Running Hot

THIRTY

Damaris came awake with the familiar panicky feeling. Something was wrong. But that wasn’t true. Everything was all right again. The Maui operation had gone off perfectly in the end. Eubanks was dead and La Sirène was back in San Francisco. Her racing heart and the breathless sensation were due to the drug. She dreaded the next injection. It was scheduled for nine a.m.

The phone rang. She rolled onto her side and grabbed it off the bedside table. One glance at the incoming number iced her blood.

“What is it?” she said into the phone. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” La Sirène said impatiently. “Except that I’m running around like a madwoman here getting ready to fly to Acacia Bay. Dear Newlin is sending his private jet for me.” Her voice became slightly muffled as she spoke to someone else. “No, no, not those shoes, you idiot, the blue pair. Blue is my color. I’ll need them for the opening-night party.”

Like a madwoman. Damaris shuddered, wondering if her sister had any idea just how accurate the description was. Probably not. Crazy people didn’t see themselves as crazy.

“That’s great,” she said, taking a couple of deep breaths to calm her racing heart. “You’re going to knock ’em dead as the Queen of the Night.” She winced at her own unfortunate choice of words. “I’m looking forward to the performance. I’m sure all the most important critics will be there.”

“Dear Newlin has promised they will be. Has Daddy found that bitch yet?”

Damaris closed her eyes. “Vivien, please listen to me. The housekeeper isn’t important.”

“I told you, forget the hotel maid,” La Sirène snapped. “I’m not interested in her. She’s nothing to me. I want the other woman, the one who protected the housekeeper and tried to resist my singing.”

Damaris got to her feet, fingers clenched around the phone. “The other woman doesn’t matter, either. Let it go, Vivien. Concentrate on the Acacia Bay performance. Your career is about to take off again. You can’t afford to be distracted.”

“Not the emeralds, you silly creature, I’ll need the sapphire-and-diamond set that dear Newlin gave me. They go with the shoes and the gown.” La Sirène’s voice grew louder as she spoke directly into the phone. “Damaris, this is the least you can do for me. Let me rephrase that. It’s the least

Daddy can do for me. He owes me this much.”

“The important thing is that the woman has no way of knowing who you are. She can’t identify you.”

“This has nothing to do with whether she can identify me. She resisted me. I know she must be a sensitive. Don’t tell me that Daddy can’t find her.”

“He’s still looking for her,” Damaris lied. “I’ll let you know as soon as he finds her.”

“Promise?”

Damaris sighed. “Promise.”

The phone went dead. Damaris stared at it, wondering why it was vibrating. After a couple of seconds she realized that it was shaking because her hand was trembling.

She made herself take several deep, steadying breaths and went to the window. She stood looking out at the lights of Los Angeles for a long time, thinking.

Two things had become very clear. Her fears about using her sister to take out Eubanks had been justified. La Sirène was now obsessed with the mysterious woman she had encountered on Maui. She viewed her as a rival. Given Vivien’s character, that fixation would not end until the woman was dead.

The entire plan was in jeopardy.

She went back to the nightstand and picked up the phone. Daddy answered on the first ring.

“You’re awake,” she said quietly.

“I don’t sleep much these days. What’s wrong?”

“I think we may have a problem. Vivien has become fixated on the woman who discovered her in Eubanks’s hotel room on Maui. Not the housekeeper, the other one.”

There was a short silence and then a soft chuckle. “Your sister may not be as crazy as you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been obsessing on her, myself.”

“I don’t understand,” Damaris whispered. “Why?”

“Because it was simply too much of a coincidence that a sensitive powerful enough to interfere with your sister’s singing just happened to be in that hotel on Eubanks’s floor at that moment.”

Shock reverberated through her. “Yes, of course. I should have realized.”

“Yes, you should have thought about the possibilities.”

“I’m sorry.” She rubbed her damp forehead. “It’s the drug, Daddy. I can’t seem to think straight these days.”

“I know. I told you, the first few months are a little rough. Relax, I’m not annoyed because of this small lapse. I’ve got the situation under control.”

“You found the woman?”

“Her name is Grace Renquist. Turns out she’s just a librarian in the Bureau of Genealogy. A fairly strong aura talent, though. Fallon Jones sent her to Maui along with a bodyguard to get a look at Eubanks. That means she must be able to ID auras.”

“How much does J&J know?”

“At the moment, nothing. As I thought, Jones was watching Eubanks as part of a routine investigation into the death of one of the women he killed, the last victim. The woman’s family hired the agency to look into it. Fallon Jones figured Eubanks for just another high-level sensitive gone bad. Now Eubanks is dead due to a stroke. As far as the agency is concerned, the case is closed.”

“But what about Grace Renquist? You said she’s a high-ranking aura talent. She must have seen Vivien’s aura. A lot of strong auras can recognize individual energy fields. At the very least she must have realized that Vivien is a powerful sensitive of some kind. J&J would follow up on that information.”

“Now you’re thinking like the future director of Nightshade.” Approval laced each word. “You’re right. Miss Renquist has, indeed, become a problem. As things stand, she is the one person who might be able to identify La Sirène. And if La Sirène were to be discovered and identified, well, things could get a bit awkward.”

Comprehension shuddered through Damaris. She had to fight to breathe. “If J&J finds Vivien—” She broke off, unable to finish the sentence.

“Yes, exactly,” Daddy said gently. “It’s highly unlikely, of course, but if J&J manages to track down Vivien, and if Grace Renquist were to identify her as the woman in Eubanks’s hotel room, it is possible that they would make the connection to you and then to me.”

Damaris’s mouth went dry. “You’re not . . . you’re not thinking of doing something to Vivien, are you?”

“Of course not. She’s my daughter. The person who needs to disappear is Grace Renquist. With her out of the picture there will be no one around who can identify La Sirène. We’ll all be safe again.”

She crushed the phone against her ear, trying to think like him, like the future director of Nightshade. “It will have to look like an accident, or at the very least, a Nightshade operation.”

“Very good,” he said. “But don’t worry. I was doing this kind of thing for a living before you were even born. I’ll take care of everything.”

The phone went silent.

She rose and went back to the window.

I’ll take care of everything. That was what a father was supposed to do. So why was she so terrified? It was the damned drug.

She glanced at the clock. Two more hours until the next dose.

William Craigmore put down the phone, set aside his book and pushed himself up from the reading chair. He smiled at the realization that he was actually looking forward to the venture. It had been a long time since he had felt the kind of adrenaline rush that only came with fieldwork. Running Nightshade was a fascinating challenge, but he sometimes missed the old days when it was just him and the other guy playing for keeps in the shadows.

He glanced at his image in the mirror as he went down the hall. He was seventy and still in good health and excellent physical condition. It was too soon to tell if the drug would give him a few extra decades of life, but Sylvester Jones, the alchemist who first concocted it back in the late 1600s, had been convinced that longevity would prove to be a side effect of the drug. Something to look forward to, he thought, especially now that he had found his daughters. He had a genetic stake in the future. He wanted very much to live long enough to see his grandchildren grow up. His offspring, enhanced by the perfected formula, would be the most powerful people on the planet.

He keyed in the code that unlocked the vault door and entered the gallery. The lights came up automatically, revealing the objects on display in glass cases. Each was a memento of an assignment successfully carried out. The bureaucrats at the clandestine government agency he had once worked for would have fainted dead away if they had known that he kept souvenirs. They were so sure they had concealed all traces of the very existence of their operation; so certain that even the agents had all died. Fools. One agent had been smart enough to see the writing on the wall.

The item he wanted was not on display in any of the cases. He went to the back of the room and entered another code into the wall safe. The door swung open. He reached in and took out one of the objects inside.

Just holding it in his hand sent a thrill of anticipation surging through him.

Like old times.