changed.
He brooded over the altered matrix for a long time.
Fifteen minutes later the phone rang. The private line. Nick picked up the receiver and heard the muffled sound of street noises.
'What is it, Feather?'
'Sorry to bother you, boss, but I don't think she's headed home. Want me to stay on her?'
'Where are you?'
'Second Gen Hill. She's driving real slow.'
'Second Generation Hill?' Nick surged to his feet. 'That's where Fenwick's book shop is located.'
'Looks like she's going to park on a side street.'
'Five hells. Keep an eye on her but don't do anything until I get there.' Nick slammed down the phone.
He knew exactly what she was going to do. Zinnia was going to break into the book shop to see if she could find any clues to Morris Fenwick's fate.
Nick crossed the gilded red chamber toward the door. He glanced at the black-and-gold watch on his wrist. Breaking and entering would not be routine for a woman like Zinnia. With any luck he would get to Fenwick's shop before she worked up the nerve to try her hand at it.
Then again, his luck had been nothing less than bizarre all evening.
Chapter 4
This was probably not a good idea. Unfortunately, she did not have a better one. She knew something was wrong. Morris Fenwick was an eccentric, neurotic, mid-range matrix-talent, but he was a client. And he was delicate. She could not help worrying about him.
Zinnia took one more look at the shadowed alley. The mingled light of the twin moons, Chelan and Yakima, gleamed dully on the lid of a large trash container. The rest of the narrow bricked passageway lay in dense shadow.
She took a grip on the unlocked window. If she did not do this right now, she would lose her nerve. She could not go home tonight until she had taken a look around the shop. She had to be sure that Morris was not lying dead or injured inside.
A strong sense of foreboding had settled on her after she left the casino. No surprise, she thought. She was not used to this kind of excitement. It was not every evening that she got jumped by a genuine psychic vampire and then went on to have a jolly little interview with the reclusive owner of the most notorious casinos in town. No doubt about it, her social life was a lot more exciting lately than it had been in a very long time.
She shoved hard on the sill. The window opened with a moan. The musty odor of old books wafted past her. This was not technically breaking and entering, she decided. After all, she had found this window unlocked.
She eased first one leg and then the other over the ledge and dropped lightly to the floor. She was in Morris's back room. The place where he stored his less valuable stock.
The darkness was absolute. She took a tentative step forward and immediately stubbed her toe against something hard. Stifling a groan, she switched on the small flashlight she had retrieved from the glove compartment of her car.
The narrow beam of light revealed a maze of boxes stacked on the floor. Each was stuffed with books. She raised the light and used it to scan her surroundings. The storeroom was crammed from floor to ceiling with volumes of all shapes, sizes, and descriptions. The shelves that lined the walls sagged beneath the weight of aging tomes.
The stillness was even more disconcerting than the darkness. The light beam wavered a little. Zinnia realized her pulse was racing.
The sense of dread intensified. She glanced at the open window. It would only take a couple of minutes to get back to the safety of her car. Another few minutes and she would be at the door of her loft apartment. The knowledge was tempting.
But she could not leave yet.
If only Aunt Willy and Uncle Stanley could see her now, she thought ruefully. They would faint with shock. They still had not recovered from the dizzy-ingly swift decline in the Spring family fortunes which had followed the death of her parents four years earlier. Nor had they even begun to rally from the humiliation they had been forced to endure eighteen months ago when she had gotten herself involved in what had become known as the Eaton scandal.
Only her younger brother, Leo, would be likely to appreciate tonight's adventure. She suddenly wished he was with her.
She made her way through the storeroom and cautiously opened the door on the far side. The smell was a lot worse in the main room. She realized it must have been shut up for some time.
The blinds were pulled closed on the windows that faced the street. The darkness was very dense.
She paused on the threshold and flicked the flashlight around the interior of the high-ceilinged shop. The sight that greeted her made her jaw drop. 'Dear God.'
Chaos reigned. She gazed, stunned at the mess. Books had been pulled from the shelves and dumped on the floor. The glass counter top had been smashed. The surface of Morris's heavy old-fashioned Later Expansion Period desk was strewn with papers. The contents of the drawers were scattered every which way. The aging swivel chair lay on its side.
She took a step back. Every instinct she possessed was screaming at her to get out of the shop. She had to find a phone so that she could summon the police, she told herself. That was reason enough to leave.
Then she remembered that the nearest phone was the one on Morris's desk. She picked it out with the flashlight beam.
With an effort of will she made herself start toward the instrument. She was halfway across the room when she saw the crumpled form at the edge of the circle of light. The too-still figure lay at the foot of the tall rolling ladder that was used to access the highest shelves in the shop.
'Morris.' She started forward. 'No. Please, God, no.'
'For what it's worth, my advice is not to touch him.'
She gasped and spun around at the sound of Nick Chastain's dark disturbing voice. Her heart pounded as she aimed the light at the doorway of the storeroom.
Nick stood cloaked in the shadows. He wore an enigmatic mask on his cold ascetic features that was about as comforting as the expression of one of the proverbial Guardians at the gates of the Five Hells.
In that moment of acute awareness, she knew that he possessed strong psychic abilities of some kind. Even without a focus link, she could sense the metaphysical as well as the physical power in him. Math-talent or game- theory-talent, she thought. That would fit with his choice of career.
She realized that he must have entered the shop through the same unlocked window that she had used a short while earlier. For a minute she was too disoriented from the horror of her discovery to comprehend the significance of his presence.
Then it hit her. Nick Chastain had followed her.
The flashlight trembled again as she pinned Nick in the beam. She struggled to keep her hand from shaking.
'What are you doing here?' she demanded.
'I would have thought that was obvious. We both have a serious interest in Morris Fenwick. And apparently we aren't the only ones.' Nick ignored the glare of the flashlight to glance at the body on the floor.
Nothing flickered in his gaze as he studied Fen-wick's motionless figure. Perhaps encountering dead bodies was not that much out of the ordinary for him, Zinnia thought. She realized she was hovering on the edge of hysteria.
'I think-' She broke off and tried again. 'I think he's-'
'Dead?' Nick moved out of the light. He went to stand looking down at the pathetic shape on the floor. 'Yes, I think we can safely assume that much. Looks like someone smashed in his skull with a heavy object. Most likely
