Three days later . . .
Sierra stopped just inside the heavily shadowed entrance of the Fogg Club. She gripped the balcony railing and surveyed the strobe-lit crowd. Fierce rock music reverberated across the room, adding energy to the already hot atmosphere.
She smiled. “Reminds me of the Vault. Is everyone in here connected to the Foundation?”
“Not everyone,” North said. He did a quick scan of the room. “Even though the owner doesn’t advertise, a few tourists and locals occasionally manage to stumble into this place or the Area Fifty-One club a couple of blocks away. It’s another bar and casino that caters to the Foundation crowd.”
The bartender looked up and saw Sierra and North. He raised a hand in a friendly greeting and went back to pouring drinks.
North wrapped his fingers around one of Sierra’s gloved hands. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to some friends.”
He steered her through the crowded mezzanine. Several people greeted North and immediately turned to Sierra, varying degrees of interest and curiosity in their expressions. She recognized the heat in the eyes of a couple of the men and one of the women as polite sexual interest, but most were clearly intrigued by whatever they had heard about her. She realized she had become the subject of a great deal of rumor and speculation. She suspected her parents were at least partially to blame. Allegra’s ability to stabilize Chandler Chastain’s aura until North arrived with the balancing device had made the Raines family famous within the Foundation. The fascination had rubbed off on her father. Byron’s inbox was piled high with requests for psychic poems.
The discovery that Griffin Chastain had died a hero and that the machines he had helped invent had been intended as medical devices had produced an instant Foundation legend. As Byron had pointed out, it didn’t make the artifacts any less dangerous, but people were accustomed to the idea that a lot of medical instruments could kill as well as heal. The Halcyon doctors were eager to work with North in hopes of creating some therapies for the poorly understood disorders of the paranormal senses.
Perception was everything, Sierra thought.
She knew that tonight was North’s first visit to the club since his vision had returned to normal. It was his way of making it clear he was back and in full command of his talent. Given the significance of the occasion for him, she had spent the afternoon shopping at the pricey boutiques that were tucked away in all the big hotel casinos on the Strip. She had taken her mother with her for a second opinion. In Vegas there was a fine line between fabulous and over the top.
Allegra had declared the black slip of a dress to be safely in the fabulous category. It was discreetly studded with black sequins that caught the light in an elegant but understated way. Her black locket, black jet earrings and stiletto heels were the perfect accessories. The slim black leather gloves added an edge to the look.
The outfit had cost a small fortune, but thanks to the generous bonus the Foundation had tacked on to her normal commission, she could afford it. Earlier that evening she had concluded the dress was worth it when she descended the grand staircase at the Abyss and saw North waiting for her at the bottom. There was so much hot energy in the atmosphere and so much heat in his eyes that she was amazed they hadn’t started a fire right there in the foyer of the big house.
They made their way through the crowd to a booth on the mezzanine, greeting more of North’s friends and associates along the way. When they were finally seated at the table a waiter took their orders for drinks. Sierra asked for a glass of wine. North went with whiskey. More people dropped by the table to congratulate North and ask him when he would be rejoining his team.
“I’m moving into engineering,” he said. “Paranormal light R and D.”
Several people turned to Sierra and asked her if she would be going to work at the Foundation.
“I’ve got a job back in Seattle,” she said.
North gave her a brooding look each time she said it but he made no comment.
Jake arrived at the table, a beer in one hand. “About time you two showed up. The Loring case is the main topic of conversation here tonight.”
“Any update on the two Puppets?” North asked.
“Not yet, but like you said, it’s just a matter of time before they get picked up.”
“What if they’ve left the country?” Sierra said.
Jake shrugged. “I doubt if they have the kind of cash it takes to just disappear. If we’re right about their unstable conditions, they won’t be capable of carrying out a complicated escape plan.”
Another couple arrived at the table. An attractive woman with serious-looking glasses smiled at North. Her companion was a handsome man whose excellent profile and toned body were ruined by his arrogant vibe.
“Congratulations,” the woman said. She gave Jake a quick, shy glance and then turned back to North. “I hear your father has recovered and that you and your team closed a major case.”
“Nice work, Chastain,” the man said.
His attention was on something else on the far side of the room. He hooked his hand around the woman’s arm and started to urge her away.
His companion, however, stood her ground, pretending to ignore the tug on her arm.
“It was the team that closed the case,” North said. “Jake was there, too.”
The woman smiled tentatively at Jake. “I’m so glad everyone is safe. It sounds like you were dealing with some very dangerous relics.”
“It’s been interesting,” Jake said.
Sierra got a ping. Jake’s tone of voice was a little too neutral. The woman seemed to sense it, too. She turned quickly back to North.
“Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?” she said.
“Sorry,” North said. “This is Sierra Raines, the go-between who handled the case. Sierra, meet Kimberly Tolland and Grant Wallbrook. They are both researchers in one of the Foundation labs.”
“How do you do?” Sierra said.
Wallbrook nodded once in a curt, barely polite greeting. “Sierra.”
“Welcome to Las Vegas,” Kimberly said. She started to offer her hand but she glanced at Sierra’s black leather gloves and stopped. She smiled sympathetically. “I heard you got burned by an artifact.”
“A job hazard for a go-between,” Sierra said.
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed that Jake had gone uncharacteristically quiet. He looked as if he wanted to escape.
Grant pulled more forcefully on Kimberly’s arm. “Let’s get a drink, Kim. We have things to talk about.”
Kimberly looked as if she wanted to protest but she managed a smile and acquiesced.
“Sure,” she said.
She allowed Wallbrook to steer her away from the booth. The action took them directly past Jake. Sierra opened her locket as if to check her makeup in the mirror. She heightened her senses and turned her head just enough to catch a glimpse of the reflections of the auras of Jake, Wallbrook and Kimberly.
The couple disappeared into the crowd. Jake watched them go.
“Wallbrook just landed a big promotion,” he said. “Head of a research lab.”
“Is that right?” North said.
Jake downed some beer and lowered the bottle. “Came with a big raise, too. Earns a hell of a lot more than a cleaner does now. It’s that damn PhD after his name. Kimberly thinks he’s Mr. Right.”
“He’s not,” Sierra said. She snapped her locket shut. “At least, not for her.”
Jake scowled. “What makes you say that?”
“Intuition. I’m pretty good at figuring out that kind of thing.”
North raised his brows.
“Except when it’s personal,” she added quickly. “Jake, if you want my opinion, you should ask Kimberly out on a date.”
Jake looked dumbfounded.
“She’d never go out with a guy like me,” he finally managed. “I dropped out of college in my junior year to go into security work at the Foundation. She’s a scientist with a hell of a lot of fancy degrees.”
“You never know,” Sierra said. “Worth a try. I think you two would be an excellent match.”
Jake looked as if he was about to argue the point. Instead he turned thoughtful. “I’ll let you guys have some time together. Your first real date, right?”
“Right,” North said, putting some emphasis on the word. “We’ve been a little busy lately. Haven’t had time to get to know each other.”
Jake chuckled. “Hint taken. Consider me gone.”
He headed off into the crowd. A silence fell on the booth. Sierra cast about for a safe topic.
“How does it feel to finally know what you want to do with the rest of your life?” she asked.
North leaned back and looked at her over the rim of his whiskey glass. The energy in his eyes and in the atmosphere around him sent a zingy little thrill through all of her senses.
“Feels good,” he said. “I think.”
“You aren’t sure?”
“Let’s just say I’m still working on the logistics of the situation.”
“What logistics?” she asked.
“Me working here in Las Vegas. You in Seattle, working at the Vault. That puts us about a thousand miles apart.”
“Yes, it does,” she agreed. “Where are you going with this?”
“It occurs to me,” he said, speaking in a very careful, even manner, as if each word was potentially risky, “that you could work as a go-between for the Foundation museum. They collect artifacts from all over the world. They are always in need of people who have the kind of talent it takes to authenticate the objects. I’m not saying the museum would pay better than the Vault, but there is a nice benefits package and the working conditions would be safer.”
“Is that right?”
“You wouldn’t have to operate on your own,” North said, warming to his argument now. “You’d have the backing of other members of the staff and even a team of cleaners on jobs that might be dangerous. No more midnight runs to deliver hot artifacts to crazy collectors on your own.”
“Sounds interesting, but I wasn’t cut out for the corporate world,” Sierra said. “I learned that lesson when I worked for Ecclestone’s Auction House.”
Damned if she was going to make this easy for him, she thought.
“Ecclestone’s was an entirely different situation,” North said, very earnest now. “You were set up to take the fall for a scam the company was running.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I never believed you were guilty. Not for long, at any rate.”
“But for a little while?”
“The file Lucas gave me indicated that you had a somewhat unconventional background, so yes, I had a few questions at first,” North said.
“Because my father sells psychic poems online and my mother does song therapy and I was raised in an intentional community populated by a lot of people who prefer to live off the grid.”
“Like I said, your background looks a little unusual when it’s detailed in a Foundation file. But as soon as I got to know you, I realized you weren’t a fraud or a con artist.”
She gave him a bright little smile. “Thanks for that.”
“I’m not saying there might not be a few issues with management at the Foundation—office politics is a universal phenomenon—but it sure as hell isn’t a corrupt auction house.”
“I agree,” she said. “Nevertheless, I don’t think I would do well in any setting where I have to report to a boss or carry out corporate goals. I’ve got more of an entrepreneurial vibe. You’ve found your calling and that’s a wonderful thing. I’m still searching for mine.”
North looked wary. “Couldn’t you search for it here in Vegas?”
“Possibly. But somehow this town doesn’t strike me as the sort of place where I can hear the voice I’m trying to hear.”
“You’re talking about the voice in that poem?”
“Right,” she said. “There’s a lot of background noise in Vegas.”
“It’s quiet out in the desert where my house is located,” North said.
“That’s true,” she said. “Are you inviting me to move in with you?”
North hesitated and then exhaled slowly. “I have it on good authority that no woman would ever want to live in the Abyss.”
“Who is your authority?”
“My mother.”
“I see,” Sierra said. “Have you conducted any serious research to determine if she’s right?”
“What do you mean by ‘research’?”
“How many women have you invited to live at the Abyss?”
“None.”
“Why don’t you try asking one if she would be happy to move into the mansion?”
North went very still. “Where do you suggest I start this research?”
“How about with the woman who is closest at hand? Me.”
“Are you saying you wouldn’t mind living in the Abyss?”
“I find it rather . . . stimulating.”
“Really? Because of the mirrors? Shit.” North broke off and pulled his buzzing phone out of his pocket. He grimaced when he saw the screen. “It’s Victor. I’d better take the call.”
“Go ahead. Knowing Arganbright, it will either be very good news or very bad news. He doesn’t seem to have any in-between mode.” Sierra got to her feet. “I’m going to the women’s room while you two chat.”
North nodded and put the phone to his ear. “This better be important, Victor. I’m on a date tonight. My first in a very long time.”
Sierra slipped away from the table and threaded a path toward the discreet sign at the far end of the mezzanine.
She ended up in a long, shadowed hallway. At the end of it she opened a door and found herself in a gaudily decorated lounge lined with mirrors and dressing tables. Through an arched doorway she saw four gleaming white stalls and a couple of sinks. More mirrors were positioned behind the sinks.
The door of the stall at the far end opened. Kimberly Tolland emerged. She looked as if she was trying to conceal some strong emotions. She managed a polite smile as she walked across the space to one of the sinks.
“Hello again,” she said. “Enjoying the evening?”
“It’s been interesting,” Sierra said.
“I’ve heard some talk that you might be invited to join the museum staff.”
“Funny you should mention my career prospects,” Sierra said. “I was just telling North that I don’t do well in a corporate setting. How do you like working in a Foundation lab?”
Kimberly turned on the faucet and studied her own reflection in the mirror as she washed her hands. “I loved it, at least until tonight.”
“I don’t understand,” Sierra said.
“I just found out that bastard brought me here to dump me. I guess he thought it would be easier if he did it in a place where I was less likely to make a scene.”
“Are we talking about Grant Wallbrook?”
“We are talking about that lying, cheating creep, yes.” Kimberly turned off the faucet and yanked a paper towel out of the dispenser. She dried her hands and then she dabbed at her eyes. Her mouth trembled. “He used my research to get the promotion and now he no longer needs me. Oh, he didn’t phrase it that way tonight when he told me we had to stop seeing each other. He said it wouldn’t look right if we continued to date, but that was just an excuse. He used me, damn it.”
“I know this isn’t going to be much consolation, but I’m pretty good when it comes to assessing aura compatibility. Yours and Grant’s definitely did not sing.”
Kimberly crumpled the paper towel. “What?”
“It’s just a knack I have. If you want to know how it feels when two auras sing together, I suggest you ask Jake out on a date.”
“Jake?” Kimberly looked genuinely startled. “But he’s a cleaner. Everyone knows they go for flash and glamour. He wouldn’t be interested in someone like me.”
“Why not?”
Kimberly took a gold lipstick out of her purse and concentrated very hard on applying the color to her mouth.
“I’m sure that to him I’m just a boring nerd,” she said.
“You’re wrong. Take a risk. Ask him to dance and see what happens.”
“What if he turns me down? I’d be totally humiliated.”
“What are you now?”
“Totally humiliated.”
“Right,” Sierra said. “So you’ve got nothing to lose.”
She went into the nearest stall and locked the door.
“I hope things go well with you and North,” Kimberly called.
“We’re working on it.”
Kimberly walked past the row of stalls and moved into the carpeted lounge area. The outer door opened and closed.
Sierra stripped off her gloves and tucked them into her little evening bag. There were some things a woman could not do while wearing leather gloves. She was happy to see that the commode was a self-flushing model. No need to touch the handle.
The outer door opened again. A moment later stiletto heels tapped briskly on the white tiled floor and paused in front of a washbasin. Water splashed in the sink and then stopped. The towel dispenser rumbled.
The heels tapped back through the arched doorway into the lounge area.
Silence. The newcomer did not leave.
Probably freshening up her makeup, Sierra thought.
But a shiver of awareness iced her senses.
The outer door opened again. Another woman had arrived. Sierra relaxed. She was no longer alone with the stranger in the lounge. For some reason that was reassuring.
She used some tissues to open the stall door and crossed to the sink the newcomer had just used. Bracing herself for the inevitable jolt, she turned on the gleaming faucet.
Rage slammed across her senses.
It was a startlingly familiar fury. Frustration and psychic instability shivered through it. She recognized it because she had encountered it on two previous occasions. The first time was when she had touched the crystals in North’s poisoned sunglasses. She had sensed the same white-hot heat on the handle of the basement door in the house on Bainbridge Island.
The person who had murdered Loring and tried to blind North was a woman.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw something sparkle on the narrow steel shelf above the neighboring sink. Kimberly had left her lipstick.
Tentatively Sierra touched the gold lipstick case with her bare fingers. She got a little sizzle but nothing like the energy that had been left by the woman who had used the first sink.
Sierra took a deep breath and turned off the faucet. Another shock jolted her but this time she was prepared. She tried to come up with a strategy. There were two women in the outer lounge. One of them was a killer.
Or were they working together?
Kimberly appeared in the arched doorway that separated the stalls-and-sinks room from the makeup lounge. Behind the lenses of her glasses her eyes were wide with horror.
There was a good reason for the expression. Larissa Whittier was directly behind her, a small pistol pointed at Kimberly’s head.
“Hello, Larissa,” Sierra said.
“Get rid of the locket,” Larissa said. “I don’t know how it works but back in Fogg Lake I overheard Marge and the town librarian discussing it. They said you could use it to make a person faint. Take it off now or Kimberly dies.”
Sierra slipped the locket off over her head and set it down on the counter positioned above the two sinks.
“You can’t risk shooting Kimberly,” she said. “Someone will hear the shot.”
“Not with the music going full blast. It’s Kimberly’s bad luck that she came back.”
“My lipstick,” Kimberly said weakly. “Look, no one is dead yet. This can end here and now.”
“No,” Larissa said. “It’s not going to end until I get my inheritance. Those weapons that my grandfather invented belong to me.”
Sierra didn’t have to look at the reflection of Larissa’s aura to pick up the instability in her energy field. The signs were evident in the unsteady pitch of her voice and her feverish eyes. Her fury was so great it dominated common sense, reason, perhaps even the instinct for self-preservation. In that moment the only thing that mattered to her was revenge.
“Griffin Chastain and Crocker Rancourt invented those devices together,” Sierra said. “Chastain intended them to be used to heal.”
“Rancourt understood the true potential of the light machines,” Larissa said. “It’s all there in his logbook. It was my grandfather who comprehended the real power of those artifacts. When Rancourt realized Chastain would never agree to weaponize the devices, he did what he had to do.”
“Congratulations,” Sierra said. “You did a nice job of hiding in plain sight while you let Delbridge Loring take all the risks. He wasn’t running the Puppets—he was one of them. So was Garraway. You were the one pulling the strings.”
“Loring and Garraway were both obsessed with the paranormal. I offered them what they could not resist—the promise of serious psychic power. They recruited the orderlies because they needed some muscle to pick up the research subjects and keep them under control at Riverview.”
“You covered your tracks well,” Sierra said. “You even left a few clues indicating that Loring was Crocker Rancourt’s long-lost grandson, the one who supposedly died in an explosion.”
“The file of obituary notices?” Larissa smiled a chilling smile. “I knew it would send North and Victor Arganbright off in the wrong direction. It’s no secret that Arganbright never believed Harlan Rancourt died in that fire.”
“The master stroke was letting Loring hide in your grandfather’s old estate on Bainbridge Island,” Sierra said. “How did you get hold of it?”
“An heir hunter found me after Stenson Rancourt and his son died in the explosion that Arganbright and Lucas Pine caused. I was Stenson’s biological daughter, but he never acknowledged me. He never paid any attention to me at all. I was the product of a one-night stand. I doubt if he even remembered my mother’s name. I’m sure he never realized that I was the one who got the full measure of Crocker Rancourt’s talent.”
“Did Harlan die in that blaze?”
Larissa shrugged. “I assume so. If he didn’t, he has certainly managed to keep a low profile all these years. It was obvious he never went after the cache of weapons my grandfather hid at the estate.”
“Maybe he never knew about them,” Sierra said.
“It’s possible. Who cares? What matters is that I’m the one who found them.”
“You found your inheritance, but the devices were of no use to you because they were all tuned to Griffin Chastain’s signature, and the tuning crystal that your grandfather stole was engineered to respond only to that signature.”
“At first I thought it might be possible to retune the crystal. I couldn’t risk it myself, but I knew someone in one of the Foundation labs who was an expert on crystals.”
“Delbridge Loring.”
“He had a different name when he was employed here,” Larissa said. “I invented the Loring identity for him. He was good, I’ll give him that much. He’s the one who created the crystals the doctors insisted North wear after he began to go psi-blind.”
“But you are the one who infused them with the poison you hoped would make North psi-blind. That’s why your energy is all over these lenses.”
“I found the formula in my grandfather’s logbook. He had planned to use it on Griffin Chastain but he never got the opportunity.”
“Because Griffin confronted him about the theft of the artifacts. Your grandfather ended up shooting Griffin instead of poisoning him.”
“Initially I put the poison into North’s drink here at the Fogg Club. Like the radiation in the crystals, it has hypnotic properties. All I had to do was provide the right suggestion. Sure enough, he started losing control of his talent within hours. The doctors at Halcyon had no explanation.”
“You had proof of concept,” Sierra said. “The poison worked. The problem was that you had to keep dosing North with the stuff until it had completely destroyed his talent. It wasn’t practical to keep poisoning his drinks, so you infused the radiation into the crystals Loring made for North’s glasses.”
“It was easy enough to slip into the crystal lab and take the special eyeglasses out for a couple of hours one night. That’s all the time I needed to irradiate the lenses. The techs never missed them. I put them back before the lab opened that morning. Every time North wore those sunglasses he was exposed to a small but steady dose of radiation.”
“Were you going to try to poison his father next?”
“Yes, but suddenly Loring sent word about the rumors of a collection of artifacts that had been sold at auction in the Seattle area,” Larissa said. “According to the chatter, a device that belonged to Griffin Chastain was among the relics. We knew it had to be important. Swan Antiques had bought the entire collection, but it was a large number of objects. Unfortunately, there was no description of the Chastain relic. It could have been any one of a hundred objects.”
“You realized you needed a Chastain to identify the artifact,” Sierra said. “You made sure Chandler got the rumor. But he knew he was being followed that day. He tricked Loring and the Puppets. They were left with a useless vintage radio.”
“The next thing I knew, North Chastain was in Seattle.” Larissa’s voice rose to an even higher, edgier pitch. “He hired you and everything started to fall apart. All because of you.”
She aimed the gun at Sierra.
“Why kill me?” Sierra said. “I’m just the go-between.”
“You destroyed everything I worked for years to achieve. That tuning crystal Loring traded for the night gun was sabotaged. I almost died trying to use it.”
“The sabotage was carried out decades ago by Griffin Chastain. He knew that as long as that crystal existed there was a chance Rancourt or one of his descendants would get hold of it.”
“You cheated me.”
“You’re losing it, Larissa,” Sierra said. “Don’t do this.”
“It’s all your fault, you stupid, interfering bitch.” Larissa’s hand tightened on the pistol.
“You have to know you can’t get away with murdering us,” Kimberly said. Her voice was astonishingly calm and controlled. The voice of reason.
“Oh, yes I can,” Larissa said.
“Nope,” Sierra said. “You can’t.”
She flattened her palm against the mirror over the sink and slammed energy into the sparkling glass.
The move had the intended effect of shocking the already unstable Larissa. She tried to regain her balance and aim the gun at Sierra again.
But the mirror was exploding. A storm of dazzling paranormal fire blazed in the room, igniting the other mirrors. The currents of energy became a wildfire that flowed into the lounge. Dressing table mirrors cracked and shattered. Some of the light fixtures popped.
“Kimberly, down!” Sierra shouted.
Kimberly dove to the floor.
Larissa screamed and pulled the trigger but she was blinded and disoriented by the violent, chaotic energy. The gun roared. Somewhere tiles cracked. Sierra grabbed her locket, got it open and sent a fierce pulse of heat through it.
The mirror crystal sent the currents of Larissa’s aura rebounding back into her energy field, briefly destabilizing them. She jerked violently, froze for an instant and then collapsed on the white tile floor, unconscious.
Kimberly got to her feet and surveyed the destruction. “That was . . . amazing.”
The restroom door crashed open. North was suddenly in the room, gun in hand, his hot aura blazing in the shards of broken mirrors. Jake was right behind him.
They both stopped when they saw Larissa on the floor.
North moved toward Sierra.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m all right. How did you know?”
“Victor called to tell me the DNA tests showed that Loring had no biological connection to Rancourt. But I was sure that only someone with Rancourt’s signature would have been so determined to find the tuning crystal that had been engineered for Crocker Rancourt. I knew there had to be someone else involved. When I realized Larissa had followed you into the restroom, I got what we in the psychic business like to call a real bad feeling. She wasn’t supposed to be here in Vegas. She had told me her assignment at Fogg Lake would last two months.”
Jake moved to Kimberly. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” She gave him a shaky smile and used a forefinger to push her glasses higher on her nose. “I’m okay. Thanks.”
Jake relaxed. “That’s good. Great.” He looked around at the shards of shattered mirrors. “What the hell just happened in here?”
“I’ve always had a little trouble controlling my talent without my mirror crystal,” Sierra said. She picked up her locket and put it around her neck. “Turns out Larissa is the true descendant of Crocker Rancourt. She was born to a woman who had a one-night hookup with Stenson Rancourt. He never acknowledged her, but after his death an heir hunter found her. She inherited the Riverview Trust and eventually found her grandfather’s vault. But the artifacts inside were useless to her.”
North looked down at Larissa. “So she joined the Foundation to look for what she considered the rest of her inheritance—the other tuning crystal.”
“That wasn’t all she wanted,” Sierra said. “She wanted revenge, too. She blamed the Chastain family for making her inheritance useless. And in the end she blamed me for ruining her grand plans. She’s the one who poisoned you, North. Loring was just following her orders when he infused the radiation into the lenses of your glasses.”
Jake took out his phone. “I’ll call Arganbright and tell him what’s going on.”
North surveyed the wreckage in the women’s room. “After you talk to Victor you’d better tell Hank that he’s going to need to get some cleaners in here.”
Jake grinned. “Oh, you mean the professional kind, the sort that actually know what they’re doing when it comes to cleaning.”
“Right.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Jake took Kimberly’s arm and escorted her tenderly into the lounge. Sierra watched him seat her on a velvet stool. He hovered protectively over her as he made the phone call. Kimberly adjusted her glasses again and regarded him with a mix of admiration and fascination.
Sierra got a ping. It was accompanied by a deep sense of certainty. She smiled.
“What?” North asked.
“Who would have thought I’d hear the voice calling out to me in a Las Vegas nightclub restroom?” she said.
“You’re losing me here.”
She patted his arm. “I’ll explain later. Right now all you need to know is that I finally found my calling.”