St Helens 02 Zinnia Read online

  Nick's mouth was infinitely compelling, infinitely demanding, infinitely satisfying. She tasted his need, savored his hunger, gloried in his desire for her. He even smelled good, she decided. Enticingly masculine. She could tell that he used soap but did not bother with cologne. She liked that. She liked that very much. She had never been a fan of perfumed men.

  "Oh, my God." She gave a small, choked cry of excitement and wrapped her arms very tightly around his neck. "I didn't realize ... I didn't know—"

  "Maybe you didn't." Nick shifted, pressing her back against the seat. "But I've been wanting to do this since the minute you walked into my office."

  "Must have been the red dress."

  "I've always liked red." His eyes gleamed in the shadows as he bent his head to kiss her throat.

  She felt a sultry heat pool in her lower body. Her fingers sank deep into his shoulders. The feel of sleek muscle and bone beneath his shirt sent another shimmer of anticipation through her.

  She had always known deep inside that something had been lacking in the handful of previous relationships she had experienced. But she had never been able to identify the elusive, missing element. Tonight, she decided in a rush of exultant satisfaction, she was finally getting a real clue.

  Flickers of awareness coursed along her nerve endings. That had never happened before during a kiss. It took her a few seconds to realize that the heat of Nick's body had set fire to all of her senses, even those that functioned on the metaphysical plane.

  Obviously, the paranormal side of her nature was as shaken and unsettled by the embrace as the physical side.

  Nick crushed her up against the seat back, using his weight to hold her there. A strange, wholly inexplicable desire to create a prism unfurled within her. Startled, she resisted the psychic probing.

  She was almost certain that Nick was a talent. At such close quarters, he might pick up her energy waves. It would be embarrassing. Sex, after all, was supposed to be confined to the physical plane. She had never heard of it affecting the psychic senses.

  This was not normal. Definitely not normal.

  But, then, she had been told by experts that her type of psychic energy was not entirely normal.

  Nick moved his mouth to hers. She felt the edge of his teeth and immediately decided that an analysis of events on the metaphysical plane would have to wait. There was no time to contemplate the peculiar sensations that rippled through her. She was too thrilled, too curious, too dazzled to ponder such esoteric considerations.

  "This is going to be good." Nick's voice was hoarse. His hand drifted down to cover her breast. "Very good."

  "Nick."

  Out of the corner of her eye, Zinnia noticed that steam was condensing on the inside of the Synchron's windows. A part of her brain was still thinking clearly enough to be amazed by her own reaction to the explosion of sexual tension. She was chagrined to realize that she hadn't even recognized the volatile nature of the atmosphere that had been swirling in the front seat of the car until Nick reached for her.

  Apparently he had figured it out right away.

  But she had an excellent excuse for her delay in grasping the reality of the situation, she told herself. She had never experienced anything like it before in her life.

  She nestled deeper into Nick's embrace, intensely aware of the hard, unyielding shape of his erection against her leg.

  He was big. Very big. Maybe abnormally so. But certainly interesting.

  Gingerly, she put her hand on his thigh, learning the broad outline of him through the taut fabric of his black trousers. His answering groan was encouraging.

  She threaded the fingers of her other hand through the hair that covered the nape of his neck. She could have sworn that his groan became a low growl.

  He slid one hand down her spine and curved his fingers around her hip. Another shiver that was both physical and metaphysical shot through her. This was not supposed to happen.

  "Impossible," she muttered against his throat.

  "No," Nick said. "Highly improbable, but not impossible. I haven't done this in the front seat of a car since I was eighteen, but I think I can remember how."

  "That's not what I meant." She flinched as another burst of psychic awareness echoed the tug of physical desire. "There's something strange going on here."

  "It's just the console. Let's move to the back. It will be more comfortable there."

  He was talking about sex, she thought. Here she was, wondering if the psychic side of her nature had gone on the fritz and had begun producing metaphysical sexual hallucinations while Nick was calmly suggesting they get more comfortable.

  A disorienting panic flared deep within her. It was strong enough to dampen a large measure of her earlier enthusiasm.

  She opened her eyes and planted her hands against his strong chest.

  "Wait." She was breathless. "That's enough. We've got to stop. Right now."

  Nick stilled. Slowly he raised his head to look down at her. "Why?"

  The appalling simplicity of the question left her speechless for a few seconds. She had no idea of how to explain the peculiar sensations she had been experiencing. "Uh, well—"

  "You've had your antipregnancy vaccination like everyone else, I assume?"

  "Yes," she sputtered, suddenly embarrassed by the pragmatic question. "Yes, of course."

  His mouth curved slightly. "So have I. We're perfectly safe." He started to lower his head.

  "That's not the point," she managed. "I'm trying to tell you that this has gone far enough. I said you could kiss me. That's all. For heaven's sake, we barely know each other. And one-night stands are not my style."

  He raised his head and studied her for a long moment. There was a shattering intensity in his gaze that stopped the breath in her lungs. Zinnia could have sworn that a new kind of energy now hummed in the close confines of the car. This was not the sparkling, exciting zing of sexual attraction, physical or metaphysical. It was something much more dangerous.

  "What, exactly," Nick said with great precision, "is your style?"

  It occurred to Zinnia that she was in a somewhat precarious position. She was alone in an isolated park with one of the most notorious men in the city. Aunt Willy's words came back to her. The man is little more than a gangster.

  "Don't you dare try to intimidate me, Nick Chastain. I came out here tonight to help you get that damned journal. I did you a very big favor. I suspect it annoys you to be in someone's debt, but that's the way things are. You owe me. I'm calling in the marker."

  He stilled. The familiar enigmatic mask slipped into place on his austere features. "What do you want?"

  "I want you to behave in a civilized manner."

  The mask dissolved as quickly as it had formed. Amusement glittered in his eyes. "I love it when you talk dirty."

  She blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

  His smile was barely discernible. "Never mind. You're right, I do owe you. And I would like to repay the debt."

  She eyed him warily. "How?"

  He curled his finger around one trailing tendril of her hair. "Would you have dinner with me?"

  "Dinner?" She could not seem to get her thoughts into logical order. "When?"

  "Tomorrow night?" He glanced at his watch. "Make that tonight."

  "I have a focus assignment tonight."

  "The following night?"

  "You're serious about this, aren't you?"

  His gaze did not waver. "Very."

  "But you don't need my assistance now. You've got the journal."

  "Forget the journal. Will you have dinner with me?"

  "You don't need to repay me. I take back what I said about your being in my debt."

  "Fine. I don't owe you. I still want to have dinner with you."

  She hesitated. "I'm not sure if it would be a good idea. The tabloids seem to have lost interest in us. If we're seen together again in public it might start a new wave of speculation."

  "I don't give a damn a
bout the tabloids or the gossip columns." He brushed his thumb across her lower lip.

  She was horrified to realize that his touch made her lower lip tremble ever so slightly. She swallowed and took a deep breath.

  "Excuse me, but I was under the impression that you were very concerned about your privacy," she said.

  "You mean you heard that I'm reclusive? Secretive?"

  "Among other things. Are you telling me that's not the truth?"

  "I'm telling you that I want to have dinner with you. I'll put up with the gossip and the speculation in order to do so. All I want from you is an answer. Yes, or no?"

  It was not the most gallant or gracious invitation she'd ever had, but at least he was not trying to manipulate her this time, she thought. He was simply asking her out on a date. Sort of.

  Having to make a request, knowing he had no way to enforce the answer he wanted, was no doubt a completely foreign experience for Nick Chastain. She almost felt sorry for him.

  Almost.

  A dinner date with him would not be wise, she told herself. It would alarm her family, worry her friends at Psynergy, Inc., and quite possibly draw unwanted attention from the tabloids.

  But a few sparks of the invisible, beguiling energy that had sizzled between them a moment ago still snapped in the air around her. She had waited all of her adult life to feel that delicious kind of energy, she thought.

  And Nick had asked, not threatened or manipulated.

  "Yes," she said. "I would like to have dinner with you."

  "I called it the Lost Expedition." Newton DeForest cradled the trailing end of a green vine in one heavily gloved hand and clipped it with a pair of gardening shears. "Bartholomew Chastain had made two earlier expeditions to map the islands of the Western Seas. Both had been extremely successful. The teams found deposits of previously unknown ores and minerals. They brought back specimens of a vast array of new plant and animal life. But Chastain's last expedition simply vanished in the jungles of some uncharted island."

  "But why aren't there any official records of the expedition?" Zinnia watched uneasily as crimson liquid seeped from the cut vine. The severed plant looked as if it were bleeding.

  Leo's information had been correct in one respect, she thought. Newton DeForest was definitely strange. He had invited her into his garden while they talked and she had readily agreed. She loved plants and longed for the day when she could afford to buy a house with space for a garden.

  But nothing in DeForest's garden looked quite right to her. There was a grotesque quality to the foliage. Leaves appeared oddly shaped. The colors of the occasional blooms did not look wholesome. Vines were twisted in an unnatural fashion.

  The extensively planted grounds of the DeForest estate existed in a perpetual gloom created by a thick canopy of broad leaves and gnarled vines. Once Zinnia got past the trellised gate, she found herself enveloped in an artificial twilight.

  Within a few steps she realized that she was disoriented. That bothered her more than the wrongness of the shapes and colors of the foliage. Her sense of direction was usually fairly reliable. She knew that she was not far from the main house but she could no longer see the aging, tumbledown stone structure. She was not certain how to get back to it. She had already lost sight of the trellised garden gate.

  She was surrounded by walls of dense dark green. They towered several feet overhead. Corridors formed of seemingly impenetrable masses of leaves twisted their way into the interior of the estate. She stood with Newton in a narrow crooked passageway formed by thick creeping vines. There was a carpet of luminous green moss underfoot. It gave off a faint eerie sheen.

  Nothing was normal in this garden, she decided. And that included the gardener.

  Newton seemed pleasant enough, even if he was distinctly odd. She wished that he had thought to offer her a cup of coff-tea. She could have used it. What with all the excitement in Curtain Park during the night, she had completely forgotten about her appointment with Professor DeForest until she had awakened an hour ago. In her rush to make the meeting on time she had missed breakfast, coff-tea, and the morning paper—all the little rituals that got the day started.

  Newton was a plump, jovial, red-cheeked elf of a man with a neatly trimmed beard and a comfortable paunch. He wore a leather gardener's apron festooned with tool and implement pockets over his plaid shirt and denim trousers. Tiny round glasses perched on his nose. A cap covered his balding head.

  He was obviously enamored of his subject, the legendary Third Chastain Expedition. From the way in which he was holding forth, Zinnia suspected that Newton missed the captive audience he had once enjoyed in the classroom. She did not mind his chattiness in the least. She was prepared to listen.

  The journal was now safely in Nick's hands, but Morris Fenwick's killer was still at large. If she stuck to her suspicion that Morris had not been murdered for dope money, then the journal was the only other lead she had. She needed to know more about the Third Expedition.

  "Ah, yes. Why aren't there any official records of the Lost Expedition?" Newton gave her a sly approving glance as he clipped another vine. "Your question is an excellent one, indeed. I spent years looking for documents and papers that would prove my theories."

  Zinnia watched, fascinated, as more blood-red juice dripped from the cut vine. "Did you find any hard evidence?"

  "Nothing that satisfied the naysayers and the scoffers." Newton sighed as he surveyed an ugly purple flower. "There was some early paperwork indicating that a Third Chastain Expedition had been planned at one time. But official records state that it was never carried out because Chastain wandered off into the jungle and killed himself a few days before the team was scheduled to depart."

  "But you believe that the expedition did take place?"

  "Oh, yes." Newton said. "I'm quite sure of it. Twenty years ago, I managed to find a couple of old jelly-ice miners who happened to be in Serendipity the week the team gathered there. They remembered the five men of the Chastain Expedition."

  "Serendipity?"

  "That was the jumping-off point. The last outpost of civilization, you might say. It was just a small mining camp located on one of the outer islands. It was later abandoned by the company. The jungle grew back very quickly. There's nothing left there today. I made a trip out to the Western Islands several years ago to take a look for myself."

  "What happened to your two witnesses? Why didn't they ever come forward?"

  "Another good question." Newton prodded the closed petals of a sickly yellow flower with the tip of his shears. The bloom opened with a snap to reveal a nest of sharp spines at the center. "The answer is that by the time I was ready to publish my work, they were both dead."

  "Killed, do you mean?"

  Newton looked sly. "Oh, the authorities claimed the deaths were not mysterious. One man was an alcoholic. He wound up facedown in a gutter in Founders' Square. The other had a drug problem. He was killed by another addict whom he apparently tried to rob. Utter nonsense."

  "What do you think happened to them?"

  "The were killed by the aliens." Newton gave her a knowing look. "Not directly, of course. The creatures most likely placed some poor dupe under mind control and then ordered him to get rid of the witnesses."

  Zinnia winced. "I see." She thought about asking Newton why the aliens hadn't had him killed, too, since he was the one who was onto their nefarious scheme, but she refrained. He might not want to continue talking to her if she confronted him with too much logic. "There must have been other people who recalled the expedition."

  "I managed to find a few others who recalled that it had been planned, but as far as they know, it was canceled at the last minute because of Chastain's suicide. Everyone I talked to who was involved, from the university officials to the folks who lived in the islands, believes the expedition never left Serendipity."

  "What about the families of the five men who formed the expedition team? They must have been a bit suspicious when their r
elatives failed to return."

  "Chastain was written off as a suicide by his family. The other four men had no close relatives. No one noticed that they had simply disappeared."

  Zinnia frowned. "Isn't that a little strange?"

  "Not really. Chastain handpicked his teams, himself. His first requirement was that every individual be experienced in jungle survival. That limited his pool of potential candidates to the usual assortment of loners, bastards, and riffraff who tend to wind up in the islands and who are willing to sign on for expedition work. Not many would take that sort of job, in those days."

  "Why not? It sounds rather exciting."

  Newton chuckled. "Not nearly as exciting as prospecting for jelly-ice. After all, a man can get rich if he locates a deposit of ice. Expedition work, on the other hand, is a salaried job. Anything valuable that is discovered becomes the property of whoever has funded the venture."

  "In this case that would have been the University of New Portland, right?"

  "Correct. And, as I said, their records show they canceled the expedition after Chastain disappeared."

  "Hmm." Zinnia bent closer to a severed vine to examine the red juice that dripped from it.

  "No, no, Miss Spring, you don't want to touch that little blood-creeper." Newton batted her hand away with a playful pat. "Not until the wound has sealed."

  Zinnia glanced at him. "Wound?"

  "Figure of speech." Newton's merry eyes danced behind his round spectacles. "As you can see, the vine appears to bleed when it's cut. The liquid is rather toxic. Leaves a nasty burn."

  "Oh." Zinnia quickly shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she followed Newton down another green passageway. "So, you're convinced that the expedition team was abducted by aliens?"

  "It's the only reasonable explanation for the disappearance of those five men together with all of the records that would have proven that the team left on schedule," Newton said. "I admit that my work has caught the attention of one or two kooks over the years, thanks to the tabloids. Some of the fools have come up with their own theories, but they're all nonsense."

  "What are some of the other theories?"