“Fuck you, bitch. What are you doing to me?”
The grocery sack fell from his hand, the contents scattering across the concrete floor. Brian’s eyes rolled up in his head. He collapsed with a thud that echoed in the shadows.
Olivia was stunned. She watched the unconscious man as if he were a snake. Her pulse skittered. She started to shake. Great. The last thing she needed was a panic attack.
She forced herself to concentrate on what to do next. A faint but fairly steady aura still glowed around Brian. Okay, so he wasn’t dead. There was no way to know how long he would remain unconscious. Maybe minutes. Maybe forever.
She had discovered the camera in Swan Antiques a few days ago. She knew almost nothing about it—just that she had some sort of intuitive connection to it. She had become obsessed, never letting it out of her sight. She carried it everywhere. Slept with it beside her bed. Sure, that was not normal, but not normal was pretty much the definition of an obsession.
The realization that the old camera might be a psychic weapon had come over her slowly but surely. Tonight she had been forced to put the suspicion to the test. Now she was certain she could have killed Brian if she had generated a little more heat through the crystal lens.
She got her senses and the incipient panic attack under control with an effort of will and studied the items that had tumbled out of the grocery bag—a roll of duct tape, a wig and a syringe.
She drew one more deep breath, took out her phone and called a familiar number. Roger Gossard, the head of Gossard Consulting, a cutting-edge psychological forensics agency, answered on the first ring.
“Olivia,” he said, his voice sharp with concern. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
She looked at the unconscious man and the items that had fallen out of the grocery sack.
“Gatewood was waiting for me inside the garage,” she said.
“Inside? Shit. I don’t know how he got past us. Where are you? Are you safe?”
“I’m all right. I’m in the garage near the elevator lobby. Gatewood is unconscious.” She paused, swallowed hard. “I think he suffered a seizure.”
“A seizure?”
She put one hand on the camera and looked at the fallen man. “Maybe a brain aneurysm. How should I know? I’m not a doctor.”
“I’m on my way in with the team,” Roger said. “We’ll be there in a couple of minutes. We’ll take charge. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. Remember, you promised to keep Lark and LeClair out of this. I’m supposed to be working undercover. If the media finds out our firm was involved in the investigation, they’ll run with it. Catalina and I are still trying to live down the rumor that we’re running a psychic investigation agency. We don’t want to attract any more clients who think we read palms and tell fortunes.”
“Don’t worry. Gossard Consulting doesn’t want the wrong publicity, either. Any hint of the paranormal would hurt our credibility. Got to protect the brand.”
“Speaking of your brand, you’ll be thrilled to know your psychological profile was right about one thing. The Speed Date Killer really does look like Mr. Nice Guy.”
CHAPTER 2
Thought you were dead,” Victor Arganbright said.
“You mean you hoped I was dead.” Harlan Rancourt contemplated one of the hundreds of pictures that cluttered Victor’s large paneled office. “You never really believed I was permanently out of the way, did you? That’s why you spent the past five years looking for me.”
Five years. He had been on the run for five very long years, hiding not just from the Foundation but from the past. In the end he had been forced to acknowledge that, although he could probably evade Arganbright’s security people indefinitely, he could never outrun the past. It was always there, one step behind him. He was so damned tired of running.
“You did a good job of hiding,” Lucas Pine said.
“Coming from you, that is a compliment,” Harlan said.
He studied the painting a moment longer. The oil was a mediocre nineteenth-century picture of the oracle of Delphi. It wasn’t much to look at. The oracle was shown in her classic pose, seated on a three-legged stool that straddled the crack in the floor of a vast cavern. The figure, draped in a hood and flowing robes, delivered her prophecy as she inhaled the mysterious fumes that seeped up through the opening in the rock. Those who had paid handsomely for her pronouncements waited nearby, anxious to hear her cryptic warnings and advice.
It was, of course, up to the customer to interpret the meaning of the prophecy. You paid your money and you took your chances.
The pictures hanging on the walls and stacked on the floor of the office varied in quality, artistic style and value. Some were hundreds of years old. Others were modern. But they all had the same theme. Arganbright was obsessed with the subject of oracles.
So am I, Harlan thought.
He turned away from the painting and regarded the two men he was confronting. He was well aware he was taking a risk, but it was a carefully calculated risk. That was the only kind he took, and he was very good at the business. He was a grand master–level chess player when it came to judging the odds and predicting the outcomes. But even for him this was a major move. If he was wrong it could cost him his life, or worse. He might end up in a locked ward at Halcyon Manor, the psychiatric hospital where the Foundation confined the real monsters.
It was late afternoon. Arganbright and Pine had been working in the office when he had called Victor’s private number to inform them that he was standing thirty floors below their penthouse at the front door of the Foundation tower. After ending the call he had been met by two armed guards and escorted upstairs in a private elevator.
Victor was seated behind a massive desk. Lucas lounged on the corner, one elegantly shod foot braced on the floor, arms casually crossed. They had dismissed the security team, but Harlan was sure both men were armed. They watched him as if he was one of the psychic monsters the Foundation hunted down and housed in Halcyon.
Monsters like Larissa Whittier.
They all had good reason to be wary of each other. It was no secret his father had viewed him as the heir apparent to what had become the Rancourt family business—or criminal mob, depending on your point of view—the Foundation. He knew that as long as he was alive, he represented a threat to the men who were now at the top—Arganbright and Pine.
They made an intriguing couple. Pine, silver-haired and polished, had the looks and stage-trained voice of an actor. It would have been easy to assume he was just another retired Las Vegas show personality—a former lounge singer or a magician, perhaps. He was retired, all right—from the CIA.
Victor Arganbright appeared at first glance to be Pine’s polar opposite. He radiated the grim, humorless demeanor of a man who was haunted night and day by his self-imposed task of tracking down a dangerous conspiracy.