She paused before taking a sip of the herbal concoction. “Why do you say that?”
“Fallon may be right. Maybe Nightshade did remove their double-talent because he failed to get rid of me. But there’s another possibility. Maybe the real reason for the termination was that Ski Mask slipped out of control and became a problem.”
She pondered that briefly.
“You mean you don’t think he was ordered to make another attempt to kill you tonight? You believe he was acting on his own?”
“He was running very, very hot. It’s hard to explain but I sensed that he wanted to kill me for his own, personal reasons. He just didn’t have the kind of detachment that a pro is supposed to have. Fallon thinks they were giving him some variation of the formula. It may have affected his sanity.”
She shuddered. “From what you’ve said, the founder’s formula has a long history of driving users crazy.”
“Yes.”
“It’s hard to believe that my father was secretly working on something so dangerous.”
“Raine—”
She put the little cup down very carefully. “No wonder the Council expelled my family from the Society and sent J&J to burn down the lab.”
He crossed the room and halted in front of her on the opposite side of the coffee table.
“I thought I made it clear, the Council kicked your father out of the Society,” he said quietly. “It didn’t expel you or your aunt. Remember that.”
She shrugged. “Not like either of us had much choice after that night when J&J destroyed everything.”
“You didn’t have a choice because you were too young. But your aunt did. She’s the one who made the decision to raise you outside the Society and to deny you your heritage.”
“In her place, I would have done the same thing. She didn’t have a lot of reason to trust the Society or J&J.”
He moved around the end of the coffee table, reached down and wrapped his hands around her wrists. He pulled her up off the sofa.
“What about you?” he said.
“I have no reason to trust the Society or J&J, either. They’ve got their own agendas.”
“And you have yours.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t trust the Society and you don’t trust J&J,” he said. “What about me?”
She searched his face. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” he said. He could hear the rough, gritty edges in his own voice but there was nothing he could do to soften them. “It matters.”
“I trust you,” she said. She looked as if the statement surprised her but she didn’t back away from it. “You have been honest with me since the start of this thing.”
He felt something deep inside him ease.
“Okay,” he said. He made himself release her wrists. “Okay, thanks.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.” He answered without even thinking about it.
“Even though you know I’ve got my own reasons for helping you find out what Nightshade is after?”
“I know where you’re coming from. Not like you’ve kept it a secret. You’ve been honest from the beginning.”
“So have you.” She sank back down onto the sofa. “I’ll pour you some of my special tea. We’ll play some cards.”
He did not want to sit down. He wanted to keep moving. Tea and solitaire weren’t going to cut it tonight. The images of Lawrence Quinn’s last seconds on earth were still too vivid, too intense. The attack by Ski Mask had compounded the usual problems of the aftermath.
It was going to be a bad night and he couldn’t risk dampening his senses with a couple of shots of scotch. Probably better not to even try to sleep.
Raine poured the brew into the small cup and handed it to him. “Here. Drink some of this.”
To please her, he downed half the contents of the cup in a single swallow. The slightly astringent, herbal flavors were not unpleasant but he didn’t think they were going to have any effect on the visions. There was only one thing that could distract him from the death scene and that was the one thing that was not available to him tonight.
Raine picked up the deck of cards and started to deal. He made a valiant effort to concentrate but he knew it was a waste of time. His brain insisted on jumping wildly from images of oncoming death to a raging need to affirm life in the most primitive way possible.
“I appreciate the effort but it’s not going to work.”
“It’s going to be one of those nights, isn’t it?” she asked. “One of the bad ones.”
“I’m used to it. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not feeling very sleepy, myself. Watching that man try to kill you left my nerves on edge, to put it mildly. And then, seeing his body in the street—”
His hand stopped with the cup halfway to his mouth. “How did you know that the guy was coming after me?”
“I’m not sure. He passed very close behind the booth where I was sitting. I was just suddenly aware of him. And not in a good way. It was like looking over your shoulder and seeing a tiger waiting to pounce.”
He nodded. “That happens with hunters when they’re running hot. The energy they put out is predatory. Most people can sense it, even if they aren’t consciously aware of it. Another sensitive like yourself wouldn’t have any trouble at all picking up the vibes.”
“You’re sure that the visions you picked up tonight were connected to Lawrence Quinn’s death?” Raine asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“And you’re also sure that the killer was Ski Mask?”
“Can’t be absolutely certain, but it seems logical. The last thing Quinn saw was a face that his panic-stricken brain interpreted as a death’s head. Two black holes for eyes. I’m betting it was really a ski mask.”
“Fallon Jones still thinks I’m the key to this thing,” she said.
He drank a little more of the tea. “Unfortunately, I agree with him.”
“But it’s been a month since Aunt Vella died. No one has made any move to contact me.”
“Fallon thinks they’ve been sitting back, watching you.”
“Watching me do what?” she asked, bewildered.
“Let’s think about this,” he said. “What’s the main thing you’ve been doing in the past month?”
“You mean, aside from running my business?”
“Yes.”
“Settling my aunt’s estate. It’s amazing how much paperwork there is associated with death.”
“Right.”
“So?”
“So, it all comes back to Vella Tallentyre,” he said.
Thirty-six
The dream was a bad one.
…A death’s head coming at him out of the darkness, black holes where the eyes should have been. He was paralyzed, fingers clutching the corner of the steel garbage container. He desperately wanted to turn and run but he was unable to move. There was no point trying to flee. The terrifying figure would run him down…
…The death’s head morphed into Jenna’s beautiful face. She smiled at him and held out her hands.
“I was perfect for you. What more could you want in a woman?”
He came awake, heart pounding. Sweat dampened his T-shirt. He sat up abruptly, swinging his feet to the floor, and breathed hard.
Just a dream, you idiot. Get over it. You can handle this. You’ve done it before. What are you complaining about? You didn’t expect to get any sleep at all tonight, anyway.
He glanced at the clock. Two forty-five. He had gotten a whole hour and a half of rest. The trouble was, he felt worse now, more wired than if he had just stayed awake.
The herbal tisane had worked but not for long. He really hated the damn dreams.
A pale, ghostly figure materialized in the doorway.
“Zack?”
He could deal with the sight of her standing there in the opening, looking ethereal and untouchable as hell, just pretend it was another vision, an antidote to the images of de
ath. But the sound of her voice was too much for his already wired senses.
“I’m all right,” he said, aware of the harshness in his own words. “Go back to bed.”
“I heard you through the wall. You called out.”
“Just the usual junk dreams.”
“Zack—”
“I don’t want to play cards, damn it. Go back to bed. Now.”
Great. He was snapping at her like a dog with a sore paw.
She walked into the room, came to a halt directly in front of him and put her arms around his neck.
“I don’t want to play any more games, either,” she said. “I realized that tonight when I watched you almost get killed.”
“Raine.” Violent desire slammed through him. “Please don’t do this. Not unless you really mean it. I don’t need your sympathy.”
She kissed him, not a gentle, soothing, reassuring kiss. This was a full-on, pull-out-all-the-stops, openmouthed kiss, letting him know that she wanted him, just as she had wanted him the other night in Shelbyville.
Sensual energy—normal and paranormal—flared, wild and hot. He was swept up in a whirlwind. The force of it obliterated the ghastly visions of the nightmare, at least temporarily.
Temporarily was good enough for now.
He dragged her down onto the bed, getting her under him where he needed her to be. Her foot glided along the side of his leg. He got a grip on the front of the prim, white cotton nightgown, intending to peel it off her but somewhere along the line he heard buttons pop and fabric rip.
The front of the gown was suddenly open down to her waist and that was a very good thing. He found her breasts and feasted on them, enveloping himself in the heat of her body and her scent.
He reached down, discovered that the inside of her leg was even warmer and softer than her breasts. He moved his hand upward along her thigh. The nightgown crumpled and gave way beneath the relentless onslaught.
When he found her hot core with his fingers she made an urgent little sound. He felt her nails on his back beneath the damp T-shirt, scoring his skin. Come morning he would be wearing her marks. The knowledge sent another wave of raw lust through him.
His briefs could no longer contain his erection. She took one palm off his back and wrapped it around him. It felt good to have her touch him so intimately but he needed to be closer, needed to be inside her.
She opened herself to him, welcoming him. When he entered her she was still a little dry and very tight. He groaned and started to retreat but she wrapped her legs around his waist, urging him deeper. He started to thrust, hard and fast, unable to hold back.
“Raine.”
“Yes,” she whispered, clutching at him. “Yes, it’s okay. I want you inside me like this.”
His release crashed through him almost immediately. The heavy waves washed away the nightmarish images and the edgy energy that had fed on them.
The cleansing climax seemed to last forever. When it was over he collapsed onto the pillows beside Raine, utterly exhausted. He knew she hadn’t come, wanted to make it right. But he was so damn tired.
She kissed him gently. “Go to sleep.”
He was vaguely aware of her reaching down to pull the covers up over both of them. The last thing he remembered was the feel of her arm sliding around his waist.
He slept.
Thirty-seven
He opened his eyes to a damp, gray dawn, feeling relaxed and refreshed. Beside him, Raine stirred.
“Who was Jenna?” she asked gently.
The relaxed, refreshed sensation evaporated in a heartbeat. For a couple of seconds he debated lying to her. But he hadn’t lied to her yet. He did not want to start now. She had a right to know.
“My fiancée.” He put his forearm over his eyes. “She died a year ago.”
Raine touched his arm. “I didn’t realize. I thought…never mind. I’m so sorry.”
He uncovered his eyes and turned his head on the pillow to look at her.
“How do you know about Jenna?” he asked.
“You called out her name while you were dreaming. That’s what brought me to your room to see if you were all right.”
He winced. “I was afraid of that. Jenna got mixed up with a dream about Lawrence Quinn.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“When you shouted her name my first thought was that Jenna, whoever she was, might be one of the bad guys you tracked in the past. I didn’t realize she was someone close to you.”
He looked straight up at the ceiling, knowing he was going to tell her everything.
“A year and a half ago Jenna and I were introduced by the matchmakers at www-dot-arcanematch-dot-com. It’s a matchmaking agency run by the Society to help members find mates. Relationships can be tricky for people with strong psychic natures.”
“I’ve noticed that,” Raine said drily.
“According to arcanematch, Jenna was the perfect woman for me. And, damn if it wasn’t true.”
Raine said nothing. He sensed her withdrawing a little, pulling back into her safe zone.
“Jenna was very beautiful,” he said, determined to plow on to the end now that he had started. “But she was so much more than merely beautiful. She was smart. Well educated. She seemed to know what I wanted even before I knew it myself, in bed and out.”
Raine tugged the sheet up to her chin. “I see.”
“She charmed my family and my friends. She could be sexy or sultry or glamorous or playful, depending on my mood. She enjoyed the same things I enjoyed from music to food to vacations. We never argued. We laughed at the same things. She never complained when I was obsessed with a case for days or weeks on end. She was always—”
“Perfect,” Raine supplied neutrally.
“Yes. She and my mother planned the perfect wedding together. And the perfect honeymoon. I told myself that I should be the happiest man on the face of the earth. But I wasn’t.”
“Perfection wasn’t enough for you?” There was a noticeable edge in Raine’s voice now.
He met her eyes. “Things were just too damn perfect. I finally decided Jenna was a little too good to be true.”
“You tried to find flaws in the perfect woman?”
“Yes.”
Raine sat up, still clutching the sheet. “For heaven’s sake, why?”
“Because at some point I finally acknowledged that I wasn’t in love with the woman everyone said was perfect for me and I had to know what was wrong.”
“With her?”
“No,” he said. “With me.”
“Well?”
“I started looking into her perfect past. When I got beyond the data in the computers, which was pristine, I finally began to spot some holes in the pattern of perfection. My first thought was that she had simply covered up a few secrets.”
“You took that as a good sign?”
“Believe it or not, it came as a relief to know that maybe she was human.”
“What happened?” Raine was looking reluctantly fascinated.
“I was careful but Jenna was a high-level intuitive talent. She began to suspect that I was having doubts about her. She got very worried.”
“Did she confront you?”
“You could say that. She tried to poison me.”
Raine stared at him, dumbfounded. “Are you serious?”
“The only thing that saved me was my talent. She put the poison in a bottle of my favorite scotch, the kind I drink when the visions are really bad.”
“How did you discover the poison before you drank it?”
“She took the bottle down from the cupboard for me that night. There was just something about the way she handled it. I watched her pour the scotch and I knew she intended to kill me.”
“Good grief. I don’t know what to say.” Raine paused, frowning. “What happened when you refused to drink the scotch?”
“She went a little mad. I don’t know how else to describe it. She t
hrew herself at me, going for my eyes with her nails. She screamed she was perfect for me over and over again. I finally managed to restrain her. I called one of the Society’s doctors. He concluded that she’d had some sort of psychotic break. We took her to a private clinic run by the Society.”
“What happened?”
“Two days later she was certifiably insane. She was put on a suicide watch but she managed to kill herself anyway.”
Raine’s eyes widened in horror. “You said that kind of sudden spin into insanity is typical of what happens when someone who is addicted to the formula is deprived of it.”
“Yes.”
“Zack, are you telling me that you were almost poisoned by a member of Nightshade?”
“Nightshade didn’t want to poison me,” he said quietly. “The intent was for Jenna to marry me.”
Understanding dawned on her intelligent face. “Of course. If they could have married off an agent to a member of the Jones family, they would have had the perfect spy.”
“They had prepared a near-perfect cover for her and managed to hack into the arcanematch files to plant it. In addition, they got into the Society’s genealogical database to set up a solid history for her, too.”
“How did Nightshade figure out how to construct the perfect woman for you?” Raine asked.
“They hacked into arcanematch and got my profile out of the database. Then they built a profile for Jenna that appeared to be nearly one hundred percent compatible. Jenna was chosen because she was not only very beautiful, she was an excellent actress. She was also a high-level intuitive talent like my mother. They jacked up her natural abilities with the formula.”
“And turned her into the perfect woman,” Raine whispered.
He folded one arm behind his head. “Until she tried to poison me. Amazing how a little thing like that can ruin an otherwise ideal relationship.”
“Guess there’s just no pleasing some men.”
Her lips twitched at the corners and the tension inside him eased.
“Call me picky,” he agreed.
“You said she tried to kill you because she was afraid you were getting suspicious of her?”