In Too Deep (9 page)

“It doesn’t worry you that everyone will know I slept here?” he asked.

“Of course not.” She dropped two slices of bread into the old-fashioned chrome toaster. “It was a rough day at the office. We had a couple of drinks and a meal to unwind and you fell asleep on my sofa. It happens.”

“It’s never happened to me. Not like that. And we didn’t just have a meal and a few drinks, damn it. We had sex.”

She raised her brows. “You’re worried about your reputation?”

“The problem,” he said, groping for the right words, “is that after today the entire population of the Cove will know that we had sex.”

“Who cares?”

He drank some more coffee, hoping the hit of caffeine would help him untangle the strange bewilderment that was fogging up his senses. Isabella did not seem to mind the possibility that people would know that they had spent the night together. Why was he worrying about it? Enlightenment did not come.

“It’s my reputation you’re worrying about, isn’t it?” Isabella said. “It is very sweet of you to be so concerned. It’s not necessary, but it is sweet.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” he said into his mug. “Sweet.”

“There are so few true gentlemen left in the world.”

“Uh-huh.” He sensed that things were going downhill fast, but he could not think of a way to stop the runaway train.

A rush of tiny springs followed by small popping sounds interrupted his fugue state. In the kitchenette, two slices of toast leaped high into the air.

“The toast,” Isabella yelped.

She managed to snag one slice out of midair, but the other landed on the counter.

“Oh, good,” she said. She smiled her brilliant smile. “They didn’t fall on the floor this time. Of course, those of us with a strong background in the food-and-beverage business do have this two-second rule that is generally applied in such situations. But I hate to apply it in front of guests.”

“Who gave you the toaster?” he asked.

“Henry and Vera. They said they found it in one of the cabins at the old Sea Breeze Motor Lodge.”

The Sea Breeze had been abandoned for decades. A few years back, using a somewhat dubious legal claim of squatter’s rights, Henry and Vera Emerson had moved in and proceeded to make it their home. To date no one had challenged them. Given the very large dogs they kept on the premises, it was unlikely that anyone in his right mind would try to evict Henry and Vera without the backing of a small army. Thus far no one with an army had shown up.

“You know,” Fallon said, “now that you’ve got a steady job, you could probably afford a new toaster.”

“Probably.” She slathered butter on the toast. “But I like this one. It has a cool vintage look, don’t you think?”

“Probably because it is vintage. Must be more than fifty years old. Amazing that it still works.”

“It needed a little tuning up, but Henry got it running again.”

“I can see that. Not every toaster can put a couple of slices into orbit.”

“Nope.” She looked pleased. “Mine is one of a kind.”

It occurred to him that he had not given her a housewarming gift.

He sat down at the wooden table and examined the two neatly arranged place settings. The knife, fork and spoon were in proper order. The napkin was neatly folded. There was a tiny flower in a miniature bud vase positioned between the two place mats. He felt as if he had stepped into another dimension.

“So,” he said. “When are you going to tell me how you wound up in Scargill Cove?”

“Later,” she said. “At the office. Breakfast first. It’s the most important meal of the day.”

SHE
FED
HIM
a heaping plate of eggs scrambled with ricotta cheese, a pile of toast and a fresh, juicy pear, hoping that the old adage was true and that the way to a man’s heart really was through his stomach. A large man like Fallon Jones needed his food.

He left after his third mug of coffee, taking the clock with him. She stood at her window and watched him walk through the fog—the damp kind off the ocean—to the office of Jones & Jones.

She had seen him kill. He was certainly not the first extremely dangerous man she had known. But he was different. Fallon Jones was that rarity in the modern world, a man who lived by a code, a man who cared about old-fashioned things like honor and a woman’s reputation.

The Sunshine Café was open. She knew that the regulars would be at the counter, eating Marge’s delicious homemade muffins and drinking coffee. They would see Fallon come down the street and go into his office. By noon everyone in town would know that he had spent the night with her.

She smiled to herself. “Fine by me.”

M
r. J-Jones?”

Fallon paused at the top of the stairs, the key in the lock of the office door, and looked down at Walker.

Walker rarely entered any building except his own cabin.

“What can I do for you, Walker?” Fallon asked.

If Walker had a last name, no one in town was aware of it. He was the closest thing that Scargill Cove had to a homeless man but he was not, strictly speaking, homeless. He had a cabin out on the bluffs where he took short naps during the day. All the evidence indicated that Walker did not need a lot of sleep. He was a man with a job to do. Patrolling Scargill Cove was his calling, and he was faithful to the task.

He bathed in the hot springs out at the Point. He wore his clothes until they became tattered and frayed. When he needed new garments, someone in town would leave whatever was necessary on top of a garbage can. Walker would only take items that he found in the trash. He refused flat-out gifts of any kind.
I don’t take charity
was part of his code and he lived by it.

He got plenty to eat. Marge at the Sunshine always left an evening meal out for him at night and fresh muffins and coffee in the mornings. In between times Walker foraged in the trash behind Stokes’s Grocery. Although he seemed physically healthy, he never gained any weight. Fallon figured that was because Walker was nearly always in motion. He walked the streets of Scargill Cove all night long, regardless of the weather.

“Got to t-talk to you, Mr. Jones.”

Walker hardly ever spoke. When he did, it was always in very short sentences. Most people in the Cove assumed that Walker had done some hard drugs when he was a young man. They said he had gone out on a very bad trip and never found his way back home. Fallon wasn’t so sure of that diagnosis. He sensed that Walker was some kind of talent. Something had happened here in the Cove decades ago that had launched him on his relentless patrols.

Fallon turned the key in the lock and opened the door. “Come on inside. I’ll make some coffee.”

Walker said nothing but he climbed the stairs and entered the office. He stood in the doorway for a minute, looking around uncertainly.

Fallon set the blanket-covered clock on a table and shrugged out of his jacket.

“Have a seat, Walker,” he said, indicating Isabella’s chair. It was the only chair in the room other than his own. There had never been much need for a client chair. J&J got very little in the way of walk-in business. Mostly the firm was a single-client agency and that client was the Arcane Society. The services of J&J were available to all members of the Society, but when those calls came in, Fallon usually handed off the work to other investigation firms operated by sensitives in the Arcane community.

Walker hesitated and then lowered himself gingerly onto the chair, as if he was unaccustomed to sitting in one. He stared hard at the blanket-covered clock, fascination and dread drawing his taut face even tighter around the bones. He started to rock.

Fallon poured water into the coffee machine. “Something wrong, Walker?”

“It needs to go back,” Walker said urgently. “It sh-shouldn’t be here.”

“What needs to go back?”

“Whatever is under that b-blanket. It needs to go back.”

Fallon had been about to shovel the ground coffee into the machine. He stopped, put the package on the table and contemplated Walker.

“Do you know what is under the blanket, Walker?”

Walker shook his head. He rocked harder. His eyes never left the blanket. “No, Mr. Jones. I just know it needs to go b-back. It should be with the other things in the vault.”

Fallon forgot about the coffee altogether. He jacked up his talent a little. A multidimensional spiderweb appeared in his mind. For the moment several of the strands remained concealed in the dark night of chaos energy. But that would change as bits and pieces of data came in. Each item of information would land somewhere on the web, get stuck and light up. Relationships, connections, links and associations would gradually illuminate the delicate design. Eventually he would see the answers he needed.

He looked at Walker.

“What other things?” he asked.

Walker finally dragged his hollow eyes away from the clock. “The alien weapons.”

Another small section of the web lit up.

The muffled sound of Isabella’s light footsteps interrupted Fallon’s thoughts before he could examine the new strand of light. The door opened.

Isabella came into the room on the wings of good energy. At the sight of Walker sitting in her chair, she paused in surprise. But she recovered immediately and gave him her glowing smile.

“Good morning, Walker,” she said.

Walker seemed to relax. He stopped rocking. “Hello, Miss Valdez.”

Fallon looked at Isabella. “Meet our new client.”

Isabella did not even blink. She started to unbutton her coat. “What’s the problem, Walker?”

Walker looked at the clock again. “That thing. It’s dangerous. It has to go b-back into the vault.”

Isabella gave Fallon a questioning look. He knew what she was thinking. If Walker had somehow sensed the energy in the clock, then he most certainly had a measurable amount of talent.

Isabella hung up her coat. “Why don’t you start at the beginning, Walker?”

Walker’s face crumpled in dazed panic. He started to rock violently. He had no clue how to locate the beginning, Fallon realized.

Isabella, too, understood immediately.

“Better yet,” she said, “why don’t you show us the location of the vault?”

Fallon was certain that would lead to another blind alley. But to his amazement, Walker’s expression became focused once again. He surged to his feet.

“Okay,” he said. “But we have to be very c-careful. The Queen is on guard.”

I
sabella opened her senses when Fallon pulled into the cracked, weedstudded parking lot of the Sea Breeze Motor Lodge. There was the usual amount of paranormal fog in front of the main lodge, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“At least the energy here doesn’t look like the stuff at the Zander house,” she said.

“Good to know,” Fallon said. He looked at Walker who was sitting in the rear seat, rocking gently. “You’re sure the vault is here, Walker?” he said.

“Y-yes.” Walker rocked harder. He rarely rode in motor vehicles. They made him even more anxious than normal.

The dogs appeared, coalescing out of the mist like a pack of wolves. They charged the
SUV
, barking furiously. Isabella sat quietly with Fallon and Walker, waiting. Not one attempted to open a door. Everyone in Scargill Cove knew the drill. If you visited Henry and Vera, you stayed in the car, the windows rolled up, until someone called off the beasts. On the rare occasions when some hapless tourist, laboring under the mistaken impression that the lodge was still a functioning motel, pulled into the lodge, Henry and Vera remained inside until the people gave up and moved on.

Fallon glanced at the illuminated windows of the office.

“Looks like Henry and Vera are home,” he said.

“They usually are,” Isabella said. “Sometimes I do wonder what they do in that place all day long, day after day.”

Fallon smiled. “You mean, you don’t know?”

“No.” She gave him a sharp look. “Do you?”

“Sure. I’m a detective, remember?”

In the rear seat Walker spoke up. “They g-guard the v-vault. That’s their job. I do patrol at night. They s-secure the vault. Marge and the others keep watch during the day.”

Isabella turned in the seat to look at him. “Marge and other people in town are involved in this thing?”

Walker gave her a jerky nod. “That was the plan back at the start. We’ve followed the plan. But s-something went wrong. We have to put things right. Alien technology is very d-dangerous.”

The front door of the office swung open. A bulky, bearded figure in denim overalls and a red-and-black plaid flannel shirt lumbered out into the fog. He glowered at the dogs through a pair of old-fashioned gold-framed spectacles.

“Poppy, Orchid, Clyde, Samson, the rest of you, that’s enough,” Henry called. “They’re friends.”

The barking subsided immediately. The six dogs stood waiting, ears pricked, eyes cold and watchful.

Isabella was the first one to open the door.

“Hello, Poppy,” she said to the big shepherd mix. “You look lovely today.”

Overcome with delight, Poppy rushed forward, tongue lolling, to greet her. Isabella rubbed her ears. Poppy swooned. Orchid, Clyde, Samson and the rest crowded in eagerly. Isabella patted them all.

Fallon opened his door and got out. “Don’t know what it is with you and those dogs.”

“I like dogs,” Isabella said. She gave Poppy one last pat. “I’m thinking of getting one of my own.” A dog would make it official, she thought. A dog would mean that she had settled here in Scargill Cove, that she had found a home.

Henry peered at her. “How’s the toaster working?”

“Great,” Isabella said. “It’s the best toaster I’ve ever owned.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Fallon’s brows climb but he made no comment.

Henry grunted, satisfied. “Don’t make ’em like they used to.” He looked at Walker and Fallon. “I take it this is about the things in the vault?”

“How did you know?” Fallon asked.

Henry angled his head at Walker. “Only one reason Walker would get into a vehicle. What’s up?”

Walker got out of the
SUV
, jittering a little. “They found s-something, Henry. Something that belongs in the vault. I could feel it, you know?”