something went ping in Isabella's head. It sounded a lot like the ping on Fallon's computer.

"Oh, crap," she whispered. "You're right, Walker."

"Tell me how you know about the drugs," Sylvia hissed.

"Leave him alone," Isabella said.

Sylvia moved toward her. "What did you do to Vogel to turn him into a zombie?"

The storm was at nightmare pitch now. Lightning lit up the sky. It silhouetted the dark figure of Fallon. He came through the doorway on a floodtide of energy.

"No." Sylvia crouched directly behind Isabella and aimed the gun at Isabella's head.

"Make one more move and I'll kill her," Sylvia said. "I swear I will. Stay back."

Isabella sensed the rising heat in the atmosphere. She knew what Fallon was about to do. Sylvia must have sensed the threat as well.

"Stop it," she shouted. "I don't know what's going on here, but I swear I'll kill her before you can do anything to me. It only takes a fraction of a second to pull the trigger. She'll be dead before I will."

Isabella looked at Fallon. "It's okay. Trust me on this."

He stopped.

"That's right," Sylvia said. She seemed to pull herself together. "That's smart, Jones. Very smart. Isabella and I are going to leave now. She stays alive as long as no one follows us. Understood?"

"Understood," Fallon said. But in his eyes there was the promise of death.

"Good." Sylvia straightened slowly. "There's a knife on the floor, Jones. Use it to cut her ankles free."

The dogs were closer now. To Isabella's ears they sounded like a pack of hellhounds.

Fallon walked across the room, picked up the pocket knife and slashed the duct tape that bound Isabella's legs.

"You're sure you want to do it this way?" he said softly.

"I'm sure," she said.

"Shut up, both of you," Sylvia said. "On your feet, Isabella."

Isabella staggered awkwardly to her feet, aware of another kind of energy heightening the atmosphere. She knew then that Sylvia was going to try to kill Fallon.

"Can't stand," Isabella gasped. "My legs are numb."

Sylvia put a hand on her back and shoved her violently toward the door. "Move."

The physical contact gave Isabella the focus she needed. She pulsed energy into Sylvia's aura, more energy than she had ever used in the past. She was suddenly on fire with power. It roared through her, filling the room.

The nexus energy, she thought. I'm drawing on some of the natural power in the vicinity.

"Run," she whispered. "Straight ahead."

Sylvia went absolutely still for an instant. The gun fell from her hand. Once again invisible lightning crackled in the atmosphere. Fallon had a fix.

"No," Isabella repeated.

Sylvia launched herself through the door and fled into the pounding rain.

The dogs were closer now, barking furiously.

Somewhere out in the storm a thin, high scream rose above the roaring wind and waves. It ended abruptly a few seconds later.

The dogs stopped barking.

Fallon pulled Isabella into his arms and held her as if he would never let her go.

A moment later Poppy and Clyde and the rest of the dogs rushed through the door of the cabin. They were delirious at the sight of Isabella. Henry and Vera and several other familiar faces raced up onto the porch and came through the door.

"Everybody okay here?" Henry asked.

Isabella raised her head from Fallon's shoulder and looked at her friends and neighbors.

"Yes," she said. "Everything is okay now."