The Vanishing

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  A brilliant light flashed on, pinning Slater in its glare. A voice boomed out of the shadows. Catalina’s senses were still heightened. She could not see the full aura of the man, because he was standing to one side of the open door. But his head and shoulders were exposed in the opening, revealing enough of his energy field for her to identify him as the identical twin of the runner who had come so close to her that morning. She knew Slater could see him, too.

  “Drop the gun, Arganbright,” the twin said. “Or I’ll drop you where you stand.”

  “Take it easy,” Slater said. “We’re all businesspeople here. Why don’t you tell us what you’re looking for? Maybe we can work out a deal.”

  “I said get rid of the gun. Then we’ll talk.”

  “Sure.” Slater crouched and set the pistol down very slowly. The bright flashlight followed his every move. “Where’s your clone?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your twin,” Slater said.

  “How the hell did you figure that out? Never mind. Tony is watching the other house. We knew about Royston’s escape route. We figured there was a chance you might find it. Where’s the woman?”

  “Right here,” Catalina said.

  She walked forward. Very deliberately she stepped in front of Slater.

  “Catalina,” Slater said quietly. “Don’t do this.”

  She ignored him, concentrating on the vision that was coalescing out of the shadows. She could read the intention of the killer as clearly as if he had spelled it out for her. The only way to keep him from shooting Slater was to use herself as a human shield.

  “Get out of the way,” the twin ordered. His already hot aura spiked in frustrated anger.

  “You’ll have to shoot through me to kill him, and we both know you need me in reasonably good shape, so let’s make a deal,” she said. “Here’s my offer. I’ll come with you, but in return you have to let my friend here go unharmed.”

  The twin was clearly caught off guard. She could literally sense him turning over alternatives. At last he seized on what probably looked like the easiest solution to his problem.

  “All right,” he said. “I don’t give a damn about Arganbright. You’re the one I need. Come on up here. Arganbright can stay down there in the basement. There’s a lock on this door. It will take him a while to get through it. That will give you and me plenty of time.”

  “Spoken like any self-respecting sociopath,” she said cheerfully. “Do you have a lot of luck with lines like that?”

  “What the fuck?” The twin’s aura radiated confusion. “Get up here.”

  “On my way,” she said.

  She went up the steps very quickly, taking them two at a time. She never took her eyes off his aura. When she reached the top he had to move out of the way. As soon as she went through the doorway he leaned around the opening, intending to take the shot.

  But she had seen his intent in the vision that had flashed across her senses a few seconds earlier. She was already in motion. The twin’s attention was on Slater. Catalina slammed the heavy base of the vintage phone against the side of his head.

  The twin was blindsided. He dropped the flashlight and the gun and reeled back. Blood saturated his blond hair and ran down the side of his face.

  “You crazy bitch,” he yelled.

  He reached out to grab her, but she was already backing away, giving Slater a clear path.

  He came up the steps very fast. Dark energy flared in his aura.

  Catalina dropped the phone and grabbed the flashlight. She swept the beam around the floor and saw the glint of metal. The twin saw his gun, too. He lurched toward it.

  But Slater hit him like a heat-seeking missile, slamming the clone hard against the wall.

  The twin grunted and sagged slowly downward until he was sitting on the floor.

  Slater studied the clone’s bloody face as he patted down the man’s clothes.

  “They don’t make telephones like they used to,” he said.

  The twin groaned.

  “The other one will be here soon,” Catalina said.

  “No ID,” Slater said. “These guys are pros.” He gripped the twin’s shoulder and shook him.

  The twin stirred and opened bleary eyes. He managed to focus on Slater.

  “They said you wouldn’t be a problem,” he mumbled.

  Slater ignored that. “Where did you take Olivia LeClair?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I don’t have time to be polite about this,” Slater said. “I know you’re expecting your twin to show up soon, so we’re going to have to hurry things along. Where did you take Olivia LeClair?”

  “Fuck you. If you’re smart, you’ll get out of here while you still can. I’m not working alone. My brother will be here any minute.”

  “Where did you take Olivia LeClair?” Slater repeated.

  He made no threatening moves, but a tide of glacial energy surged in the atmosphere. Catalina realized it was coming from Slater’s aura. She had never experienced anything like it. Confusion turned to shock, and then a strange excitement sparked across all her senses, normal and paranormal.

  She did not know whether to be terrified or thrilled. Maybe both. Power in any form never failed to grab a person’s attention.

  Slater tightened his grip on the twin’s shoulder. “Where did you take Olivia LeClair?”

  The twin convulsed as if he was having a seizure. His face twisted in a mask of horror.

  “Wh . . . what are you doing to me?” he gasped.

  “Answer my question,” Slater said.

  “Just a job. Nothing personal, okay? Client said pick ’em up and leave them at the old motel. Got one. Supposed to grab the other woman but you got in the way.”

  “Where is the motel?” Slater asked.

  “I’m cold. Too cold. What are you doing to me?”

  “Where is the motel?”

  The words were spoken in a terrifyingly neutral tone of voice. It wasn’t just the twin’s aura that was getting cold. The temperature in the hallway was dropping, too.

  The twin stared at Slater. “You’re a fucking icer. You’re not real.”

  “Where is the motel?” Slater said.

  The room got a little colder. So did the twin.

  “Slater,” Catalina said, “be careful. We need him alive.”

  Slater glanced at her, frowning a little, as if she had spoken in another language and he was having trouble translating.

  The twin started speaking in a thin, panicky voice.

  “Frontier Lodge. Outside Hinley. We didn’t hurt her, I swear it. Instructions said undamaged goods. That’s what we delivered. You gotta help me. You can’t kill me.”

  “Probably best if you don’t give me the incentive to try,” Slater said. “Catalina, use your phone to take a picture of this guy.”

  She was trembling in reaction to the violence but she managed to dig her phone out of the pocket of her trench coat. She took a couple of shots of the twin, who stared at her, dazed.

  A draft of air swept down the hallway just as she dropped the phone back into her pocket. She realized a door had opened somewhere in the house. Footsteps sounded in the shadows.

  “Deke? Where are you? They found Royston’s safe room and the damned tunnel. Did you get them?”

  Deke jerked violently and tried to lever himself into a sitting position. “Tony. Tony, help me. He’s an icer. Gonna kill me—”

  Slater tightened his grip on Deke. The cold in the atmosphere intensified. Deke twitched again and then slumped on the floor.

  Slater rose and started down the hall. A storm of midnight ice swirled around him.

  But Deke’s desperate cry for help had sounded the alarm. The thud-thud-thud of rapidly retreating footste
ps told Catalina that Tony was on his way back out of the house. Evidently one violent sociopath saw no reason to stick around to try to save another violent sociopath, even if they were twins.

  The footsteps faded quickly. Catalina heard the muffled rumble of a motorcycle engine.

  Slater reappeared. “He got away, but we’ve got one.”

  “I don’t think Deke is going to be able to answer any more questions for a while,” Catalina said.

  “Why not? Is he dead? Damn. He’s no use to me dead.” Slater moved closer to the man on the floor. “Good. He’s got an aura. He’s alive.”

  Catalina decided not to point out that the fact that Deke was still breathing was something of a happy accident.

  “He’s alive,” she said. “But he’s in a very deep state of sleep. Unconscious. Maybe in a coma. There’s no way to know when he’ll wake up, but assuming he does, I don’t think it will be anytime soon.”

  “In that case, we’ll leave him in the basement. I’ll contact Victor and have him send someone out to collect this piece of garbage. You and I can’t waste any more time.”

  “We have to check that motel before we go to Fogg Lake,” Catalina said. “Olivia might still be there.”

  “Waste of time,” Slater said. “We have to get to Fogg Lake.”

  “I’m not going to argue about this. You are free to leave for Fogg Lake. I’m going to find that motel. It’s our first solid lead. I can’t ignore it.”

  Slater fixed her with a considering look.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she warned.

  “What?”

  “You’re wondering if you can grab me, stuff me into the car and take me to Fogg Lake. Forget it.”

  He sighed. “Did you see all that in a vision?”

  “I didn’t need one to figure out what you were thinking. Some things are pretty damn obvious.”

  “All right, we’ll find the motel and then we’ll head for Fogg Lake. But first we have to stop at your office or your apartment, someplace where we can print out that photo of the clone.”

  “Why?”

  “We may need it to show to people in Fogg Lake. Cell phones and computers don’t work there, remember?”

  “All right,” Catalina said. “We can print out the photo at my office and then we’ll find that motel. I’ll drive.”

  “Fine. Let’s get going.”

  His easy acquiescence worried her.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I need to think about it.”

  She glanced at the unconscious Deke and remembered his words.

  You’re a fucking icer. You’re not real.

  * * *

  —

  The Frontier Lodge was on an old road outside a tiny farm town in the foothills of the Cascades. It was clear that the motel had been closed for a very long time. Most of the doors and windows were boarded up, but one door stood open. The room, with its sagging bed and stained carpet, was empty.

  The electricity had been cut off. Slater swept his flashlight around the small space. An object glittered beneath the bed. Catalina got down on her hands and knees and pulled out the bracelet.

  “This is Olivia’s,” she said. “I was with her when she bought it. That creep Deke was telling the truth. She was here.”

  “Can you tell how many people besides Olivia were in this room recently?”

  Catalina prowled the musty space, forcing herself to concentrate. A murky vision appeared. She turned to look at the bed.

  “Three,” she said, aware that she was sliding into her other voice. “Three people in addition to Olivia were in this room.”

  “Two of them would have been the twins. That leaves us with one unknown individual.”

  “The clones left. Someone else arrived.” Catalina stepped into the prints of the third individual. They seethed with anticipation.

  “He is excited,” she whispered. “Thrilled.”

  “Sexually?”

  “No. But he is close, so close, to something he wants very badly.”

  “Are you sure it’s a man?”

  She hesitated and then shook her head. “No. I can’t be sure. But the person is strong enough to carry Olivia outside. I suppose a strong woman could manage that. Just seems more likely it was a man.”

  “How do you know she was carried outside?”

  Catalina shook off the vision and looked at him. “Because I can’t see any sign of her footprints on the floor between the door and the bed. I think she was carried in here. Someone arrived a short time later to pick her up and carry her outside.”

  “Anything else?”

  Catalina walked around to the other side of the bed and stopped cold. Once again she jacked up her senses.

  “Olivia,” she whispered.

  Footsteps blazed on the floor.

  “She wakes up. She’s dazed and disoriented and scared. But she has an objective. A goal. She’s frantic.”

  Catalina followed the hot prints to the door of the dingy bathroom and stopped. She snapped out of the vision.

  “She needed to use the facilities after the long drive from Seattle,” Slater said. “Makes sense that the kidnappers would allow her to go in there.”

  Catalina gazed into the small room. “She left us a message, Slater.”

  He moved quickly to stand behind her.

  “So she did,” he said very softly.

  The tip of a finger had been used to inscribe one word on the thick dust that coated the mirror.

  VORTEX

  CHAPTER 20

  It’s starting to look like your uncles may be right,” Catalina said. “Maybe Vortex is not a legend after all.”

  Slater watched the narrow mountain highway unwind in the headlights of Catalina’s tough little SUV. Catalina was at the wheel. She was clearly an expert on bad mountain roads, and this was one hell of a bad mountain road. He was in good hands. That was excellent news, because he probably should not be sitting behind the wheel just now. It was all he could do to battle the strange lethargy that was stealing through him.

  Catalina deserved answers, but he hadn’t had time to give her the few that he possessed. He had gotten on the phone with Victor as soon as he and Catalina had left the Frontier Lodge, and he had ended the call a moment ago. A Foundation team was already on the way to Seattle. They would pick up the twin who had been left bound and gagged in the basement of Royston’s safe house and transport him back to Las Vegas for questioning. Assuming he ever came out of his coma. You’re an icer. You’re not real.

  Slater pushed the memory of the twin’s accusation aside. The matter of what he had become would have to wait. He had other problems, not least of which was the issue of communication. The phone call to headquarters would be the last phone call he would be able to make for some time. The rural mountain area through which they were driving made GPS and phones increasingly unreliable. The situation would become even more untenable when they arrived in Fogg Lake. A hot radiation environment of any kind played havoc with computers and cell phones.

  “One of the things you learn early on in my line is that a powerful legend can do just as much damage as the real thing,” he said.

  “Because people want to believe it’s true and they’ll do whatever it takes to chase after it?” Catalina asked.

  “Exactly. In the case of the Vortex lab, there are just enough clues out there to make Victor and Lucas and several of the Foundation experts believe that it really did exist and that a rogue scientist took control of the research. If they believe it, you can bet there are others who are convinced that it existed.”

  “Let me guess. This rogue scientist who ran Vortex wanted to conquer the world using weaponized paranormal energy?”

  “Probably not. This was a rogue scientist, remember, not some dictator or warlor
d. It’s more likely he wanted to discover the full potential of paranormal energy so that it could be used to cure disease, prolong the human life span, discover new worlds, et cetera, et cetera. But to do that he needed access to money, power and unlimited resources. If the legend is true, he was willing to kill to get them.”

  “So he was no better than the average dictator or warlord.”

  “He was potentially more dangerous, because he was smarter than the average power-hungry dictator or warlord.”

  “Does this rogue scientist have a name?” Catalina asked.

  “I’m sure he did, but that was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Bluestone Project.”

  “What this comes down to is that Olivia was probably taken by some creep or multiple creeps who believe in the legend of the Vortex lab.”

  “Someone evidently thinks she knows something about Vortex,” he said.

  The lethargy was getting heavier. He drank some of the bad coffee they had picked up at a gas station.

  Catalina tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “She left that message on the mirror for you or someone else from the Foundation. She knew that I would call Victor once I discovered she was kidnapped, and she knew that whoever showed up from Las Vegas would understand the significance of ‘Vortex.’”

  “She was right.”

  “At least we’ve got one of the kidnappers now. If Deke ever wakes up, Victor’s team may be able to get some useful information out of him.”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. I think the twins are hired muscle. Smart people do not confide in guys like that.”

  “That leaves us with the one unknown individual in the motel room,” Catalina said.

  “You’re sure it was just one individual?”

  “Almost positive. I never go with a hundred percent when it comes to crime scenes, though. Too many pools of energy around to be absolutely certain of anything. That motel room wasn’t hot the way a murder scene is hot, thank heavens, but there was a lot of intense emotion in that space.”

  “Victor has a team on the way to Seattle. They’ll pursue the investigation from that end. If the twin we left in the basement has any useful information, the cleaners will get it out of him.”