“Thank you.” Jenny sounded grateful and relieved. “I really would like to know more about your end of the field. I have to admit that I’ve always had a great curiosity about the private collectors’ market. It’s such a mystery, and so intriguing. Perhaps we can talk shop one of these days?”

“Sure,” Abby said.

“Wonderful. I’ll look forward to it.”

Jenny wandered off in the direction of the bar. Abby watched her go and then turned to search the crowd once more. There was still no sign of Sam.

There was something else that was bothering her now, as well. Jenny O’Connell had been in the company of Gerald Frye for most of the evening. Now she was alone.

43

SAM SAT IN THE CHAIR, ANKLES STACKED ON THE CORNER OF his desk, and listened for the sound of footsteps in the hall. His gun was on top of the desk. So was the green prism.

It was just a matter of time. He had seen the killer make his way to the edge of the crowd a few minutes ago. Sooner or later, he would show up in the lab.

The desk lamp was switched off, but Sam was jacked. The crystals and stones in the display cases glowed in the darkness, casting the strange shadows that could be created only by ultralight.

The footsteps he had been waiting for echoed in the hallway at last, faint at first and then louder as they neared the door. There was a short pause.

The door opened slowly. A figure appeared, silhouetted in the opening. A toxic mix of fear, panic and desperation burned in the atmosphere.

The intruder hesitated, then moved quickly into the room and closed the door. There was a sharp click. A penlight beam arced through the darkness and came to rest on the packing boxes in the corner.

“You don’t have to go through the boxes, Dr. Frye,” Sam said. “I’ve got what you’re looking for here on my desk.”

Gerald Frye froze. “Sam.”

“I had a feeling you would be the one who came here tonight, but I had to be sure.”

“I was looking for you, Sam. Your mother noticed that you had disappeared from the party. She’s worried because you’ve been so depressed lately. She asked me to see if you’d retreated here to your lab. I told her that you probably just wanted to get away from the crowd for a while, but that I’d make sure you were okay.”

“Skip the bullshit,” Sam said. “You’re here to get the prism that you used to manipulate Grady Hastings. Must have come as a shock today when I mentioned during the tour that I had packed up the contents of the lab of a small-time researcher named Hastings.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The prism is the one thing that connects you to Grady Hastings. You realized that if I ever examined it closely, I would know that it had probably come from the Black Box lab. You were right.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Frye said.

“I recognized the para-engineering immediately. Knew it could only have come from our facility. But there’s a large staff in the Black Box. It took me a while to go through the list of suspects. I had a hunch you were the one who had created the hypnotic recording and tuned it to Grady Hastings’s aura, though. You’re one of the very few people in that lab with the technical expertise and the talent to do it. But that didn’t mean that you were the killer. There was always the possibility that someone else had used your device. Trust me, I know how it feels to be set up. I didn’t want to make a mistake, so I ran this little experiment tonight.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Frye edged toward the door.

“There’s no point trying to run. It’s over. Just a couple of things I want to get clear. Whose idea was it to try to steal the crystals? Yours or Cassidy’s?”

“I’m not going to answer any of your questions. If you lay a hand on me, I’ll scream bloody murder. There are a couple hundred people outside.”

“We’re in a concrete basement. No one will hear you scream.” Sam took his feet down off the desk, sat forward and rested one hand on the glowing green prism. “But I’m not going to touch you. We’re just going to talk.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you want me to know how brilliant and how talented you are.”

There was stunned silence. A great calm descended on Frye. He moved to the nearest display case and examined the cut geode inside. The blue ultralight from the glittering crystals embedded in the rock etched his face in eerie shadows.

Frye grunted. “Everyone said you were heartbroken, but I knew you were just pissed off because you had let Cassidy get so close to your family’s secrets.”

“That was part of it.” Sam got up and walked around to the front of the desk. He leaned back against the edge and folded his arms. “So whose idea was it to try to steal the crystals?”

“Mine. I recognized Cassidy Lawrence for the opportunist she was the first time I met her. We were two of a kind. I dropped a few hints about the Phoenix stones. Imagine my surprise when I found out that she was already aware of them. That’s why she set out to seduce you at that gem-and-mineral show.”

“Guess that explains a few things.”

“Cassidy, of course, thought she was using me. She was accustomed to being able to manipulate every man she encountered. She certainly dazzled you.”

“How did she learn about the crystals?”

“The rumors of the Phoenix Mine have had forty years to turn into a legend. Cassidy came from a long line of crystal talents. She paid attention to that kind of chatter. She picked up the whispers of the Phoenix a year ago and started doing some serious research. She arranged to meet you at that gem-and-mineral show. The next thing you know, you’re giving her a tour of the lab and she’s filling out a job application.”

“You started working for us before Cassidy did. How did you learn about the Phoenix Mine and the crystals?”

“Ray Willis filled up more than one lab notebook with the records of his experiments,” Frye said. Cold triumph rang in his words.

“I’ll be damned. Willis kept more than one notebook?”

“There were two, the one he showed to your father and Knox, and a second one in which he kept his own private records. Shortly before the explosion in the mine, he sent the second one to my mother for safekeeping.”

“Why would he send it to your mother?”

“The two of them were lovers at the time that your father and the others discovered that vein of crystals,” Frye said. “He realized the true value of the stones immediately, and wanted to conceal some of the results of his experiments from his partners.”

“Did your mother have any idea of how dangerous the stones are?”

“No, of course not. The first lab book wasn’t encrypted, but it might as well have been, as far as she was concerned. The notes are all written in the form of para-physics equations and technical jargon. I found it when I went through her things after she died a few years ago. But there was nothing in the notebook concerning the exact location of the Phoenix Mine.”

“But after you found the lab book you knew who did have that information, though, didn’t you? Your father’s partners, Elias Coppersmith and Quinn Knox.”

“I managed to track down Knox,” Frye said. “He was deep into the booze and the pills by then. I tried to question him, but I couldn’t get much out of him. His brain was mush. He told some very tall tales about the Phoenix Mine, but he had long since forgotten the coordinates, or pretended that he had forgotten. All I got from him was that it was somewhere in Nevada.”

“Lot of desert in Nevada.”

“Knox did let slip one other interesting bit of information. He told me the story of how he and your father had escaped from the mine after Willis tried to murder them. He said that they both nearly died because your father insisted on carrying out a sack of rocks.”