“I just need a minute,” North said. “Mom, I think Dad’s responding to your energy on some level. I want to try asking him a couple of questions.”
Lily paused and then she nodded once. “Go ahead.”
North touched his father’s shoulder and tried to think of questions that required only simple yes or no responses.
“Dad, were you attacked?” he asked.
There was no visible response but Lily stiffened. She gazed down at her husband, transfixed.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’m sure I felt something just now. A vibe. I can’t explain it but it felt like a yes.”
North kept his hand on Chandler’s shoulder. “Dad, do you know who attacked you?”
There was a moment of fraught energy in the atmosphere. Lily frowned and then tightened her grip on Chandler’s hand.
“No,” she said. “He doesn’t know.”
“We need to get in the air,” the pilot said.
North asked the only other question he could think of in that moment. “Dad, were you attacked because of the object you bought at Swan Antiques?”
Another shiver of energy. Hot and intense. This time North could have sworn his father was struggling to focus on him. But the effort cost him. Chandler closed his eyes and went limp.
“Yes,” Lily said. She looked at North, her eyes very fierce. “The answer is yes.”
“I can work with that,” North said.
He stepped back from the gurney. The medics carried their patient up the stairs and disappeared through the door.
Lily turned to North. “Do what you have to do,” she said. “But be careful. Your father and I love you.”
“I know,” North said. “I love you, too.”
Lily gave him a brief hug and then hurried up the stairs.
North waited until the Foundation plane was in the air. When it was gone he concentrated on the task at hand. He turned to Olivia LeClair.
“I need to locate a go-between named Sierra Raines,” he said.
She smiled. “Yes, Victor Arganbright said you wanted to hire her. She’s waiting for you at the Vault in Pioneer Square.”
“Sounds like a nightclub.”
“It is.”
“It’s almost noon.”
“The Vault is open twenty-four hours a day,” Olivia said. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“Thanks,” North said.
CHAPTER 8
Are you all right, Mr. Chastain?” Sierra asked.
North Chastain was clearly startled by the question. It immediately became obvious he was also seriously pissed off.
“I’m fine,” he said.
He was lying. She could see enough of his reflected aura in the mirror on the wall behind him to tell her that the man from the Foundation was sleep deprived. She was sure North Chastain was drawing energy from his paranormal senses not simply to stay awake but to ward off the disorienting effects that resulted from a severe lack of sleep.
It wasn’t just lack of sleep that was disturbing his senses, she concluded. There was something else going on with his aura, something more complicated. The dark reflections in the mirror were difficult to interpret. She might be able to get a better read on him if she could get a look at his eyes—she was pretty good at reading eyes—but that was impossible at the moment because North was wearing wraparound mirrored sunglasses. Indoors. In the shadows of the dimly illuminated basement of the Vault nightclub.
He did not appear to be the kind of man who adopted dramatic affectations like sunglasses in a nightclub. The glasses were part of the mystery that enveloped him.
With his hard, sharp profile, he had a predatory edge that gave him an intriguing but decidedly ominous vibe. He was not a man you would want to cross. Like her, he was wearing a lot of leather—jacket and boots but no gloves. She assumed he wore it for the same reasons she did. Cleaners kicked down a lot of dangerous doors and had to be prepared to come in contact with some hot artifacts. They chased the bad guys, after all.
Beneath the jacket North wore a gray crew-neck pullover and black cargo trousers festooned with a lot of pockets. He had dropped a pack onto the floor when he sat down in the booth.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet with me,” North said. He sounded cool and professional now, having evidently managed to control his short rush of irritation.
She gave him her most polished smile. “Anything for the Foundation.”
North winced. “In other words you figured that if you didn’t agree to see me, you might be looking at trouble from Las Vegas.”
“Exactly. Also, I need the money and Mr. Jones assures me the Foundation always pays its tab. Okay, I’m here. You’re here. Tell me about the case.”
North drank some coffee and lowered the big mug. She was drinking coffee, too, a frothy cappuccino. North had ordered a triple-shot grande.
“Are you aware of Swan Antiques in Pioneer Square?” North asked.
“Of course,” Sierra said. “Gwendolyn Swan is a player in the hot artifacts market. I’ve done a few jobs for her. Why?”
“Yesterday afternoon Chandler Chastain bought an artifact from her.”
“I’m assuming the Chastain name is not a coincidence?”
“No,” North said. “Chandler is my father. At some point after he purchased the artifact, he was attacked. He’s awake but he’s almost entirely unresponsive, although he does seem to be able to communicate a little through Mom when they have physical contact.”
Shocked, Sierra set her cup down. “I’m so sorry. Was he shot?”
“No. There is no evidence of physical trauma, which makes me think he was attacked with something that affected his paranormal senses. He may have been drugged. That’s the theory the doctors are going on at the moment. But there is another possibility.”
Sierra eyed him warily. “What?”
North hesitated. “The attacker might have used a hot artifact, one infused with a lot of dangerous, unknown radiation that destabilized Dad’s aura.”
Sierra went still. “Are you talking about a paranormal weapon? That’s the unholy grail of the underground collectors’ market. If such a thing existed the Foundation would be breathing fire down the neck of any dealer or go-between or collector who tried to buy or sell it.”
Too late she realized she should have kept her mouth shut.
“Have you picked up any rumors about a para-weapon coming onto the market?” North asked.
She cleared her throat and reminded herself to proceed with caution. “There are always rumors in the underground market.”
“New rumors? Maybe a device from one of the lost labs?”
She folded her gloved hands on the table. “I assure you, I have no personal knowledge of any artifacts that might be weapons from the Bluestone Project.”
“Talk to me, Sierra. I’m on the clock.”
She spread her hands. “All I can tell you is that recently I’ve been approached by a couple of clients who made it clear that if anything that could be considered a functioning paranormal weapon came onto the market, they wanted to be in on the auction. Price was no object.”
“That’s all you know?”
“Yes,” she said. She said it very firmly because it was the truth. “It occurs to me you picked the wrong go-between. You would probably do better with someone who’s had more experience in the Pacific Northwest market. I’m still fairly new in this line of work. I’ve been doing it for only a few months.”
“Victor Arganbright and Lucas Pine think you’re the best one for this job. They’re almost never wrong.”
“Almost never?”
“When they screw up, they tend to go big.”
“I think you should consider the possibility they screwed up when they sent you to me.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have time to line up another go-betwe
en,” North said. “Our first stop is Swan Antiques. We’re going to find out exactly what my father bought and take it from there.”
Grim determination charged the atmosphere. She understood. If it were her father who was trapped in a nonresponsive state she would be doing exactly what North was doing—using any means or any person necessary to get answers. Family was family.
“You do realize I’m not in business to do favors for the Foundation,” she warned. “My hourly rate is high. Very high.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll get paid. Now that I’m officially a client, let’s move. We’re wasting time.”
She held up a forefinger. “Just one more box to check off before I accept you as a client.”
North was starting to look pissed again. “What?”
“You’re not a Puppet, are you?”
“What self-respecting Puppet would work for the Foundation?”
He had a point. There were a lot of loose screws rattling around at the fringes of the paranormal underworld. Some were mentally ill individuals who heard voices or experienced hallucinations and believed they were being manipulated by people with psychic talent. There were also those with a measure of genuine talent who were unable to handle their psychic side. Instead of rationally processing the input from their paranormal senses they grasped at bizarre conspiracy theories to explain what seemed otherwise inexplicable. And then there were those who preyed on such individuals, conning them or luring them into cults.
All the so-called Puppets had one thing in common, aside from their fascination with conspiracies. They were afraid of the Foundation. They were convinced Victor Arganbright and his cleaners were bent on hunting them down with the intent of silencing them. Some believed that if they were picked up by the Foundation teams they would end up as test subjects in strange paranormal experiments.
Those who ran the cults and the scam artists who took advantage of the gullible also feared the Foundation. Victor Arganbright and his cleaners had developed a reputation for taking down the cons and the frauds. Most were handed over to regular law enforcement, but the underworld whisper mill held that some of the really dangerous people disappeared into a locked ward at Halcyon Manor, the private psychiatric hospital run by the Foundation.
So, yes, it was unlikely a Puppet would want to be connected in any way to the Foundation.
“Just checking,” Sierra said.
“Fine. You checked.” North downed the last of his triple-shot grande and got to his feet. “Let’s go.”
Sierra reminded herself that she needed the work. A woman in her current financial situation could not afford to be too picky.
She got to her feet. “Swan’s shop isn’t far from here. We can walk to it.”
CHAPTER 9
It was weird, North thought, but until he walked into the Vault and saw Sierra Raines waiting for him in a booth, he had never realized he had a thing for women in leather. Leather, after all, wasn’t unusual or exotic or trendy in his world. A lot of cleaners, including the women, wore it. But on Sierra it looked different. Sexy as hell.
It wasn’t just the leather that appealed. He had been right when he had studied her photo in the file that Lucas had given him. Sierra wasn’t Las Vegas beautiful. No, she was compelling. Strong-willed, intelligent and gutsy. It was, of course, the perfect camouflage for a professional con artist.
But something—everything—about Sierra had revived his spirits, and not just the physical side of things. He reminded himself that she might be an experienced con artist, but his intuition was sending him other messages. Or maybe it was another part of his anatomy that was making him want to trust her.
All he knew was that her energy quickened his senses and offered him what was probably a false sense of hope. He seized on that silent promise because he was in desperate need of hope. Then again, that was the core talent of a professional con artist—the ability to make the mark believe that what he wanted most in the world was within reach. Just trust me.
Having agreed to work with him, she had lost no time in taking him straight to Swan Antiques. He probably would have wasted an hour or more trying to find the place on his own. The shop was located halfway down an alley in the Pioneer Square neighborhood, an old part of town distinguished by narrow lanes and unmarked doorways.
The best thing you could say about the address of Swan’s shop was that it was atmospheric. But alleys were alleys the world over. He had seen enough of them to know that by their very nature they attracted those who preferred to avoid the bright lights of busier, more crowded thoroughfares. A lot of trade in hot artifacts was done in alleys.
“Of course I remember Mr. Chastain,” Gwendolyn Swan said. “I sold him a vintage radio. There was definitely some heat in it but it was low-level energy, the kind that gets picked up from sitting around in a hot environment. Why are you interested in it?”
“I’m trying to trace the artifact,” North said. “It’s a crucial element in my investigation.”
“I just told you, your father purchased it. I never saw it again after he took it out of this shop.”
“Chandler Chastain was attacked a few hours after he bought that artifact from you,” North said. “The relic has gone missing. That means there’s a connection.”
Gwendolyn bristled. “I’m sorry to hear that, but if you’re implying I had something to do with the attack on Mr. Chastain—”
“No, damn it. I’m trying to get a lead.”
Gwendolyn Swan was an attractive woman in her thirties, very businesslike. Her hair was pinned up in a no-nonsense twist. She watched him with undisguised wariness. He didn’t take it personally. He had learned long ago that no one in the underground market liked to start the day with a visit from someone from the Foundation.
Before entering the shop Sierra had suggested he let her handle the inquiries. He had brushed aside the offer. He was the investigator, after all. He knew what he was doing.
Swan was cooperating, but in a minimalist way. Like most dealers she was suspicious of anyone connected to the Foundation. The Rancourts had left a legacy that was proving hard to overcome. And, okay, he was probably not handling things in the most diplomatic manner. He couldn’t help it. The abiding sense of urgency was riding him hard.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Gwendolyn snapped. “I can show you the paperwork involved in the sale and I can assure you the artifact had a paranormal provenance. I picked it up at an estate auction. It was in a crate together with a lot of other low-level artifacts. Your father examined several items that came in the same shipment but the radio was the only thing he took with him.”
Sierra apparently concluded there was nothing for her to do. She turned away from the counter and started to wander through the array of statues, vases and miscellaneous antiques that littered the shop floor. As far as North could tell everything looked like a reproduction or an outright fake.
Sierra had explained that everyone in the trade knew the real artifacts were downstairs in the basement of Swan’s shop. That was typical of most dealers. The good stuff was always stored belowground, where the earth and sturdy construction materials, such as concrete and steel, shielded the paranormal currents and made it harder for raiders to detect the objects.
“Do you think the radio came from one of the lost labs?” North asked.
Gwendolyn shrugged. “In my professional opinion it’s a possibility. But I make no guarantees when it comes to the authenticity of lost lab artifacts. Mr. Chastain understood that. The relic could have picked up some energy simply by sitting around in a collector’s vault for several years.”
Out of the corner of his eye North saw Sierra stop in front of a display stand that held an old twentieth-century camera. She picked it up to take a closer look.
Gwendolyn watched her with slightly narrowed eyes, as if she was afraid Sierra might try to slip it into her pack.<
br />
“Did any of your other customers show an interest in the radio?” North said.
“What?” Frowning, Gwendolyn switched her attention back to him. “No.”
Her responses were growing increasingly curt. Her eyes flicked back to Sierra, who had just put the camera back on the stand.
“Interesting artifact,” Sierra said, returning to the counter. She stopped next to North, almost touching him. “I’m surprised you’ve got it on display up here.”
Gwendolyn blinked. “Why is that?”
“It’s hot,” Sierra said. “Feels like lost lab energy.”
Gwendolyn was riveted now. “Do you think so?”
“I’m almost sure of it. If I were you I’d store it downstairs for safekeeping. You know how rumors fly in this business. The raiders wouldn’t hesitate at a quick smash-and-grab operation.”
Gwendolyn relaxed a little. “You’re right. Thanks for the tip. I’ll move it downstairs later. No sense taking chances.”
North glanced at the camera and hesitated a little. Lost lab artifacts were always compelling to anyone who knew the history of the Bluestone Project. But he had a job to do.
Resolutely he turned back to Gwendolyn and opened his mouth to launch into another question. Before he could speak Sierra kicked his foot. He gave a small start of surprise and glanced at her. She ignored him.
“You mentioned you got the radio from an estate sale,” she said.
Gwendolyn waved a hand. “That’s right. There were several artifacts in the collection that were far more interesting.”
Once again North started to insert a question. Again Sierra abused his foot. She smiled at Gwendolyn.
“Did you ask Mr. Chastain why he wanted the artifact?” she said.
“Yes,” Gwendolyn said. “I was curious because he was obviously an expert and I didn’t understand why he would be so interested in it. He told me he thought it might have belonged to one of his grandparents. I realize family heirlooms hold a sentimental appeal for those in the bloodline, but beyond that there was absolutely nothing special about that radio.”
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