Changed (Second Sight) Read online

  “Are you listening to me?” Geoffrey said.

  Maurice tore his eyes away from the lab bench.

  “Not really,” he said.

  Geoffrey threw his hands in the air. For a moment, Maurice studied him, the public face of the Green Earth Commune.

  I wonder, he thought, if I’d had all the plastic surgery and exercise, the capped teeth and the tanning booth, if I’d be as good looking. We do, after all, share the same genes.

  Spoken like a true geneticist, Maurice thought, as Geoffrey put his hands on his hips and glared at him.

  Maurice took a deep breath. He didn’t really have time for this. He glanced at the flasks. There was still a lot to do, some of it real science.

  “I’m worried!” Geoffrey said.

  That got Maurice’s attention. He stared at his brother.

  “You’re worried,” Maurice said.

  “You’re not?”

  Maurice shrugged.

  “I don’t believe this,” Geoffrey said. “What are we going to tell the couple who’ve already paid for Kayla’s baby? How are we going to sell the others? We need someone on that side of the business.”

  Daniel had been quite the find. It’s not like they could advertise.

  “Recruit another programmer,” Maurice finally said. “Recruitment is your department.”

  “Well, it’s not that easy is it?”

  Maurice had to grin. The shoe was on the other foot and the change felt good.

  “I know,” Geoffrey said, snapping his fingers. He reversed direction and headed to the door. “I’ll post something on Facebook. The internet is full of programmers.”

  Maurice shook his head and snickered under his breath.

  “Just as along as you stay out of my way,” he muttered.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AS MAC DRIED the frying pan and stowed it below in the kitchen cabinet, Isabelle put the last plate in the dish rack to dry. They hadn’t exactly worked themselves into a routine yet. In fact, they were really just starting to learn about each other. He folded the dish towel and set it on the edge of the sink with a final pat.

  The first week had been rough: the accidental readings, the Green Earth Commune, Kayla’s baby.

  Kayla’s baby, Mac thought. How had Daniel thought he’d be able to sell it to Maurice?

  And what about the Botox?

  “I thought,” Isabelle said, “that we weren’t thinking about work.”

  Though she still stood next to him at the sink, she’d turned her head to watch him.

  “That’s right,” he said, nodding. She was dressed only in a white, terry cloth robe, her bare hands still wet. He moved behind her, slipping his arms around her middle. He’d thrown on a pair of FBI Academy shorts and a Behavioral Sciences t-shirt from his old unit. “We’re not.”

  “Except we are,” she said, leaving her hands in the sink.

  “No,” he said, dangerously close to her ear. “We’re not.”

  Isabelle squirmed and pointedly leaned her head away from his.

  “Oh my god,” she said, giggling a bit. “Do not start.”

  Mac smiled to himself and stood up straighter.

  But as his arms settled around Isabelle’s waist, his thoughts returned again to the Botox.

  “Right,” Isabelle said, craning her head to look at him. “Tell me you’re not thinking of it.”

  He grinned at her.

  “Okay, I’m not thinking of it.”

  She held up one hand, showing him her fingers.

  “Really?” she said.

  “Oh, you’d read me without my permission, would you?”

  “Permission?” she said, smiling. “I didn’t think I needed permission to touch you.”

  He hugged her closer.

  “It depends,” he said, trying to nuzzle behind her ear.

  “Why Botox?” she said quickly, leaning away.

  “Here I’m trying to hug you–”

  “Seriously, Mac,” Isabelle said, her smile fading. “Something’s wrong. I know it.” She looked into his eyes. “You know it too. I don’t have to read you to know that.”

  He might have gazed into her amazing, amber eyes forever. But they were searching his and waiting for an answer. He took in a deep breath.

  “All right,” he said, slowly letting her go. “What have we got?” As he stepped back, she turned around to face him. “You read Botox, an angry Maurice who wouldn’t buy Little Gavin, and some computer files.”

  “Yes,” she said nodding, putting her hands into the pockets of the robe.

  “We know that Botox is a drug used in cosmetic surgery. We have a commune where the cult leader is fathering children left and right. There’s a sycophantic tech guy who tries to sell them his own son. Hidden accounts. Identities that don’t go back more than seven years.” He paused, crossed his arms over his chest, and shook his head. “None of it fits together.”

  There were simply too many unanswered questions–and too little data–the bane of any profiler.

  Mac suddenly remembered Daniel’s computers. They’d been confiscated from his condo by the Cyber Crime division. Tim had discovered that the security firewalls protecting Daniel’s machines were the same as those protecting the commune.

  “You saw computer files,” Mac said. Isabelle nodded. “I wonder where Tim is with that.”

  •••••

  While Mac called in to the FBI, Isabelle called Yolanda.

  I should have called sooner.

  Her older psychic friend had been right yet again. Daniel had been in Isabelle’s future. Though Yolanda had made it clear she wasn’t in favor of psychics and non-psychics together, she’d still done a crystal ball reading for Isabelle. And, true to her word, she’d kept anything she’d learned about Isabelle and Mac to herself.

  Isabelle sat down on the bed and heard the phone pick up.

  “Is it cliché to say I knew you were going to call?” Yolanda said.

  Isabelle laughed a little.

  “Very,” she said, relieved.

  Yolanda was business as usual. After the way Isabelle had nearly bolted from the room after the reading, she wasn’t sure what to expect. Yolanda had been very troubled by what she’d seen in the future and Isabelle had been terrified of hearing anything to do with her and Mac.

  “Even so,” Yolanda said, exhaling loudly. “I mean, phew! It sure is good to hear your voice.”

  Isabelle frowned a little. Yolanda sounded relieved as well.

  “It’s good to hear yours too,” Isabelle said. “I just wanted you to know that everything worked out fine.” She smirked. “Not that you didn’t already know.”

  “So the commune’s all done then,” Yolanda said. “Well, good riddance.”

  Isabelle blinked.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “What?” There was silence on the other end of the phone. Good riddance? What did that mean? “Yolanda?”

  More silence.

  “Look at the time,” Yolanda said hurriedly. “Who knew it was getting so late. I’ve got to go. You stay in touch.”

  Then she hung up.

  Without so much as a goodbye, Isabelle found herself listening to nothing. Then she stared at the phone.

  Good riddance?

  •••••

  “What?” Tim yelled, so loudly Mac had to hold the phone away from his ear.

  “Hey,” Mac said. “Take it easy.”

  “Oh,” Tim said, immediately deflated. “Mac. I thought it was Martinez again.” Really? Mac thought. Is that how you’d talk to your boss? “But if you’re calling about these damn computers,” Tim said, immediately agitated again. “Get in line.”

  Damn computers.

  “I take it there’s no joy on the hacking front,” Mac said.

  “To put it mildly,” Tim said. “There was a rootkit hiding a virus.”

  Though Mac didn’t know what a rootkit was, he was pretty sure he understood virus.

  “What happened?”
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  “It started erasing the hard disk,” Tim said wearily, as though he’d explained this a hundred times already today. “Writing over it. I pulled the power.”

  Mac recalled the smug look on Daniel’s face in the interrogation room. He’d refused to answer a single question. The only thing he would say is ‘you’ll see.’

  Is this what he meant?

  “Look,” Tim said tiredly. “I’ve got a lot to do. Anything else?”

  Mac realized Tim must have been working all weekend.

  “No,” Mac said. “Not unless you can scan for the word Botox.”

  “Botox?” Tim said. “No. I mean, not ‘no’ to Botox. No to anything. Until I can be sure this won’t happen to the second machine, I’m not even turning it on. And until I can kill that virus after mounting the device as a non-bootable disc, I’m not scanning anything.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MAURICE WATCHED THE albino, lab rat topple sideways in its little glass cage. He quickly logged the time and jotted down a brief note.

  “Paralysis,” he said.

  He scanned back up the list.

  Difficulty swallowing.

  Blurred vision.

  Trouble breathing.

  Abdominal cramps.

  And the timing? He quickly tallied the numbers and then did a quick conversion in his head. The weakest members would be dead tonight. The rest, tomorrow. Not even the commune’s doctor would suspect. The first few cases would likely be diagnosed as stomach flu. He’d even take a little himself.

  Wouldn’t want to be a suspect.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THERE WAS NO view of the Malibu coastline from Daniel’s office but that didn’t surprise Isabelle. Daniel had always preferred his office to be like a cave. That apparently hadn’t changed.

  According to Mac, the work with Daniel’s computers wasn’t going well. By the time he’d gotten off the phone, Mac had already decided he was coming here. Though Isabelle had thought she would have to beg to come along, Mac had quickly said yes.

  The case must be going worse than I thought.

  Mac had explained on the way that neither of the computers would be useful any time soon and that his interview with Daniel on Friday had amounted to nothing. The same smug attitude had suffused Isabelle’s reading of him as well. It was as though Daniel was waiting for something.

  Waiting for what?

  Isabelle couldn’t help but think of the strange and abrupt conversation with Yolanda. Mac hadn’t known what to make of it either and it still troubled Isabelle. She heard Mac’s footsteps upstairs and glanced upward. He’d taken the bedroom.

  That room was going to be way more information than Isabelle wanted to know.

  She looked down at her gloves.

  It was Daniel who had first insisted on them. When Kayla had told her that she was dating Daniel too, Isabelle had finally understood why. For a psychic, she’d been ridiculously easy to dupe, not to mention lie to and throw over.

  She shook her head.

  “Enough,” she muttered, taking off her gloves.

  Enough with the past. That was behind her. Mac was the future. From the start, he’d wanted the gloves off.

  She paused.

  But what about the security clearance and the classified data? He was worried about it. And that worried her. How are we possibly going to get around it?

  She heard his footsteps upstairs again.

  Concentrate, Isabelle. You’re here to find out about Daniel.

  She stepped over to his computer desk. If there was any place in the world where Daniel spent more time, Isabelle didn’t know where it would be. He was always at his computer.

  Isabelle sat in his chair. Three large black monitors virtually surrounded her, arranged in a U-shape on the deep desk. Though the computers were gone, Isabelle could see their outlines in the dust behind the monitors, loose cables everywhere. But it wasn’t the screens that were of interest to her and not even the computers. In front of her was a mouse. It would have been the one thing he’d have touched the most.

  Isabelle unfastened one glove, tugged it off and reached out her bare hand. Her fingers lightly touched the device.

  Her vision went instantly gray and the images began to stream in.

  Computer monitors, the ones in front of her, flashed on and off. Text flowed by, not many images. Wait. Except for the Coming Home group at Yahoo. Lots of pictures. Of babies. Some of couples. Everybody smiling. Adoption and reparenting.

  Adoption?

  Isabelle felt her pulse jump a notch. She had to breathe through her mouth. A normal reading would have ended about now but she needed to know about the babies. For someone who had so little interest in his own, Daniel had spent a lot of time looking at the pictures on an adoption web site. He was happy, even ecstatic. The future was bright.

  Coming Home, she read at one web site, as sweat started to dampen her upper lip. Where you can privately re-home the child of your choice.

  What does that mean?

  More web pages flashed by. More couples. Isabelle pushed, going back, looking farther.

  Where is the link to Botox?

  She was breathing hard now, her heart hammering in her chest. Her eyes were starting to burn. How could she have seen Botox so clearly in Daniel’s thoughts when it was nowhere on his computer? It had been important.

  Is he using it? Trafficking in it?

  Her lungs couldn’t keep up and the gray haze was beginning to dim.

  Why did Yolanda say ‘good riddance’?

  With an effort, Isabelle pushed the mouse away and sat back hard in the chair.

  •••••

  “Psychic?” Maurice muttered. “Nonsense.”

  He would need a new detective agency.

  The ten year background check that Geoffrey had ordered for Isabelle de Grey and Gavin MacMillan had turned up little of interest, except for her role–Maurice squinted at the email–in some serial killer slayings.

  What drivel.

  He closed the email and glanced at the temperature sensors again. The digital readouts for the flask probes blinked a reassuring red. Everything was on schedule.

  Just a second. Didn’t that ring a bell? About a serial killer? Hadn’t there been something about that on the news a little while ago?

  Maurice opened the email again.

  Yes. He remembered now. The police had caught an actor.

  Isabelle had been part of that?

  As he scanned down the rest of the report, he remembered Kayla. It had all started to fall apart with her–after Isabelle had visited with Kayla’s mother. Then Kayla had disappeared. Then Daniel had kidnapped their son.

  But it had all started with Isabelle.

  Maurice had even questioned the association at the time.

  But a psychic?

  Maurice scowled.

  She had to have been involved in Kayla’s departure. The timing had been too much of a coincidence. Of course, there was no such thing as psychic ability but somehow Isabelle had been connected to the events that had started to unravel the Green Earth Commune.

  Then he remembered the gloves and her reaction to the shock wand.

  Something there hadn’t been right either. He’d known it.

  But that wasn’t evidence of psychic ability.

  No, that was evidence of something else–his brother’s stupidity.

  Geoffrey had insisted. He’d been charmed. Maurice should never have allowed it. He shut the laptop. Next time, he wouldn’t have that problem. Next time, there would be no Geoffrey.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DANIEL’S BEDROOM WAS everything the Green Earth Commune was not.

  Mac opened the drawer of the ultra-modern nightstand. A mirror, a razor blade, and a quart-sized bag of cocaine. Mac shut it and opened the next. A vaporizer and another quart-sized bag of marijuana.

  Daniel buys in quantity.

  The next drawer held the condoms.

  Mac closed it and went to the
matching dresser against the polished concrete wall. To his right, beyond the sliding glass doors and decks, the view of the Pacific Ocean was even more expansive than the view from the kitchen. The corner of the enormous master bedroom was almost entirely glass. But Mac only glanced at the view. He’d already registered the role it played in the profile. Nor was he interested in the expensive clothes as he pulled open the top drawer. He quickly shoved them aside, his hands searching to the back and into the corners. Nothing. He closed it and opened the next.

  Gleaming modernism, conspicuous consumption, an expensive sports car, built-in chargers and ethernet everywhere. The organic and rustic off-the-grid lifestyle wasn’t for Daniel and yet–Mac rifled through the clothes–he was closely tied to the commune. So closely that he’d taken his son there to sell.

  Why?

  Mac’s fingers closed on something. He pulled it out. Another plastic baggie but this one had photos.

  “Bingo,” Mac said.

  Though he could already see what he’d found, he quickly opened the bag and looked at each photo in turn–Daniel’s women. His cell phone had been virtually empty. Daniel had been very careful not to leave photos, texts or emails on it, even though it’d been locked. Mac leafed through the pictures one by one.

  Isabelle’s reading of the photo from the dormitory had always bothered him. Daniel had actually gone to the women’s quarters, taken it out of the trash, but then abandoned it when he thought he’d be discovered. Why take that risk? But the more he learned about Daniel, the more it had become clear–Kayla had meant nothing to him. Then, when he and Isabelle had intruded on him with another a woman, a woman he didn’t mind them knowing about, it had clicked. The photo of Kayla had been a trophy. He collected them.

  A few of the women in these shots were naked. Mac felt his stomach tighten. He was getting close to the end and he knew full well who–

  There she was.

  “Isabelle,” he said quietly.