Kitabı oku: «Sight Unseen»
The image of a pond exploded on Raine’s retinas
Leaf shaded and dark, its stillness failed to draw her. It repelled instead. Frightening. Repugnant.
Then the surface of the water began to stir. The pond took on a reddish hue. Cold and dark. Bloody and violent.
Unconsciously she opened her mouth, attempting to draw air into lungs that felt as if the pressure of those black depths were closing in on her. The surface continued to churn, patterns emerging as the water roiled.
There were images there, too, but they were moving too quickly for her to focus on any one of them. Like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, they merged and blended, changing even as she watched.
She began to fight. To struggle against the pull of the vortex at the center of the pond, trying not to look into its dark heart, because she knew that if she did, she would see something she didn’t want to see. Something no one was intended to see.
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
Temperatures are rising this month at Harlequin Intrigue! So whether our mesmerizing men of action are steaming up their love lives or packing heat in high-stakes situations, July’s lineup is guaranteed to sizzle!
Back by popular demand is the newest branch of our Confidential series. Meet the heroes of NEW ORLEANS CONFIDENTIAL—tough undercover operatives who will stop at nothing to rid the streets of a crime ring tied to the most dangerous movers and shakers in town. USA TODAY bestselling author Rebecca York launches the series with Undercover Encounter—a darkly sensual tale about a secret agent who uses every resource at his disposal to get his former flame out alive when she goes deep undercover in the sultry French Quarter.
The highly acclaimed Gayle Wilson returns to the lineup with Sight Unseen. In book three of PHOENIX BROTHERHOOD, it’s a race against time to prevent a powerful terrorist organization from unleashing unspeakable harm. Prepare to become entangled in Velvet Ropes by Patricia Rosemoor—book three in CLUB UNDERCOVER—when a clandestine investigation plunges a couple into danger….
Our sassy inline continuity SHOTGUN SALLYS ends with a bang! You won’t want to miss Lawful Engagement by Linda O. Johnston. In Cassie Miles’s newest Harlequin Intrigue title—Protecting the Innocent—a widow trapped in a labyrinth of evil brings out the Achilles’ heel in a duplicitous man of mystery.
Delores Fossen’s newest thriller is not to be missed. Veiled Intentions arouses searing desires when two bickering cops pose as doting fiancés in their pursuit of a deranged sniper!
Enjoy our explosive lineup this month!
Denise O’Sullivan
Senior Editor, Harlequin Intrigue
Sight Unseen
Gayle Wilson
MILLS & BOON
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Five-time RITA® Award finalist and RITA® Award winner Gayle Wilson has written over thirty novels and three novellas for Harlequin/Silhouette. She has won more than forty awards and nominations for her work.
Gayle still lives in Alabama, where she was born, with her husband of thirty-four years. She loves to hear from readers. Write to her at P.O. Box 3277, Hueytown, AL 35023. Visit Gayle online at www.booksbygaylewilson.com.
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
CIA AGENT PROFILE
Name: Ethan Snow
Date of Birth: January 15, 1968
Assigned Team: External Security
Special Skills: ATP-rated pilot; speaks Russian and Farsi; expert marksman; degree in forensic accounting
Agent Evaluation: Highly disciplined; exhibits stellar leadership qualities; has high expectations of those who work with him
Status: Resigned from the agency due to personal reasons
Current Address: The Phoenix Brotherhood
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Ethan Snow—Phoenix operative Ethan Snow has spent the past six months trying to connect the dots that would tie The Covenant to terrorism. Despite his frustration, he would never willingly have consulted clairvoyant Raine McAllister, no matter how highly recommended she came. He is left no choice, however, when someone in that secret organization makes Raine a target.
Raine McAllister—Had worked on the CIA’s remote viewing projects when she was a child. Now she helps the police locate abducted children. When she’s asked to help make the connection between those long-ago projects and The Covenant, she discovers that she has more at stake in this investigation than anyone else.
Griff Cabot—The head of the Phoenix will do anything to protect his family, and they are all involved in the danger this time.
Montgomery Gardner—The former DCI oversaw the Agency’s experiments in the paranormal. What part of the blame does he bear for Project Cassandra, the one that went terribly wrong?
Sabina Marguery—Her husband’s suicide resulted from the failure of Cassandra. What secrets is she harboring about that long-ago experiment? And more important, what secrets is she harboring about Raine McAllister?
Carl Steiner—Is the assistant deputy director of the CIA stonewalling the Phoenix about Cassandra because even after a quarter of a century, the Agency still has something to hide?
Charles Ellington—He wrote the book on the CIA’s involvement in parapsychology. Why is Cassandra his only omission?
For Maddie, the sunshine of my life
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
Prologue
Washington, D.C.
“I’ve heard of The Covenant, of course. Most of what I know concerns the quasi-patriotic/religious programs they sponsor from behind the scenes. Anyone who’s been in Washington for any length of time has some knowledge of their role in those. That’s not to say, however, that I have anything to add to what you’ve uncovered. Or any names to give you. No acquaintance of mine has ever admitted to belonging.”
Despite his age, former director of central intelligence Montgomery Gardner’s mind was still sharp and his connections as good as they had ever been. If he knew nothing about The Covenant, then Phoenix operative Ethan Snow knew he was at a dead end. And that he’d just spent six months on an investigation that was literally going nowhere.
If the stakes hadn’t been so high, he might have given up long before now. He had come to Griff Cabot’s office today ready to admit defeat. Although Griff had acknowledged that visiting the old man was a last-ditch effort, he had insisted it was one they should make. Gardner was, after all, his wife’s grandfather and Griff trusted him to tell them the truth. Now this, too, appeared as futile as every other avenue of information Ethan had pursued.
“What we’ve uncovered is little more than the fact the organization exists,” Griff admitted. “And that some of its members, maybe a fringe element, have been involved in funding domestic terrorism.”
“Other than a few tantalizing hints,” Ethan added, “we can’t even get a handle on how wide scale their efforts there have been.”
He had hoped the plot involving the Lockett Legacy that John Edmonds had quashed might be an aberration. Now, after months of following up every elusive lead through electronic intercepts and banking records, Ethan had come to believe The Covenant was indeed promoting terrorism on many other fronts. All of them harmful to the United States.
He couldn’t prove what he knew intuitively. And he couldn’t find any way to penetrate the veil of secrecy that effectively protected whoever was behind the organization.
“Americans perpetrating acts of terror against their own people,” Gardner said, shaking his head.
As the director of the CIA, Gardner had certainly been exposed to the harsh realities of treason. There was not a naive bone in the old man’s body, yet he sounded shocked that a group considered by many to be both patriotic and altruistic might be guilty of that heinous crime.
“And protected by an oath of confidentiality while they do it,” Cabot added.
“Membership is by invitation only,” Ethan said. “No one I’ve interviewed will admit to knowing anyone who is or who might be a member. There are no organizational lists as far as we can discover. No tax records because of the way they handle contributions. I’m not sure any one member is allowed to know the identity of another.”
“That must make for interesting meetings,” the old man said dryly. “Do you suppose they go to those masked? A modern-day Hell Fire Club?”
“One bent on destruction rather than debauchery,” Ethan said.
“And all the while hidden behind a cloak of sanctity,” Griff added. “Short of divine intervention or clairvoyance, I’m not sure how we pierce that veil of secrecy.”
“I can’t help you there,” Monty Gardner said, “although I suspect my relationship to the Divinity is as close as some others’ in this town who go out of their way to flaunt their standing with Him.”
They waited as the old man’s lips pursed, his eyes focused unseeingly across the room. The silence stretched long enough to become uncomfortable before Griff broke it.
“Monty?”
“I may know someone who can help. You’ll have to do a bit of traveling. I assume you aren’t averse to that?”
The question was clearly addressed to Ethan. Despite his failure to make any headway with the investigation, this was still his case. If the ex-DCI had a contact he believed could provide information on The Covenant, Ethan was eager to pursue it, wherever it might take him.
“I’m more than willing, if you think it might help.”
“I shall hold you to that,” the old man said with that same touch of dry humor. “Come into my office, and I’ll find the address for you. I keep it in a special place. A very special place.”
With that cryptic comment, the old man began to rise from his comfortable armchair. Under the cover of that movement, Ethan glanced toward Griff, his brows raised in inquiry.
Cabot shook his head and shrugged. Apparently he had no idea where or to whom Gardner intended to send his agent.
And it didn’t really matter, Ethan acknowledged. Wherever it was, after six months of frustration, he was more than ready to contact anyone who might be able to help.
Chapter One
Two Days Later
Gulf Shores, Alabama
The same vague feeling of discontent that had plagued her throughout the day had driven Raine McAllister to the studio at the back of the beach house at sundown. Usually, simply entering that room, with its wide expanses of glass, instilled a sense of peace. Tonight even its magic didn’t seem to be working.
She walked over to the wall of windows that looked out on the blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Cream-crested waves foamed over the sugar-sand beach below. The red of the dying sun painted the edge of the horizon, but twilight had already fallen over the shoreline.
There was not another human being as far as the eye could see. Living this far from the so-called civilization of the tourist areas had its disadvantages, but the isolation soothed her soul.
Except tonight. Tonight nothing seemed soothing. Or normal. It was as if she viewed the familiar scene below through a lens that was slightly out of focus. Flawed and distorted.
She leaned her forehead against the coolness of the glass and closed her eyes. She concentrated on breathing deeply, willing her mind to tranquility.
After a moment, far sooner than she had intended, her eyes opened. She listened, but whatever had disturbed her reverie apparently hadn’t been sound. There was no noise but the rhythmic sibilance of the waves, muted by the glass.
Whatever was out of place in her world wasn’t outside. It was within. Inside her mind. Or in her soul, perhaps. And she had no explanation for it.
She moved away from the window as the sun dipped beyond the ocean, instantly changing the quality of light in the studio. A silver arrow on the water pointed to the moon, which, hidden until now, rode low in the sky.
She lifted the cloth off her latest work and then stepped back to examine the sculpture in its entirety. Like everything else around her, the figure of the running man seemed slightly wrong, but she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was about the shape that bothered her.
When she’d finished work last night, she had been pleased with her progress. Now, however…
She allowed her eyes to examine each element of her creation. The runner’s torso expressed a more solid strength than the long, muscled legs, extended to their full range of motion. She reached out, intending to run her finger down the delicate delineation of the calf muscle she had been so proud of yesterday.
For some reason her hand hesitated in midair, as if reluctant to make contact. Determined to shake off tonight’s malaise by losing herself in her work—as she always could—she forced her fingers forward until their sensitive tips encountered the coolness of the clay.
As soon as they did, the figure of the runner disappeared, flickering out of sight to be replaced by the image of a pond. Leaf-shaded and dark, its stillness failed to draw her, as anything in nature normally would. It repelled instead. Frightening. Repugnant.
Deliberately, she jerked her mind away from it, blinking to destroy a picture for which she had no explanation. Her breath trembled in and out in small, audible gasps. Her fingers again hovered a centimeter away from the outstretched leg of the statue.
She closed her eyes, once more attempting to control her breathing. Attempting to remember the last time something like this had happened.
And when she did, she also remembered why she had vowed that would be the last time. There had been a reason then, of course, but as for whatever she had seen tonight…
She opened her eyes, forcing them to focus on the lines of the statue her hands had molded. Yesterday she had relished the feel of the clay beneath her fingers. The medium had become, as it sometimes did, a living force, responding to her command, but also drawing her where it wanted her to go.
Never before, however, had anything like this happened when she touched it. This, then, was the cause of the foreboding she’d felt all day. She had known something in her world had changed, but not what. Of all the possible scenarios she might have imagined to explain her unease, this would have been the last.
That was over. She had sworn it. No more.
She dropped the hand that had touched the statue, turning to retrieve the dampened cloth to place it back over the figure of the runner. Holding the fabric in both hands, she began to drop it onto the half-finished piece.
This time the image exploded on her retinas, the flash as powerful as lightning. The same pond. The same instantaneous awareness of its inherent evil.
As she watched, unable to break free from the grip of the vision, the surface of the water began to stir. Gradually, so gradually that it took her several seconds to realize what was happening, the pond took on a reddish hue.
Not the warm, vibrant color of the sunset she had watched over the ocean, but something cold and dark. Bloody and violent.
Unconsciously she opened her mouth, attempting to draw air into lungs that felt flat, as if the pressure of those black depths were closing in on her. The surface continued to churn, patterns emerging as the water roiled.
There were images there, too, she realized, but they were moving too quickly for her to focus on any one of them. Like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, they merged and blended, changing even as she watched.
Everything else faded away. The night sky and the ocean. Her work, scattered on tables and pedestals around the studio. Any sense of time. Of self.
She had no idea how long it was before she realized that the patterns were repeating. Echoing one another in slightly differing versions. And that each time they did, they became more vivid. Clearer. More threatening.
She began to fight them. To struggle against the pull of the vortex at the center of the pond around which everything seemed to revolve, trying not to look into its dark heart because she knew that if she did, she would see something she didn’t want to see. Something no one was intended to see.
She would never know if she might have won that battle. Just as she had begun to despair of freeing herself from the vision, the old-fashioned chimes on her front door sounded. Rich and melodic, the notes cut through the growing sense of horror that held her captive.
She blinked, and the image disappeared to be replaced by the unfinished sculpture of the runner. The damp cloth she had held in her hands had been carefully draped over it, the folds smoothed around its shape.
She couldn’t remember doing that. She couldn’t remember anything after she had allowed the center of the cloth to touch the head of the figure.
She glanced toward the windows, surprised to find that the moon was high in the sky, the trail it left across the water now narrow and indistinct. And there was no longer any hint of crimson along the edge of the ocean.
She turned back to the runner, shrouded now by the cloth. Slowly her head moved from side to side in denial of what had just occurred.
The bell chimed again, echoing in the stillness. She wasn’t expecting a visitor. She got the occasional solicitor out here, but they never came at night.
“Coming,” she said, although there was no way anyone at the front door could hear her from back here. Certainly not that slightly tremulous whisper.
She turned, hurrying now that she had decided something must be wrong. Perhaps the vision had been a warning. A premonition of the news whoever was ringing her doorbell would bring.
Even the suggestion that there might be a logical explanation for what had just happened made her feel better. Never before had anything like that occurred without her consciously seeking it. Her “gift” had always been hers to control. Hers to use or not.
She couldn’t imagine living her life any other way. She didn’t want to think about having to.
“MAY I HELP YOU?”
Although Gardner hadn’t offered to show Ethan any photographs of the woman he’d sent him to see, there had been two small snapshots attached to the inside front cover of the file the old man had taken from his desk. Ethan had studied them, inconveniently upside down, while Gardner copied down Raine McAllister’s address.
One of the pictures had been of a freckle-nosed child, smiling broadly at the camera. The other had been of a seemingly self-possessed young woman in a cap and gown, obviously taken at her graduation from college.
The sea-green eyes of the woman holding the door were exactly the same as they had been in the photos—clear and very direct. Her hair was dark, almost black, but the strong sun of the area where she lived had gilded highlights along its entire length. She wore it shoulder length, as straight as she had during her years in college.
Her face, becomingly tanned, was devoid of makeup. The freckles, although fainter, were still visible across the bridge of a rather high-arched, patrician nose.
“My name is Ethan Snow,” he said, watching the small furrow form between her brows as she realized it meant nothing to her. “We have a mutual friend who thought you might be willing to be of some assistance—”
The furrow disappeared as her mouth tightened. “Whoever sent you was mistaken. I don’t do that anymore.”
She stepped back. Her hand, which had never released the knob, began to push the door forward.
Six months of frustration as well as the events of the last forty-eight hours fueled Ethan’s anger. He’d be damned if he’d come all this way and not even get an opportunity to tell her why. He put his left forearm against the door, his fingers wrapping around the edge to keep it from moving.
Shocked, she looked up, straight into his eyes. Her pupils had dilated, expanding rapidly into the rim of color. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“All you have to do is listen,” he said, still holding the door. “If you want to say no after that, fine. But not until.”
“You’ve been misinformed.” Her voice was softer, free of the shock and indignation he’d just heard in her question. It sounded more regretful than angry. Or resigned. At least when she added, “I really can’t help you.”
“You don’t even know what I want.”
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, I can’t do it.”
Again she pushed against the door, attempting to close it. Ethan didn’t remove his arm. Nor did he step back.
“Ten minutes,” he said.
He was tired. He was hungry. And given the events of the last two days, there was no way in hell he was going to get in the jet and head back to D.C. without at least finding out why Monty Gardner had given him this woman’s name.
Raine McAllister didn’t look like any intelligence operative he’d ever met. And she certainly didn’t look like a Beltway insider. Not in those skin-tight cutoffs and a tank top.
Even before he and Griff had talked to the old man, however, Ethan had reached the end of his resources. Now, after what had happened last night, he was even more convinced than he had been then that The Covenant was too dangerous to allow him to give up on this investigation.
“Whatever you’re here for,” Raine McAllister said, “whoever sent you, I really can’t help you.”
She had stopped pushing against the door with her slender strength. She simply stood there, her eyes holding his, her face as empty of expression as her voice had been of emotion.
“Montgomery Gardner.”
Before he had completed the enunciation of the last name, her face changed. Then, exactly as the old man’s had two nights ago, her eyes seemed to focus on something other than the present. After perhaps five seconds, she closed her mouth, pressing her lips together before she stepped back, opening the door wide enough for Ethan to step through.
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