All the Colors of Night (Fogg Lake #2)(7)
When he lost his talent completely he would not belong here at the Fogg Club. Hell, he wouldn’t be any good to the Foundation. He would be looking for a new path out in the normal world.
Okay, time to stop feeling sorry for yourself.
The lenses in his glasses had adjusted to the low light level of the club. He made his way along the mezzanine to the bar. Hank Sheffield was pouring drinks. When he saw North he grabbed a bottle of whiskey off the top shelf and a glass.
“I was wondering when you’d get here,” Hank said. He put the glass on the gleaming bar top and poured some of the expensive whiskey into it. “The rest of the team rolled in a couple of hours ago.”
“I stopped off at Area Fifty-One to play some blackjack,” North said. He picked up the whiskey and took a healthy swallow.
“Any luck?”
“Some,” North said. He had pocketed a few hundred bucks. He probably could have won more but he never played for high stakes. Gambling was just a game, after all. Winning was certainly better than losing but he never got a genuine rush out of the experience.
Hank got a shrewd look. “Good crowd at Area Fifty-One?”
For the first time that evening, North felt a spark of amusement. Hank’s ex-wife, Jeanie, owned the Area 51 club. It was no secret that the two were still sharing the same house and, no doubt, the same bed, but they had concluded they did not make good business partners. After the divorce, Jeanie had opened Area 51 and become Hank’s chief competitor. They both catered to the same clientele—the employees, consultants, museum staff and researchers associated with the Foundation. The secretive organization devoted to all things paranormal was headquartered in Las Vegas.
“The place was busy,” North said, determined to remain neutral. “Jeanie said to give you her best, by the way.”
Hank snorted. “Bullshit. Jeanie has never once in her entire life told anyone to give me her best.”
“Okay, what she actually said was that if you ever decide to give up running this hotdog stand she will consider hiring you to tend bar.”
Hank nodded. “That sounds like my Jeanie. I talked to some of the other cleaners on your team tonight. They said the takedown went well today.”
“We found the guy we were looking for,” North said. “A serial killer who was using his psychic vibe to attract his victims.”
No need to mention that the case was probably the last time he would go out into the field with the team. If he stayed with the Foundation, he would end up behind a desk. That wouldn’t go well, not for him.
“So you took down one of the monsters. Good job.” Hank folded his arms on the bar. “In that case, why aren’t you out on the dance floor or buying drinks for one of the nice ladies who come in here to have a little fun?”
“Give me time,” North said. “The evening is still young.”
“It’s one o’clock in the morning.”
“I thought it was always midnight here at the Fogg.”
The atmosphere inside the Fogg was mostly the same as it was at any other Vegas nightclub—a lot of intimate shadows, high energy, pulsating music and a dance floor lit with dazzling strobes. There was also some fake fog that glowed a fluorescent green. But the real vibe, the one that brought in the regulars, was created by the array of paranormal artifacts displayed in a floor-to-ceiling clear plastic vault in the center of the room.
The objects inside appeared ordinary enough. Mid-century office chairs, ashtrays, a metal filing cabinet and a couple of old-fashioned, black landline telephones were arranged on the tiered glass shelves and illuminated with the glowing green fog. All the artifacts were standard-issue vintage government surplus. But at some point in its history, each antique had been associated with one of the lost labs of the Bluestone Project. Each had absorbed some kind of paranormal radiation, enough so that someone with a degree of psychic awareness could sense the energy.
He might be losing his unique night vision but the rest of his senses were still working. The fact that he was wired from what he suspected was his last field op made him especially aware of the heat in the atmosphere. He was restless, on edge and, okay, maybe depressed. He needed something to take the edge off. Sex might offer a temporary fix, but he knew most of the people in the room tonight. They were colleagues, coworkers and friends. Sex with someone you worked with was usually a mistake, although everyone knew that particular mistake happened a lot within the Foundation. He had made it himself on more than one occasion, although he had been careful to get together with women who worked in the labs or the museum, not someone on his own cleaner team.
Sex with someone who had heard the rumors about his prognosis, however, would be a full-on disaster. It was a good bet everyone in the Fogg tonight knew what was happening to him. The last thing he wanted was a pity fuck.
And when you got right down to it, he wasn’t especially interested in sex these days anyway. He was living under a sword of Damocles, waiting for the last of his night vision to disappear entirely. It didn’t help that he didn’t dare let himself fall into a deep sleep. He was getting by on short naps, setting alarms so that he woke up frequently to make sure the glasses hadn’t fallen off.
There were other reasons why he didn’t want to sleep soundly. Deep sleep brought dreams, and in his dreams he was always on the verge of falling into the absolute darkness of an abyss.