“Sam mentioned that.”
“I can assure you that in the course of tossing out a wide net, the school administrators managed to gather a lot of serious wack-jobs, some of whom no doubt went on to become very scary people,” Gwen said.
“Like the two bastards who assaulted you. Do you know what happened to them?”
“No. They steered clear of the three of us after that. When Abby and Nick and I got out of Summerlight, the last thing we wanted to do was keep in touch with former classmates, believe me. I will give the academy credit for teaching us one very valuable lesson, though.”
“What was that?”
“How to pass for normal,” Gwen said.
“But it’s hard to pretend you’re normal when you get involved in a close relationship of any kind—friend or lover.”
“Obviously, you’ve had some experience,” Gwen said.
“Yes,” he said. “But unlike you, I grew up in a family that accepted the fact that Sam and Emma and I are different.” He smiled. “I should say Dad has accepted it. Mom still tries to pretend the three of us are normal, but deep down, she knows the truth.”
“I’m sure that mothers always do know the truth about their offspring, whether they admit it or not.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “All right, the assault in the linen closet explains how you came to find out that you were capable of sending a man screaming into the night. But that was a deliberate effort on your part and done in self-defense. That doesn’t explain why you would send a lover screaming from your bed.”
“Not intentionally,” she assured him. “Honest.”
“Unintentionally?”
She grimaced. “The problem is my aura. When I sleep, I dream more intensely than most people. My dreaming aura affects anyone who happens to come into physical contact with me. If that person happens to be asleep and dreaming, my currents overpower his. The result, I’m told, is a particularly unnerving kind of nightmare.”
“Well, that answers one question,” he said, satisfied.
She raised her brows. “About my love life?”
“No, about how Zander Taylor happened to go over the falls. You sent him into a nightmare, didn’t you? He went crazy and started running.”
She closed her eyes. “I knew you would figure it out sooner or later.”
“Nice work.”
She opened her eyes and watched him very intently. “It doesn’t bother you that I’ve got the ability to send someone into a nightmare landscape so intense that the victim actually leaps to his death to escape?”
He patted her bare shoulder. “We’ve all got baggage.”
“That’s very broad-minded of you, but in my case my baggage makes me a prime suspect in a few murders, past and present. And some would say that in Zander Taylor’s case, I’m guilty.”
“Not like he’s a great loss to the world,” Judson said.
“You’re not taking this seriously, are you?”
“I’m taking you very, very seriously, Gwendolyn Frazier.”
He tightened his grip on her face and pulled her mouth down to his. He kissed her until she wrapped herself around him once more.
* * *
A LONG TIME LATER, he awoke to the feel of someone shaking him gently.
“Judson,” Gwen said.
“What?” He did not open his eyes.
“Judson, wake up.”
The urgency in her voice brought him fully awake. He sat up swiftly and used his other vision to quarter the room, searching for the threat. Nothing of a dangerous nature presented itself.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.” Gwen was on her knees amid the tumbled bedding. Excitement blazed in her eyes. “That’s just it, nothing’s wrong.”
He sank back against the pillows. “I think I’m missing the point here. If nothing’s wrong, why the hell are you acting like there is something wrong?”
“We both fell asleep.”
“Yeah. Felt good. I haven’t been sleeping too well lately and I needed the rest. Nothing like great sex to do the trick. Better than meds, that’s for damn sure.”
“Yes, you are missing the point. Judson, we both fell asleep. Side by side. I was dreaming and you didn’t even twitch.”
“I try not to twitch too often,” he said. “It makes people nervous.”
“This is no joke. You are the first person I have slept next to in my entire adult life who hasn’t had a really bad reaction to my dream aura.”
“Oh, that.” He stretched his arms overhead. “Between you and me, I wasn’t expecting to run screaming into the night.”
She ignored that. “I was planning to send you back to your own room before I drifted off, but I fell asleep instead. So did you.”
“Probably all that exercise,” he explained.
“You were sleeping quite soundly.”
“Yes, I was, wasn’t I? Can I go back to sleep now?”
“I have a theory,” she said. “It’s just a theory, mind you, but there is a certain logic to it.”
“I’m going to have to listen to this theory before I get to go back to sleep, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are.” She was clearly having trouble containing her excitement. “I think that because you are a strong talent, yourself, you have a kind of immunity to me.”
He raised a finger to silence her. “Now there is where you are wrong, Dream Eyes.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I am anything but immune to you. Just the opposite.”
He pulled her back into his arms and kissed her until she stopped talking.
Twenty
Sometime later, he opened his eyes again when he felt Gwen slide out of bed. He knew she was trying to be discreet about it. Probably headed for the bathroom, he thought. But when he saw her put on the robe and lean down to pick up the map that had fallen to the floor, he realized something else was going on.
He levered himself up on his elbows. “Everything okay?”
“What?” Surprised, she glanced back at him. “Yes, sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. A few minutes ago, I woke up and decided to try the road trip dream again. I went back to the start, back here to Wilby, and I saw a pattern.” She moved to the table and spread the map out across the surface. “But it was all wrong.”
Her urgency got through to him. He shoved aside the covers, sat up and reached for his pants. Zipping his fly, he crossed the room to the desk.
“Tell me about the pattern and what’s wrong with it,” he said.
“I assumed going into the dream that this was a map of towns and places that Evelyn intended to visit for research purposes. But there are too many towns marked.”
“There are only a half-dozen circled.”
“Yes, but that’s about four, maybe five too many. You see, Wesley operates with a tight budget. He doesn’t like to pay for airfare and lodging for a scouting crew to check out the location unless it promises to be good. It’s highly unlikely she would have selected six towns for the next episode of Dead of Night. And if she was working on a big project involving multiple locations, I think she would have talked it over with me and probably Wesley as well.”
He flattened his hands on the table and examined the six towns. “You’re thinking that there’s a connection between these locations? Some paranormal significance?”
“No, well, not exactly, at least not in terms of legends about haunted houses or paranormal vortexes. In my dream, Evelyn told me to go back to the beginning. That was my intuition reminding me that this is the same kind of pattern that she and I uncovered after Zander Taylor went over the falls.”
Judson’s senses stirred. “The two of you were able to identify some of the locations of his previous kills. You concluded that he had targeted people who claimed to be psychic.” He flipped the map over and looked at the six names that had been written there. “I need fifteen minutes on my computer.”
* * *
TEN MINUTES L
ATER he shut down the obituary page of the newspaper he had been studying and checked off the last name on the list that Ballinger had made on the back of the map.
“That’s it,” he said. “Six towns, six deaths, all by natural causes, all within the past eighteen months or so. The names of the deceased match the names on the map. But if someone has started killing again with the camera, there’s one big difference this time.”
“What?” Gwen asked.
“None of the victims was a practicing psychic, real or fake. According to the obituaries, none of them was making his or her living by claiming paranormal talents.”
“I don’t know why the pattern is different, but someone is killing again, the same way Zander Taylor did—by paranormal means.” Gwen drummed her fingers on the table. “Evelyn somehow stumbled onto the truth.”
“The murderer realized she was tracking him so he killed her?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Judson thought about it. “He took her computer and cell phone, hoping to get rid of any traces of her research that might lead the cops to him.”
“He couldn’t have known about the map and where it was hidden,” Gwen said. “Either that or he was unable to get into the mirror engine to retrieve it. I told you, not everyone can handle the psi in that machine. But this doesn’t make sense. Why the change in pattern?”
“We know that Taylor is dead,” Judson reminded her. “Different killer, different pattern, different kind of prey. But there will be something that these six victims had in common, trust me. We just have to find the common thread.”
“Whoever he is, he must be one of the locals here in Wilby,” Gwen said. “Someone who knew about Zander and decided to emulate him. Maybe a copycat killer?”
“Maybe. In addition to the likelihood that the killer is a local, we know one other thing about him.”
Gwen looked up from the map, understanding heating her eyes.
“The killer has enough talent to work the camera,” she said. “We’re looking for another psychic.”
Twenty-one
Elias Coppersmith arrived in a massive, shiny black SUV with heavily tinted windows. Gwen stood with Judson inside the lobby and watched the big vehicle glide into a vacant slot in front of the inn.
“Your brother, Sam, drives a black SUV, doesn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes. Why?” Judson wasn’t paying much attention to the question. He was watching the SUV.
“Just curious,” she said. “Because you drive a black SUV, too. Same brand, I believe.”
“Company discount,” Judson said.
More likely something in the DNA of the Coppersmith men that inclined them toward large vehicles endowed with the souls of trucks, Gwen thought. Other rich guys drove flashy red Ferraris and Porsches.
From inside the inn, it was impossible to see the occupants of the vehicle, but she was mildly surprised when the passenger door opened. A big, lean, silver-haired man who could have been cast in the role of the town marshal in a classic western movie climbed out.
“That’s Dad,” Judson said. “He’s early. Must have left Seattle at zero-dawn-thirty. Wonder who’s behind the wheel? He probably picked up someone from Coppersmith Security before he left.”
“Your father is so paranoid about that geode that he brought an armed escort?”
“Trust me, knowing Dad and his opinion of Hank Barrett, it’s not just the escort who will be armed,” Judson said.
She thought about the pistol strapped to Judson’s ankle and wondered if going about armed was another Coppersmith family trait.
“I’d better go out and let him know he’s got the right place,” Judson said. “I’ll be right back.”
He crossed the lobby with a few long, easy strides, pushed open the glass door and went outside.
Gwen studied the family greeting scene through the lobby windows, firmly suppressing the faint, wistful sensation that fluttered through her. There was no big male hug exchanged between Judson and Elias, she noticed. But the bond between father and son was so strong that she could sense it even from where she stood. The power of a close-knit family, she thought. There was nothing else like it.
At that moment, the driver’s-side door of the SUV opened. A lithe, elegantly slender, good-looking man with platinum-blond hair cut in a crisp, military style alighted from the cab with a dancer’s grace. He was dressed head-to-toe in fashionable and very expensive black—black turtleneck, black trousers, black loafers. Gwen knew that all of the attire came with designer labels.
Delight spilled through her. She had family, too. The only difference was that her brother wasn’t related by blood.
She rushed through the lobby, burst out of the doorway and flew across the parking lot.
“Nick,” she called. “What are you doing here?”
Nick Sawyer grinned, showing a lot of very white teeth, and opened his arms. She threw herself into his embrace. He caught her with deft ease and swung her around in a circle. When he set her on her feet, she hugged him fiercely.
“I came to check up on you,” he said. “The last time one of my sisters got mixed up with a Coppersmith, she nearly got killed. Are you okay?”
She laughed. “I’m fine.”
Judson materialized at her side. He gave Nick an assessing look.
“You must be the cat burglar.”
“That’s antiquarian book dealer to you,” Nick said, his eyes going cold.
“Right.” Judson looked amused. “That would be the antiquarian book dealer who keeps the climbing gear stashed in the trunk of his car.”
“Everyone should have a hobby,” Nick said. “By the way, there’s a suitcase in the back of the car. Abby packed some clothes for you, Gwen. She knew you hadn’t planned to stay long here in Wilby. She figured that by now you’d be needing a few things.”
Gwen smiled, aware of the warmth welling up inside. “That’s my sister, always looking out for me, even while she’s preparing for her own wedding.”
Twenty-two
I’m telling you, somehow, somewhere, Hank Barrett is involved in this thing,” Elias said. “He sent his son to do his dirty work. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
From where he stood at the window of Judson’s room, he could see glimpses of the river through a thick stand of fir and pine. He had never been comfortable in heavily wooded terrain. Being surrounded by trees that blotted up the light and limited visibility made him uneasy. He had always preferred the wide open stretches of the desert where a man could see what was coming at him.
The four of them and the largest house cat Elias had ever seen were crowded into Gwen’s small sitting room. The cat was stretched out alongside Gwen in one of the old-fashioned reading chairs. Judson lounged against the mantel. Nick was draped in the other wingback chair, methodically emptying the tray of fancy little sandwiches that sat on the small table. It had been a long drive from Seattle, and Elias had forbidden any food-related stops on pain of being left at the side of the road.
“No, Dad,” Judson said. It was clear he was holding on to his patience with an effort of will. “It’s not the only answer that works. In fact, it’s not even the most likely answer.”
Damn it, none of his offspring understood, Elias thought. He gripped the window ledge very tightly. Sure, they got that Barrett’s Helicon Stone was serious competition. They had grown up in the hard rock business and they expected a degree of ruthlessness from a tough competitor. But they did not fully comprehend the depth of the personal hostility toward Coppersmith, Inc., that Barrett had been nursing for decades. They had not had to confront the man face-to-face and listen to him vow to destroy everything that Elias had built, everything he held dear. Nor did Judson, Sam and Emma entirely believe him when he warned them that Barrett had passed his grudge on down the line to his son, Gideon.
But, then, they did not know the whole story, Elias reminded himself. Only Willow did and she had kept his secrets.
“What makes
you so sure Barrett is not involved?” he asked.
“I told you my logic,” Judson said evenly. “If Gideon had gone after the stone, he would have been a lot more subtle about it, and it’s a good bet that he would have been successful. But we’ve got the geode.”
Elias grunted.
Judson’s coldly determined expression was all too familiar, Elias thought. Every time he complained to Willow that none of his three offspring seemed interested in taking over the helm of Coppersmith, Inc., she reminded him that each of them had inherited not only his savvy intelligence and his feel for rocks and crystals but also his titanium-strong, mile-wide stubborn streak. None of them could work with you for more than five minutes, Willow always said. You will have to step down before one of them will step up to take your place.
But he couldn’t step down, Elias thought. Not yet, not until he had made certain that Coppersmith, Inc., and his family were safe from Hank Barrett. Should have gotten rid of him the old-fashioned way all those years ago and buried him out in the desert. No one would have found the body, and I wouldn’t be dealing with this problem today.
But a neat, tidy solution had been impossible. Willow had forbidden it. And when you got right down to it, how did you go about killing a man who had saved your ass more than once in the middle of a firefight and whose ass you had saved, in turn? Some lines could not be crossed. There was a rule about it somewhere.
“You can’t know for sure that Barrett’s not involved,” he insisted.
But his own logic was flawed and he knew it. Judson was right. Wilby was a small town. If Gideon Barrett had come here to get the stone, he would have found it and taken it.
Gwen spoke up from her chair.
“I don’t know anything more about the Barretts or Helicon Stone than what Judson has told me,” she said, “but I do know a considerable amount about Evelyn Ballinger and the circumstances here in Wilby. I agree with Judson. I very much doubt that Evelyn was murdered by outsiders. This was local and it was personal.”