“You’refuckingher?” Twitchell asked. “Unbelievable. You said there was one solid fact on the table: Travis Poole is dead. But I’ve got another equally solid fact for you—Radstone’s talent is very real and very dangerous. She was diagnosed at the age of twelve. That’s why she wound up at the Ballantine Academy. The bitch is capable of driving you into a nightmare that will make getting lost in the Underworld without nav amber look like a walk in the park. All she needs is physical contact, so you might want to rethink the fucking.”
Owen did not respond. He ended the call, never taking his eyes off Alice.
“No,” he said before she could say anything, “I can’t prove I’m on your side. You’re going to have to trust me if you want to stay out of Serenity Gardens.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I know,” Alice said, “butthis works both ways. You’ll have to trust me not to use my talent to send you into a waking nightmare.”
She was back in fully composed mode, he realized. Her self-control was amazing. That, of course, was one of the many reasons it had been so thrilling a few minutes ago when she had briefly allowed herself off the leash.
He had been right about her from the start. There was plenty of fire under the surface.
“Good,” he said. “That simplifies things. The trust issue is out of the way.”
“Well, I suppose for now—”
“It’s time to move forward with our plan,” he said, pretending he hadn’t heard the uncertainty in her voice.
“I thought you said we needed more information.”
“We just got it.”
“From that phone call? What did Twitchell say that convinced you we can move forward?”
“The forty-eight-hour deadline, among other things.”
“What did that tell you?”
“He should have given us twenty-four hours at most. In his place I’d have said I needed the answer by morning. The forty-eight-hour time frame means that he’s working on a move of his own and he needs the time to put the pieces in place on the board.”
“We can’t trust anything he says.”
“True. But I’m sure of one thing about Twitchell—he’s a high-end strategy talent. So is Kelbrook, for that matter.”
“That makes sense,” Alice said. “Twitchell is a fixer, after all, and Kelbrook runs a business empire.”
“Yes, but I’ve dealt with Twitchell long enough now to be sure he’s got his own agenda, one that is probably not aligned with Dunstan Kelbrook’s. That means one of the questions we must ask is, what’s in this for him?”
She swept out her hands. “Money? Maybe Twitchell will get a bonus if he gets those shares for Kelbrook.”
“No, this whole thing is about a lot more than money.” He suddenly remembered that he was standing around in a bathrobe. Not a good look for a consultant. “This is about the Kelbrook family dynamics. It has been from the start.”
“A succession drama?”
“Maybe. With luck, we’ll get more data in the morning.”
“What happens in the morning?”
“We’re going to check out the address of the dead guy in the shower.”
“Carl Voyle? But that’s over in the Shadow Zone. You said we had to stay here in the Amber Palace for security reasons.”
“As far as the media and everyone else is concerned, we will never leave the premises.”
He explained the first step of the plan that was finally starting to take shape in his head.
“That just might work,” Alice said.
