White Lies (2 page)

He leaned against the railing, absently swirling the whiskey that he had not touched all evening. He wasn’t here tonight to relax and enjoy the hospitality. He was here to gather information with all his senses. Later he would go hunting.

The door of the compact popped open. A figure emerged from behind the wheel. The newcomer was a woman. She was not dressed in the uniform that the other members of the catering staff wore. Instead, she had on a severe black-skirted suit. A pair of black, heeled pumps and an oversized shoulder bag finished off the outfit.

Definitely not from around here,Jake thought. This was Arizona and it was July. No one went beyond “resort casual” at this time of year.

He prowled quietly forward along the veranda. When he reached a deep pool of shadow at the side of one of the stone pillars that supported the overhanging roof, he stopped. He propped one shoulder against the pillar and waited for events to unfold.

The newcomer’s neat black pumps echoed crisply on the paving stones of the drive. She walked boldly toward the main entrance where Myra waited. Jake could see that the somber black suit skimmed small, high breasts, a trim waist and hips that, if one wanted to get technical, were probably too generously proportioned to suit the scale of the rest of the petite frame. He, however, had no problem, technical or otherwise, with her curves. They looked just right to him.

This was the kind of woman you looked at twice, even though you knew she wasn’t beautiful. At least she was the kind thathe looked at twice. Make that three times, he decided. The big, knowing eyes, proud nose and determined chin were striking in a compelling, unconventional way. The veranda lights gleamed on lustrous dark hair that was secured in an elegant knot at the back of her head.

But it wasn’t her looks that grabbed his full attention across the spectrum of his senses. She had something else going for her, something that didn’t depend on physical attractiveness. It was in the way she carried herself, the angle of her shoulders and the tilt of her head. Attitude. Lots of it. It would be a mistake to underestimate this woman.

Automatically he cataloged and analyzed the data that his senses were collecting, the way he always did when he was hunting.

She wasn’t prey. She was something a lot more intriguing. She was a challenge. You couldn’t charm a woman like this into bed. She would make the decision based on whatever criteria she had established. There would be some fencing involved, certain negotiations, probably a few showdowns.

He felt the blood heat in his veins.

Myra stepped into the woman’s path. He could see that she had dropped the gracious hostess role. It didn’t take any paranormal sensitivity to detect the tension and wariness vibrating through her. The first words out of Myra’s mouth told him just how much trouble he was looking at.

“What are you doing here, Clare?” Myra asked.

Well, damn. Jake mentally sifted through the files he had been given to read before he was sent to Stone Canyon two weeks ago. No mistake. Right age, right gender, right amount of hostility from Myra.

This was Clare Lancaster, Archer’sother daughter, conceived in the course of a brief, illicit affair. The probability analysts employed by Jones & Jones, the psychic investigation firm that had hired him for this job, had estimated that the likelihood of her showing up here while he was working undercover was less than ten percent. Which only went to show that just because you were a psychic with a special flair for probability theory didn’t mean diddly-squat when it came to predicting the behavior of a woman. Plain, old-fashioned guesswork would have yielded better results.

He knew he should be worried. Clare’s presence here was seriously bad news. If the rumors about her were true, she was the one person in the vicinity who could blow his cover to pieces.

According to the Jones & Jones files, Clare was a level ten on the Jones Scale. There was no level eleven, at least not officially.

The Jones Scale originated in the late 1800s. It was developed by the Arcane Society, an organization devoted to psychic and paranormal research. Back in the Victorian era a lot of serious people took the paranormal very seriously. The period was the heyday of séances, mediums and demonstrations of psychic abilities.

Of course the vast majority of practitioners in those days were charlatans and frauds. But the Arcane Society had already been in existence for two hundred years at that point, and its members knew the truth. Paranormal talents did exist in some people. The Society’s goal was to identify and study such individuals. Over the years it had acquired a large membership of psychically talented people. Those who joined got tested, and they brought their offspring to be tested.

The Jones Scale was designed to measure the strength of a person’s psychic energy. It was continually being updated and expanded as modern experts in the Society created new methods and techniques.

It wasn’t just the knowledge that Clare was a strong sensitive that raised red flags. According to the files, her talent was extremely rare and highly unusual. The strength of a person’s pure psychic energy was fairly easy to measure these days, within limits, at least. Identifying the exact nature of an individual’s talent was often far more complicated.

In the vast majority of cases psychic abilities fell into the realm of intuition. Those endowed with a measurable amount of paranormal talent were often good card players. They got lucky when they gambled, and they were known for their very reliable hunches.

But there were some major exceptions. Among the members of the Society, such exceptions were usually termed “exotics.” It was not a compliment.

Clare Lancaster was an exotic. She had a preternatural ability to sense the unique kind of psychic energy generated by someone who was attempting to prevaricate or deceive.

In other words, Clare was a human lie detector.

“Hello, Myra,” Clare said. “I can see from your expression that you weren’t expecting me. I was afraid of that. All I can say is that I’ve had a bad feeling about this right from the start. Sorry for the intrusion.”

She didn’t sound sorry, Jake thought. She sounded like a woman who expected to have to defend herself; a woman who had done just that frequently in the past and who was fully prepared to do so again. A scrappy little street fighter in conservative pumps and a badly wrinkled business suit. He was a little surprised that she didn’t have “Don’t Tread on Me” tattooed across her forehead.

“Did Elizabeth ask you to come here tonight?” Myra demanded.

“No. I got an e-mail from Archer. He said it was important.”

Now, that was interesting,Jake thought. Archer had said nothing at all about his other daughter, let alone bothered to warn him that she might show up unexpectedly.

Clare turned her head quite suddenly and looked straight into the pool of shadow where he stood. A small shock electrified his senses. Something had alerted her to his presence. He hadn’t intended for that to happen. He knew how to blend into the background. He had a predator’s talent for concealment when he chose to use it and he had been using it instinctively for the past couple minutes.

Aside from the rare handful of other sensitives who possessed exotic psychic abilities similar to his own—other hunters—there were very few people who could have detected his presence in the shadows. Clare’s intuitive awareness was especially impressive given the amount of highly charged emotional electricity that was vibrating in the air between her and Myra. If nothing else, the tension alone should have distracted her.

Yes, indeed, here comes trouble. Can’t wait.

“I was not aware that we had gotten a call from the guards at the front gate,” Myra said stiffly.

Clare turned back to her. “Don’t worry, there was no major breach of security. The guard called the house before he waved me through the gates. Someone on this end vouched for me.”

“I see.” Myra sounded uncharacteristically nonplussed. “I don’t understand why Archer didn’t tell me that he invited you.”

“You’ll have to take that up with him,” Clare said. “Look, it wasn’t my idea to come all this way for a cocktail party. I’m here because Archer said that it was very important. That’s all I know.”

“I’ll go and find him,” Myra said. She turned and walked quickly across the veranda, disappearing through the open French doors.

Clare made no move to follow. Instead she switched her attention back to Jake.

“Have we met?” she asked with a chilly politeness that made it very clear she knew they had not.

“No,” Jake said. He moved slowly out of the shadows. “But I have a feeling that we’re going to get to know each other very well. I’m Jake Salter.”

He’s lying,Clare thought.Sort of.

She should have been prepared. She was always prepared for a lie. But this wasn’t a pure, full-on lie. It was a subtle, nuanced bit of misdirection wrapped in truth, the kind of lie that a magician might use:Now you see the coin, now you don’t. But there really is a coin. It’s just that I can make it disappear.

He was Jake Salter but he wasn’t.

Whatever he was, he was definitely a powerful talent. The strong but confusing pulses of energy that accompanied the half-truth jangled her senses. She had developed her own private coding system for lies. The spectrum ran from the hot ultraviolet energy that accompanied the most dangerous lies, to a pale, cool, paranormal shade of silvery white for the benign sort.

But Jake Salter’s lie generated energy from across the spectrum. Hot and cold. She knew intuitively that Jake could be extremely dangerous but he wasn’t, at least not at the moment.

Adrenaline flooded through her, making her edgy and hyper-alert. Her paranormal senses flared wildly, disorienting her on both the physical and the psychic planes. Her pulse kicked up suddenly and her breathing got very tight.

She was accustomed to the sensation. She had been living with her rare brand of sensitivity since it developed in her early teens. Heaven knew she had practiced long and hard to learn how to clamp down on her physical as well as her paranormal reactions. But unfortunately her unusual senses were hardwired to the primitive fight-or-flight response. The Arcane House parapsychologist who had helped her deal with her unique type of energy had explained to her that psychic talents that triggered such basic physical instincts were exceptionally hard to control.

When she did her own search through the genealogical records of the Arcane Society, looking for examples of others like herself, she had stumbled across two disturbing facts. The first was that, although human lie detectors popped up occasionally among the membership, the majority were fives or lower. Powerful level tens were extremely rare.

Disturbing Fact Number Two was that of the handful of level-ten lie detectors in the historical records, the majority had come to bad ends because they never learned to control their talent. They wound up in asylums or took to drugs to dull the effects of the steady barrage of lies that assailed them day after day, year in and year out. Some committed suicide.

The truth was, everybody lied. If you were a level-ten human lie detector you either got used to it or you went crazy.

If there was one thing she had taught herself, Clare thought, it was control.

She pulled her senses—all of them—together with an effort of will and adjusted her psychic defenses.

“I’m Clare Lancaster,” she said. She was proud of the fact that the words came out evenly and politely, as if she wasn’t on the downside of a mini–panic attack.

“Nice to meet you, Clare,” Jake said.

Okay, he wasn’t lying now. He really was pleased to meet her. More than pleased, in fact. She did not need her psychic sensitivity to detect the masculine anticipation in the words. Old-fashioned feminine intuition worked just fine. Another little thrill quivered through her.

He walked, no, heprowled, toward her, a half-filled glass in one hand. She got the impression that he was factoring her presence into some private calculation. Fair enough. She was doing the same thing in reverse.

“Are you a friend of the family, Mr. Salter?” she asked.

“Call me Jake. I’m a business consultant. Archer hired me to consult on a new pension and benefit plan for Glazebrook.”

Another lie wrapped in truth. Wow. This man was scary good. And scary interesting.

He had moved into the light cast by one of the wrought-iron veranda lamps, allowing her a good look at him for the first time. She had the feeling that had not been by accident. He wanted her to see him. She understood why. Even his choice of clothing was an act of misdirection.

She wondered if he actually believed that the black-framed glasses, the hand-tailored button-down shirt and the business-casual trousers that he wore were an effective disguise. The conservative cut of his very dark hair didn’t work, either.

Nothing could conceal the watchful intelligence in those dark eyes or hide the subtle aura of controlled power that emanated from him. He was all fierce edges and mysterious shadows. She would have bet the tiny amount of money left in her bank account that, like any proper iceberg, the really dangerous part of Jake Salter was hidden beneath the surface.

You didn’t have to be psychic to figure out that this was not a guy you wanted to encounter in a dark alley late at night. Not unless he was promising some very kinky sex.

The last realization made her catch her breath. Where had that come from? She was definitely not inclined toward kinky sex. Actually, she wasn’t really into sex of any kind. Sex meant letting go, becoming vulnerable and taking risks with someone you trusted. When you were a human lie detector, you had a lot of trust issues. When she did go to bed with a man, she made certain she was in control.

One of the great things about Greg Washburn was the fact that he had been quite content to let her take charge of the physical side of their relationship, just as he allowed her to control every other aspect of it. In fact, theirs had been a near-perfect engagement. She and Greg never argued about anything right up until the day he dumped her.