In Too Deep

She glanced at him and smiled. In spite of the exhausting day, he looked energized. Sherlock Holmes with a bunch of new clues and leads to sort out.

  "What do you think is going on inside Nightshade at this very moment?" she asked.

  "My gut tells me that things have changed drastically at the top of the organization. The command structure fell apart after the founder died, and it has not yet had time to reconstitute itself. I'm not sure it can. I am finally beginning to perceive the outlines of the new version of the organization."

  "I take it that you're not envisioning a kinder, gentler Nightshade?"

  "No, I think that, for the time being, we're going to find ourselves dealing with a handful of mini-Nightshades, each one operating independently."

  "Like a bunch of criminal gangs instead of one single mob?"

  "Right." Fallon took his feet off the coffee table. He leaned forward, forearms braced on his thighs and cradled his glass in both hands. His eyes gleamed with a familiar intensity. "Which means that there is a high probability of outright warfare between some of the gangs. We're talking the usual corporate politics. There will be shifting alliances. There will be power grabs. Backstabbings. Betrayals."

  "You look like a kid who just got a big stack of birthday presents."

  His eyes heated with a little psi. She could almost hear the spark and snap of energy in the atmosphere.

  "The infighting will work in our favor," he said. "It will give us lots of cracks and fissures to exploit."

  "What about the formula? From what you've told me, whoever controls it, controls Nightshade."

  "The formula was being produced in a number of different locations before Craigmore was killed. From what we can tell, each lab functioned independently, conducting its own research on the original version of the drug."

  "All in an effort to deal with the side effects?"

  "Yes. We took down five of the labs, but there are a few more out there that we haven't found. We have to assume that the research is continuing and that new variations on the drug are in the pipeline. Some versions are no doubt more effective than others. Each drug producer will fight to keep its formula secret while trying to steal other, more effective versions."

  "So, in addition to the infighting, betrayals and backstabbings, we'll be seeing some corporate espionage among the remaining circles."

  "We can work with that," Fallon said. "Where there is espionage work to be had, there are any number of job openings available for double agents, traitors, thieves and spies."

  "And killers?"

  "Yes," Fallon said. He looked satisfied. "I think the illusion-talent in Seattle will fit right in."

  37

  He woke up in Isabella's double bed, aware that it was nowhere near dawn. He checked the glowing dial of his watch. Two in the morning. Isabella was neatly tucked into the curve of his body. He was suddenly, fully aroused.

  He eased one hand under the hem of her nightgown and moved his palm upward over her warm thigh. Levering himself up on his elbow, he kissed her shoulder.

  "Are you awake?" he asked.

  "No."

  He slid his fingers between her legs. "Are you sure?"

  "I'm sure."

  "Okay," he said. "I just wondered."

  He pressed himself against her soft rear, nibbled on her earlobe and started to tease her lightly with his fingers.

  She sighed and turned onto her back. He felt energy heighten in the shadows. When he jacked up his senses, he saw the gentle heat in her eyes. She put her arms around his neck.

  "I'm awake now," she said.

  "So am I."

  "I noticed."

  He moved over her, capturing her beneath him, and kissed her. With a soft, languid whisper, she opened for him, inviting him into her warmth. He made love to her, slowly, deliberately, until she was hot and shivery in his arms, until he sensed the escalating tension deep inside her. Only then did he thrust into her.

  "Fallon."

  She came almost immediately and so did he.

  When it was over, he withdrew reluctantly and fell back onto the pillow beside her. Reaching down between them he found her hand and clasped it. He waited until both of them were breathing normally again.

  "Tomorrow we'll drive up the coast to Eclipse Bay and find your grandmother," he said.

  "You're sure she's there?"

  "Yes," he said. "It's all right to contact her now. You can call her in the morning. She's no longer in any danger."

  "Thanks to J&J."

  He looked up at the ceiling, intensely aware of her hand in his. "You're safe now, too."

  "Yes."

  "You can go anywhere," he said. "You don't have to hide out in Scargill Cove."

  "I'm not hiding, not anymore. I've spent my entire life on the outside looking through the windows of people who actually have lives. Now I've got one of my own and I'm going to live it."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Scargill Cove feels like home," she said. "Interesting job. Nice neighbors. I think I was cut out for small-town living."

  "You're sure you like the job?"

  "I was born for it," she said.

  "That's good because I need you to help me do this work."

  "I agree."

  "Marry me, Isabella."

  She did not respond.

  The unquenchable fires of chaos froze. Time stopped. Maybe his heart stopped, as well. He discovered he could not breathe, did not want to breathe, if he did not get the right answer.

  "You don't have to marry me to keep me at my desk at J&J," Isabella said eventually. "I'll stay with you."

  "I'm a Jones. In my family we get married. Ceremony, license, the whole works."

  "Interesting customs in your family. We don't do the license thing in mine."

  "I'm hoping you'll adopt my family traditions, but if you don't want to do that, I'll take you any way I can get you."

  "I think I could adopt your customs if you think you can go along with one of my family traditions."

  "I'll do anything for you," he said simply. "Name it."

  "In my family we fall in love. Can you love me? Because I love you, Fallon Jones, with all of my heart."

  The glorious fires of chaos flared high once more. Time went forward. His pulse restarted. He could breathe again.

  "Isabella." He pulled her into his arms, crushing her to him. "I will love you for the rest of my life and whatever comes after."

  "In that case," she said, "I will be happy to break a few old family traditions and marry you. In fact, to prove how much I love you, I'll even use my real name on the wedding license."

  He laughed, the energy of joy pouring through him in a torrent. And then he was kissing her and she was kissing him and the night was on fire.

  THE NEWS of the death was in the Willow Creek paper the following morning. Fallon read it to Isabella over coffee.

  The unidentified body of a man was found shot to death in a concealed marijuana plantation early this morning. Authorities believe the man either wandered into the plantation by accident or went there deliberately to steal some of the plants. It is believed that he was killed by guards hired to protect the crop.

  A representative of the sheriff's department said that the marijuana will be destroyed. The growers have been declared persons of interest. Anyone having any information about those responsible for the plantation is asked to contact the authorities.

  "I told him to get lost," Isabella said. "He blundered into someone's hidden marijuana plantation and got shot."

  "If it's any consolation, he probably wouldn't have lasted long, anyway," Fallon said. "Not if he was on the drug. The latest information we have indicates that those who take it must take a dose twice a day, every day. Miss even a single dose and the senses start to deteriorate. Insanity and death usually follow within forty-eight hours."

  "Yes, I know," Isabella said.

  "But it doesn't make you feel any better."

  "No," she said.

  38


  It had been a very bad week.

  Victoria Knight took her glass of wine out onto the balcony of her condo to drink. The lights of Seattle glittered in the rain.

  A very bad week.

  Two well-conceived projects had floundered. It was true that the one involving Carolyn Austin had been chancy from the start. The odds had been stacked against success, Victoria thought, but when her new associate within Arcane had suggested the idea, she had thought it worth a shot. The opportunity to weaken J&J and, perhaps, loosen the grip of the Jones family on the Society had been irresistible. They had sought to harness the raw energy of a grieving mother driven by an obsessive desire for revenge and it had almost worked. Almost.

  The second project had been far more elaborately designed and carried out. It definitely should have been successful. Victoria's fingers tightened on the delicate stem of the glass. The concept of developing a para-weapons lab based on Bridewell's inventions had been brilliant. It should have worked.

  Both projects had floundered because of Isabella Valdez and, it seemed, the very town of Scargill Cove. Something about Isabella's energy made her formidable. It was a shame that Sylvia Tremont had been unsuccessful in the attempt to introduce the poison into Isabella's kitchen. But that had been another long shot.

  As for the Cove, it was as if the small community was guarded by some kind of protective force field.

  Two excellent projects in ruins. In the old days when Nightshade had been governed by Craigmore, that kind of track record would have meant a death sentence.

  But Nightshade was different now. Following Craigmore's death, the executives of the Inner Circle had been unable to elect a new director. Instead, they had gone for one another's throats, literally in some cases. Two of the people at the top had recently been found dead. The official verdict in each instance was natural causes, but she was quite sure that was not the case. Someone was getting rid of the competition.

  Meanwhile the surviving circles were on their own and operating independently. She had no way of knowing how many more were out there in addition to the one she controlled, but she had to assume that there were other cells that possessed a version of the formula.

  But she had Humphrey Hulsey, the most talented of all the researchers, working on the drug. He was overseeing the construction of his new lab at that very moment. She had every confidence that the version of the formula that came out of his facility would be the most powerful and the most stable.

  Whoever controlled the strongest variation of the drug, controlled Nightshade.

  A bad week. But she had uncovered three traitors within Arcane, thereby proving that the fundamental strategy had potential. Carolyn Austin and Sylvia Tremont had failed, but they were proof that the Joneses had enemies who could be turned against them.

  As for the third Jones enemy, he was now her new business associate. He was going to prove invaluable because he moved in the highest circles of the Society. The desire for vengeance was a powerful motivator. Her new associate hated the Joneses with a passion that had been seething in his bloodline for generations.

  "More wine, Victoria?" he said behind her.

  She looked down and saw that her glass was empty. She turned around. "Yes, thanks. It's been a difficult week."

  Adrian Spangler smiled. Cold energy shivered in the atmosphere around him.

  "Something tells me things will soon be looking up," he said. "Together, you and I are going to destroy the Joneses and everything they have created. We will take over Arcane."

  He came forward with the bottle of wine. Before he filled her glass, he kissed her. She felt her blood heat.

  Adrian was valuable because of his position within Arcane. He possessed a powerful talent and, like her, he was smart enough to stay off the formula until Hulsey had proven that it was stable. The sexual attraction between them had been instantaneous from the start.

  Adrian Spangler was everything she needed to achieve her objectives, Victoria thought. But she was starting to wonder who was using whom.

  Sometimes Adrian Spangler scared the hell out of her.

  39

  They drove into Eclipse Bay just after sundown. Like all small towns on the coast in winter, the community was quiet and mostly dark. The shops on the main street were closed.

  Fallon followed the directions he had been given and pulled into the driveway of a weathered cabin. Light glowed in the windows. There was another vehicle in the drive, an SUV painted camouflage green and brown.

  The door of the cabin opened before he got the engine shut down. Two women came out onto the porch. Both wore their tightly permed steel-gray hair cut short in the classic senior helmet. The taller of the two was dressed in military-style fatigues and heavy black boots. The shorter one wore a faded denim shirt, jeans and running shoes. In spite of their age, there was an air of wiry vigor about the women.

  Isabella smiled. "The smaller one is my grandmother. On the phone she said she's calling herself Bernice Fitzgerald here in Eclipse Bay."

  "That means the other woman is Arizona Snow," Fallon said. "I've talked to her once or twice on the phone, but we've never met in person."

  "Easy to believe they really did work for some clandestine black-ops agency at one time. They both look pretty tough, don't they?"

  "I like that in a woman," Fallon said. "I'd be glad to have either one at my back in a bar fight."

  Isabella laughed and unbuckled her seat belt. "You've got me, instead."

  "You'll do."

  She cracked open the door, jumped out and ran toward the porch.

  "Grandma. I knew you were alive."

  The smaller woman opened her arms for Isabella. "About time you got here. What took you so long?"

  Fallon climbed out of the SUV and looked at the woman in fatigues. "A pleasure to meet you, Arizona Snow."

  "Well, well, well, so you're Fallon Jones." Arizona gave him a head-to-toe survey and nodded once, evidently satisfied. "Yep, you look exactly like I thought you would. Come on inside, both of you. You're just in time for dinner."

  THEY SAT at the old oak table and ate the hearty, cumin-scented stew that Bernice had made. There was crusty bread and a salad on the side.

  "I knew as soon as I got that phone call from Isabella telling me about the conspiracy she had uncovered at her new job that she had stumbled into something real dangerous," Bernice said. "Told her to go to ground. If that didn't work, I said, get yourself to Scargill Cove and contact Fallon Jones. He'll know what to do, I said."

  "It was more complicated than we guessed," Isabella said. She bit off a chunk of bread and chewed with enthusiasm. "The conspiracy at Lucan involved stolen paranormal weapons and ultimately linked to an even bigger conspiracy involving this group called Nightshade. They've stolen a secret formula from Arcane. The stuff enhances psychic talents but it's badly flawed. Makes you crazy."

  Bernice narrowed her eyes. "I had a feeling that Lucan's operation was just the tip of the iceberg."

  Arizona leaned back in her chair, grimly knowing. "A stolen formula and paranormal weapons, eh? Now that explains a lot. Wouldn't surprise me if there's a connection to what's going on here at the Institute. They tried to smuggle in some Area 51 artifacts a while back, but I put a stop to that."

  "Wheels within wheels, all right." Bernice chuckled. "Reminds me of the old days with the Agency."

  "Sure does," Arizona said.

  Like old comrades in arms, the two started to talk, sharing war stories of the days when they had worked for clandestine agencies.

  Fallon settled back to enjoy himself. Isabella leaned forward to whisper under cover of the lively conversation.

  "What are you thinking?" she asked.

  "That I feel right at home," he said. "I'm with my kind of people. No one in this room thinks I'm weird."

  "Of course not."

  Arizona got up and took a bottle of whiskey out of the cupboard.

  "Remember that time when they assigned us to find
out what was really going on in that basement in a building at the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina?" she said to Bernice.

  "Sure do." Bernice snorted. "Turned out to be another black-ops agency running lucid dreaming experiments. They were using psychic dreamers to hunt serial killers. What a snafu that was. The director of the dream research operation thought our director was trying to take over his territory and vice versa. Turned into a real pissing contest. Classic bureaucratic turf war."

  "I still laugh whenever it comes to mind," Arizona said.

  "Hey." Fallon pushed his empty bowl aside, sat forward and folded his arms on the table. "I never heard of the lucid dream research going on in North Carolina. Tell me about it."

  Arizona brought the whiskey and four glasses to the table and sat down.

  "Well, you see it was like this," Bernice said.

  She started to talk. Fallon opened up his senses and listened closely. It was all about context.

  Under the table he reached for and found Isabella's hand. She squeezed his fingers very tightly. The energy of their shared love flowed through him, brightening all the places that had once been locked in shadow.

  When there was a brief lull in the conversation, he smiled at her.

  "You're not the only one who finally got a life," he said. "I've got one now, too."

  "Feels good, doesn't it?" Isabella said.

  "Yes," Fallon said. "It feels very good."

  QUICKSILVER

  Book Two in The Looking Glass Trilogy

  The visions of blood and death blazed violently in the mirrors. The terrible scenes, illuminated by gaslight, reflected endlessly into a dark infinity.

  Virginia lay very still for a moment, her heart pounding while she tried to make sense of the nightmare in which she had awakened. Myriad reflections of a woman lying on a tumbled, bloodstained bed surrounded her. The woman was dressed in only a thin linen chemise and white stockings. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders in tangled waves. She looked as though she had recently engaged in a passionate encounter. But her dazed eyes were wide with shock and horror, not fading desire.