A euphoric sense of discovery slammed through him. The experience of manipulating the artifact had charged him, energized him, in a thousand different ways. A whole new world had just opened up for him. He knew what the night gun really was, what it had been intended to do.
He now knew who and what he was; what he was meant to do.
He wanted to roar his discovery from the top of the tallest hotel casino in Vegas. He was intoxicated with the knowledge that the crystal device had worked.
Sierra went to him and wrapped her arms around him.
“You did it,” she whispered into his shirt. “I knew you would.”
And this, he realized, was exactly what he needed to make his new world absolutely perfect—Sierra in his arms.
“I found it,” he said.
Everyone in the room was looking at him, wondering what he meant. But Sierra understood. She smiled and stepped back to look at him.
“Your calling?” she said.
“I know this is going to sound a little over the top, but yes, I know what I need to do. I’m going to carry on Griffin Chastain’s research.”
Lily frowned. “You want to become a magician?”
North laughed. “That was just a day job for Griffin Chastain. I think he found his true passion when he designed and created the crystal devices that Rancourt eventually stole from the laboratory at Fogg Lake.”
Chandler eyed the crystal gun. “You want to design paranormal weapons?”
Lucas groaned. “We’ve got enough trouble as it is dealing with the fallout of the old lost labs research.”
Victor grunted. “The very last thing we need is to have more unpredictable weapons floating around.”
North shook his head. “You don’t understand. Griffin Chastain wasn’t inventing weapons. He was designing paranormal medical devices. His research was all about using dark light to help balance and heal the human aura, specifically the auras of people who have some extra senses. People like us.”
Victor looked dubious. “That may have been his intention, but it’s obvious the technology he created can be used to injure or kill.”
Byron Raines spoke up. “Hasn’t that always been true of the healing arts? Any medicine or medical device that is powerful enough to save a life is usually powerful enough to injure or even kill. From potent medications to a surgeon’s knife, it’s always about balance and intent.”
“Byron is right,” Lucas said. “In any event, we don’t have a lot of options here. We now know for certain the technology exists. It’s out there. No putting that toothpaste back in the tube. Who knows what dangerous devices will turn up from the era of the lost labs? There will be other people like Loring who will try to weaponize artifacts. We’re going to need defenses, including technology that can heal the damage done to auras. Our best bet is to take control of that research. It fits into our core mission.”
Chandler looked at Lucas and Victor. “There’s no one better qualified to take charge of the R and D of my father’s work than his grandson.”
Victor exhaled heavily and then nodded. “You’re right. The Foundation will provide you with a lab, North.”
“Thank you,” North said. “The first step is to find the rest of the devices Rancourt stole from the Fogg Lake lab.”
“Got a plan?” Sierra asked.
“Same plan I had back at the start of this thing,” North said. “Just haven’t had time to follow through on it.”
“What’s that?”
“Follow the money.”
Victor raised his brows. “The forensics accounting department may be able to help you out with that project.”
CHAPTER 43
Lily followed Sierra out into the hall.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said. “You saved my son and my husband. I am so grateful I’m afraid I’m going to burst into tears any second now.”
“North is the one who saved Mr. Chastain,” Sierra said. “I’m just the go-between. I was hired to help track down the artifact and arrange for North to acquire it. I did my job, that’s all.”
Her parents were standing nearby, sipping coffee. She was aware that Byron was studying her with an assessing gaze, as if he were analyzing her words the way he intuitively analyzed a poem. Her mother had a knowing look.
Lily smiled a misty smile and shook her head. She looked through the observation window of the hospital room. Inside, North and Chandler were talking with Victor and Lucas. It was obvious the conversation was serious in nature.
“North told me you discovered that someone deliberately sabotaged those damned glasses he’d worn for the past few weeks,” Lily said. “There’s no telling what might have happened if you hadn’t come into his life when you did.”
“There’s a lot of talent at Foundation headquarters,” Sierra said. “I’m sure eventually someone would have figured out what was going on.”
“Maybe, but probably not in time to save his night vision. What matters to me is that you were the one who was there when he needed you.” Lily turned away from the window. “There’s something else I want to thank you for as well. All these years Chandler and North have lived with the knowledge that Griffin Chastain might have been a traitor. I know the sins of the fathers are not supposed to be handed down to the sons, but that is exactly what happens in real life. Chandler and North have both tried to overcome Griffin’s reputation as a traitor, but they couldn’t, not entirely.”
“‘. . . And nothing that I try to do brings credit to my name,’” Sierra quoted softly.
Lily gave her a searching look. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a line from a poem Dad sent to me a few days ago,” Sierra explained. She glanced at Byron. “I read the whole thing to North on the plane. He told me ‘Hope and Love’ could have been written for him. He said he felt as if he was always dealing dust. That his cards crumbled in his hands.”
“Evidently North was also searching for his calling,” Byron said. He glanced through the observation window. “Looks like he found it.”
Lily smiled at Sierra. “I’m not sure about the calling business, but I do know you helped North restore the family honor. That means more than you can possibly imagine to both him and his father. And because it matters so much to them, it matters to me, too.”
“Thank you,” Sierra said. “But until the cleaners find Loring and those last two Puppets, I’m afraid your family is still in danger. It’s obvious that Loring has a personal vendetta going against the Chastains.”
Byron nodded in a somber manner. “The desire for revenge can be handed down through a family as surely as the sins of the fathers. And it is equally destructive.”
The door of the hospital room opened just as he finished speaking. Victor emerged.
“Unfortunately, you’re right, Byron,” he said. “We’ve got all the cleaners looking for Loring and his thugs. It’s just a matter of time before we track them down. By now the two Puppets who got away are probably highly unstable, but that will only make them more dangerous.”
North came out of the room, followed by Chandler and Lucas.
North focused on Victor. “You’ve had time to look into the background of Garraway, the director at Riverview. Find anything useful?”
Victor frowned. “As far as we can tell, Garraway was, as your intuition indicated, just the money guy. He was a skilled con man who made a fortune with a sophisticated pyramid scheme. Indications are he had some talent. Loring evidently convinced him to back the Riverview project.”
“Takes a psychic con man to con another psychic con man,” Lucas observed. “Loring must have promised to tune some of the weapons to Garraway’s signature. Either that or he promised Garraway a cut of the action. Whatever the case, Garraway went for it.”
“Everything relating to Riverview was in the name of a shell corporation
,” Victor added. “But we haven’t found anything that directly connects to Loring. No bank accounts. No credit cards. No cell phone. He was living as far off the grid as it was possible to get.”
“What about his car?” North asked.
“That was in the name of the Riverview corporation,” Victor said. “Just like everything else.”
North got a thoughtful expression. “He’ll have a safe house, not just for himself but for the devices that Rancourt stole. They’re all red-hot.”
“But somehow they’ve remained concealed all these years,” Sierra said. “There haven’t even been any rumors about them. Trust me—Mr. Jones, the serious dealers and the go-betweens who work the underground market would have heard about such a valuable cache of crystal tech. You just can’t keep something like that quiet, not for decades.”
“Unless,” North said, “the artifacts have been stored in a collector’s vault all this time.”
Lucas got a speculative look. “If you’re right, we’re talking about a collector who stole the cache before the lost labs were shut down.”
“Crocker Rancourt,” North said. “He took them from the lab vault shortly before he murdered my grandfather and evidently died without revealing where he hid them. Somehow Loring discovered the artifacts. They must have been stashed in a very secure vault, one that hasn’t been opened since Crocker Rancourt locked the relics inside.”
“We tore the Riverview hospital apart as soon as we moved the patients out,” Victor said. “We’ve still got a team there to secure Loring’s lab, but so far they haven’t found anything except the artifacts that were stored in the lab vault there.”
“I need to take a look at what the forensic accountants found,” North said. “Everything.”
CHAPTER 44
North walked into the crimson-and-gold living room of the Abyss. He had a sheaf of printouts in his hand.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
The satisfaction of the hunter who has picked up the trail resonated in his voice.
Sierra had been dozing on a red velvet sofa, a cashmere throw tucked around her. She sat up slowly, yawning, and glanced at the big clock above the fireplace. It was two in the morning.
“What, exactly, have you got?” she asked.
“I found Loring’s bolt-hole. With luck, he’ll still be there, because he has no reason to think we’ve located his hideout. If I’m right, the cache of weapons will also be in the house.”
“What house?”
“An old one on a private estate on Bainbridge Island.”
“Lots of old estates tucked away on Bainbridge,” Sierra said. “You never really notice them, because the island is still surprisingly rural.”
“An entity called the Riverview Trust has owned this particular estate since the days of the lost labs. The trust fund has paid the taxes on it every year since the purchase. Here’s the kicker—Victor’s forensic accounting people were able to discover that the trust was originally established by Crocker Rancourt. The property has never been sold.”
“If Loring really is Harlan Rancourt, that means the house stayed in the family all these years,” Sierra said. “If that’s true, why didn’t Stenson Rancourt go after Crocker Rancourt’s tuning device years ago, when he was running the Foundation?”
“Maybe,” North said softly, “Stenson never knew about the artifacts. Maybe Crocker Rancourt died with his secret.”
“There’s another possibility,” Sierra said. “Talent does go down through the bloodline, but it never shows up in exactly the same way in each generation. Maybe Stenson didn’t get a full dose of Crocker Rancourt’s ability or maybe his psychic talent took a different twist.”
North sat down beside her. “So Stenson either didn’t know about the relics or else he couldn’t find them. Yet somehow the man who calls himself Delbridge Loring managed to locate them. He probably found the tuning device at the same time. He must have been thrilled at first.”
“Until he discovered that the tuning device did not respond to his psychic signature. That was when he realized that it had probably been engineered for Griffin Chastain. It was the most likely explanation because your grandfather and Crocker Rancourt were the only two people involved in the creation of the night gun. They would not have tuned it to anyone else. It was too dangerous.”
“With his knowledge of the paranormal he would have understood that using the improperly tuned devices was extremely dangerous,” North said. “But he could not abandon such a valuable cache of paranormal tech. Whatever else he is, Loring is clearly a scientist who has studied the paranormal. He knows his way around a laboratory. He was desperate. He opened the Riverview Psychiatric Hospital with financial backing from Garraway, recruited the Puppets and started conducting experiments on street people who had some talent.”
“He must have heard the rumors about Griffin Chastain’s dowsing rod coming onto the market,” Sierra said. “He knew he might be able to use it to find the old lab. But he didn’t know what the locator device looked like. Only a Chastain could recognize the psychic signature of the artifact.”
“So Loring made sure my father heard the rumor that a Chastain artifact had been picked up by Swan Antiques. Then he had Chandler followed. After Dad emerged from Swan’s with the radio, Loring figured he had it made.”
“He ordered his Puppets to murder your father and grab the artifact. He told them to use the crystal weapon because he did not want to leave any evidence at the scene that the Foundation investigators could follow.”
“But the device failed to kill Dad,” North said.
“And suddenly you were on the scene, asking questions.”
North leaned over and gave her a quick kiss. “I wasn’t alone. I had the best go-between in Seattle working with me.”
“A Vault go-between strives to uphold the highest professional standards.”
“Spoken like a pro.” North looked down at the financial papers he was holding. “This whole damned business is about to come to an end. But we have to move fast. I talked to Victor a few minutes ago. He’s giving orders to get the Foundation jet fueled and ready. I’m leaving for Seattle with a team of cleaners in about forty minutes.”
“I’m coming with you,” Sierra said. She stood and tossed the cashmere throw over the back of the sofa. “This is my contract. I deserve to be in on the ending.”
“Yes,” North said. “You do.”
CHAPTER 45
The big house was Victorian in style—architecturally speaking, you couldn’t call it a Gothic nightmare, North thought, but with its darkened windows, wildly overgrown gardens and big iron gates, it certainly qualified as ominous. It looked as if it had been abandoned decades earlier.
There was no sign of a vehicle, but the doors of the three-car garage were all closed.
He looked at his team—his old team, the one he had worked with for the past couple of years. Jake Martindale, Zeke, Dallas and Brianna had volunteered to accompany him on this operation. Everyone at the Foundation knew he had regained his vision, but the fact that the special glasses had been poisoned was a closely kept secret.
“All right,” he said, “stick to the plan. Jake, take Zeke and go in from the back when I give the word. First priority is to secure the basement. If I’m right and there is a vault, it will most likely be underground. The objective is to make sure Loring doesn’t get into it. If he does, he will probably escape through a tunnel. Every serious collector has a safe room and an exit strategy.”
“And if we do run into Loring or one of his Puppets?” Jake asked.
“If Loring is armed, it will be with a standard-issue firearm, not one of the artifacts. He knows better than to take the risk. That’s why we’re all wearing vests. The Puppets, however, may still be armed with artifacts. Both the relics and the Puppets are highly unstable and unpredictable. Use the tranquilizer g
uns on anything that moves.”
They were working with limited information about the layout of the house. North had found some aerial views but no floor plans. The mansion had never been on the market, so there were no photographs of the interior.
Sierra waited quietly on the side. She had declined the offer of a tranquilizer gun on the grounds that she had no experience with one. Instead she had her locket out from under her leather jacket, within easy reach, and she had removed one glove.
“You’ll follow Dallas, Brianna and me in,” North said to her.
“Got it,” she said. She looked at the mansion. “Lots of bad energy in that house.”
There were murmurs of agreement from the team.
North took the lockpick out of the pocket of his trousers and went toward the gate. But at the last second he stopped and simply gave the gate a shove. It swung open on squeaking hinges.
“Unlocked,” Jake said. “That could be good news or bad news.”
“Pretty sure it’s bad news,” North said. “Loring is running.”
It only went to prove the age-old wisdom that held that every good battle plan fell apart the minute you launched it.
They all moved through the gate into the heavily overgrown gardens.
“Same plan,” North said. “Jake and Zeke, go in the back door. The rest of us will go in through the front door. Sierra, stay at the rear. If things get noisy, get out.”
“Understood,” Sierra said.
The front door was unlocked. North led the way into the hall. There was no indication that anyone was in the house.
“Back door was locked,” Jake announced through the communicator, “but we’re in. No sign of anyone around.”
“Loring must have been in a hell of a hurry,” Brianna said. “Didn’t even bother to lock his front door. Think he was tipped off?”
“I doubt it,” North said. “Victor and I kept this operation very tight. I think it’s more likely Loring got scared and ran.”