Orchid

great deal of my research. Very naughty of you. But then, you always had that rebel streak, didn't you? Seems to be a basic component of the ice-prism para-profile.'

Gilbert had changed very little in the three years since she had seen him. He was still round and bouncy and his white lab coat was artfully tailored to fit his portly figure. He was a malicious elf of a man. He should have been wearing long, pointy-toed shoes and a cap with a tassel on it, Orchid thought.

There was one small change in him, she noticed. The gleam in his merry little eyes seemed a little too bright, a bit more unnatural.

Orchid shivered. She took a couple of meta-zen-syn breaths to steady herself. 'You have done a very, very stupid thing, Gilly.'

Annoyance flickered across his red-cheeked face. 'You never did show the degree of respect appropriate for a man of my power and accomplishments. But before we have finished, my dear, you will learn to call me Dr. Bracewell. Oh, yes. You will learn.'

'Hard to respect a man who has done something as dumb as this.' Orchid waggled her hand in the plastic cuff. 'What makes you think you can get away with kidnapping Briana and me?'

Gilbert's eyes sparkled. 'This makes me believe it, my dear.'

He reached into the pocket of his lab coat and removed a long, thin object that resembled a small flashlight. In the glare of the lab lights it gleamed with a strange, metallic sheen.

'Well, that answers one very interesting question,' Orchid said. 'You were the twit who arranged for the theft of the alien artifact.'

'I did, indeed, Miss Adams.' Gilbert glanced at the silvery relic with fascinated pride. 'I learned about the relic's powers when I persuaded Mr. Willis to return to ParaSyn a couple of months ago for a three-year follow- up.'

'Theo would never have come back here willingly.'

'Poor Mr. Willis was in need of money. He had some silly dream about opening a focus agency specializing in ice-prisms. Utter nonsense, of course. But when I offered to pay him a considerable sum for a single, one-hour session, he reluctantly agreed to return.'

'I still can't see him confiding data about the relic to you.'

'To tell you the truth, I, too, did not trust him to be fully cooperative during the session. So while he was here I took the liberty of using some new medication that induced him to talk quite freely. He had just started his job in Dr. Brizo's lab.'

'You mean you drugged him and that's when he told you that he thought one of the alien relics in Brizo's lab had some real power?'

'Yes.'

'And you actually believed him? Sheesh.'

Gilbert gave her a disapproving frown, as if she had disappointed him. 'He was under the influence of the medication, my dear. He told me the truth.'

'What he believed to be the truth, maybe. Theo had a few syn-psych problems, if you'll recall.'

'Rest assured, it's the truth.' Gilbert chuckled. 'At any rate, he explained that while working with one particular relic, he had sensed that it contained some form of energy. He wanted to conduct further tests before he wrote up his report. He wanted to be very certain, you see, because he was afraid his new associates would think he was crazy if he simply told them what he suspected to be true.'

'Theo Willis didn't like you any better than I did. Mind telling me how you got him to steal the relic for you?' Orchid gave him a derisive look. 'You're only a low-range hypno-therapist, after all. Class two at best.'

The barb stung, as she had intended. Gilbert's hand clenched violently around his clipboard. But he quickly recovered his composure.

'It was quite simple, my dear. I worked through a much stronger hypno-therapist.'

'Quentin Austen,' Orchid whispered.

'Yes, indeed. Once I discovered the value of the relic, I knew I had to have it. But I could not risk having ParaSyn connected to the theft. With the assistance of my new hypnotic enhancement drug, I convinced Mr. Willis that he would benefit greatly from therapy. He agreed to allow himself to be referred to Austen.'

'Austen used hypnosis to get Theo to steal the relic.'

'You've already figured that out, have you? Quite right. What's more, with the aid of the same new medication I just mentioned, Dr. Austen was able to instill and enforce an especially strong hypnotic suggestion in Mr. Willis.'

'Why would Austen help you?'

Gilbert beamed. 'Because he was about to lose his license to practice due to a pending lawsuit from one of his ex-patients. He needed the support and influence that I wield with the disciplinary committee of the New Seattle Association of Synergistic Psychologists.'

'You told him that if he helped you use Theo to steal the artifact, you'd see to it that he got to keep his license, is that it?'

'Precisely.'

'Once you had the relic, you arranged for Theo to be murdered.'

Gilbert's brow furrowed. 'I really had no choice. I assumed that getting rid of Willis would erase any trace of a link between ParaSyn and the stolen relic. Besides, I intended to use another ice-prism, not Willis, for my work on the relic. Willis was much too erratic for serious research.'

Orchid felt suddenly very queasy. 'You intended to use me, didn't you? That's why you kept sending me those letters urging me to return to ParaSyn for follow-up studies.'

'Yes. I had hoped the influence of your Northville academic background would persuade you to return to the lab. But, as always, you proved extremely stubborn and uncooperative.' Gilbert smiled. 'Ah, well, you're here now and that's all that matters.'

Orchid ignored that. 'You hired Mr. Amazing and his prism to murder Theo, didn't you?'

'Actually the illusion-talent who called himself Mr. Amazing handled the car crash on his own. He had no need of a prism for such a simple job.'

'But things started to go wrong after that, didn't they?'

'Things began to grow untidy.' Gilbert's plump fingers tapped nervously on the back of his clipboard. 'The attempt to discourage Mr. Stonebraker failed. It was really most annoying. Then Austen came to me. He was extremely distraught. He said that just before he died, Willis had written a letter accusing him of hypnotizing him and forcing him to steal the relic. In the letter Willis claimed he had arranged to have another letter sent to a friend, instructing him to go to the police if anything happened to him.'

'The letter to Morgan Lambert,' Orchid said softly.

'I employed Mr. Amazing again to retrieve the letter and get rid of Lambert. He and his prism found the letter, but the fool made a copy. He had the temerity to try to blackmail me with it.'

'So you killed him and tried to kill the prism who had helped him. But you screwed up, didn't you, Gilly? You didn't succeed in killing Crowder.'

'Things got a bit out of control,' Gilbert admitted.

'And you got desperate. You tried to make it look as though Quentin Austen was behind the theft and the murders. Then you killed him, too. You wanted everyone to think that he had finally gone over the edge and committed suicide.'

'It wasn't quite like that, but you're very close, my dear. Very close, indeed. The plan should have worked.' A troubled expression marred Gilbert's cheery features. 'It will work. I have you now.'

'Not for long. Stonebraker will come for me.' Orchid deliberately slipped into melodramatic tones that were more appropriate to an actor in a late-night horror film. 'He's a strat-talent, Gilly. Do you know what that means?'

Gilbert frowned. 'They're rather primitive, I believe.'

'Very primitive, Gilly. Some people call them hunters. Rafe will find me. And when he does, Gilly, he will hunt you down and he will rip out your throat.'

Gilbert's eyes widened. He took an involuntary step back. She did not write psychic vampire romance novels for nothing, Orchid thought.

Briana stirred on the gurney. 'My God. I hope he does exactly that, you nasty little worm.'