“Olivia thinks she was murdered but we’ve never been able to find any proof. When you die in the mountains, nature has a way of concealing the evidence.”
“True.”
“We can’t even establish a possible motive. If she was killed, it was probably a random act of violence. Maybe she surprised someone who was running a drug lab. We just don’t know.” Catalina cleared her throat. “We’d better get moving. Long drive.”
“Yes,” Slater said. He still had the old phone in one hand. “Grab that tray of index cards for me, will you?”
“All right.”
She picked up the file and followed him out of the vault. He moved swiftly toward the stairs. She had to hurry to keep up with him.
He reached the concrete steps and started up to the ground floor of the big house. He stopped so suddenly that she almost stumbled into him.
“What?” she said, grabbing the handrail to steady herself.
He hit the light switch, dumping the basement into deep night. He closed and locked the door, spun around and aimed a small flashlight at the steps.
“Under the steps,” he said. “Hurry.”
Clinging to the rail with her free hand, she bounded back down the stairs to the floor of the basement. Slater was right behind her.
Heavy footsteps echoed in the hall at the top of the stairs. Two men.
“We’ve got ’em,” one man said.
There was a series of dull thuds, followed by a grinding noise and a sudden crack of sound. A couple of seconds later the door crashed open.
Slater leaned out from the shelter of the concrete stairs and fired two shots in crisp succession.
“Fuck,” one of the men yelped. “Nobody said he was armed. Use the damned fog.”
Slater fired another round at the doorway and ducked back under the staircase.
The lights came on just in time to reveal two glass objects that looked like snow globes sailing through the air. But whatever was inside didn’t look like snow. It looked like fog.
The glass balls shattered on the floor of the gallery. The heavy door at the top of the steps slammed shut.
Slater reached out and grabbed Catalina’s hand.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go,” he said.
She was trying to comprehend his meaning when the tsunami of fog engulfed her senses. The hallucinations struck an instant later. She was plunged into the kaleidoscope from hell.
CHAPTER 19
Blinded.
Panic splashed through her, acid-hot. All her senses roared into the red zone, mental sirens screaming. Gray fog formed in the gallery. The hallucinations rapidly worsened. Paranormal flames leaped. Visions of the dead and dying that she had conjured at old crime scenes descended upon her in a storm of nightmares.
“Just hallucinations,” she whispered.
“Yes.” Slater tightened his grip on her hand. “We’ve got this.”
“Good to know,” she gasped. “For a minute there I was a little worried.”
The hallucinations got more intense. Now she could have sworn she felt the heat of the flames that surrounded them.
“I think this fog is acting like a stimulant to our senses,” Slater said. “It’s throwing us into overdrive. Go dark. Now.”
Shutting down her other vision while she was under assault went against all her survival instincts. It was like closing her eyes when confronted by a snake or a tiger. Her mind and body were both screaming at her to call on all available weapons, telling her she needed everything she had to do battle with her attacker.
But the harder she fought the hallucinations, the worse they got. She sensed that Slater was shutting down. It was worth a try. She pulled on all her control and managed to lower her sparking, snapping, flaring senses a couple degrees. The hallucinations did not vanish, but they faded. She thought the fog had thinned a little, too. She was able to make out Slater standing beside her.
Encouraged, she dampened her senses a little more. Some of the hallucinations retreated. The fog continued to thin. She could see a nearby row of shelves now.
“You’re right,” she said. “But we can’t just walk out of here. They’ll be waiting for us.”
“We’re not leaving the way we came in. We’re going into the vault.” “Okay, I understand it can function as a safe room, but we’ll still be trapped. For all we know, those two will wait us out.”
“Collectors are well aware that their safe rooms can become traps, so they make sure they’ve got an exit.”
“Huh. You do know a lot about collectors.”
“I am one, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
They made their way back through the fog and moved into the vault. Slater released her hand at last to pull the thick steel door shut. He slid the massive bolt into place.
Next he began a careful scrutiny of the glass walls. It did not take him long to find what he was looking for.
“Here we go,” he said.
She watched a panel slide open, revealing a narrow, unlit tunnel. When Slater aimed the flashlight into the darkness, she saw the gleam of tiles. The passage was just barely large enough to accommodate one person.
“I’ll go first,” Slater said. “Here, take the phone. I’ll need one hand for the flashlight and the other for my weapon.”
She realized she was still clutching the card file. She gripped the phone in her free hand. “You’re expecting trouble at the other end?”
“I no longer know what to expect in this screwy case.”
“I doubt if anyone heard those shots you fired a few minutes ago, because there are no close neighbors, and the concrete in here will have muffled the noise. But if we come out of this tunnel above-ground and you start shooting at those clones, we’re going to attract attention. The police will be here before we know it, and by the time we finish explaining what happened, it will be too late to drive to Fogg Lake.”
“I promise not to shoot anyone unless there is no other option.”
“Well, okay, I guess.”
Compromise. She reminded herself that good relationships were founded on such things.
Slater moved into the tiled passageway—the very narrow, very dark tiled passageway. Clutching the phone and the contacts file, she took a deep breath and followed. Memories of the nightmarish flight through the Fogg Lake cave complex fifteen years earlier rose up in a choking wave. The claustrophobia hit hard and fast.
You will drown in the lake …
She could do this. She had to do this. The other option was to retreat back into Royston’s gallery and wait for the clones from hell to take her. That was no option at all.
Desperate not to succumb to full-blown panic, she cautiously jacked up her senses. Doing so helped suppress the panic. Up ahead she could see Slater’s fierce aura. She found the sight reassuring.
She was also relieved to discover that the hallucinations did not return. The atmosphere might be stale, but it was free of the fog.
“I see the exit up ahead,” Slater said.
“Thank goodness.”
Something in her voice must have alerted him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure. Peachy. I have a little problem with tight, enclosed spaces. Just get us out of here.”