In Too Deep (28 page)

“Nothing here that looks like it ever had any connection to your broker,” she said.

Fallon consulted the map. “According to the team, he entered the mansion on a regularly scheduled tour. All the tours start in the Grand Hall.”

“To the left,” Julian said.

He led the way around the corner and down a long, high-ceilinged corridor paneled in rich, dark hardwood.

Isabella lowered her senses, not wanting to waste energy that she might need later for more nuanced detective work. Still, even when perceived with only a fraction of her talent, there was an abundance of fog to wade through. There were no such things as ghosts, but sometimes she wondered if down through the centuries, others endowed with her kind of talent had started the rumors of spirits from the Other Side. It was easy enough to imagine phantoms in the eerie light.

She followed Fallon and Julian through another doorway and into a heavy sea of fog.

“Whoa.” She stopped abruptly, adjusting her senses down another notch. “This, I take it, is the Grand Hall?”

Even in darkness lit only by moonlight slanting through high, Gothic-style windows and the two thin beams of the flashlights, the vast space glowed with gilded splendor. The walls were hung with huge ancient tapestries depicting medieval hunting scenes. Marble tiles covered the floor. Heavy, ornate furniture adorned the room. Couches and chairs covered in velvet and embroidered brocades were arranged in groupings around tables inset with lapis and malachite. Massive chandeliers hung from the ceiling.

“We know for certain that the broker was in this room,” Julian said. “He was seen entering. He exited the house with the rest of the tour group through the kitchens.”

“There’s a high probability that your broker had some serious talent in order to survive as long as he did in his line of work,” Fallon said. He studied the cavernous space, keeping his flashlight aimed at the marble-tiled floor and the richly woven rugs. “Probably a strategy-talent or an intuitive.”

“He definitely had some juice,” Julian agreed, “although he seemed unaware of it.”

“Strats and intuitives often take their psychic side for granted,” Fallon said absently. He crossed the room to examine a wall of glass-fronted bookcases. “Their abilities don’t strike them or those around them as unusual unless they are extremely powerful.”

“If he did have some talent, he would have been jacked when he entered this hall,” Isabella said.

“Right.” Fallon aimed the beam of the flashlight at a gilded red lacquer console table. “He knew that what he was about to do was dangerous. There would have been a lot of adrenaline, and that means his senses would have bounced sky-high.”

“Which would heat up the fog,” Isabella said.

Julian frowned. “What fog?”

“Never mind,” Isabella said. “Just give me a minute to take a closer look.” She opened her senses slowly. “Sheesh. There’s a ton of energy in here.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Julian demanded.

“This place gets half a million visitors a year, according to the brochure,” Fallon said.

“Well, no wonder the mist is so thick,” she said. “There’s so much stuff in this house that anything smaller than a refrigerator would be hard to find unless you knew where to look.”

“Damn it, Isabella,” Julian said. “Can you handle this or not?”

“Oh, shut up, Julian,” she said. “I don’t work for you anymore, remember? I’m a J&J investigator now.”

Fallon’s shadowed smile bordered on the macabre.

Julian shut up.

Isabella ignored them both and concentrated on calibrating her senses. She tuned out the older fog, concentrating on the brighter, more recent traces. Then she refined the search further, looking for only the very hot, icy light that she had detected on the broker’s computer.

And suddenly, there it was, the unique trail of searing fog that could only have been laid down by the broker.

“Got it,” she said softly. “You’re right, Fallon, he was running very hot. He was definitely nervous but mostly he was excited, thrilled.”

“No surprise there,” Julian said. “It was probably the biggest deal of his career.”

Fallon watched Isabella. “You’re in charge here. We’ll follow you.”

“This way,” she said, confident now that she had the trail.

She went quickly up the wide, curving staircase at the far end of the Grand Hall to the second floor. The river of fog flowed along another paneled passageway, past rooms and chambers and alcoves that gleamed and glowed and glittered in the shadows.

“Wouldn’t want to have to pay the utilities bill for this place,” she said.

“It would be the salaries for the staff required to maintain the mansion that would ruin you financially,” Fallon observed.

“Could you two try to stay focused here?” Julian muttered.

Isabella ignored him. So did Fallon.

She followed the searing mist down another hallway, past a large ballroom. She hated to admit it, but at times like this she did feel a little like a dog that had picked up the scent. Fallon’s words floated through her head.
Born to hunt
. Somehow that made her talent sound a lot more impressive.

She rounded another corner and came to a halt. Fallon and Julian stopped behind her.

“What do you see?” Julian asked urgently.

She studied the energy on the carpet. “He went into this room,” she said. “But the others on the tour did not.”

Fallon aimed his flashlight at the doorway of the room. A velvet rope blocked the entrance. “He hung back, waited until the tour group had moved on and then he ducked under the rope.”

“Looks like it,” Isabella said.

Julian moved to stand beside Fallon. Together they speared the shadows with their penlights.

Isabella stood on tiptoe behind the men, trying to peer past the barricade created by their broad shoulders.

“How sweet,” she said. “It’s a little girl’s bedroom.”

“Vantara had a daughter,” Julian said. “She inherited this place. Couldn’t afford to maintain it so she sold it to the historical foundation that runs the tours.”

The bedroom was a frilly fairyland of pink and white. The small bed was adorned with ruffles and flounces and covered with a herd of stuffed animals. Lacy curtains bracketed the windows. A child-sized dressing table and stool stood in one corner. Dolls, rocking horses and stuffed pandas littered the floor.

“I don’t see anything that even remotely resembles a weapon,” Julian said.

“No,” Fallon agreed. “But there’s something of a paranormal nature in here. I can feel the energy.”

Isabella tapped the shoulders of both men. “Excuse me. Mind if I take a look?”

Fallon stepped back. So did Julian.

She ducked under the velvet rope and stepped into the bedroom, concentrating on the trail of fog.

The mists led straight to the top of a pink-and-gilt chest of drawers. For the first time, Isabella took out her own flashlight and switched it on. She started opening and closing the drawers. Most were crammed with dainty petticoats, nightgowns and other items that had been made for a little girl.

The bottom drawer was filled with small pink and white socks and a cauldron of boiling fog.

“Got it,” Isabella said.

“What is it?” Julian asked urgently.

“Hang on.” Isabella dug beneath the neatly arranged socks and saw an elaborately wrought hand mirror. She aimed the beam of the flashlight at the object and caught her breath. The mirror was spectacular. The gold-and-silver frame was intricately worked in an elaborate Baroque design that subtly incorporated ancient alchemical symbols. Strange crystals glittered in the light. Although the object looked as if it had been crafted during the seventeenth century, the glass was not dark with age.

Captivated, she reached down to grasp the curved handle.

Electricity sparked through her. She flinched but she did not let go.

“This thing is definitely hot,” she said softly.

“Are you okay?” Fallon asked.

“I think so.”

She looked into the mirror, aware that Fallon and Julian had come up behind her and were doing the same thing. They were all fascinated, she realized.

It was like looking into a pool of liquid mercury. She could almost see her image but not quite. The seemingly solid glass of the mirror appeared molten. Silver energy swirled just beneath the surface, compelling her to look deeper.

“It’s incredible,” she whispered.

“Lower your senses,” Fallon ordered.

The razor-sharp words snapped her out of the mini-trance. Startled, she hastily cut her talent. The surface of the mirror took on a more normal appearance. She could still sense the power in the artifact, but it no longer exerted the strong pull that it had a few seconds earlier.

Julian plucked the mirror from her hand. Energy whipped the air around him. His triumphant excitement was palpable.

“Damn, you did it, Isabella,” he breathed. “This has to be the para-weapon that the broker left here.”

“But what does it do?” Isabella asked.

She half expected Fallon to respond. He was always the one with the answers. But for once he had nothing to offer.

“I told you, I don’t know exactly how it works.” Julian examined the back of the mirror. “All I can tell you is that the black-ops folks who hired Lucan to make the buy are willing to pay a hell of a lot to get it off the market.”

“Time to go,” Fallon said. “We got what we came for. Let’s move.”

The chillingly neutral quality of his voice sent a shiver of awareness through Isabella. Something was wrong. In that moment she knew that he had recognized the mirror and had some knowledge of its power.

She looked at him, but in the deep shadows it was impossible to read his face. She heightened her talent a little and saw the heat in Fallon’s eyes. It was not the kind she associated with their lovemaking. Fallon was jacked and dangerous.

“Jones is right,” Julian said. “Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

He went swiftly toward the doorway. Fallon grabbed Isabella’s arm, his grip uncharacteristically rough. She turned to look at him in surprise. But he was already shoving her across the room toward the bed.

She landed with a jolt and a shocked gasp. When she opened her eyes, she saw that Julian had spun around in the doorway. The mirror in his hand flashed white-hot.

The room was suddenly ablaze with a blinding paranormal fire. Isabella realized that although she could still see and hear and feel, she felt terrifyingly numb. It took her a heartbeat to understand that was because her para-senses were frozen.

She was vaguely aware that Fallon was in motion, launching himself through the raging storm of psi. He slammed into Julian. His momentum took both of them to the floor in the hallway. They landed with a sickening thud.

The energy storm cut off abruptly when Julian lost his grip on the mirror. But when Isabella tried to raise her talent, she discovered that her senses were still numb.

The sickening sounds of hand-to-hand combat brought her up off the bed. She found the flashlight she had dropped and staggered across the room to the doorway. She had to grip the frame to stay on her feet.

Fallon and Julian were locked in a cage fight because of the narrow confines of the hallway. The primal nature of the battle sent a nauseating wave of panic through Isabella. Fists rose and fell, smashing again and again into muscular flesh. Boots and shoulders struck the wall. She caught glimpses of blood as the two men heaved and rolled and collided again and again.

A lethally thin blade flashed evilly in the shadows. She could not tell which man gripped the knife. But in the next moment she heard a terrible crack. Fallon had slammed Julian’s hand against the floor.

The knife dropped on the carpet. Julian howled, rolled onto his side and clutched his broken wrist.

“Bastard,” he snarled. “You son of a bitch. You should be dead.”

“You’re not the first person to tell me that.” Fallon got to his feet. There was blood on his face. He took his gun out from under his black leather jacket. “The Quicksilver Mirror can kill,” Fallon said. “But only in the hands of a talent who is powerful enough to control the maximum amount of energy latent in it. You just weren’t strong enough, Garrett.”

“Shit.” Julian groaned. He sat up, cradling his injured wrist. “The last thing I need is a lecture on para-physics from Fallon Jones. Just shoot me now.”

“Good idea,” Isabella said.

Fallon looked at her. “Are you okay?”

“Yes—no.” Another flicker of panic shivered through her. “Fallon, my senses are frozen.”

“So are mine.” Keeping the gun trained on Julian, he picked up the mirror. “But they’ll recover in time. If the mirror doesn’t kill you, the effects are temporary.”

“Oh, good. For a moment there I was a little worried.”

Fallon prodded the groaning Julian. “On your feet. We’re leaving before the maintenance people show up and start asking a lot of questions about the damage to the hallway.”

Julian got to his knees. “How the hell do you plan to get me out of here? That’s my hunter who’s standing guard down there.”

“Not anymore,” Fallon said. “After he got us inside, he was replaced by a J&J agent. I called in some talent from L.A.”

Julian’s face twisted in disgust. “How did you figure it out?”

“I didn’t know you were after the Quicksilver Mirror until I saw the damn thing,” Fallon said. “But there were a few details that didn’t sit right. You gave off the vibes of a guy who was working his own agenda. What pissed me off and made me decide that you were one of the bad guys was how you used Isabella and then sent that hunter team to grab her in Phoenix when you discovered that you needed her after all. That’s no way to treat a lady, Garrett.”

Julian shot Isabella a fulminating look. She gave him her most dazzling smile.

“I was following Lucan’s orders,” Julian said, turning sullen.

“I called Lucan again after you left the trailer today. Gave him a different theory of the crime. He agreed to play it out and see what happened.”

“Whose theory of the crime?” Julian demanded.

“Isabella’s. I’ve learned the hard way not to ignore the gut reaction of a trained investigator. She was sure you were behind the arms dealing in Department A.”