Jayne Krentz - Dream Eyes

“You hired a security consultant,” Judson said. “What made you think I didn’t come with a gun?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I suppose I was under the impression that you and your brother relied on paranormal technology for your work.”

“Sam is the tech guy in the family. He likes his gadgets. But it’s usually a hell of a lot easier to defend yourself with a traditional gun than it is with psi-technology, especially if the guy who is shooting at you is a long ways away. I told you, para-weapons only operate at close range.”

“I see. Well, this incident certainly raises a few new questions. I can’t believe that someone just tried to kill me.”

“That might not have been the shooter’s objective.”

“Do you have another suggestion?”

“The shot was high.” Judson said. “The shooter may have been trying to scare you off, not kill you.”

“Okay, I’ll take some comfort in that possibility. What now?”

“You’re going out the back door. I’ll get the car and bring it around the lab building to pick you up.”

“Are you sure it’s safe to go out the front door?” she asked.

“He’s gone,” Judson said.

“You’re sure?”

“Very sure.”

“But you still want me to go out the back way?”

“Humor me, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “But promise me you’ll be very careful when you go out the front.”

He looked mildly surprised by her concern. Then the edge of a smile appeared. He picked up the strongbox and went to the door.

“I’ll be careful,” he said.

* * *

SHE WAITED TENSELY at the rear door of the lab, listening hard until she heard the SUV’s big engine fire up. She relaxed only somewhat when she did not hear any more shots.

A moment later, Judson drove around the corner of the building, braked to a halt and leaned across the passenger compartment to throw open the door. She locked the lab door and hopped up into the front seat, the map clutched in one hand.

“Are we going to report this to Oxley?” she asked, buckling her seat belt.

“Sure.” Judson drove toward the road that bordered the river. “It will be interesting to see if he bothers to investigate. Even if he does go through the motions, I doubt that he’ll turn up any hard evidence. But the important thing is that word will get out around town that someone took a shot at you.”

“That’s a good thing?”

“It will put pressure on the shooter. He’ll think twice before he tries again because he knows that no cop, even a small-town one, will ignore a second hunting accident. That will buy me some time to find him.”

“How do you intend to do that?” She stopped when she realized he was turning the wrong way onto the road. “Where are you going? Wilby is the other direction.”

“The nearest bridge is this way. I want to get to the other side to see if I can locate the place where the shooter stood when he took the shot.”

Gwen glanced at him. “You think you’ll find some psi-residue at the scene that will point us toward a suspect?”

“Maybe. Sometimes I get lucky.”

A hundred yards up the road, Judson drove across a narrow bridge. The lane on the far side was little more than a dirt track through the woods.

He stopped the SUV in a position directly opposite the lodge and got out.

Gwen watched him walk a few feet into the words before she extricated herself from the front seat and followed him. The wind was sharpening. The next summer storm would be upon them by nightfall.

When she reached Judson’s side, she sensed the energy in the atmosphere around him.

“Well?” she asked.

“This is where the shooter stood when he pulled the trigger.” Judson studied the front of the lab. “He knew what he was doing. He aimed for the door frame, and that’s what he hit.”

“How do you know that?”

“He was . . . satisfied with the shot. But he was surprised when I returned fire. I was right. He didn’t know that I was armed.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about a male?”

“No. I’m using the masculine pronoun in a generic sense, the same way I did at Ballinger’s house.”

“So there could be a woman involved in this thing?”

“Oh, yeah,” Judson said very softly.

“Do you have any sense of the emotion that the shooter was feeling when he took the shot?”

“Angry. Scared. Desperate.” Judson turned back toward the SUV. “You’re wondering if it was Nicole Hudson who fired that shot, aren’t you?”

“You heard her last night. She blames me for Taylor’s death.”

“If she was the shooter, all I can tell you now is that she wasn’t trying to kill you. I need more information.”

Gwen smiled. “I know what you mean. It’s called context.”

“Hunter.” Oxley studied the scarred metal where the rifle shot had punched through the doorjamb. “Every year we get a lot of city folks up here. Most of ’em can’t hit the broad side of a barn. They get excited and shoot at anything that moves.”

“I can see you’re not impressed,” Judson said.

Gwen was initially surprised that Oxley had not kept them waiting long. His arrival at the lodge so soon after Judson made the 911 call indicated that he had been poised to spring into action if he got word that she was present at yet another crime scene. It was almost as if he had been expecting to hear more bad news, she thought. It was depressing to be the Wilby version of Typhoid Mary.

Light glinted on Oxley’s dark glasses when he turned his head to look at Judson. “This kind of thing happens every season. Just glad no one was hurt.”

“Gosh, so are we,” Gwen said.

Oxley’s heavy jaw hardened. “You think someone deliberately took a shot at you?”

“That possibility crossed my mind, yes.”

“Now, why would anyone want to do that?” Oxley asked very softly.

“I don’t know,” Gwen said. “It occurred to me that getting the answer to that question was your job.”

Oxley contemplated her for a long moment, his eyes unreadable behind the shades. “It’s no secret that you made an enemy here a couple of years ago.”

“You’re talking about Nicole Hudson, aren’t you?” Gwen said.

“Between you and me, Nicole is not real stable.”

“I’ve heard that,” Gwen said.

Oxley grunted. “I happen to know for a fact that she’s still got her dad’s old hunting rifle.”

“Wonderful,” Gwen said. “An unstable woman in possession of a weapon. What are the odds she might decide to use it?”

Oxley rubbed the back of his thick neck. “I’ll have a talk with her.”

“We don’t think this was a hunting accident,” Judson said quietly. “We wanted to report the incident in case the situation escalates.”

“Escalates?” Oxley repeated in ominous tones. “Like it escalated two years ago?”

“Yes,” Judson said.

“Who are you, Coppersmith, and what’s your connection to Miss Frazier, here?”

“I’m a friend,” Judson said. “I’m helping Gwen deal with Evelyn Ballinger’s affairs.”

“Friend, huh? Way I hear it, you and Miss Frazier are more than just friends, but that’s your business,” Oxley said. “I’d advise you to be real careful, though. Friends of Gwen Frazier have a bad habit of dying here in Wilby.” He squared his cap on his head and stalked back toward the patrol car. “Call me if there are any more incidents.”

“You bet,” Gwen said. “Good to know you’re there to serve and protect, chief.”

Oxley paused before stuffing himself behind the wheel. “You want to see this situation de-escalate? Leave town. Got a hunch things will go right back to normal around here once you’re gone. Just like they did last time.”

“You found one of the Phoenix geodes?” Elias roared into the phone. “Just sitting around in some abandoned resort lodge?”

Wincing, Judson held the phone away from his ear.

His father had built a business empire founded on rare earths and valuable ores. Elias had interests in every region of the globe. As president and CEO of Coppersmith, Inc., he did high-level deals in cosmopolitan European capitals and in hardscrabble mining camps on every continent. He had connections that stretched from Wall Street and Washington, D.C., to the farthest corners of the planet.

The strategic importance of rare earths ensured that Elias could pick up a phone and get the full and immediate attention of government officials, directors of hedge funds and the owners of a wide range of technology firms. He was the go-to man for those who wanted to know what the foreign competition was doing. In practice, Elias almost never picked up the phone. Other people wasted a lot of their valuable time and their assistants’ valuable time trying to get through to him.

Elias could hold his own with anyone from an East Coast banker to a Silicon Valley engineer, but he had started out as a hard rock prospector in the deserts of the American West, and he would be a man of the Old West for the rest of his life. It was there in his voice. The drawl got thicker when he got excited. He was excited now.

“The geode was actually sitting around in a private lab here in Wilby,” Judson said. He looked at the steel strongbox on the bench at the end of his bed. “The former owner cut it open. She was using it to power some of her lab equipment, a psi-reflecting engine made out of hot mirrors.”

The door between his room and Gwen’s stood open. Max wandered across the threshold and vaulted up onto the big bed, landing with a heavy thud. He looked at the steel box with an attentive expression for a few seconds and then he seemed to lose interest.