Silver Master

Chapter 10

ARAMINTA AND MAX RETURNED SHORTLY BEFORE DAWN. The sound of the sliding glass door being opened woke Davis. He watched Trig let the dust bunnies into the apartment.

“Any sign of the relic?” he asked.

“Afraid not,” Trig said.

“Damn. Guess that would have been too easy.”

Max tumbled across the floor to greet him. Araminta drifted down the hall in the direction of Celinda’s bedroom.

Trig stretched. “You need me any longer, boss?”

“No, I can take it from here.” Davis sat up and discovered that there was a blanket covering him.

“Miss Ingram put it over you after you conked out last night,” Trig said.

“Huh.” The thought of Celinda bending over him in what must have been a fairly solicitous manner, ensuring that he didn’t get cold during the night, made him feel much better than he had a moment ago.

He pushed the blanket aside and contemplated a shower. He needed one. Experimentally, he rubbed his jaw. He also needed a shave.

Before he could decide how to proceed, rapid footsteps sounded in the hall.

Celinda appeared. Her hair was a tangled cloud around her face. She wore a dark blue robe secured with a sash and a pair of matching slippers. Araminta was perched on her shoulder.

Davis looked at her and realized that he was getting aroused all over again. He liked Trig a lot, trusted him completely, but right now he wished his friend was anywhere else but here in Celinda’s living room. He didn’t like the idea of Trig or any other man seeing her like this, all warm and soft and flushed from sleep. The surge of possessiveness caught him by surprise.

“Araminta’s back,” Celinda announced excitedly.

“Yeah, they both rolled in a couple minutes ago,” Trig said, angling his head toward Max.

Celinda turned to Davis. She seemed oddly startled at the sight of him sitting there on her sofa. It dawned on him that, what with his crumpled black dress shirt and trousers and the morning beard, he probably looked as if he, too, had spent the night out on the tiles.

Celinda’s hopeful expression dimmed. “No one looks very cheerful. Can I assume that means they didn’t bring back the relic?”

“It’s still missing.” Davis got to his feet. “Mind if I use your shower?”

The request seemed to floor her. Her eyes widened. “Uh.” She recovered quickly, blushing a bright pink. “No, no, of course not. Go ahead. I’ll, uh, start breakfast. Or something. I think I’ve got some eggs.” She turned quickly to Trig. “Will you stay?”

“Appreciate the offer, but if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way,” Trig said. “I need to start working our contacts on the street and inside the Guild, see if we can find the guy who generated those twin ghosts last night.”

“Oh. Yes, of course.” Celinda paused, looking first at Trig and then at Davis. “What about the second man?”

“The getaway driver?” Davis nodded. “We’ll look for him, too. But we haven’t got much to go on there.”

“Well,” Celinda said, “if it helps, I can tell you that he’s got a rather twisted parapsych profile. I would advise extreme caution if either of you happen to run into him again.”

They both looked at her.

“Are you saying that because he’s involved in a criminal enterprise and, by definition, most outlaws probably have twisted profiles?” Davis asked evenly.

“No.” She seemed to hesitate, then come to a decision. She reached up to pat Araminta. “I’m saying that because I can read psi profiles if I get close enough to a person. Last night, for a few seconds, I was very close to the getaway driver.”

Davis looked at Trig and then turned back to her.

“Are you telling us that you can sense other people’s psi energy patterns?” he asked.

“At close range, yes.” She shrugged. “It’s one of the reasons why I’m so good at my job. I can match people psychically as well as in the usual ways.”

Trig whistled softly. “Whoa. Talk about a nonstandard talent. Ever been tested?”

“Yes. My parents suspected I was a little different. They took me to a private lab. The ability to read psi patterns is extremely rare, so I don’t advertise my talent for obvious reasons. But Davis is a strong and evidently rare para-rez himself, so I assume neither of you gets nervous around nonstandard talents.”

“How strong are you?” Davis asked.

She hesitated again. “Very.”

He raised his brows. “Are we talking off the charts?”

“Well, yes,” she admitted, “but I’m sure that’s only because the talent is so rare in the population the testing labs don’t have a good basis for comparison.”

Davis rubbed his jaw again. Something in common, he thought. “How much can you tell about a person based on what you pick up from his or her psi energy patterns?”

She gave him a very somber look. “Often a lot more than I really want to know. There are some very strange people out there.”

“I’ve always heard that psi patterns are unique to individuals,” Trig said.

Celinda nodded. “In my experience that’s true. No two people produce precisely identical psi wave patterns, not even twins.”

“Could you recognize the driver of that car if you got close to him again?” Davis asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “But I would have to be fairly close. No more than a few feet away at most.”

“Oh, man,” Trig said. He looked eagerly at Davis. “That kind of talent would sure be useful in our business, boss.”

“Sort of like having one of those dogs they use to detect drugs in suitcases,” Celinda said dryly.

Trig turned red. “No way, ma’am. I never meant to imply that you’re a dog.” He went almost purple, clearly mortified. “Or anything like that,” he finished weakly.

Celinda gave him a wry smile. “It’s okay, I understand.”

“Your talent,” Davis said, diplomatically emphasizing the word talent, “for picking up another individual’s psi patterns would certainly be useful when it comes to identifying the driver, but it won’t help us locate him. Unfortunately, that’s going to take old-fashioned detective work.”

Trig grimaced. “Which means I’d better get moving.” He looked at Celinda. “Would you mind if I borrowed a book?”

She looked taken aback by the request. “What book?”

“That one.” Trig indicated a volume on the table beside a chair. “I started it after I finished Espindoza’s History last night. Found it on your bookshelf. Hope you don’t mind.”

She looked at the book on the table. So did Davis. From where he sat he could just make out the title. Ten Steps to a Covenant Marriage: Secrets of a Professional Matchmaker.

“Oh, that one.” Celinda suddenly rezzed a dazzling smile for Trig. “Certainly. Help yourself.”

“Thanks,” Trig said. “I only got through chapter one.” He walked back to the table, picked up the volume, tucked it under his arm, and returned to the door. “Nice to meet you, Miss Ingram. Have a good time at the wedding.”

“Thanks,” Celinda said. Her smile faded.

Trig let himself out into the hall and went downstairs, making very little noise for such a solidly built man. Davis listened closely, but he did not hear Betty Furnell’s door open.

He got to his feet. “That book that Trig took with him.”

Celinda raised her brows. “What about it?”

“I assume you’ve read it?”

“I wrote it.”

HE WAITED UNTIL HE HEARD THE SHOWER RUNNING BE fore he went into her bedroom. He stood there for a couple of seconds, inhaling the scent of her space and thinking of how she had made a great fuss about checking to be sure the bridesmaid’s dress was safe. But she had not even glanced into the closet. She had looked under the bed.

He crouched beside the bed. There were no telltale lines indicating a hidden floor safe beneath the wall-to-wall carpet. He ran his fingertips along the baseboard. A section felt loose. He tugged gently.

A ten-inch length of the baseboard popped free. Behind it was a dark opening in the wall.

He reached inside and pulled out a gray sack. The object it contained felt heavy in his hand. It also felt familiar.

He untied the sack. The missing relic was not inside. Something else was, though.

He retied the sack, tucked it into the wall, and replaced the baseboard.

He went back down the hall wondering why a professional matchmaker would have an illegal mag-rez gun hidden under her bed.

A woman who lived alone and worried about intruders would probably keep the gun in a place where she could get at it in a hurry, the drawer in the bedside table for instance. But Celinda kept hers stashed in a very inaccessible location.

The mag-rez had been concealed for some serious purpose. Evidence of a crime committed in the past? Or evidence of one that had not yet been committed?