“I know how it feels, but I’ve never been close to anyone else who is going through it, so I didn’t know what it looked like. I didn’t realize that it had some of the symptoms of a high fever.”
“Aura heat.”
“Yes, but you were giving off a lot of energy,” she said. “I have to tell you it was a little unnerving. I was afraid that flash-bang gizmo might have caused some sort of delayed psychic stress.”
“I told you, I’m all right.” Great. Now he was snapping at her again. “You don’t have to play nurse.”
“I was just looking out for you while you slept off the burn.” She was starting to sound annoyed. “I didn’t mean to offend your macho self-image. Do you always wake up in a bad mood like this?”
“No. But everything seems to be different with you.”
“Keep in mind that I had a bad day, too, and unlike you, I haven’t had any sleep yet. I am in no mood for sarcasm.”
He took a few beats to ponder that. “Does it strike you that we seem to be arguing over nothing again?”
“Yes, it does.” She folded her arms. “Any idea why that is happening?”
“Sure. I want to have sex with you, but every time I turn around tonight, you’re either thanking me or trying to take care of me. So I provoke an argument because it makes you mad. See, I’d rather have you mad at me than pointing out the fact that I’m a decrepit bodyguard.”
There was stunned silence for a few seconds. Abby finally got her mouth closed.
“Good grief,” she said. “That is…very insightful.”
“For a man, you mean?”
“For anyone. I’m impressed.”
She started to giggle. She covered her mouth with her hands and turned toward the window. The giggles turned into muffled laughter.
“Now you’re laughing at me,” he said, resigned. “You know, you can be hard on a man’s ego.”
She sobered, dropped her hands and turned back to face him. Her eyes sparkled with the tears generated by her laughter.
“Good thing yours isn’t too fragile,” she said.
“Every man has his limits.”
“So does every woman. You were only half right, you know.”
“Yeah?”
She smiled ruefully. “The arguments aren’t all your fault. I may be pushing things a bit, too.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason,” she said.
He went still. “Yeah?”
“I want to sleep with you, but part of me thinks that is a very bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Because something weird seems to happen when you and I make…” She broke off and coughed discreetly. “When you and I have sex.”
“Define weird.”
She spread her hands. “I don’t know how to explain it, but it feels like something to do with our auras. It’s as if my wavelengths are somehow resonating with yours. It’s a very intimate sensation. Probably just my imagination at work. But I’ve been wondering…”
“Wondering what?”
She sighed. “If you must know, I’m wondering if it’s some aspect of the psychic stress I experienced when I broke the code on that book in Mrs. Vaughn’s library. Maybe some energy from the dreamstate is affecting my normal senses or something.”
“Ah,” he said. He smiled.
She frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re wondering if having sex with me is making you crazy,” he said. He was grinning now. “It’s an intriguing question. One that will require a lot more research and experimentation.”
“You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. That resonance thing going on with our auras? I feel it, too.”
She brightened. “You do?”
“If you’re going crazy, so am I. But unlike you, I’m not worried about it.”
“You’ve experienced that kind of thing before during sex?” she asked, hopeful now.
“No.” He smiled and moved closer to her. “Maybe that’s why it feels so good. Personally, I’ve gotta tell you that I’m not going to lose any sleep over this.”
“But what do you think is going on?” she asked. “The para-physics involved, I mean. It certainly isn’t normal.”
“You want the truth? I don’t give a damn about the para-physics.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
He put his hands around her shoulders. Beneath the fabric of the black T–shirt, she felt sleek and warm and soft and like all that was feminine. Her scent clouded his senses, intoxicating and compelling. He tightened his grip on her and drew her to him. She did not resist.
Her lips were slightly parted. He jacked up his talent a little and saw that her eyes burned with a little psi-light. He could sense the heat in her aura, too. Sexual energy was so hot that it burned across the spectrum from the normal range into the paranormal. It was the raw energy of life. And he had never felt more alive than he did right now.
“Abby,” he said.
“You’re the scientist here,” she said. “I guess if you’re not worried, I should stop worrying, too.”
“I like your logic.”
He plunged his fingers into the storm of her hair and captured her mouth.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back with a feminine heat that ignited a wildfire within him. It was all he could do to hold on to his control.
He wrenched his mouth free from Abby’s and kissed her throat. Her hands moved down from his neck and slipped up under his T–shirt. Her palms felt good on his chest, soft and very warm.
“You feel feverish again,” she said.
“No kidding. You’re running a fever, too.”
“Feels good.”
“Yes,” he said. “It does.”
She pushed the T–shirt upward. He yanked the garment off over his head and tossed it aside. She kissed his shoulder, her mouth warm and damp on the phoenix tattoo. He took a step back and got rid of his pants and briefs. When he turned to her, she was smiling at him. He could already sense the intimate resonance pattern of their auras.
“Yes,” he said. “Damn right, it feels good.”
He tugged off the T–shirt she wore, scooped her up into his arms and fell with her onto the bed. He rolled onto his back, dragging her down across his chest. She made love to him there in the darkness, raining spicy wet kisses from his throat to his belly, and then she ventured lower. He groaned when her fingers closed around him. When she took him into her mouth, he sucked in a sharp breath and sank his hands into the thick, tangled curls of her hair.
She used her tongue on him, and he thought he would go mad. When she pressed gently against the ultra-sensitive place directly behind his testicles, he knew he had reached his limit.
“My turn,” he breathed.
He eased her onto her back and came down on top of her. She was as damp as he was, slick with perspiration. He kissed her firm, dainty breasts until she was arching against him and clutching at him. Satisfied, he worked his way slowly down her body, savoring the taste and scent of her.
When he reached the tight little furnace between her legs, she cried out and dug her nails into his shoulders. He sensed the gathering tension in her and stoked the fires until she was fierce and breathless. He gripped her sweet ass in both hands and anchored her so that she could not escape his mouth.
She came undone in a storm of energy that dazzled all of his senses.
“Sam. Sam.”
“Right here,” he breathed.
He shifted position, holding his weight on his elbows. He captured her face between his hands and plunged his tongue into her mouth at the same time that he thrust deep into her still-clenching passage. The convulsions of her release pulled him over the edge within seconds.
He gave himself up to the rushing freedom of the climax with a hoarse, muffled groan of satisfaction that seemed to echo forever.
A long time later, Abby became aware of the weight o
f Sam’s thigh on top of hers. His arm was flung across her breasts. She turned her head on the pillow and saw that his eyes were closed. He looked to be sound asleep. Cautiously, she tried to edge out from under his sprawling weight. He tightened his arm around her, trapping her, but he did not open his eyes.
“You’re awake,” she accused.
“I am now.” Reluctantly, he rolled onto his back. “You know, we should do this more often.”
“What? Meet weird guys in parking garages who try to whack you with psychic flash-bang gadgets so that they can kidnap me?”
“Must you always focus on the negative? I was referring to the hot sex.”
She smiled. “Oh, that.”
He folded his arms behind his head. “Yeah, that.”
She turned onto her stomach and levered herself up on her elbows. “How was it different tonight?”
“The sex?” He gazed up at the ceiling. “Let me count the ways…”
“Not the sex. The dream.”
“The one you interrupted?”
“That’s the one, yes.” She paused. “You called my name.”
“Probably because you weren’t supposed to be in it.”
“What was I doing in it?”
“Scaring the hell out of me,” he said.
“Explain.”
“It’s the same dream that I told you about.”
“The one in which poor Cassidy walks down the hall to open the lab door?”
“Yes. Usually, it’s like some damned video loop. It keeps repeating, over and over again. Always the same. Until tonight.”
“What was different about tonight’s version?”
He looked at her, his eyes burning a little in the shadows. “Tonight you were the woman walking down the hall, about to open the lab door. I called out to you. Tried to stop you. But you couldn’t hear me.”
“You’re worried about protecting me, and that concern came through in the new version of the dream.” She leaned over and brushed her mouth against his. Then she pulled back. “But it’s okay. I’m not Cassidy. If you called out to me or tried to warn me, even in a dream, I would hear you.”
“Would you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I heard you tonight, didn’t I?”
He stroked her cheek with the back of his finger. She turned her head and kissed his palm. He wrapped one arm around her and drew her back down to him.
38
“WHAT DID YOU MEAN LAST NIGHT WHEN YOU TOLD ME THAT we needed to go back to the start of this thing?” Abby asked. “You said you were missing something about the incident in the Vaughn library.”
They were eating omelets and drinking coffee in the hotel restaurant. Abby was feeling surprisingly well rested. Which only went to show that if you had clean underwear, a toothbrush and a sexy bodyguard, a woman could handle anything, she decided.
For his part, Sam showed no signs of exhaustion. He looked sated and satisfied. He also appeared energized.
“You told me that the day of the home invasion, Grady Hastings specified that he was after a particular encrypted book,” Sam said.
“Yes. Morgan’s The Key to the Latent Power of Stones.”
“According to what little there is about him online, there’s no indication that Hastings was in the hot-books market. He doesn’t have the money for it, for one thing.”
“He told me that he needed The Key to help him with his research. Evidently, he’s really into crystals.”
“Like me,” Sam said.
Abby smiled. “Like you without the Coppersmith money to fund his work.”
“And without the Coppersmith connections in the rare-books market. And yet he somehow discovered that an obscure, psi-coded book on crystals was in the library of a private collector. How would that be possible if he wasn’t tapped into the underground book world?”
Abby put down her fork and thought about it. “He said a voice in a crystal had told him how to find the book and that it was encrypted.”
“Did the voice tell him about you?”
“Yes.”
“Think we can safely assume he is delusional? He may have fantasized about hearing a voice in the crystal, but the information about you and the book was accurate. He got it from some source. Any ideas?”
“I don’t know. I certainly don’t advertise, and Mrs. Vaughn didn’t put the contents of her library online. She is not dangerous, but she is as secretive as every other collector I’ve ever worked with.”
“But serious collectors, dealers and freelancers like you would be aware of at least some of the more valuable books in her collection, right?”
“Oh, yes. That kind of gossip is always floating around. All of us who work that market keep close track of auctions, sales and rumors about recent acquisitions. What are you thinking?”
“Your dream intuition has been right all along. I’m thinking it is past time to talk to Grady Hastings.”
39
“IT WAS THE VOICE IN THE CRYSTAL THAT TOLD ME THAT The Key was in Mrs. Vaughn’s library,” Grady Hastings said. “I couldn’t believe it at first, but I heard it over and over again, so I knew it had to be true. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. At least, I don’t think I meant to hurt anyone. Can’t remember, exactly, to be honest. The doctor tells me I have to remember that part, but I can’t.”
“Why did you want The Key so badly?” Abby asked. “Do you remember that?”
They were sitting in the spare, utilitarian room the psychiatric hospital reserved for meetings between visitors and patients. An orderly stood some distance away, surreptitiously checking email on his cell phone. Or maybe playing a game, Abby thought. Whatever the case, it was obvious that he was not interested in the conversation. The woman who had led Abby and Sam to the visitors’ room a short time earlier had explained that they were the only people who had come to visit Grady since he had been admitted.
Abby and Sam were on one side of a wide table. Grady sat across from them. He was no longer radiating the wild, chaotic energy that had swirled around him on the day he had invaded the Vaughn home. He still gave off the vibes of an individual who marched to his own drummer, but he was not scary today. Abby found herself feeling sorry for him. He seemed very worried, very young and very lonely. He was dressed in hospital-issue garb, a loose-fitting shirt, trousers and slippers.
“I needed The Key to complete my experiment,” Grady said. His expression became animated for the first time. He straightened in his chair. “I was so close to the final step, you see, and the voice told me that the answer was in The Key.” His enthusiasm faded as quickly as it had materialized. He sagged back in defeat. “I can’t believe I thought I was hearing a voice in one of my crystals. I must have been crazy, just like everyone says. I screwed up, and now I’ll never know if I was on the right track or not.”
Sam looked at him. “What was the nature of the experiment?”
“I was trying to grow crystals that could be used as hearing aids. My mother was deaf. I used sign language from the cradle. When I was still a kid, I told her that one day I would find a way to help her hear. She believed in me. She died when I was fourteen, but she made me promise that I would never give up my goal of inventing a new kind of hearing technology. But they won’t let me have a lab in here. When I asked them for some of the crystals that I was working on at home, the doc said that the fact that I believed crystals had some kind of special powers was another indication that I needed more treatment.”
“Your doctor doesn’t think there is power in crystals?” Sam asked.
“Nah.” Grady grimaced. “He thinks it’s all woo-woo stuff.”
“Did you remind him that it’s crystal technology that makes it possible for him to have a personal computer and carry a phone that can access the Internet?” Sam asked. “Did you mention lasers? LCD screens?”
“Sure,” Grady said. “But I was working with crystals that have some paranormal properties, and the doctor can’t grasp the concept.”
�
�He’s not alone,” Abby said.
Sam folded his elbows on the table and fixed Grady with a deeply interested expression. “You were working with crystals to invent hearing devices?”
“Yeah.” Grady came alive again. “According to my theory, almost anyone could use them. You wouldn’t have to have a lot of talent. If I’m right, it will take very little psi to make my hearing devices work. Everyone produces some energy. But I was missing a critical element. I knew there was a problem, but I couldn’t get at it. Do you know that feeling?”
“Yes,” Sam said. “I know it well.”
“One day I started hearing this voice telling me that I needed The Key.” Grady rubbed his forehead. “It sounds freaky, I know. But I just got this feeling that if I could find that book and the woman who could crack the encryption, I could make the breakthrough that I needed.”
“You said the voice came from a crystal?” Sam asked. “One in your collection?”
“Yes.” Grady frowned, bewildered. “I think so. But I can’t remember which one. I don’t understand why I can’t remember that, either.”
“What color was the crystal?” Sam asked.
“I don’t…” Grady stopped. “Wait. It was green. I’m almost positive that it was one of my green stones.”
“The voice in the green crystal told you that The Key was in the Vaughn library?” Abby asked.
Grady gave her a plaintive look. “I guess so. I told you, I can’t remember exactly. But how else could I have known that?”
“You had never met Mrs. Vaughn before you went to her home to get The Key?” Sam asked.
“No.” Grady snorted. “Get real. How would a guy like me meet someone like that? I don’t know anyone who has that kind of money.”
“Where did you get the gun?” Sam asked.
“Huh?” Another troubled frown came over Grady’s face. “I’m not sure.”
“Did you buy it?” Abby asked.
“No.” Grady rubbed his forehead. “I think I found it somewhere. Maybe on the front seat of my car. Can’t remember.”
“Did the voice tell you where to find the gun, and that you had to use it when you went to get The Key?” Sam asked.
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