The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(48)

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.

Catalina deserved answers, but he hadn’t had time to give her the few that he possessed. He had gotten on the phone with Victor as soon as he and Catalina had left the Frontier Lodge, and he had ended the call a moment ago. A Foundation team was already on the way to Seattle. They would pick up the twin who had been left bound and gagged in the basement of Royston’s safe house and transport him back to Las Vegas for questioning. Assuming he ever came out of his coma. You’re an icer. You’re not real.

Slater pushed the memory of the twin’s accusation aside. The matter of what he had become would have to wait. He had other problems, not least of which was the issue of communication. The phone call to headquarters would be the last phone call he would be able to make for some time. The rural mountain area through which they were driving made GPS and phones increasingly unreliable. The situation would become even more untenable when they arrived in Fogg Lake. A hot radiation environment of any kind played havoc with computers and cell phones.