Catalina turned the knob, pushed open the door and walked into another shadowed room. There were a number of books on the shelves. A home theater, complete with red velvet curtains and gilded chairs, took up one half of the library.
“If you shoot me, Beatrice Ross will hear the shot and call the cops,” she said. “You’d have to kill her, too. But you’re not planning to do that, are you?”
“No,” Danson said.
He reached into his other pocket and took out a syringe.
A man walked out from behind the curtain. He had a gun in one hand, a badge in the other.
“Police,” he said. “Drop the gun, Danson. And the needle. Hands on your head. You’re under arrest for the murders of Ingram, Royston and John Morrissey. You are also under arrest for the attempted murder of Catalina Lark. And then there’s the kidnapping charge.”
Danson froze.
The library was suddenly swarming with people in SWAT gear. Danson lowered the gun and let it fall on the carpet. He put the syringe down next to it.
“Be careful with the syringe,” Catalina said. “Whatever is inside is poisonous.”
An officer wearing thick gloves retrieved the syringe and gently placed it into a special container. Someone else took charge of the gun.
Slater and Olivia emerged from the other room.
“Are you all right?” Olivia asked.
“I still say this was a really stupid idea,” Slater said. He wrapped an arm around Catalina. “I swear, if you ever do anything this crazy again I’ll … Never mind. Are you okay?”
“Yes, but this vest is really hot and uncomfortable,” she said. She opened the front of her jacket to reveal the Kevlar vest. “Can I take it off now?”
“I’ll help you,” Olivia said.
Danson did not take his eyes off Catalina. Rage spiked in his aura.
“How did you figure it out?” he said.
Victor strolled into the room. He was accompanied by Lucas.
“Ms. LeClair overheard Nyla Trevelyan make a rather sarcastic comment about the difficulties of trying to work with family,” Victor said. “With that information we sought help from an Oracle.”
Danson stared at him. “Oracle? What are you talking about?”
Catalina smiled. There was no need to let Trey Danson or the police know that Harmony, using the Fogg Lake ancestry records, had helped them track down Nyla’s half brother.
Lucas looked at Danson. “Once we had a name, we brought in an expert forensic psychologist.”
Roger Gossard walked through the doorway. “That would be me.”
“The problem was that we had zero evidence linking you to the kidnapping of Ms. LeClair or to the murders of Ingram and Royston,” Victor said.
“Because there wasn’t any,” Danson said.
“Until now,” Slater said. “Catalina is wearing a wire.”
“Mr. Gossard was very helpful,” the detective said. “He advised us that if you were smart you would keep your head down and probably leave town. But he said your sense of self-preservation would probably be overridden by your desire for revenge.”
“After talking to Olivia and me and compiling all the evidence, Roger was able to come up with a psychological profile that accurately predicted your behavior,” Catalina said. “Evidently you’ve got some impulse control issues. All we had to do was dangle the bait.”
“Oh, my,” Beatrice said from the hall doorway. “This has been such an exciting afternoon. I haven’t had this much fun since my acting days.”
Danson stared at her. “What the fuck?”
Beatrice gave him an icy smile. “I knew you thought I was just a doddering old lady but I put up with it because you actually gave excellent investment advice. My sister and I made a lot of money thanks to your talent.”
“We didn’t have any hard evidence of your involvement in a serious crime so we took a look at your list of clients,” Victor said. “Imagine our surprise when we discovered that one of them was Beatrice Ross, a former actress who retired here.”
“Born and raised in Fogg Lake,” Beatrice added.
“When I contacted Ms. Ross and told her our suspicions about you, she agreed to assist us,” Victor said. “Evidently she really did have a few questions about her sister’s death.”
“This is bullshit,” Danson muttered.
Beatrice smiled but her eyes were as sharp as gemstones. “You murdered my sister, didn’t you? You knew that I inherited her estate. As soon as you convinced me to take my nephew out of my will and appoint you as the trustee, you would have murdered me, too.”
Danson was stone-faced now. “I’m not saying another word until I talk to my lawyer.”
“You’ve already said enough,” the detective said. “And thanks to Ms. Lark we’ve got a recording of every word.” He looked at the team in the flashy SWAT gear. “Get him out of here.”
Roger looked at Catalina. “Thanks.”
“You called it right,” Catalina said. “You said Danson would not be able to resist the opportunity to take revenge.”
“He committed several murders and risked everything to find whatever it was he was looking for,” Roger said. “But it was all for nothing, thanks to two women who operated a small investigation agency. He couldn’t let it go. It was just a matter of time before he went after you.”
“Thanks,” Catalina said. “I think this case will be very good for your brand.”
Roger gave her a considering look. “Lark and LeClair could have taken all the credit for this case. Why would you want to help me build my brand?”
“Let’s just say I recently discovered that revenge isn’t sweet,” Catalina said.
Olivia smiled. “Besides, the last thing our brand needs is another media frenzy focused on a crazy fake psychic who solves murders.”
CHAPTER 40
Gwendolyn Swan went to the door and turned the Open sign to Closed. She crossed the salesroom floor to her desk, picked up the receiver of the old landline phone and placed the call to her sister.
Eloisa Swan answered on the first ring. “Well?”
“Bad news, I’m afraid.” Gwendolyn leaned against the counter. “The project is a failure. The Fogg Lake lab has been located, but the Foundation is now in control of it.”
There was a long silence on the other end.
“What went wrong?” Eloisa asked finally.
“I could list any number of things, but in hindsight it’s clear that the biggest mistake was made back at the beginning when the triplets botched the kidnapping. They grabbed Olivia Le Clair without incident, but they missed Catalina Lark that same night.”
“You said she wasn’t at her apartment when they went to get her.”
“She had gone to see a client,” Gwendolyn said. “There was an incident at the client’s house. A fork was involved. Lark wound up spending half the night with the police. One thing led to another. Reporters showed up at the front door of Lark’s apartment building early the next morning. The triplets got nervous and called off the operation. They tried to pick her up on the street a couple of hours later but by then the Foundation had a man in Seattle. Things went downhill from there.”