The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(29)

Slater gave her a bleak smile. “Who knew?”

“Go on.”

“Like the Manhattan Project, the various labs associated with Bluestone were established in rural locations. We believe that most, if not all, of the Bluestone labs were located in the West and the Southwest. The theory was that if the enemy discovered one lab and sabotaged it, the entire project would not be destroyed.”

“You think that Fogg Lake was one of those sites.”

“We assume so, yes.”

“Because of what happened that night decades ago,” Catalina said.

“Whatever went wrong that night apparently made the government agency responsible for overseeing Bluestone extremely nervous. Ultimately the decision was made to shut down the entire project. Orders were given to destroy the labs. Every record and file, every scrap of paper associated with the project was supposed to be burned. There were no digital records in those days, so it was assumed that it would be a relatively simple matter to erase every trace of Bluestone. But this was a government project, so …”

“So of course some paperwork survived.”

“And some of the artifacts associated with Bluestone survived. Hence the collectors’ market.”

Catalina studied him for a long moment. “Are you a collector?”

“Yes.”

“You said collectors tend to be eccentric and weird.”

Slater nodded and drank some coffee. He lowered the mug. “I try to disguise my little obsession by working in the Foundation’s museum. I’m in the security department. I’m in charge of tracking down potentially dangerous artifacts with a paranormal provenance and transporting them to Foundation headquarters in Las Vegas.”

“I can see how a job like that might give you a convenient cover for collecting just about anything.”

“Works for me,” Slater said.

“Have you recovered a lot of artifacts?”

“We have a number of objects stored in the museum vaults,” Slater said. “But only a few are considered dangerous.”

“Have you ever found an actual lab?”

“No.”

“Then how can you be certain they even existed?”

Slater’s mouth curved in a wry smile. “To repeat, Bluestone was a government operation. It was highly classified, but it required funding, a lot of it. Money, even dark money, always leaves a trail.”

“You found that trail?”

“Not me. The Foundation has experts who specialize in tracking financial operations. But although they’ve come up with hints and clues, there is still a lot we don’t know about the project. It’s hard to make a big research operation like Bluestone vanish, but I’ve got to hand it to whoever was in charge of closing down the project. He or she did a hell of a job. All we’ve got at this point are rumors, legends and some scattered artifacts.”

“You think that Morrissey and the man who killed him were searching for the Fogg Lake lab the night that Olivia and I witnessed the murder.”

“Yes.”

Catalina picked up a sleek black pen and tapped it gently against her coffee mug. “Let’s go back to my original question. What makes Ingram’s and Royston’s deaths so important to the Foundation?”

“We’re paying particular attention because there are some new rumors circulating in the underworld market. There are indications that someone is trying to find one particular lab. Of all the facilities, it was the one that was treated as the most highly classified. The code name was Vortex. It was a real black box operation.”

“Why was it special?”

“It was focused on developing technology designed to weaponize paranormal energy. There are some hints in the archives that suggest the Vortex lab may have been successful or, at the very least, came up with a few working prototypes.”

“Do you think the Fogg Lake lab was the Vortex operation?”

“We don’t know. It may not be the Vortex lab, but I think whoever is searching for Vortex has taken an interest in the Fogg Lake facility.”

“Assuming it even exists.”

“You and Olivia and I, along with everyone else who can trace their ancestors back to Fogg Lake or the Bluestone Project, are evidence that it existed,” Slater said.

Catalina eyed him closely. “What’s your connection to Fogg Lake? I grew up there. I don’t remember an Arganbright family.”

“None of my people are from Fogg Lake but the residents of your hometown aren’t the only ones with a connection to the Bluestone Project. A wide range of paranormal research was carried out in all of the labs. The Arganbrights carry the results of one of those experiments in our DNA.”

A shiver of intuition crackled through her. “Well, well, well. I’m going to take a flying leap here. You think the Arganbrights were affected by experiments done in that mysterious Vortex lab, don’t you?”

Slater hesitated and then shrugged. “There is some family lore indicating that my grandfather may have worked in the Vortex lab. We’ve never been able to prove it because he didn’t survive the closure of the labs. My father suspects Granddad was killed by someone who thought he knew too much. What we do know is that there’s a strong psychic vibe in the bloodline and that it showed up first in my father’s generation. Everything after that is pure conjecture.”