In Too Deep (14 page)

She considered that. “Okay, but I really don’t see any connection between the discovery of the Bridewell curiosities and my presence here in the Cove. Aside from the fact that I have a talent for finding things, of course. I mean, it’s what I do. Even when I don’t want to do it, if you see what I mean.”

“Talk to me, Isabella.” He looked at her with his shadowed, unreadable eyes. “I need some answers.”

“I understand,” she said. “And now that I’ve worked with you for a while, I know that I can trust you. It’s not like I have a choice, anyway.”

“Why is that?”

“I knew the night I arrived in Scargill Cove that this was as far as I could run. I’m good at living off the grid, heck, I was born off of it. But it’s only a matter of time before they find me.”

THEY
SAT
at their respective desks. Fallon swallowed some coffee and watched Isabella sip her green tea. He could see that she was composing herself, trying to decide where to start her narrative. He searched for a way in.

“What did you mean when you said you were born off the grid?” he asked.

She looked at him over the rim of her cup. “Ever heard of the Iceberg website?”

“That bizarre conspiracy-theory website run by some nut who calls himself the Sentinel?” Fallon grimaced. “Sure, I know it. Some folks say I’ve got conspiracy issues, but I’m a piker compared to the Sentinel. That guy is so far over the horizon, he’ll never come back. He must have lost touch with reality long ago.”

“Think so?”

“He’s definitely looney tunes.”

“So why do you monitor his website?”

Fallon shrugged. “Because sometimes he hits on a nugget of solid information that I can plug in to one of my case files. Like they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The problem with whatever I get from the Iceberg site is that the bits of good data are always tangled up in one of the Sentinel’s crazy wheels-within-wheels, circles-within-circles fantasies. Teasing out the truth can take hours of research. There is no logical foundation to the Sentinel’s theories and therefore no meaningful context. The guy is a classic paranoid conspiracy nut.”

She raised her brows. “You, on the other hand, have context, is that it?”

“Makes all the difference,” he assured her. “Case in point. The Sentinel will happen on a small hint of hard information about Nightshade and then embed it into a fantasy of alien abduction. It’s useless in that fantasy context, so no one pays any attention. But I can sometimes fit the data into my own investigation because I do have context.” He paused. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen anything new on the Iceberg site for a while. Maybe the Sentinel finally went on meds. To tell you the truth, I’ll miss him.”

“No,” she said coolly. “The Sentinel didn’t go on meds. He was murdered.” She took a deep breath. “Maybe.”

“Yeah, there was some chatter about that a while back online but it faded. That’s the thing about the Sentinel. You can’t believe anything you hear about him. I wouldn’t put it past him to fake his own murder just to stir up more conspiracy theories.”

“Believe me when I tell you that I am praying that she did exactly that.”

Fallon stilled. “She?”

“The Sentinel is a woman. She pretends to be male online because it adds another layer of cover.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the Sentinel raised me after my parents were killed in a plane crash,” Isabella said. “I’m her granddaughter.”

Fallon felt as if he’d been poleaxed. He sat forward abruptly, automatically heightening his talent. “You’re serious.”

“The reason you never found the real me when you went looking is because I have been living under fake IDs all of my life.” Isabella cradled her tea mug in both hands. “My mother did not go to a hospital to have me.”

“So, no Social Security number? No birth certificate?”

“I’ve had a dozen Social Security numbers during my life, as well as a variety of birth certificates, credit cards and passports. My grandmother manufactured a fake ID for me before I was even born and she gives me a new one whenever I move or change jobs.” Isabella glanced at the wall where her backpack hung on an iron hook. “I’ve got two brand-new, unused sets in my pack right now.”

“Where were you born?’ he demanded, fascinated. “How did you manage to stay out of the system?”

“My parents were living with my grandmother on a remote island in the South Pacific when I was born. My father wrote thrillers under an assumed name, all based on conspiracies he had uncovered. My mother was an artist. Her work hangs in some very respected museums. All the paintings are under a fake name. I was born at home, and the birth was never registered with any official government agency. I was homeschooled from the start. Every name I’ve ever used except Isabella Valdez has been manufactured.”

He whistled softly. “I’ll be damned. And people think I have a problem when it comes to the paranoia thing. Isabella Valdez is your real name?”

“Yes.” She straightened her shoulders. “I decided to start using it the night I hitchhiked to Scargill Cove.”

“What about the bio I found online?”

“Oh, that’s a complete fake, of course. First time it’s ever been used. Grandma told me to save it for this particular situation.”

“Where did your grandmother get the sets of fake ID?” Fallon asked.

“From an old family firm that specializes in that kind of high-end art. They’ve been in business for generations. Grandma always said that if they were good enough for J&J, they were good enough for her.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that she uses the Harper family’s services.”

Isabella smiled into her cup. “Good guess.”

Understanding whispered through him. “Why did you come to Scargill Cove, Isabella?”

“To find you, of course,” she said very steadily. “Grandma always told me that if anything ever happened to her or if I got into the kind of trouble that I couldn’t handle on my own, I should contact Jones & Jones.”

“Why did it take you this long to tell me the truth?”

“Because I had to be sure I could trust you. We are all influenced by our upbringing. I was raised in a family of conspiracy theorists. I have certain hardwired eccentricities.”

“In other words, you don’t trust anyone outside the family.”

“I trust you, Fallon, now that I’ve had a chance to know you. But I had to be sure. My grandmother’s life, assuming she is still alive, depends on it.”

“And if she is dead?”

Isabella’s eyes darkened. “Then I will avenge her.”

He steepled his fingers, thinking. “What makes you think someone would try to kill her?”

“Because they don’t want her to expose the conspiracy on her website, of course. But I’m praying that she outwitted them. Grandma is really, really good when it comes to this kind of stuff. With luck, the bastards believe that she’s dead.”

Wheels within wheels
, Fallon thought. Classic conspiracy theory logic. No context, no hard facts, no problem.

“Why would they believe she’s dead?” he asked.

“There’s plenty of documentation confirming her death.” Isabella waved that off. “There was a notice in the local paper. A death certificate was filed. According to the records, Grandma was cremated. It’s all very neat and tidy.”

“But you’re not buying any of it?”

“It’s possible that they found her,” Isabella conceded. “But I think there is also a very good chance that she is alive and has gone into hiding. I have no way to contact her. That was part of the plan, you see. She told me that if she ever had to disappear, we had to make it look solid.”

“But she told you to come to J&J for help?”

“Yes.” Isabella watched him with a steely determination. “They’re after me, too. I got away once, but I might not be so lucky a second time.”

Fallon went stone cold. “Someone tried to kill you?”

“In Phoenix about a month ago. They found me at the department store where I was working. That’s when it hit me.” Isabella broke off. Tears glistened in her eyes.

“When what hit you?” he prompted.

“That they might have found her, after all.” Isabella opened her desk drawer, yanked a tissue out of the small box she kept there and wiped her eyes. “I had been telling myself that she was following the emergency plan. Gone into hiding. But if they found me, maybe they found her, too. Maybe she really is dead.”

Isabella was crying. He had no clue what to do in a situation like this.

“Isabella,” he said.

“Sorry,” she said. She sniffed into the tissue. “It’s just that if she really is gone, it’s as if she never even lived. She set things up that way. Her only legacy is her website, and it just sits there online like some kind of virtual tombstone. I can hardly bring myself to look at it.”

“Isabella,” he said again. And stopped because he could not think of anything else to say.

“If she’s dead, it’s my fault because I told her about the conspiracy,” Isabella said into the tissue.

He was on his feet without conscious thought. He rounded his desk, yanking the clean, neatly folded white handkerchief out of his pocket. She took the handkerchief from him, looked at it for a few seconds as if she had never seen one and then she started to cry quietly into it.

He hauled her gently to her feet, wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly, as if he could somehow shield her from the dark fantasy world she had constructed.

With a small cry, she dropped the damp handkerchief onto the desk, buried her face against the front of his black pullover and sobbed in earnest.

He stood there with her while the fog off the ocean rolled in, cloaking the town and the office windows, isolating them from the rest of the world.

A
fter a while, Isabella stopped crying. She raised her head and gave him a shaky smile.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Lately that’s been happening to me without warning. I’m fine one minute and then I think about how she might actually be dead and that maybe I’m just fooling myself and all of a sudden I’m crying.”

“It’s all right,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He realized that she was trying to step back. Reluctantly he opened his arms and released her.

She sat down, carefully refolded the damp handkerchief and handed it to him. She grabbed another tissue and blew her nose one last time. She tossed the tissue into the trash basket, drank some tea and composed herself.

He stood in the center of the office for a few seconds, unsure of what to do next. When nothing helpful came to mind, he went back to his desk, swallowed more coffee and forced himself to focus on the problem at hand.

“Using your line of logic,” he began.

She gave him a wan smile. “That’s a polite way of saying you don’t believe me.”

Out of nowhere anger flashed through him. “Damn it, don’t put words in my mouth. I’m trying to gather facts here.”

She sighed. “I know. I apologize. I’ve been a little emotional lately.”

“Understandable,” he said gruffly.

She nodded, very serious. “Yes, I think so. I’ve been under a lot of stress.”

“That’s certainly one word for it,” he agreed. “All right, let’s try this again. You said someone tried to kill you a few weeks ago in Phoenix?”

“Yes. Well, two men tried to kidnap me. I’m sure they planned to kill me.”

“How did you escape?” he asked.

She moved one hand in a vague motion. “Turns out there’s a flip side of my talent. I can find things and people, all right. But I can use my ability to conceal them, as well. I can tell someone to get lost. Literally. That’s what I did with the two thugs they sent after me.”

He ignored the pronoun.
They
was very popular with conspiracy buffs. There was always a mysterious
they
manipulating things from behind the scenes.

“How does it work?” he asked.

She blinked. “How does what work?”

“Your talent.”

“How does any talent work?” She gave a little shrug. “I have to have physical contact to do it, that’s all I know. They had me cornered on a mall roof. I sent them down an emergency stairwell and out onto the street. I don’t know what happened to them after that. I assume they walked for a while until they came out of the trance.”

“Or got run down?”

“I told them to only cross at the lights,” she said. “When I put people into a get-lost trance, they tend to follow orders very precisely.”

“Sounds like a form of hypnotic suggestion.”

“I suppose so.”

“Why did you tell them to only cross at the lights?”

“I assumed that if two guys from the company I used to work for got run down on a Phoenix street, it would create more problems than it would solve,” she said. “Dead bodies have a way of causing trouble.”

But the lack of dead bodies meant no police records or any other kind of evidence that would lend credibility to her story, he thought. He was starting to understand how Alice had felt when she fell down the rabbit hole. He had to deal with the very real possibility that Isabella was as lost in a conspiracy fantasy as the Sentinel. But one thing was clear, Isabella believed every word she was saying.

“Tell me about the conspiracy,” he said.

“I used to work for Lucan Protection Services. Do you know it?”

He paused his coffee mug in midair, all of his senses crackling. “Sure. Max Lucan is a member of the Arcane Society. He runs a high-end art-and-antiquities security agency.”

“I went to work for his company about seven months ago. At the time I felt very fortunate to get the job.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say that the combination of my talent plus my family history gives me employment problems. The result is that I change employers the way some folks change their socks.” She paused. “I get fired a lot.”

“I understand the personal history issues. It could not have been easy growing up in a family that doesn’t officially exist. But what’s the problem with your talent? I would think being a finder would make you a natural fit for any kind of investigation or security firm.”

She took another sip of tea and lowered the mug. “The problem is that I’m picky about what I find.”