'You're sure you want to do this tonight?'
'Definitely. I won't sleep until this matter has been taken care of, Miss Spring. You will come with Mr. Chastain, won't you? I'd be too frightened to go through with the sale if you weren't there. Morris said in his note that I could trust you.'
'All right. But I can't guarantee that I'll be able to get in touch with him tonight. He operates a gambling casino, Mrs. Fenwick. There's no telling what he's doing at this hour of the night.'
'Please try. I'm so nervous about all this. Morris was always a little paranoid, but this note is very insistent, even for him.'
'I'll call the casino and see what happens.'
Zinnia hung up the phone and switched on the bedside lamp. She got out of bed and found her purse.
Inside she discovered the tacky red-and-silver business card Nick had given her.
Nick Chastain was not the type to be sitting beside a phone, waiting for it to ring, she thought, as she punched in the number of his direct line. She wondered what she ought to do next if he could not be reached.
Nick answered on the first ring.
Just as if he had, indeed, been sitting beside the phone, Zinnia thought.
Chapter 9
She had finally called.
It was a good working demonstration of the old adage about being careful what you asked for because you just might get it, Nick thought grimly.
She had finally called, all right. Not because she wanted his help but because Polly Fenwick had asked her to act as an intermediary in the sale of the journal.
Now here he was, alone at last with Zinnia Spring, and what was he doing with her? Sitting in a car in a dark park at one-forty-six in the morning waiting for a stranger.
Nick was not in a good mood. He never was when things were not proceeding according to plan.
'Tell me.' He turned off the Synchron headlamps and dourly studied the stretch of heavily wooded park that surrounded the car. 'At what point did it strike you that these meeting arrangements were just a little out of the ordinary?'
Zinnia shot him a sidelong glare. He was intensely aware of her sitting beside him. She was dressed in a pair of snug-fitting jeans and a sweater that was the lush red of ripe cherry-berries. Her hair had been hastily pulled back into a ponytail. She wore no makeup.
He knew she was annoyed with him. He had picked her up in front of her apartment less than fifteen minutes ago and he sensed that she was already regretting her decision to assist in the transaction. It was his own fault.
The atmosphere inside the close confines of the car seethed with tension, mostly his own. There was not much he could do about it. He was fighting two inner battles simultaneously and the effort required nearly all of his self-control.
On the one hand, he was struggling to resist the instinctive use of a few quick bursts of his talent in order to assess the risk factors in the matrix. He knew that if he did not rein in his power, Zinnia would pick up the telltale traces of energy on the metaphysical plane. She might recognize him as the same matrix-talent who had reached out to her last night when she walked through the casino. Nick had not yet thought of a graceful way to explain that incident so he thought it best not to raise the issue yet.
The second skirmish he waged was against his own brooding frustration. As far as he was concerned, when Zinnia had finally condescended to call him, she had done so for all the wrong reasons. It was not his carefully set lures that had drawn her back into the pattern of his matrix. It was her sense of responsibility to a dead client that had brought her back to him. He had a strong suspicion that once she had fulfilled her duty tonight, he would again lose his tenuous hold on her.
'What's that crack supposed to mean?' Zinnia asked.
'I don't know about you, but secret meetings in secluded locations with complete strangers are not the way I usually do business.'
'That does it. I've had enough of this nonsense.' She turned abruptly in her seat to confront him. 'What's wrong with you? I thought you wanted to get your hands on the journal.'
'I do.'
'In another few minutes it will be yours. But you're acting as if I've dragged you out in the middle of the night for no good reason.'
'I can't believe you agreed to meet with a stranger at this hour.'
'She's not exactly a stranger. She's Morris's widow. I explained that.'
'Why in five hells did you choose the park?'
Zinnia's mouth tightened. 'I didn't pick the location. Mrs. Fenwick suggested it.'
Her quick uneasy glance out the window told Nick that in spite of her bravado, she was having a few qualms, too. About time, he thought with morose satisfaction.
Curtain Park was not an inviting place at this time of the night. The thickly wooded stretch of greenery occupied a section of land near the bay. During the day the paths were full of joggers, picnickers, and tourists from New Vancouver and New Portland. But at night it was empty.
The closest object of interest was a large unlovely monument to the First Generation discoverers of semi- liquid full-spectrum crystal quartz. Jelly-ice, as the stuff was commonly called, had eventually enabled the descendents of the stranded colonists to build a new technology to replace the Earth-based one that had disintegrated within months after the Curtain had closed.
Nick flexed his fingers around the steering bar. 'Tell me again how Polly Fenwick just happened to come across the journal tonight.'
'She said she found a note that led her to it and instructed her to sell it to you as quickly as possible.
Morris apparently advised her to contact me to handle the sale. I think Mrs. Fenwick is scared to death of you. Lord knows why.'
Nick glanced at her, but even in the shadows he could see that her expression was perfectly sincere. 'Right. She's so terrified of me that she asks to meet with me at this hour in a badly lit section of the city's biggest park?'
Zinnia spread her hands. 'She said the note from Morris told her to unload the journal as quickly as possible and to keep the deal a secret. He was adamant that no one was to know she'd even found it. Look, I'm sorry if you disapprove of the way I handled things. Mrs. Fenwick woke me out of a sound sleep. I was a little confused and disoriented when she suggested the meeting place.'
'I think we can agree on that.'
'She asked me to get in touch with you, so I did.' Zinnia tapped her hand against the back of the seat. 'Would you rather I hadn't called you?'
'You should have discussed the situation with me before the decision was made.'
'Nobody forced you to come out here tonight. If you're too jumpy to go through with the transaction, we can call it off. Polly and I can get in touch with the other bidder, whoever he is. Maybe he won't be so darn picky.'
Nick remembered the card with his uncle's name on it that he had taken from Fenwick's address file. 'Is that a threat?'
'I'm merely laying out your options,' she said a bit too airily.
'Thoughtful of you.'
'I can't figure out why you're so angry. I thought you'd be pleased that the journal has reappeared so quickly.'
'Amazingly quickly.'
She frowned. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Forget it.' Nick saw the dimmed lights of a slow-moving car angle across the narrow park access road. 'We'll finish this argument later. We've got company.'
