The Hot Zone (A Rainshadow Novel Book 3) Read online

If she did survive she would have to confront the reality of her new talent. Individuals with more than one kind of talent were extremely rare. Everyone knew they were inherently unstable. The experts had determined that the human mind simply could not handle the heightened level of stimulation that occurred when a second or third talent developed. Multi-talents almost always went mad. If they did not die young, they ended up in locked para-psych wards and were kept under heavy sedation.

  Her life had taken a very weird turn.

  Chapter 2

  She had no idea how much time passed before Lyle led her up an ancient green-quartz staircase and out into the ruins of an Alien outpost. It was nighttime. The strange, ethereal towers of the dead town glowed with luminous energy. The windowless structures had been abandoned centuries earlier but they showed no evidence of weathering.

  When she went through the gate of the high quartz wall that surrounded the ruins she discovered that they were in a stand of trees. She could hear the sounds of traffic in the distance.

  “Thanks, Lyle,” she said. “You are hereby designated my best friend in the whole world.”

  Lyle chortled and bounded up onto her shoulder.

  She took her phone out of her pack and was not surprised to see that there was no charge left on the amber battery.

  “Probably couldn’t get a signal out here, anyway,” she said to Lyle. “So much for calling Brock to let him know I’m okay. He must be worried sick. Probably has a privately financed search-and-rescue team combing the Underworld, looking for me.”

  The thought that her new husband was searching for her night and day warmed her as nothing else could have done. She had to let him know as soon as possible that she was alive and well. Okay, maybe not entirely well, but definitely alive.

  She followed the sound of traffic to a road. A short time later a trucker stopped for her. She climbed up into the cab and sat down with Lyle in her lap.

  “I really appreciate this,” she said.

  “Sure.” The trucker eyed Lyle. “Is that a dust bunny?”

  “Yes.” She patted Lyle. “He’s sort of adopted me.”

  “Heard they were dangerous. They say that by the time you see the teeth, it’s too late.”

  “Lyle won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  Lyle chortled and blinked his baby blues a couple of times.

  The trucker smiled and pulled back onto the road. “He’s real cute. Where you two headed?”

  “The nearest town.”

  “First stop is Crystal City.”

  Crystal City was the home of her father’s family. There would be no help for her there.

  “Where do you go after Crystal?” she asked.

  “Should be in Resonance City sometime before dawn.”

  She brightened. “That works. That’s where I live. I’ve got some cash on me. I’ll buy you breakfast.”

  “Fair enough.” The trucker gave her another searching glance and then concentrated on his driving.

  “What day is this?” she asked after a moment.

  “Wednesday,” the trucker said.

  “No, I mean what is the date? I’ve lost track of time.”

  The trucker glanced at her, brows elevated. “It’s the second of October.”

  “Oh.” She swallowed hard.

  “How long have you been gone?”

  She nearly stopped breathing.

  “Just a couple of days,” she lied.

  She had left on the last contract assignment more than three weeks earlier. Brock would be beyond worried.

  A short time later the lights of an isolated set of buildings glittered amid the trees at the end of a long, private drive. There was a gate and a guardhouse at the entrance. She caught a fleeting glimpse of a discreet sign at the junction of the road and the drive. AMBER CREST PARA-PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL.

  “What is that place?” she whispered.

  “Para-psych hospital,” the trucker said. “Run by the Gold Creek Guild. Supposedly it’s where they treat the really bad psi-burn cases. But rumor has it, that’s where the big Guilds house the worst of the worst—the monsters and freaks. It’s a high-security facility. Had to make a delivery there once. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to go in and out. We’re talking armed guards, hot fences, and cameras everywhere.”

  Sedona shuddered. Lyle cuddled closer, as if trying to reassure her. She patted his tatty fur and watched the darkened road come up in the truck’s headlights.

  Amber Crest treated the monsters and freaks. What had she become?

  They pulled off at a truck stop diner for breakfast at three in the morning. Sedona paid the tab. An hour before dawn the truck rolled into Resonance City.

  “You can drop me anywhere,” Sedona said. “I’ve got enough money left for cab fare.”

  “You sure you’re going to be okay?” the trucker asked.

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve been looking after myself for quite a while now.”

  “Not doing a real good job of that, if you ask me. Getting lost out there in the woods and all.”

  “I’ll be okay,” she promised. “My husband will be waiting for me.”

  The trucker got a troubled expression. “You’re married?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  There was no reason to add that her freshly minted marriage to Brock Prescott was only a Marriage of Convenience, not a true Covenant Marriage. MCs had some legal standing but the reality was that they could be cancelled by either party with no legal or financial hassles. A lot of people took an old-fashioned attitude toward MCs, deeming the institution a polite fiction designed to paper over an affair. That was true, Sedona thought. Nevertheless, it was a commitment of sorts.

  She decided not to mention that Brock was probably the only one who would have been searching for her the past three weeks. She was the offspring of an illegitimate union. Her parents were dead and her blood relations on both sides had officially disowned her as soon as they were legally allowed to do so. She had gotten the papers informing her that she had no claim on either of her birth families the day she turned eighteen.

  She climbed out of the truck at another all-night diner, intending to call Brock. It was four o’clock in the morning but he wouldn’t care about the time once he heard her voice.

  The waitress allowed her to use the house phone but when she dialed Brock’s number she got tossed into voicemail. She called a cab instead.

  A short time later she emerged from the cab in front of Brock’s elegant town house. She had moved in with him the week before her last assignment.

  Rain was falling heavily. She hurried up the walk, but by the time she got to the front door she and Lyle were both drenched.

  Clutching Lyle in the crook of her arm, she leaned on the doorbell.

  “Home, at last,” she said to Lyle.

  Lyle chortled.

  After a moment lights came on somewhere inside the town house. An almost overpowering sense of relief swept through Sedona. Soon she would be throwing herself into Brock’s arms.

  “He’s going to be so surprised,” she said to Lyle.

  The door opened. It wasn’t Brock who stood in the hall.

  “Sedona?” Diana Easton, Brock’s administrative assistant, stared at Sedona in shock. “Good grief, you’re a mess. What in the world are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same question.” Sedona took in Diana’s dainty robe and filmy nightgown. “But I think I already know the answer.”

  Lyle growled at Diana.

  “Is that a rat?” Diana asked.

  Sedona ignored her.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  “Diana?” Brock called. “Who is it?”

  His rich, well-modulated voice reflected his social status. Brock Singleton Prescott was wealthy, well-educated, and very well-conne
cted. His family moved in the highest social circles of Crystal City. Two years ago he had become the CEO of the family empire, Prescott Industries.

  “You’ll never guess,” Diana said a little too sweetly.

  Lyle growled again.

  Brock emerged into view, still tying the sash of his robe. He was tall, with chiseled features, a toned body, and an innate sense of style that enabled him to look just as good in a bathrobe as he did in one of his hand-tailored business suits. He stared at Sedona, stunned.

  “The Gold Creek Guild authorities told us that you were lost and presumed missing,” Brock said, sputtering a little in shock.

  “My life has gotten complicated,” Sedona said.

  “Yeah, well, I, uh, filed the divorce papers two and a half weeks ago.”

  So much for throwing herself into his arms, Sedona thought.

  Lyle rumbled darkly.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered to Lyle. “We’ll be fine.”

  Brock frowned. “What the hell happened to you, Sedona?”

  “Long story,” she said tightly. “What about my stuff?”

  “It’s in storage,” Brock said, evidently trying to be helpful. “Isn’t that right, Diana?”

  Diana smiled again. “Old Quarter Storage Facility. I’ll get the key.”

  She vanished into the depths of the town house. Sedona was left looking at Brock.

  “Just one question,” she said.

  “What?” he asked uneasily.

  “Did you ever look for me?”

  “I told you, I was informed that you had gone missing on your last job and that you were in all probability dead.”

  Sedona nodded. “So you didn’t even bother to search for me.”

  “The Guild boss who hired you for that last mission assured me that a team had been sent out but that it found no trace.”

  “Right. Here’s a tip going forward. Next time a Guild boss tells you something, don’t assume he’s giving you the truth. A Guild boss has no trouble lying through his teeth if it suits him.”

  Diana reappeared with a key and a business card. “Here’s the address of the storage facility.”

  Sedona took the key and the card. Without a word she turned and went down the front steps.

  “Sedona?” Brock said behind her. “Do you need some money for a cab or a hotel?”

  She stopped and turned around. Somehow she managed an ice-bright smile.

  “Go to hell, Brock.”

  She turned back, tucked Lyle more securely under her arm, and walked into the rainy night.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me, Lyle,” she said.

  Lyle chortled.

  “Nothing left to lose.”

  Chapter 3

  “Yes, I do see your reservation here in the computer, Mr. Jones, but the only cottage that we have left is quite small.” Sedona put on her brightest innkeeper’s smile. “Number Thirteen, Graveyard Cottage. No view of the bay, I’m afraid. It looks out over the local cemetery.”

  “Sounds like the place has a lot of atmosphere,” Cyrus Jones said.

  She had overheard the hunters refer to him as Dead Zone Jones. She had no idea why they called him that, but she was very certain of one thing—there was nothing dead about him.

  His voice—low, dark, and freighted with power that was both very masculine and very controlled—sent shivers through Sedona’s senses. She could have sworn that she heard wind chimes clashing softly in another dimension. She knew the eerie music was her intuition pinging her. It was a recently discovered and decidedly unsettling aspect of her new weirdness. She was still getting accustomed to the strange vibe. She didn’t always know how to interpret the chimes. But in this case she was pretty sure they signaled danger of a kind she had never before experienced.

  Jones was the boss of the newly established Rainshadow Ghost-Hunters Guild. He had arrived, along with a gleaming black SUV and very little luggage, on a private charter ferry.

  The October night had long since descended when the ferry docked in the Shadow Bay Marina, but Sedona had watched Jones’s arrival from the lobby window of Knox’s Resort & Tavern. She had not been alone. Most of the town had turned out to get a look at the island’s first Guild boss.

  He’d received an unusually colorful welcome. Shadow Bay had never seen fit to invest in extensive streetlighting. But this was Halloween Week—a weeklong festival instituted by the new mayor as a way to promote tourism on Rainshadow. As a result, the town’s single shopping street was festooned with hundreds of orange and psi-green lanterns. The garish illumination extended from the Haunted Alien Catacombs attraction that had been set up in an old warehouse at the marina all the way to the town square. Most of the shops and eateries along the route were open and filled with visitors.

  Jones had driven the SUV off the ferry and parked it in the marina lot. The shopkeepers and island residents who happened to be in town had watched him take a large black leather duffel bag out of the back of the vehicle. He had walked up the street, moving through the macabre glow of the Halloween lanterns with the ease of a man who owned the night.

  In the course of his hike to the entrance of Knox’s Resort & Tavern he had stopped several times to speak with the people lined up on the sidewalks. He had shaken a great many hands before he came through the lobby door.

  Now he was standing in front of Sedona and she didn’t need the chimes to warn her. Common sense was all it took to know that if she wasn’t very careful, Jones was going to screw up her carefully structured new life on Rainshadow Island.

  Cyrus contemplated her across the width of the inn’s front desk. His gem-green eyes burned with a little heat. She was not an aura reader but a woman didn’t have to have that particular talent to register the heat in a man’s aura, not when the energy field was so strong.

  “I don’t care about the view,” Cyrus said. “I won’t have a lot of time to admire it.” He glanced rather casually at her name tag. A faint smile edged his hard mouth. “I’m here to get a job done, Miss Snow.”

  Chimes clashed softly, rattling her senses. She had no idea why he found her name amusing but the knowledge added to her unease. She did not doubt for a moment that the powerful members of the Guild Chamber—more formally known as the Joint Council of Dissonance Energy Para-Resonator Guilds—were well aware of what they were doing when they tasked Jones with establishing a new Guild territory on Rainshadow. If he set out to do a job, the job would get done.

  It was just her luck that she was the new manager of Knox’s Resort & Tavern. Less than a month ago she had come to Rainshadow seeking a refuge; a place where misfits felt at home. The good people of Shadow Bay, long accustomed to dealing with the weird, had welcomed her, and Lyle, too, with open arms.

  She had known, deep down, that it was probably all a little too good to be true. She was right. A week ago the town had been overrun with ghost hunters. Okay, maybe overrun was an exaggeration—the Rainshadow Guild was still a small operation, as Guilds went. But when you had a resort full of them, it certainly seemed as if they were on the island in vast numbers.

  Housing a bunch of rowdy hunters was not her worst nightmare. She experienced more hellacious dreams on a nightly basis, thanks to Blankenship and his two assistants. And it was undeniably true that the Chamber was paying the outrageous prices she had demanded for the room-and-board arrangements for the men. Her boss, Knox—he only used his surname—was thrilled at the way the money was rolling in. The Guilds always pay their bills, he’d explained on several occasions.

  At the moment Knox was behind the bar in the adjoining tavern, doing his best to lighten the wallets of half the hunters in town. Hot Rocks beer and Green Ruin whiskey were flowing freely.

  It was bad enough having to house a lot of hunters for an indefinite period of time, Sedona thought. She really did not want to have to deal with the
new boss of the Rainshadow Guild.

  It was no secret that this was Jones’s first job as the CEO of a Guild. It was not entirely clear what his previous position had been, but she would have bet good amber that he had been promoted out of the ranks of the Chamber’s mysterious security division. They had fancy titles for the hunters who conducted Guild-sanctioned investigations—security specialists or something along those lines. But an enforcer was an enforcer, regardless of whether he worked for a mob boss or the Chamber.

  Chamber enforcer to Guild boss was not a common path of advancement through the Guild hierarchy, but she had heard of other such instances. Adam Winters, the new Guild boss of Frequency City, was rumored to be a former enforcer. The Chamber probably assumed that if a man was tough enough to hunt the human monsters who possessed lethal amounts of paranormal talent, he was tough enough to control his own territory. She hadn’t met a lot of enforcers in the course of her work with the Guilds—they were a rare breed and they tended to keep low profiles. But those she had known all had an ice-cold edge.

  Cyrus Jones had that edge and a lot more going on. Dark secrets whispered in the atmosphere around him. It wasn’t just raw power that she sensed. She was pretty sure she was picking up the vibes of the kind of mag-steel will that was required to handle a high-rez talent.

  The edge was there, too, in the ruthless planes and angles of his hard face and his lean, rangy, broad-shouldered build. He was wearing the classic ghost-hunter uniform—khaki trousers and shirt, leather boots, leather jacket, and heavy leather belt. All of it looked well-worn. All of it sent the message that he had seen a lot of action in the Underworld.

  Like every self-respecting hunter he wore amber. There were chunks of it set in his buckle, his watch, and the hilt of the knife he wore on his belt. And that was just the visible amber, she thought.

  Sedona knew that it had come as a shock to the hunters who had recently arrived on the island to discover that here on Rainshadow, even well-tuned amber wasn’t strong enough to steer a person safely into and out of the forbidden territory known as the Preserve. Only those with unique talents could handle the paranormal forces inside the psi-fence.