Changed (Second Sight) (3 page)

THERE WAS NO view of the Malibu coastline from Daniel’s office but that didn’t surprise Isabelle. Daniel had always preferred his office to be like a cave. That apparently hadn’t changed.

According to Mac, the work with Daniel’s computers wasn’t going well. By the time he’d gotten off the phone, Mac had already decided he was coming here. Though Isabelle had thought she would have to beg to come along, Mac had quickly said yes.
 

The case must be going worse than I thought.

Mac had explained on the way that neither of the computers would be useful any time soon and that his interview with Daniel on Friday had amounted to nothing. The same smug attitude had suffused Isabelle’s reading of him as well. It was as though Daniel was waiting for something.

Waiting for what?

Isabelle couldn’t help but think of the strange and abrupt conversation with Yolanda. Mac hadn’t known what to make of it either and it still troubled Isabelle. She heard Mac’s footsteps upstairs and glanced upward. He’d taken the bedroom.

That room was going to be
way
more information than Isabelle wanted to know.

She looked down at her gloves.

It was Daniel who had first insisted on them. When Kayla had told her that she was dating Daniel too, Isabelle had finally understood why. For a psychic, she’d been ridiculously easy to dupe, not to mention lie to and throw over.

She shook her head.

“Enough,” she muttered, taking off her gloves.
 

Enough with the past.
That was behind her. Mac was the future. From the start, he’d wanted the gloves
off
.
 

She paused.

But what about the security clearance and the classified data?
He was worried about it. And
that
worried her.
How are we possibly going to get around it?

She heard his footsteps upstairs again.
 

Concentrate, Isabelle. You’re here to find out about Daniel.

She stepped over to his computer desk. If there was any place in the world where Daniel spent more time, Isabelle didn’t know where it would be. He was always at his computer.
 

Isabelle sat in his chair. Three large black monitors virtually surrounded her, arranged in a U-shape on the deep desk. Though the computers were gone, Isabelle could see their outlines in the dust behind the monitors, loose cables everywhere. But it wasn’t the screens that were of interest to her and not even the computers. In front of her was a mouse. It would have been the one thing he’d have touched the most.
 

Isabelle unfastened one glove, tugged it off and reached out her bare hand. Her fingers lightly touched the device.

Her vision went instantly gray and the images began to stream in.

Computer monitors, the ones in front of her, flashed on and off. Text flowed by, not many images. Wait. Except for the Coming Home group at Yahoo. Lots of pictures. Of babies. Some of couples. Everybody smiling. Adoption and reparenting.
 

Adoption?

Isabelle felt her pulse jump a notch. She had to breathe through her mouth. A normal reading would have ended about now but she needed to know about the babies. For someone who had so little interest in his own, Daniel had spent a lot of time looking at the pictures on an adoption web site. He was happy, even ecstatic. The future was bright.

Coming Home, she read at one web site, as sweat started to dampen her upper lip. Where you can privately re-home the child of your choice.
 

What does that mean?
 

More web pages flashed by. More couples. Isabelle pushed, going back, looking farther.
 

Where is the link to Botox?

She was breathing hard now, her heart hammering in her chest. Her eyes were starting to burn. How could she have seen Botox so clearly in Daniel’s thoughts when it was nowhere on his computer? It had been important.
 

Is he using it? Trafficking in it?

Her lungs couldn’t keep up and the gray haze was beginning to dim.

Why did Yolanda say ‘good riddance’?

With an effort, Isabelle pushed the mouse away and sat back hard in the chair.

•••••

“Psychic?” Maurice muttered. “Nonsense.”

He would need a new detective agency.
 

The ten year background check that Geoffrey had ordered for Isabelle de Grey and Gavin MacMillan had turned up little of interest, except for her role–Maurice squinted at the email–in some serial killer slayings.
 

What drivel
.

He closed the email and glanced at the temperature sensors again. The digital readouts for the flask probes blinked a reassuring red. Everything was on schedule.

Just a second. Didn’t that ring a bell? About a serial killer? Hadn’t there been something about that on the news a little while ago?

Maurice opened the email again.

Yes. He remembered now. The police had caught an actor.

Isabelle had been part of that?

As he scanned down the rest of the report, he remembered Kayla. It had all started to fall apart with her–after Isabelle had visited with Kayla’s mother. Then Kayla had disappeared. Then Daniel had kidnapped their son.
 

But it had all started with Isabelle.

Maurice had even questioned the association at the time.
 

But a psychic?
 

Maurice scowled.

She
had
to have been involved in Kayla’s departure. The timing had been too much of a coincidence. Of course, there was no such thing as psychic ability but somehow Isabelle had been connected to the events that had started to unravel the Green Earth Commune.

Then he remembered the gloves and her reaction to the shock wand.

Something there hadn’t been right either. He’d
known
it.

But that wasn’t evidence of psychic ability.
 

No, that was evidence of something else–his brother’s stupidity.

Geoffrey had insisted. He’d been charmed. Maurice should never have allowed it. He shut the laptop. Next time, he wouldn’t have that problem. Next time, there would be no Geoffrey.

DANIEL’S BEDROOM WAS everything the Green Earth Commune was not.

Mac opened the drawer of the ultra-modern nightstand. A mirror, a razor blade, and a quart-sized bag of cocaine. Mac shut it and opened the next. A vaporizer and another quart-sized bag of marijuana.
 

Daniel buys in quantity.

The next drawer held the condoms.

Mac closed it and went to the matching dresser against the polished concrete wall. To his right, beyond the sliding glass doors and decks, the view of the Pacific Ocean was even more expansive than the view from the kitchen. The corner of the enormous master bedroom was almost entirely glass. But Mac only glanced at the view. He’d already registered the role it played in the profile. Nor was he interested in the expensive clothes as he pulled open the top drawer. He quickly shoved them aside, his hands searching to the back and into the corners. Nothing. He closed it and opened the next.

Gleaming modernism, conspicuous consumption, an expensive sports car, built-in chargers and ethernet everywhere. The organic and rustic off-the-grid lifestyle wasn’t for Daniel and yet–Mac rifled through the clothes–he was closely tied to the commune. So closely that he’d taken his son there to sell.

Why?

Mac’s fingers closed on something. He pulled it out. Another plastic baggie but this one had photos.

“Bingo,” Mac said.

Though he could already see what he’d found, he quickly opened the bag and looked at each photo in turn–Daniel’s women. His cell phone had been virtually empty. Daniel had been very careful not to leave photos, texts or emails on it, even though it’d been locked. Mac leafed through the pictures one by one.
 

Isabelle’s reading of the photo from the dormitory had always bothered him. Daniel had actually gone to the women’s quarters, taken it out of the trash, but then abandoned it when he thought he’d be discovered.
Why take that risk?
But the more he learned about Daniel, the more it had become clear–Kayla had meant nothing to him. Then, when he and Isabelle had intruded on him with another a woman, a woman he didn’t mind them knowing about, it had clicked. The photo of Kayla had been a trophy. He collected them.

A few of the women in these shots were naked. Mac felt his stomach tighten. He was getting close to the end and he knew full well who–

There she was.
 

“Isabelle,” he said quietly.

Mac breathed a sigh of relief. She was clothed. As were the few women behind her. Daniel had become bolder over time. In college, he’d been content with a regular snapshot. Mac went back to the image of Isabelle. The dark background looked like it might be a restaurant. Isabelle was smiling, not looking at the camera, as though she were talking with someone. She’d hardly changed, her hair a bit shorter then. Mac had to smile at the look on her face. Off-guard, open, not yet worried about living as a psychic. Not yet knowing how future relationships would end.

That won’t be us,
he thought
.
We
won’t be another failed relationship. Isabelle and I–we’ll figure it out.

Slowly, he slotted the image back into place.

He glanced at the unmade bed to his left.

When they’d arrived, Daniel had been there, with a woman. Downstairs–Mac glanced at the doorway–Daniel had heard the door ring. He saw it was Isabelle, his old girlfriend, which was great until the FBI agent with her said that Kayla had the baby and thought he was dead. But he wasn’t really interested. Instead of seeing Kayla, he kidnapped the baby and took it to the Green Earth Commune.
 

“There has to be agreement between character and action,” Mac muttered.
 

It was a basic tenet of profiling. Somehow, what Daniel had done made complete sense. In his mind, the baby belonged there. Mac glanced back down at the photos. If Isabelle hadn’t intervened, Kayla’s son would have been born there, would have stayed there. And that’s how Daniel had wanted it.

•••••

Maurice swabbed the inside of the large, steel cooking pot. Though there were a few curious glances, no one questioned him. He’d learned long ago that the white lab coat carried authority with it. Add the latex gloves and a few tools and people would stand on their heads if you asked them.

He moved to the next stove and the next pot as he pocketed the latest ‘sample.’ But the plastic tubes with extra long swabs weren’t sterile–far from it. They’d been preloaded.

It’s like slight of hand.

For a moment, a thrill raced through him and then, just as suddenly, a cold jolt of fear.

Just act normally. You’re taking samples.
 

But now his mouth was dry and the latex gloves were wet on the inside. He swabbed another deep stewpot. In a matter of only an hour or so, everything here would be full of food. The pots, the giant cook surfaces, the tea dispensers, the serving trays. Luckily, he didn’t need to coat each one.

At the moment, most of the women were washing vegetables and chopping. Several of them were pregnant. They’d be the first to get sick–some of them as quick as tonight. Many of them would die.

“Maurice. What are you doing?”

Maurice nearly jumped out of his skin as the swab dropped from his grip. He spun to find Geoffrey just behind him.

“Geoffrey!” he said. “What the–”
 

All eyes had turned to them.

“I think you dropped something,” Geoffrey said, looking over Maurice’s shoulder into the shiny cauldron. He stepped toward the stove.

“Don’t touch it!” Maurice said quickly, holding out his hand. Geoffrey jerked to a stop mid-stride. “I mean,” Maurice said, trying to find a calmer sounding voice, “let me. I’m wearing gloves.”

“
Fine
,” Geoffrey said, holding up his hands and backing up. “Fine.”

Maurice quickly retrieved the dropped swab, jammed it into the plastic tube, and stuck it in his lab coat pocket. He wiped a little sweat from his upper lip using the back of his sleeve.

“Stop sneaking around,” Maurice finally muttered under his breath.
 

The chopping sounds resumed and most of the women pointedly looked away.

“I’d hardly call it sneaking around,” Geoffrey said, looking at Maurice’s lab coat pocket. “You didn’t hear me?” Maurice glanced left and right. Had he been so absorbed that he hadn’t noticed someone saying his name? “I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” Geoffrey said. “So, what
are
you doing?”

“I’m doing a few tests,” Maurice said.

“For what?”

Not that you would understand, but…

“E. coli,” Maurice said.

“E. coli!” Geoffrey said. “We have
E. coli
?”

Suddenly, you could hear a pin drop.

“No,” Maurice said quickly. “
No
.”

That was all he needed–for people to be suspicious of the food.
 

“Can we catch it?” Geoffrey said, sounding truly alarmed.

“No,” Maurice said, annoyed now. “You don’t
catch
it. It’s just–” He stopped himself. He’d been about to give a real explanation of
Escherichia coli
to someone who couldn’t tell a petri dish from a nut bowl. He needed to put a stop to this and quickly. “Look.
You
don’t have it.
No one
here has it. I’m just running a routine test for the health department.
That’s all
.” He looked around the kitchen. “Just a routine test,” he said loudly. “If
anything
was wrong, you’d be the first to know.” Their faces were nervous. “Besides,” Maurice said, forcing a smile and clapping Geoffrey on the shoulder, “we eat here too!” He looked pointedly at Geoffrey. “Right, Geoffrey?” He squeezed his brother’s shoulder tightly. “
Tell
them.”