Copper Beach

glanced down at his ring. The crystal was no longer burning.

    He looked at her. “It is now.”

44

    “WELL, OF COURSE YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT I WOULDN’T do something dumb like open the door and make a perfect target out of myself,” Abby said. She patted Newton’s head. “I watch TV like everyone else. You don’t charge into an unknown situation. But Newton is a lot shorter than me. I knew that no one would be expecting a dog to be the first one through the door.”
    Newton licked her hand. She fed him another treat, his fourth or fifth, Sam thought. He had lost count.

    Sam raised his glass. “Here’s to Newton.”

    “To Newton,” Willow said.

    “To Newton,” Elias repeated.

    The four of them were sitting in the living room of the big house. A fire burned brightly on the wide stone hearth. The Coppersmith employees and their families had returned to their island lodgings, preparing to leave in the morning. The county sheriff and a deputy had come and gone, taking Gerald Frye’s body with them.

    Everyone seemed to think that Frye had died of a heart attack. There was, Sam thought, nothing to indicate otherwise. He looked at his ring and thought about the raw power he had pulled from the small Phoenix crystal. So much energy from just a tiny stone.

    “Not to take away anything from Newton’s act of derring–do,” Abby said, “but it’s obvious that Sam had the situation under control before Newton and I arrived.”

    “Don’t be so sure of that.” Sam swallowed some of his whiskey and set the glass down on the arm of his chair. He gazed into the flames. “In a weird way, I think it was knowing that you were coming down the hall and that you would open the door that gave me the juice I needed to break through the trance.”

    “You would have escaped from the dreamstate with or without me,” Abby said, with conviction.

    Willow smiled. “You have a lot of confidence in my son.”

    Abby raised her glass. “Another professional.”

    Elias studied her with keen interest. “How did you know?”

    “Know what?” Abby asked.

    “That Sam was in danger?”

    Abby rubbed Newton’s ears. “I just knew. And there was a huge sense of urgency about the knowing. I knew he had set a trap in the lab, so that was the logical place to go first.” She glared at Sam. “I thought you had set up cameras to photograph the killer when he went after the prism.”

    Willow frowned. “Yes, that was the plan.”

    “I changed the plan,” Sam said. He took his attention off the flames and looked at Abby. “Did you know that Frye was in the lab with me?”

    “I wasn’t certain, but I had a feeling he might be there, because Jenny O’Connell was alone. Frye had been with her most of the day, but suddenly she was on her own. When I realized the door was unlocked, I flattened myself against the wall, just like they do on the cop shows, and sent Newton in.” She smiled, not bothering to conceal her pride. “And it worked great. Except that you had already taken out Frye, so in the end, it was something of a nonevent.”

    “Trust me, it was not a nonevent from my perspective,” Sam said. He drank some more whiskey. He was still riding a post-burn buzz, but he was going to crash soon.

    Elias scowled at him. “Why didn’t you tell us that you suspected Frye was the one who would walk into your trap?”

    “He didn’t tell you because he didn’t want to get it wrong,” Abby said quietly. “Sam knows what it’s like to be falsely accused.”

    Willow sighed. “I understand. So does Elias. It’s just that you took such a risk, Sam.”

    “A calculated risk,” Sam said. He drank some more whiskey. “What I did not factor into the equation was the possibility that Frye might have another prism weapon. Also, I didn’t factor in Abby.”

    “Or Newton,” Abby said.

    “No,” Sam said. He smiled and rested his head against the back of the chair. The exhaustion was starting to seep through him. “I didn’t make allowances for Newton, either.”

    Elias shook his head in disgust. “There were a few things that I failed to factor in, too. All these years I’ve been watching for a single lab book to surface. Knox and I were aware of only the one notebook containing the record of the experiments. It never dawned on us that Ray Willis had filled up a second notebook with the results of experiments that he ran in secret.”

    “The question now,” Sam said, “is where did Gerald