“Earlier you said that some doctors at a clinic had slapped you with the ‘delicate’ label. I asked you why. You said it was a long story. We have a long walk out of here. I thought it would be a good time to tell me the tale.”
“Damn. Should have seen this coming.” Talking about his problems was the last thing he wanted to do.
Charlotte stiffened. “Don’t ask.” Her voice had gone very cool.
He concentrated on folding the blanket into a small square. “Don’t ask what?”
“Why women always want to chat after sex. Speaking personally, I don’t. Not usually. In my experience it invariably leads to a bad outcome. But, then, all my dates end badly.”
“At least you’re consistent.”
“True. But I think I need to know why you wound up here on Rainshadow.”
He thought about it while he crammed the blanket back into the pouch.
“What the hell,” he said finally. “It’s not like it’s not in both my Bureau file and the Arcane clinic files.”
“My goodness,” she said. “What on earth happened?”
He was saved from an immediate answer by a familiar chortle. Rex fluttered across the glowing meadow. When he reached them he bounded up to Slade’s shoulder. He was still holding the small purse.
“Well, well, well, where have you been, Big Guy?” Charlotte said. She reached up to pat Rex. “I’ll bet you went hunting, didn’t you? I don’t even want to think about what you dined on this evening.”
Slade knew he was probably anthropomorphizing, but judging by Rex’s jaunty attitude, he had a hunch the dust bunny had gotten lucky. Probably hadn’t had to have a complicated, mood-shattering postcoital chat afterward, either.
He slung one strap of the small pack over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
They tromped across the sparkling meadow, past the obsidian pond and into the trees. Slade gathered his thoughts, searching for an entry point into a nightmare he relived every night.
“It happened on my last assignment,” he said finally. “It was supposed to be a straightforward investigate-and-take-down-if-necessary job. A researcher from a low-profile government lab died in a diving accident on an island in the Harmonic Sea. Seemed routine, but any time a government lab employee goes missing or dies unexpectedly, the Bureau looks into the situation.”
“So you went to check out the accidental death and concluded that it was murder?”
“No, I concluded that there had been no death at all,” he said. “Well, there was a dead guy and he had been murdered while diving but he was not the missing researcher. He had, however, been killed by paranormal means in an attempt to make it look like a heart attack. The missing lab tech’s ID was on the body.”
“So you investigated further,” Charlotte said.
“That’s the job. Turned out the lab tech was very much alive and working for a drug lord named Masterson, who had a walled compound, more like a fortress, on one of the other nearby islands.”
“What on earth would a drug thug want with a government researcher?”
“You may be surprised to learn that the drug trade is highly competitive,” Slade said.
“Gee. Who would have thought so?”
“For obvious reasons a successful drug lord needs to stay one step ahead of the competition. It just so happened that the lab tech’s expertise was in pharmaceuticals. Masterson wanted him to produce a new designer drug for the gray market.”
“A club drug,” she said. “One that’s not quite illegal because the chemical composition has been tweaked just enough to keep it off the list of banned pharmaceuticals.”
“Law enforcement is always one step behind the chemists in the drug trade.”
“So this drug lord abducted the researcher with the goal of forcing him to make a new drug?” she asked.
“As far as I could tell, there was no strong-arm work involved,” he said. “Masterson used a more traditional business approach. He paid the lab tech a hell of a lot of money up front and offered to cut him in for a share of future profits.”
“You interrupted the plan, I assume?”
“I went into the fortress one night with the intention of searching the lab. I was about to crack a mag-steel vault when things got complicated.”
“How?” she asked.
“What I didn’t know until then was that Masterson had rounded up a few end-of-the-line alcoholics and junkies to use as subjects in the drug experiments. The poor bastards were locked up in a lower level of the basement. I went down to get them out.”
“Of course you did,” she said, sounding very certain. “It’s what you do. What happened?”
“I got the prisoners out of the basement but when I went back in to open the safe, Masterson, the lab tech, and a couple of Masterson’s enforcers were waiting for me. I took down Masterson first. Evidently they had not expected me to be able to do that.”
“Because of his talent?”
“He was some kind of hunter. I never did discover the exact nature of his ability.”
“So, how did you manage to take him out?”
“The old-fashioned way. Mag-rez pistol.”
“Oh. Right. That would work.”
“It does if you’re faster than the other guy. The enforcers fled. With their boss dead there was no reason for them to stick around. But they laid down a lot of covering fire on the way out. One or more of the shots struck a gas canister in the corner of the room. There was an explosion. It killed the renegade lab tech instantly because he was standing so close to the canister. Next thing I knew the whole lab was going up in flames and a lot of dark smoke.”
“How did you survive the explosion?” she asked.
“I was in the basement stairwell, using it for cover. The stone walls shielded me from the worst effects of the explosion but not from the gas that was in the canister. There was no way I could avoid inhaling some of it when I made a run for the door.”
“What kind of gas was it? Some sort of illicit drug?”
“No one knows what it was,” he said. His hand tightened around the flashlight. “A team went into the ruins of the lab later but they didn’t find anything aside from traces of a few chemicals known to have some psycho-pharmaceutical properties. The assumption is that the gas was a new experimental drug.”
“What effect did it have on you?”
“It didn’t do any damage to my lungs but it acted like acid on my senses.”
Charlotte came to an abrupt halt. “You were psiblinded?”
He stopped because he didn’t have much choice. “Temporarily. Couldn’t use any of my talent for a couple of weeks.”
“How awful. But your senses recovered, thank heavens.”
“Only partially,” he said. “The experts tell me they probably won’t come all the way back.”
“I don’t understand. You used your talent to determine that Jeremy Gaines was murdered by paranormal means and you can navigate here inside the Preserve.”
“For now I’m at a Level Seven on the Jones Scale.”
“That’s very strong. Well above average, certainly.”
“I used to be a Nine,” he said.
“I see.”
She was silent for a moment, taking in the full meaning of what he had just said. She understood, he thought. The loss of two full points on the scale was dramatic. Now she would feel sorry for him. That was the last thing he wanted.
“Are you sure that the new measurement is accurate?” she asked finally.
Might as well tell her the rest, he thought. She would continue to feel sorry for him but she would also realize that she had to put some emotional distance between them. The sex had been great but he knew that in spite of her decision to enter a no-strings-attached relationship, deep down she wanted something a lot more intimate and enduring. That meant a lover who was psychically compatible. He could not promise her that kind of bond. He might as well get to the bottom line and get it over with before any real damage was done. Correction,he thought, make that before any more damage was done to either of them.