She did not respond.
The unquenchable fires of chaos froze. Time stopped. Maybe his heart stopped, as well. He discovered he could not breathe, did not want to breathe, if he did not get the right answer.
“You don’t have to marry me to keep me at my desk at J&J,” Isabella said eventually. “I’ll stay with you.”
“I’m a Jones. In my family we get married. Ceremony, license, the whole works.”
“Interesting customs in your family. We don’t do the license thing in mine.”
“I’m hoping you’ll adopt my family traditions, but if you don’t want to do that, I’ll take you any way I can get you.”
“I think I could adopt your customs if you think you can go along with one of my family traditions.”
“I’ll do anything for you,” he said simply. “Name it.”
“In my family we fall in love. Can you love me? Because I love you, Fallon Jones, with all of my heart.”
The glorious fires of chaos flared high once more. Time went forward. His pulse restarted. He could breathe again.
“In that case,” she said, “I will be happy to break a few old family traditions and marry you. In fact, to prove how much I love you, I’ll even use my real name on the wedding license.”
He laughed, the energy of joy pouring through him in a torrent. And then he was kissing her and she was kissing him and the night was on fire.
THE NEWS of the death was in the Willow Creek paper the following morning. Fallon read it to Isabella over coffee.
“I told him to get lost,” Isabella said. “He blundered into someone’s hidden marijuana plantation and got shot.”
“If it’s any consolation, he probably wouldn’t have lasted long, anyway,” Fallon said. “Not if he was on the drug. The latest information we have indicates that those who take it must take a dose twice a day, every day. Miss even a single dose and the senses start to deteriorate. Insanity and death usually follow within forty-eight hours.”
“Yes, I know,” Isabella said.
“But it doesn’t make you feel any better.”
“No,” she said.
38
It had been a very bad week.
Victoria Knight took her glass of wine out onto the balcony of her condo to drink. The lights of Seattle glittered in the rain.
A very bad week.
Two well-conceived projects had floundered. It was true that the one involving Carolyn Austin had been chancy from the start. The odds had been stacked against success, Victoria thought, but when her new associate within Arcane had suggested the idea, she had thought it worth a shot. The opportunity to weaken J&J and, perhaps, loosen the grip of the Jones family on the Society had been irresistible. They had sought to harness the raw energy of a grieving mother driven by an obsessive desire for revenge and it had almost worked. Almost.
The second project had been far more elaborately designed and carried out. It definitely should have been successful. Victoria’s fingers tightened on the delicate stem of the glass. The concept of developing a para-weapons lab based on Bridewell’s inventions had been brilliant.
Both projects had floundered because of Isabella Valdez and, it seemed, the very town of Scargill Cove. Something about Isabella’s energy made her formidable. It was a shame that Sylvia Tremont had been unsuccessful in the attempt to introduce the poison into Isabella’s kitchen. But that had been another long shot.
As for the Cove, it was as if the small community was guarded by some kind of protective force field.
Two excellent projects in ruins. In the old days when Nightshade had been governed by Craigmore, that kind of track record would have meant a death sentence.
But Nightshade was different now. Following Craigmore’s death, the executives of the Inner Circle had been unable to elect a new director. Instead, they had gone for one another’s throats, literally in some cases. Two of the people at the top had recently been found dead. The official verdict in each instance was natural causes, but she was quite sure that was not the case. Someone was getting rid of the competition.
Meanwhile the surviving circles were on their own and operating independently. She had no way of knowing how many more were out there in addition to the one she controlled, but she had to assume that there were other cells that possessed a version of the formula.
But she had Humphrey Hulsey, the most talented of all the researchers, working on the drug. He was overseeing the construction of his new lab at that very moment. She had every confidence that the version of the formula that came out of his facility would be the most powerful and the most stable.
Whoever controlled the strongest variation of the drug, controlled Nightshade.
A bad week. But she had uncovered three traitors within Arcane, thereby proving that the fundamental strategy had potential. Carolyn Austin and Sylvia Tremont had failed, but they were proof that the Joneses had enemies who could be turned against them.
As for the third Jones enemy, he was now her new business associate. He was going to prove invaluable because he moved in the highest circles of the Society. The desire for vengeance was a powerful motivator. Her new associate hated the Joneses with a passion that had been seething in his bloodline for generations.
“More wine, Victoria?” he said behind her.
She looked down and saw that her glass was empty. She turned around. “Yes, thanks. It’s been a difficult week.”
Adrian Spangler smiled. Cold energy shivered in the atmosphere around him.
“Something tells me things will soon be looking up,” he said. “Together, you and I are going to destroy the Joneses and everything they have created. We will take over Arcane.”
He came forward with the bottle of wine. Before he filled her glass, he kissed her. She felt her blood heat.
Adrian was valuable because of his position within Arcane. He possessed a powerful talent and, like her, he was smart enough to stay off the formula until Hulsey had proven that it was stable. The sexual attraction between them had been instantaneous from the start.
Adrian Spangler was everything she needed to achieve her objectives, Victoria thought. But she was starting to wonder who was using whom.
Sometimes Adrian Spangler scared the hell out of her.
39
