Hans’s face fell. “Then what else may I do for you?”
Caleb smiled gently. “Nothing more. You’ve been a good friend to me, Hans.”
“Yes, we’re very good friends. It’s good that you were able to stop by after all these years.”
“But it’s time for you to go home now. I think it’s best that you forget us.”
He nodded. “Because of that trouble you said you were in. I understand. You’ll come and see me again?”
“Yes, someday.” He shook his hand. “I think I hear the plane.
Now go home and don’t let anyone see you on the way. Good-bye, Hans.”
“Yes, I hear it, too,” Hans said as he turned away. “Good-bye, Seth. I’ll see you next time.”
Lina turned to Caleb as Hans drove away. “He’s very accommodating. How long have you known him?”
“Long enough.” He turned and watched the Gulfstream jet coming in for a landing. “I think I’m going to be his silent partner. He’s always wanted to own his own gas station.”
“Providing he could trust you,” Lina said, as she and Jock moved toward the Gulfstream.
Caleb made a face. “It’s going to take quite a while to get her to think kindly of me, isn’t it?”
“You could use the same voodoo you did on Hans Wolfe,” Jane said.
“No, I couldn’t. I told you that I have a few rules I don’t break.”
She was silent a moment. “It’s very generous of you to give Hans his dream.”
He shrugged. “I put him at risk. He may still be at risk.”
“Will he forget everything just as that bank manager did?”
“Yes. It’s safer for him as well as us.” He walked toward the tall, sandy-haired man who was getting out of the plane. “Thanks for coming on short notice, Marc. We need to move quickly.” He gestured to the pilot. “This is Marc Lestall. Get on the plane. I’ll make formal introductions later.”
“Where are we going?” Lestall asked. “It would be a good idea if I knew. Right?”
Caleb looked at Jane. “MacDuff’s Run?”
She nodded. “But I want to go see Alan Roland first.”
He was silent for a moment. “It might be dangerous.”
“Not if we go to his office. He’s not going to make a move surrounded by all his office staff.”
“And it might not accomplish anything. He’s not going to admit anything.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want him to think that he’s safe because he’s hiding behind all that money and power. I want him to be aware that we
know
what a bastard he is.”
“Then we’ll go to Edinburgh and split up. You and I will go to London to see Roland and send Lina and Gavin to MacDuff’s Run. We’ll join them later.” Caleb followed her up the steps and said over his shoulder to Lestall. “Scotland.”
THEY WERE IN THE AIR
within a few minutes, and Jane gazed down at the ground disappearing from view. Millet might be down there, but he couldn’t touch them. Not now.
Relief. Intense relief.
“Blanket?” Caleb was standing beside her with a navy blue blanket in his hands. “We have a few hours, and you might be able to catch a few winks on the trip. We haven’t had a chance to get much rest since this began.”
“That’s an understatement.” She started to take the blanket, but he was already tucking it around her. His hand brushed her throat, and she inhaled sharply. It was only the lightest touch but her skin tingled, burned.
And he knew it. His gaze was on her face, and there was a stillness, a watchfulness, that made her chest tighten and her heart start to pound. It was like that primitive moment at the cottage when
he’d thrown Weismann down before her. He was wrapped, surrounded in heat, but now it had nothing to do with violence and everything to do with sexuality.
She jerked her own eyes away and moved back away from him. She huddled under the blanket and tried desperately to think of something that would break that intimacy. “It’s soft . . .”
“Cashmere.” His gaze never left her face. “Marc has a lot of business executives who hire him to fly them around. They appreciate the finer things.”
She looked around the luxuriously appointed cabin. Thick, gray carpet, twelve plush seats in burgundy suede framed in polished mahogany. Lina and Jock were sitting near the back of the plane, and Lina’s eyes were already closed.
“I appreciate the finer things, too.” She stroked the feather-soft wool. “Particularly when they have to do with comfort. Celine and I never agreed about designer luxuries. She thought a little discomfort was worth the—” She stopped as her eyes started to sting. They had been so frantically busy that Celine’s death had faded from the forefront of her mind. Now the memory was back and all the more poignant for the suddenness of its coming. She blinked fast, hard. “Damn. Sneak attack.”
“The worst kind of ambush.” That almost primitive sensuality was gone though the electricity still lingered between them. Caleb handed her his handkerchief as he sat down in the seat across the aisle from her.
She dabbed at her eyes. “I want to go back. I want her alive. I want to change things. If I hadn’t agreed to that damn art show and gone to Paris, then she wouldn’t be dead.”
“That’s true. Unless you believe in destiny. You could also say that if you’d never painted
Guilt
, none of this would have happened. Maybe changing one piece of the puzzle wouldn’t make a difference.”
“It’s all crazy. I told you, it was pure chance that
Guilt
looks like their idea of Judas. He’s a figment of my imagination. A dream.”
His brows rose. “Dream?”
She hadn’t meant to blurt that out. Certainly not to him. “Maybe I did see his face in a few dreams, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
He was smiling. “Oh, Jane. You do protest too much.”
“Bullshit.”
“I realize that admitting that you may have a tinge of weirdness yourself is against your every instinct. You’re such a wonderfully grounded, practical woman. It took all your tolerance just to accept that I’m a freak.”
“I’m not that closed-minded. I’ve come to realize that there are some people with legitimate psychic gifts. I’m just not one of them.”
“Then why did I immediately feel a closeness to you the moment we met? I knew you’d understand whatever I—”
“I don’t know why you would feel like that,” she interrupted.
“And you don’t want to hear it. I scared you tonight. You don’t want to claim any similarity with me. You’re shying away from everything about me that you don’t understand.”
“You didn’t scare me. But you’re right, there are too many things about you that I don’t understand.”
“Then ask me. I don’t promise to answer everything, but I’ll be honest with what I do tell you.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted him to be honest when she remembered the brutality of the night. And when she was still overpoweringly aware of how he had aroused her only a moment ago.
Yes, she did. He had fascinated and intrigued her since the moment he had come into her life. Admit it, she thought. I want those answers. “You seem to go into people’s minds and mold
them and pull out whatever you need so easily. Yet you told me that you wanted to be careful with Adah so that it would be smoother. Is it harder to do than it appears?”
“Sometimes. It depends on the mind. Most of the time it’s like skating on firm, fresh ice. Sometimes it’s a fight to get in, and that can cause serious damage unless I take my time. But I can overcome it.”
“But you didn’t take your time with Weismann.”
“No, I didn’t give a damn. He was already a dead man as far as I was concerned.”
The blunt ruthlessness of the statement shocked her. He had promised to be honest with her, and he was keeping to his word.
He smiled crookedly. “Was that a little too much information for you? Is that all you wanted to know?”
She was silent a moment. “No, one more question. You said it was very rare that you ran up against someone you couldn’t manipulate. Even if you try all your bag of tricks?”
“After all these years of practice, I’m close to perfect.” He shrugged. “But yes, there are a few people out there who I can’t touch. Very strong minds. And then there are the quagmires. Whenever I hit one of those, I pull out and run like hell.”
“Quagmires? What’s that?”
“I call it the quagmire effect. There are some people whose minds are constructed oddly. They don’t necessarily even have to be strong. They’re just . . . different. It’s like being caught in quicksand. Intense pain and sensation of smothering. If it went on too long, I think it would kill me.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve only had it happen twice. The first time I didn’t know what was happening, and I backed out right away. But I was still dizzy and sick for a day afterward. The second time, I couldn’t get out of
his mind and I blacked out. I didn’t wake up for two days. I was very careful after that. I’ve learned to recognize the signs.” He smiled. “You see, I trust you. I’m letting you know all my vulnerabilities.”
“Perhaps a tiny percentage of your vulnerabilities. You’re as heavily armored as a tank.”
He chuckled. “Next time I’ll reveal another Achilles’ heel. I’ll be like Scheherazade telling you a tale a night to keep you interested.”
“More like a narrator from the
Twilight Zone
.” She pulled the blanket higher around her. “I’m going to take that nap now.”
“Do that. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” He was silent a moment. “Have there been other dreams, Jane?”
She tensed. “Everyone has dreams.”
“Like that one?”
She didn’t want to answer. Why was she feeling compelled to do it? “Sort of. Maybe.”
“What’s it like when you dream? Disjointed?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. Clear. Very clear. As if I’m there, part of it. It’s as if a story is . . . unfolding.”
“Interesting. Will you tell me more about them?”
“No.”
“If you change your mind . . .”
“No.”
“Dreams don’t make you weird. Or at least only in the most minor category on the scale. Believe me, I know about weird.”
“I do believe you,” she said emphatically.
He chuckled. “I know you do. Tell me, where is
Guilt
right now.”
“MacDuff’s Run. MacDuff took it for safekeeping. Why?”
“I want to see it. I want to see your dream, Jane,” he added thoughtfully. “It must have been a very powerful dream. Do you believe that it could have been brought on by the thoughts and vibes of all those thousands of worshipers in Judas’s temple?”
Shock jolted through her. “No, I do not.”
“Just a thought.”
A very disturbing thought. But then Caleb was a very disturbing man. She wished she’d never made that verbal slip about the dream of
Guilt
. He would probe and gnaw at it until he was satisfied or had it in pieces and devoured.
Caleb tilted his head. “Or it might have been a case of remote viewing.”
“Remote viewing? What on earth is that?”
“It’s a technique that the CIA has been experimenting with though they don’t admit to it. It’s rather like astral projection or out-of-body experience where their psychic agent actually can mentally go to a place or situation and view it. I guess you could call it a form of psychic espionage.”
She frowned. “In dreams?”
“Or deep hypnosis, or, if they’re gifted enough, they merely concentrate and pull it off. If that mosaic of Judas is that close in resemblance to your painting, then maybe you did a little mental visiting.”
“The CIA? That’s absolutely absurd. They wouldn’t be doing experiments like that.”
“No? As I said, they’re very careful of their credibility, but the intelligence community will do anything to keep the advantage. When they learned the Chinese and Russians were ahead of them in experimentation they jumped on the bandwagon in 1972. There was even a multimillion-dollar research program called the Star-gate Project, which came to light in the nineties, that probed military applications of psychic phenomena.”
“And they claimed it worked?”
“Of course not. That would be giving away a valuable asset and endanger their psychic operatives.”
“Or they were embarrassed to admit that they’d even entertained the idea of anything so crazy.” She added curtly, “If remote viewing even exists, I have nothing to do with it. That’s even more bizarre than thinking I’m attuned to those idiots’ vibes.”
“I’m just exploring possibilities. I’m finding that one very promising. It would explain why you—”
“And I’m finding it total bullshit.”
He held up his hand. “No need to become upset. I’ll keep my thoughts to myself for the present.”
“Good idea.”
“Go to sleep,” Caleb said. “I’ll try to stop asking questions. I’m not trying to catch you at a weak moment. It’s just my nature.”
“I don’t have to answer your questions.”
He was silent a moment. “I might have nudged a little.”
“What?”
“Just a little. Then I backed away. And I’m admitting it, aren’t I?”
She stared at him in disbelief. “And that makes everything all right?”
“No, but it makes it a little less threatening. And I took ‘no’ for an answer.”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore, Caleb.”
“I know. I had to tell you. You’d have wondered later, and it might have damaged our relationship.”
He was totally impossible. One moment she was chilled and terrified by him. The next he was showing her a side that was almost vulnerable. “We have no relationship.”
“Yes, we do.” His eyes were holding her own, and she was aware that the sensuality she had thought gone was still there, waiting. “I
don’t know what it’s going to turn out to be. It’s tentative, but I’m working on it.” His voice was velvet soft. “Sleep well, Jane.”
“TAKE IT.” JUDAS THREW
the pouch on the ground at the feet of the high priest, Caiaphas. “I don’t want it. I never wanted it. You made me take it.”
“You wanted it.” The high priest’s lips curled. “Don’t lie. But now you’re having second thoughts. I don’t know why. Everything is working out quite well.”
“I didn’t think it would be like this.” Tears were running down his face. “They all think I’m Satan. I tell you, he wanted to die. I only helped him.”