Orchid (37 page)

“Why would you have that kind of information available?”

“Because I never take a position in a stock unless I've researched it thoroughly. I've got all the details of the ParaSyn campus, including plans of the labs, mechanical layouts, the works. I've also got information on the security setup.”

Selby blinked a couple of times. Behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes narrowed. “My God. I see what you mean by thorough. Do you always do business that way?”

“Always.”

“Not that it seems very important at the moment, but tell me something. Do I even stand a chance at the annual board meeting?”

Rafe hesitated. “No.”

“I could have done it if you hadn't come back.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you?”

Rafe glanced at him. “It was time.”

“I see.” Selby gazed through the windshield at the gathering shadows. “It'll be dark soon. ParaSyn will be closed for the day.”

“Don't worry,” Rafe said. “I do my best work at night.”

Orchid was aware of the smell of the place first. She remembered it all too well. That sterile, mechanical,
clean-room smell that dominated the labs and halls at ParaSyn. Beneath it was the faint odor of chemicals and instruments. The heavily conditioned air had a stale, antiseptic taint.

Fear wafted through her. It was followed by the cleansing rush of anger. Strange how odors could trigger such strong emotions, she thought.

The next thing she noticed was the temperature of the room. A few degrees too cool for comfort. That, too, brought back unpleasant memories.

She hated this place.

Someone moaned beside her. Orchid opened her eyes. Her head swam. The after effects of the anesthetic gas, she thought.

Bright lab lights glared down on her from the acoustically baffled ceiling. To her right she could see a long lab bench laden with machines and instruments. She realized she was lying on a small, narrow gurney.

Fear pounded through her again, driving out even the anger for a moment. Some of the most severely disturbed talents had been brought from the locked syn-psych ward on gurneys like this one.

She struggled wildly for a few seconds and managed to sit up. But when she tried to slide off the gurney she discovered that her right wrist was fastened to one of the metal rails with a plastic cuff.

A burst of adrenaline helped to clear her head a little.

Another moan drew her attention. She looked over her shoulder and saw Briana on a second gurney. She, too, was secured with a padded cuff.

“Briana?” Orchid kept her voice to a whisper. “Briana, wake up. We've got to get out of here.”

Briana stirred restlessly, as though caught in a bad dream.

“Briana.”

Briana's eyelids fluttered and then opened. She blinked several times, sluggishly. “Orchid?” Her voice sounded thick.

“Yes, it's me. Don't talk too loud.”

“Where are we?”

“ParaSyn Research.” Orchid studied the neat array of equipment on a nearby lab bench. “We've got to find something we can use to cut through these cuffs.”

“I don't understand.”

“We've been kidnapped.” Orchid managed to slide gingerly off the gurney. She clung to the rail when her knees threatened to give way. “I don't think the bastard meant for them to take you. But you were there when they came for me.”

“Who are you talking about?” Briana asked just as a door opened.

Orchid turned awkwardly. A familiar figure trotted into her range of vision. He had a clipboard tucked under one arm.

“Miss Adams is referring to me, I believe.” Gilbert Bracewell smiled his jolly elfin smile. “Allow me to introduce myself. Dr. Gilbert Bracewell, director of research here at ParaSyn. At your service.”

“Little sonovabitch.” Orchid clung to the gurney. “I never did like you.”

“Naturally, I'm crushed to learn that, but I'll get over it, I'm sure.” Gilbert chuckled. “I'm delighted to have you back here at ParaSyn, my dear. When you and the others walked out on the ice-prism experiments you ruined a great deal of my research. Very naughty of you. But then, you always had that rebel streak, didn't you? Seems to be a basic component of the ice-prism para-profile.”

Gilbert had changed very little in the three years since she had seen him. He was still round and bouncy and his white lab coat was artfully tailored to fit his portly figure. He was a malicious elf of a man. He should have been wearing long, pointy-toed shoes and a cap with a tassel on it, Orchid thought.

There was one small change in him, she noticed. The
gleam in his merry little eyes seemed a little too bright, a bit more unnatural.

Orchid shivered. She took a couple of meta-zen-syn breaths to steady herself. “You have done a very, very stupid thing, Gilly.”

Annoyance flickered across his red-cheeked face. “You never did show the degree of respect appropriate for a man of my power and accomplishments. But before we have finished, my dear, you will learn to call me Dr. Bracewell. Oh, yes. You will learn.”

“Hard to respect a man who has done something as dumb as this.” Orchid waggled her hand in the plastic cuff. “What makes you think you can get away with kidnapping Briana and me?”

Gilbert's eyes sparkled. “This makes me believe it, my dear.”

He reached into the pocket of his lab coat and removed a long, thin object that resembled a small flashlight. In the glare of the lab lights it gleamed with a strange, metallic sheen.

“Well, that answers one very interesting question,” Orchid said. “You were the twit who arranged for the theft of the alien artifact.”

“I did, indeed, Miss Adams.” Gilbert glanced at the silvery relic with fascinated pride. “I learned about the relic's powers when I persuaded Mr. Willis to return to ParaSyn a couple of months ago for a three-year follow-up.”

“Theo would never have come back here willingly.”

“Poor Mr. Willis was in need of money. He had some silly dream about opening a focus agency specializing in ice-prisms. Utter nonsense, of course. But when I offered to pay him a considerable sum for a single, one-hour session, he reluctantly agreed to return.”

“I still can't see him confiding data about the relic to you.”

“To tell you the truth, I, too, did not trust him to be fully cooperative during the session. So while he was
here I took the liberty of using some new medication that induced him to talk quite freely. He had just started his job in Dr. Brizo's lab.”

“You mean you drugged him and that's when he told you that he thought one of the alien relics in Brizo's lab had some real power?”

“Yes.”

“And you actually
believed
him? Sheesh.”

Gilbert gave her a disapproving frown, as if she had disappointed him. “He was under the influence of the medication, my dear. He told me the truth.”

“What he believed to be the truth, maybe. Theo had a few syn-psych problems, if you'll recall.”

“Rest assured, it's the truth.” Gilbert chuckled. “At any rate, he explained that while working with one particular relic, he had sensed that it contained some form of energy. He wanted to conduct further tests before he wrote up his report. He wanted to be very certain, you see, because he was afraid his new associates would think he was crazy if he simply told them what he suspected to be true.”

“Theo Willis didn't like you any better than I did. Mind telling me how you got him to steal the relic for you?” Orchid gave him a derisive look. “You're only a low-range hypno-therapist, after all. Class two at best.”

The barb stung, as she had intended. Gilbert's hand clenched violently around his clipboard. But he quickly recovered his composure.

“It was quite simple, my dear. I worked through a much stronger hypno-therapist.”

“Quentin Austen,” Orchid whispered.

“Yes, indeed. Once I discovered the value of the relic, I knew I had to have it. But I could not risk having ParaSyn connected to the theft. With the assistance of my new hypnotic enhancement drug, I convinced Mr. Willis that he would benefit greatly from therapy. He agreed to allow himself to be referred to Austen.”

“Austen used hypnosis to get Theo to steal the relic.”

“You've already figured that out, have you? Quite right. What's more, with the aid of the same new medication I just mentioned, Dr. Austen was able to instill and enforce an especially strong hypnotic suggestion in Mr. Willis.”

“Why would Austen help you?”

Gilbert beamed. “Because he was about to lose his license to practice due to a pending lawsuit from one of his ex-patients. He needed the support and influence that I wield with the disciplinary committee of the New Seattle Association of Synergistic Psychologists.”

“You told him that if he helped you use Theo to steal the artifact, you'd see to it that he got to keep his license, is that it?”

“Precisely.”

“Once you had the relic, you arranged for Theo to be murdered.”

Gilbert's brow furrowed. “I really had no choice. I assumed that getting rid of Willis would erase any trace of a link between ParaSyn and the stolen relic. Besides, I intended to use another ice-prism, not Willis, for my work on the relic. Willis was much too erratic for serious research.”

Orchid felt suddenly very queasy. “You intended to use me, didn't you? That's why you kept sending me those letters urging me to return to ParaSyn for follow-up studies.”

“Yes. I had hoped the influence of your Northville academic background would persuade you to return to the lab. But, as always, you proved extremely stubborn and uncooperative.” Gilbert smiled. “Ah, well, you're here now and that's all that matters.”

Orchid ignored that. “You hired Mr. Amazing and his prism to murder Theo, didn't you?”

“Actually the illusion-talent who called himself Mr. Amazing handled the car crash on his own. He had no need of a prism for such a simple job.”

“But things started to go wrong after that, didn't they?”

“Things began to grow untidy.” Gilbert's plump fingers tapped nervously on the back of his clipboard. “The attempt to discourage Mr. Stonebraker failed. It was really most annoying. Then Austen came to me. He was extremely distraught. He said that just before he died, Willis had written a letter accusing him of hypnotizing him and forcing him to steal the relic. In the letter Willis claimed he had arranged to have another letter sent to a friend, instructing him to go to the police if anything happened to him.”

“The letter to Morgan Lambert,” Orchid said softly.

“I employed Mr. Amazing again to retrieve the letter and get rid of Lambert. He and his prism found the letter, but the fool made a copy. He had the temerity to try to blackmail me with it.”

“So you killed him and tried to kill the prism who had helped him. But you screwed up, didn't you, Gilly? You didn't succeed in killing Crowder.”

“Things got a bit out of control,” Gilbert admitted.

“And you got desperate. You tried to make it look as though Quentin Austen was behind the theft and the murders. Then you killed him, too. You wanted everyone to think that he had finally gone over the edge and committed suicide.”

“It wasn't quite like that, but you're very close, my dear. Very close, indeed. The plan should have worked.” A troubled expression marred Gilbert's cheery features. “It will work. I have you now.”

“Not for long. Stonebraker will come for me.” Orchid deliberately slipped into melodramatic tones that were more appropriate to an actor in a late-night horror film. “He's a strat-talent, Gilly. Do you know what that means?”

Gilbert frowned. “They're rather primitive, I believe.”

“Very primitive, Gilly. Some people call them hunters.
Rafe will find me. And when he does, Gilly, he will hunt you down and he will
rip out your throat.”

Gilbert's eyes widened. He took an involuntary step back. She did not write psychic vampire romance novels for nothing, Orchid thought.

Briana stirred on the gurney. “My God. I hope he does exactly that, you nasty little worm.”

Gilbert's face darkened. “Mr. Stonebraker is no longer a threat. If he appears, he will be dealt with. Everything is under control in terms of security here at ParaSyn.”

“Uh huh.” Orchid looked at him. “If you believe that, Gilly, I've got a nice bridge in the Western Islands I can sell to you.”

“Shut up,” Gilbert hissed. “Shut up this instant. And don't ever call me Gilly again. I have had enough of your scorn and disrespect. You don't know what you're up against.”

“You're no different now than you were three years ago, Gilly. You're still envious of people who have more psychic power than you do, aren't you? You're well and truly wacko if you think that alien relic is going to help you increase your talent.”

“Damn you. I will show you what this relic can do.” Gilbert tightened his grip on the artifact.
“Link.”

“Fat chance, Gilly.”

Gilbert lifted his chin. Very methodically he put the clipboard down on the lab bench, reached into his pocket, and brought out a small pistol.

“Link, you stupid little ice-prism, or I will kill Mrs. Culverthorpe. You have until the count of three to make up your mind.”

“Orchid?” Briana struggled to sit up on the edge of the gurney. Fear twisted her face. “Orchid, I think he means it.”

“One,” Gilbert hissed.

* * *

Selby stared at the slumped form of the guard who had just dropped to the ground with a dull thud. “Did you kill him?”

“No. But he'll be out for a while.” Rafe went down on one knee beside the ParaSyn guard.

Working swiftly, he stripped off the snappy black uniform and boots. He removed the plastic restraint cuffs from the black leather belt and clipped them around the guard's wrists. Then he retrieved the two-way radio.