The big house was Victorian in style—architecturally speaking, you couldn’t call it a Gothic nightmare, North thought, but with its darkened windows, wildly overgrown gardens and big iron gates, it certainly qualified as ominous. It looked as if it had been abandoned decades earlier.
There was no sign of a vehicle, but the doors of the three-car garage were all closed.
He looked at his team—his old team, the one he had worked with for the past couple of years. Jake Martindale, Zeke, Dallas and Brianna had volunteered to accompany him on this operation. Everyone at the Foundation knew he had regained his vision, but the fact that the special glasses had been poisoned was a closely kept secret.
“All right,” he said, “stick to the plan. Jake, take Zeke and go in from the back when I give the word. First priority is to secure the basement. If I’m right and there is a vault, it will most likely be underground. The objective is to make sure Loring doesn’t get into it. If he does, he will probably escape through a tunnel. Every serious collector has a safe room and an exit strategy.”
“And if we do run into Loring or one of his Puppets?” Jake asked.
“If Loring is armed, it will be with a standard-issue firearm, not one of the artifacts. He knows better than to take the risk. That’s why we’re all wearing vests. The Puppets, however, may still be armed with artifacts. Both the relics and the Puppets are highly unstable and unpredictable. Use the tranquilizer guns on anything that moves.”
They were working with limited information about the layout of the house. North had found some aerial views but no floor plans. The mansion had never been on the market, so there were no photographs of the interior.
Sierra waited quietly on the side. She had declined the offer of a tranquilizer gun on the grounds that she had no experience with one. Instead she had her locket out from under her leather jacket, within easy reach, and she had removed one glove.
“You’ll follow Dallas, Brianna and me in,” North said to her.
“Got it,” she said. She looked at the mansion. “Lots of bad energy in that house.”
There were murmurs of agreement from the team.
North took the lockpick out of the pocket of his trousers and went toward the gate. But at the last second he stopped and simply gave the gate a shove. It swung open on squeaking hinges.
“Unlocked,” Jake said. “That could be good news or bad news.”
“Pretty sure it’s bad news,” North said. “Loring is running.”
It only went to prove the age-old wisdom that held that every good battle plan fell apart the minute you launched it.
They all moved through the gate into the heavily overgrown gardens.
“Same plan,” North said. “Jake and Zeke, go in the back door. The rest of us will go in through the front door. Sierra, stay at the rear. If things get noisy, get out.”
“Understood,” Sierra said.
The front door was unlocked. North led the way into the hall. There was no indication that anyone was in the house.
“Back door was locked,” Jake announced through the communicator, “but we’re in. No sign of anyone around.”
“Loring must have been in a hell of a hurry,” Brianna said. “Didn’t even bother to lock his front door. Think he was tipped off?”
“I doubt it,” North said. “Victor and I kept this operation very tight. I think it’s more likely Loring got scared and ran.”
The inside of the mansion looked as if it had been locked in a time warp since the early 1960s.
“Wow,” Sierra said. “The original version of mid-century modern. My grandmother says she never did understand why the style came back into fashion. She said the only reason people bought those plastic chairs and shag rugs the first time around was because they were cheap.”
Jake and Zeke appeared from a hallway. “Place feels empty. But there’s some heat.”
“Take the upstairs,” North said. “We’ll go down.”
“Right.”
Jake and Zeke went up the stairs and disappeared onto the upper floor. They reappeared almost immediately.
“Nothing but a lot of dust,” Jake reported. “No footprints. He wasn’t spending time there.”
North found the door to the basement in the big kitchen. When he opened it the unmistakable odor of death wafted up from the darkness. He flipped on the light switch.
Loring’s lifeless body was sprawled at the foot of the steps. A large pool of dried blood stained the concrete floor.
“Looks like one or more of the Puppets got tired of waiting to become a super psychic,” Sierra said quietly.
North led the way down the stairs. The rest of the team followed. Sierra paused in the doorway.
“Just a minute,” she said.
North and the others looked at her. Cautiously she put her ungloved hand on the knob of the basement door.
“Shit,” she said.
She yanked her fingers off the knob and hastily pulled on the glove.
“What?” North asked.
She met his eyes. “Rage. A lot of it. And frustration.”
“Loring would have been pissed as hell when he opened that door and came down here,” North said. “His entire project was in ruins. His grand plan to control the technology Crocker Rancourt stole all those decades ago had fallen apart.”
Jake slipped past Sierra and went down the basement steps.
“Whoever killed Loring would have been in a similar mood,” he pointed out. “A Puppet who has figured out that he was conned would lay down a lot of rage, too.”
“You’re right,” Sierra said. She started slowly down the steps.
North watched her closely. “Same vibe you picked up on the doorknob at the scene of the Garraway murder?”
“No. This is different. But also very unstable.”
“It all fits,” North said. “If Loring really was Rancourt’s grandson, he probably considered the cache of artifacts his inheritance. He must have blamed the entire Chastain line for depriving him of what he believed was rightfully his.”
“Sins of the fathers and all that garbage,” Jake said quietly.
“Whoever shot Loring went old-school with a pistol,” Brianna observed. “Either the killer ran out of paranormal weapons—”
“Aura-balancing devices,” North corrected absently.
Brianna shrugged. “Sure. Whatever. Either the Puppet didn’t have any more lethal tech or else he couldn’t make it function.”
“There’s another possibility,” North said. “Maybe the two remaining Puppets still believe in the con. If they think they can use the para tech without Loring’s help, they may have decided they didn’t need him anymore.”
“You think they came here to kill Loring and steal the cache of devices?” Jake asked.
“It’s a possible scenario.” North surveyed the empty basement. “But I doubt if they found the artifacts. The devices have been concealed for decades. What are the odds that a couple of unbalanced Puppets would be able to find Rancourt’s vault?”
“Not very good,” Sierra said. “In my experience collectors usually go extremely high-tech when it comes to protecting their artifacts. Crocker Rancourt would have had good reason to take a lot of precautions. After all, he had committed murder to get his hands on the devices.”
North began a slow prowl of the basement, his senses heightened. There was no sign of a vault or a gallery but he could see the psychic energy of footprints—a lot of them. They burned on the floor. Some were faint with age. Some were fresh. He followed the hottest prints, old and new, to a blank concrete wall.
“Here we go,” he said. “There’s a door here somewhere.”
The concrete was a solid barrier that effectively blocked paranormal radiation, but there were always tiny cracks between even the most carefully concealed door and its frame.
He could sense small threads of energy leaking out from whatever was behind the wall. He recognized his grandfather’s psychic signature and smiled a little.
“Whatever is behind that wall was designed and built by Griffin Chastain,” he said.
He traced the faint threads of leaking energy with his fingertips, drawing an imaginary line straight down to the floor.
There was a small crack in the concrete that was too straight to be the result of the natural settling of an old house.
“Stand back,” he said. “There’s always a possibility that Loring left a trap behind.”
Sierra and the others retreated a few steps. North studied the hot energy around the crack.
He pushed gently. A small section of the floor slid aside, revealing a traditional bank vault–style lock.
“We’re in luck,” he announced. “Crocker Rancourt used standard technology for his vault. It was probably state of the art at the time, but it’s old and outdated now.”
He dropped his pack on the floor and took out the electronic lockpick. He moved quickly, very sure of what he was doing. It didn’t take long to break the old lock. Gears rumbled inside the wall. A large section of concrete slid aside, exposing the interior of a steel-lined vault. Energy poured out of the opening. An array of artifacts glowed hot on the shelves.
“The weapons,” Jake said. “So they weren’t just a legend after all.”
“Medical devices,” North said.
“Right,” Jake said quickly. “Medical devices.”
“I thought there would be more of them,” Brianna said. “I count five artifacts.”
“Keep in mind that Loring removed at least three that we know of,” North said. “The crystal device that was used to try to murder my dad, the light grenade that Sierra and I encountered back at the start of this case, and another artifact that the Puppets used when they attacked us in the garage. All of the relics probably came from this vault.”
“There wouldn’t have been a lot of devices to begin with,” Zeke pointed out. “The Bluestone Project was shut down while the engineers were still trying to figure out how to overcome the tuning problems. Everything we’re looking at here is probably a one-of-a-kind prototype.”
“And they are all apparently tuned to your vibe, North,” Jake said. He got a speculative expression. “That’s why Loring was never able to use any of them. Why he was desperate to get his hands on the tuning crystal that was intended to be used by Crocker Rancourt. The way things stand now, you’re the only one who can activate any of these machines.”
North looked at him. “Which means I’m the one with the best chance of figuring out exactly what they were designed to do. Let’s get them packed up. The sooner they’re safe in a Foundation vault, the sooner we can all relax.”
“We’ve still got a couple of Puppets to pick up,” Brianna said.
“Ralph and Joe,” Sierra said.
“After we remove the artifacts we’ll report Loring’s murder to the local police and the Foundation cleaners stationed in Seattle,” North said. “By now the Puppets will be disorganized and highly unstable. If they do still have some of the artifacts, they won’t be able to use them, at least not effectively. It shouldn’t take long to find them.”
He waited until he and Sierra were done before he asked the question that he’d been wanting to ask.
“Well?” he said.
“The answer is yes,” she said. “The energy on the basement door is the same that is on your glasses. Whoever poisoned the crystals murdered Loring.”