All the Colors of Night (Fogg Lake #2)(12)
Victor grunted. “That pretty much sums it up. Pack that bag and come in to headquarters. I’ll tell you everything I know before you go to the airport, but I’ll warn you up front, I don’t have a lot of information.”
Victor ended the connection.
North was already on the grand staircase, moving fast. He was used to packing in a hurry. It did not take long to throw the essentials into a backpack.
When he was ready he opened the gun safe, took out the holstered pistol, hoisted the pack and went back downstairs.
The steel-gray SUV was waiting inside the garage. He drove out through the front gate and headed toward the Strip. He did not bother to glance back at the Abyss. There was no need to make sure he had turned off the lights or locked the doors.
The house could take care of itself.
CHAPTER 5
Delbridge Loring stopped at the end of the long workbench, picked up the vintage radio and hurled it against the nearest wall. The artifact struck hard and fell to the floor. The plastic casing cracked. A knob fell off. The small glass screen shattered.
“You son of a bitch, Chandler Chastain, you cheated me.”
Ignoring the radio, Loring resumed pacing the laboratory, trying to get a grip on the rage threatening to consume him. He had risked so much only to discover that all he had to show for his efforts was a broken radio. Sure, there was a little heat in it, but nothing special. It was not the tuning device he desperately needed.
After all the planning, all the experiments, all the waiting, things were starting to go wrong. Chandler Chastain should have been dead; instead he was in a sort of unresponsive state. With luck he would not come out of it, but who knew how things would turn out? What if he regained the ability to communicate? How much would he remember? Would he be able to identify the person who had attacked him with the night gun?
The disaster was the Puppets’ fault. They had fucked up the entire operation. That was the problem with Puppets. They were, by nature, unstable and impulsive. Typical cult recruits. But it wasn’t as if he’d had a lot of options when it came to hiring muscle. He’d needed men with minimal talent, just enough to activate the weapons. Men who were hungry for more power. He’d needed men who would believe him when he promised to transform them into invincible psychic warriors armed with untraceable weapons. He needed people he could manipulate. That sort didn’t come equipped with the ability to think logically. There was a reason that within the paranormal community they were referred to as Puppets. So simple for a smart man to pull the strings.
Still, the four Puppets were all he had to work with. Well, there was Garraway, but he was just the money man and the window dressing needed to make the Riverview operation appear legitimate.
Loring went to the window and stood looking out at the high walls of the psychiatric hospital. Beyond lay nothing but vast stretches of forest and the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean. There was a small town a few miles away but the locals were not friendly. They had not been happy when they discovered that the old, abandoned mansion had been converted into a private asylum. They kept their distance. That was fine by Loring. He wanted nothing to do with the people in town. He was here to fulfill his destiny.
He turned away from the window and contemplated his state-of-the-art lab. It was everything he had ever wanted. He had been determined to succeed where Crocker Rancourt had failed; where the entire Bluestone Project had failed. He had a talent for crystals and he was close to discovering the secret of weaponizing paranormal energy.
All he needed was Crocker Rancourt’s tuning crystal.
He forced himself to calm down. He was a scientist. He knew how to recover from disastrous experiments. It was time to go back to some of the original data. He had not looked at the logbook in months, because he had read it cover to cover and made copious notes when it first came into his hands. He had practically memorized the formulas and the math.
But maybe, just maybe, he had overlooked something that could set him on a new path.
He crossed the lab and punched a code into a security panel. The heavy metal door of the small walk-in vault swung open. A number of artifacts were arrayed on the shelves, various items that he had collected in the course of his research. None had proven helpful. Everything had led to a dead end—everything except the logbook.
If there were more secrets to be found, they were in Griffin Chastain’s notes.
He went to the glass case where Chastain’s logbook was stored. He opened the case and reached inside to pick up the leather-bound book.
It took him a few seconds to realize it was the wrong logbook. Another leather-bound logbook—a vintage document from the same era—had been left in its place.
It took him a moment to process what had happened. Someone had stolen the logbook.
One of the Puppets, perhaps, who planned to sell it on the underground market. But even as the possibility came to mind he dismissed it. They had no reason to steal it. They believed they were going to be the beneficiaries of the secrets in the logbook. More crucially, they understood he was the only one who could comprehend the complicated paranormal physics.
It was equally unlikely that Garraway had taken it. He was good with money but he couldn’t possibly grasp the scientific concepts and formulas in the logbook. Besides, he was committed to the Riverview project for the same reason as the Puppets—he lusted after the promise of paranormal powers.
Loring forced himself to think about the timeline. It had been over two months since he had last had occasion to take the logbook out of the glass case. Only one disturbing event had occurred at Riverview during that time.