The twin started speaking in a thin, panicky voice.
“Frontier Lodge. Outside Hinley. We didn’t hurt her, I swear it. Instructions said undamaged goods. That’s what we delivered. You gotta help me. You can’t kill me.”
“Probably best if you don’t give me the incentive to try,” Slater said. “Catalina, use your phone to take a picture of this guy.”
She was trembling in reaction to the violence but she managed to dig her phone out of the pocket of her trench coat. She took a couple of shots of the twin, who stared at her, dazed.
A draft of air swept down the hallway just as she dropped the phone back into her pocket. She realized a door had opened somewhere in the house. Footsteps sounded in the shadows.
“Deke? Where are you? They found Royston’s safe room and the damned tunnel. Did you get them?”
Deke jerked violently and tried to lever himself into a sitting position. “Tony. Tony, help me. He’s an icer. Gonna kill me—”
Slater tightened his grip on Deke. The cold in the atmosphere intensified. Deke twitched again and then slumped on the floor.
Slater rose and started down the hall. A storm of midnight ice swirled around him.
But Deke’s desperate cry for help had sounded the alarm. The thud-thud-thud of rapidly retreating footsteps told Catalina that Tony was on his way back out of the house. Evidently one violent sociopath saw no reason to stick around to try to save another violent sociopath, even if they were twins.
The footsteps faded quickly. Catalina heard the muffled rumble of a motorcycle engine.
Slater reappeared. “He got away, but we’ve got one.”
“I don’t think Deke is going to be able to answer any more questions for a while,” Catalina said.
“Why not? Is he dead? Damn. He’s no use to me dead.” Slater moved closer to the man on the floor. “Good. He’s got an aura. He’s alive.”
Catalina decided not to point out that the fact that Deke was still breathing was something of a happy accident.
“He’s alive,” she said. “But he’s in a very deep state of sleep. Unconscious. Maybe in a coma. There’s no way to know when he’ll wake up, but assuming he does, I don’t think it will be anytime soon.”
“In that case, we’ll leave him in the basement. I’ll contact Victor and have him send someone out to collect this piece of garbage. You and I can’t waste any more time.”
“We have to check that motel before we go to Fogg Lake,” Catalina said. “Olivia might still be there.”
“Waste of time,” Slater said. “We have to get to Fogg Lake.” “I’m not going to argue about this. You are free to leave for Fogg Lake. I’m going to find that motel. It’s our first solid lead. I can’t ignore it.”
Slater fixed her with a considering look.
“Don’t even think about it,” she warned.
“What?”
“You’re wondering if you can grab me, stuff me into the car and take me to Fogg Lake. Forget it.”
He sighed. “Did you see all that in a vision?”
“I didn’t need one to figure out what you were thinking. Some things are pretty damn obvious.”
“All right, we’ll find the motel and then we’ll head for Fogg Lake. But first we have to stop at your office or your apartment, someplace where we can print out that photo of the clone.”
“Why?”
“We may need it to show to people in Fogg Lake. Cell phones and computers don’t work there, remember?”
“All right,” Catalina said. “We can print out the photo at my office and then we’ll find that motel. I’ll drive.”
“Fine. Let’s get going.”
His easy acquiescence worried her.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I need to think about it.”
She glanced at the unconscious Deke and remembered his words.
You’re a fucking icer. You’re not real.
________
The Frontier Lodge was on an old road outside a tiny farm town in the foothills of the Cascades. It was clear that the motel had been closed for a very long time. Most of the doors and windows were boarded up, but one door stood open. The room, with its sagging bed and stained carpet, was empty.
The electricity had been cut off. Slater swept his flashlight around the small space. An object glittered beneath the bed. Catalina got down on her hands and knees and pulled out the bracelet.
“This is Olivia’s,” she said. “I was with her when she bought it. That creep Deke was telling the truth. She was here.”
“Can you tell how many people besides Olivia were in this room recently?”
Catalina prowled the musty space, forcing herself to concentrate. A murky vision appeared. She turned to look at the bed.
“Three,” she said, aware that she was sliding into her other voice. “Three people in addition to Olivia were in this room.”
“Two of them would have been the twins. That leaves us with one unknown individual.”
“The clones left. Someone else arrived.” Catalina stepped into the prints of the third individual. They seethed with anticipation.
“He is excited,” she whispered. “Thrilled.”
“Sexually?”
“No. But he is close, so close, to something he wants very badly.”
“Are you sure it’s a man?”
She hesitated and then shook her head. “No. I can’t be sure. But the person is strong enough to carry Olivia outside. I suppose a strong woman could manage that. Just seems more likely it was a man.”
“How do you know she was carried outside?”
Catalina shook off the vision and looked at him. “Because I can’t see any sign of her footprints on the floor between the door and the bed. I think she was carried in here. Someone arrived a short time later to pick her up and carry her outside.”
“Anything else?”
Catalina walked around to the other side of the bed and stopped cold. Once again she jacked up her senses.
“Olivia,” she whispered.
Footsteps blazed on the floor.
“She wakes up. She’s dazed and disoriented and scared. But she has an objective. A goal. She’s frantic.”
Catalina followed the hot prints to the door of the dingy bathroom and stopped. She snapped out of the vision.
“She needed to use the facilities after the long drive from Seattle,” Slater said. “Makes sense that the kidnappers would allow her to go in there.”
Catalina gazed into the small room. “She left us a message, Slater.”
He moved quickly to stand behind her.
“So she did,” he said very softly.
The tip of a finger had been used to inscribe one word on the thick dust that coated the mirror.
VORTEX
CHAPTER 20
It’s starting to look like your uncles may be right,” Catalina said. “Maybe Vortex is not a legend after all.”
Slater watched the narrow mountain highway unwind in the headlights of Catalina’s tough little SUV. Catalina was at the wheel. She was clearly an expert on bad mountain roads, and this was one hell of a bad mountain road. He was in good hands. That was excellent news, because he probably should not be sitting behind the wheel just now. It was all he could do to battle the strange lethargy that was stealing through him.