Eye of the Beholder

murmured. She straightened with what appeared to be painful effort. "Would you mind if I got my pills out of my purse?"
    Dylan glanced at her handbag. "You won't need them."
    Alexa looked at him. "You know you won't get away with this. Trask will figure out what happened. He won't give up until he finds you. He's that way about some things. A little obsessive."
    Dylan tightened his grip on the gun. "I'll take care of Trask later. After the sacrifice calms the vortices."
    "You do realize that all this talk of a sacrifice makes you sound less than sane, don't you?" Alexa asked casually.
    Dylan uttered a disgusted sound. "You don't understand any of it, do you?"
    "Why don't you explain it to me? Start with how you found out that Foster Radstone was skimming funds from the Institute."
    "I've always kept close tabs on the Institute's financial status. It was one of my duties as the Guardian. I suspected Radstone was skimming months ago. I added him to my list."
    Harriet peered at him with wide-eyed interest. "Forgive me, young man, but you don't appear to be the type who takes an interest in financial matters."
    Dylan gave her a brief, chilling smile. "I was a corporate financial officer for over a decade before I found the path to Dimensions."
    "And you seemed like such a nice man," Alexa muttered. "What was this list you mentioned?"
    His expression implied that she was not very bright. "The list of people who had to be removed so that the message of Dimensions could expand farther into the world. There were three of them on it at the beginning. Dean Guthrie was at the top. Radstone was next. Liz Guthrie was to be the last."
    "My God," Alexa whispered.
    He ignored that. "I meditated for a long time on how to proceed."
    "Not long enough, apparently," Alexa said. "Why did you wait until Trask arrived in Avalon?"
    "If it had been necessary to get rid of Guthrie immediately, I would have done so. But I knew that I could afford to wait for a few months to begin the process of getting rid of those who stood in the way. The problem was that I had to arrange for several deaths rather close together in time."
    "And you wanted to be sure that Chief Strood didn't conclude there was a link between them, is that it?" Alexa asked.
    "Exactly. I knew that having Trask in town at the time of Guthrie's accident would provide a distraction in case Strood got suspicious."
    "Which he didn't," Alexa said.
    Dylan's mouth tightened with disdain. "Chief Strood was his usual incompetent self. He never seriously questioned Guthrie's crash."
    "After Guthrie's death went off without a hitch, you figured you were on a roll, didn't you?"
    "The vortices were in flux. There was an enormous amount of negative energy available for me to tap. It was a sign that I was to continue with my plan."
    "But after Guthrie, things started going wrong, didn't they?"
    Dylan's jaw locked in fury. "I had everything planned so that each killing would look different Unrelated to any of the others. But the only one that went right was Guthrie. You and Trask screwed up the others."
    Out of the corner of her eye, Alexa saw Harriet give her a speculative glance. She realized that the older woman was willing to take her cue from her.
    The only thing Alexa could think of to do at that moment was keep Dylan talking while she and Harriet tried to maneuver behind a makeshift barricade.
    "Tell me about Liz," Alexa said. "Is she okay?"
    Irritation flickered in his eyes. "It's much too soon for her to die. It would look weird if her accident followed too closely on the heels of her ex-husband's death."
    Alexa sank her nails into the journal. "I can see where that might raise a few questions. Sooner or later everyone's going to find out that Liz inherits Dean's entire estate, right? And I'll bet she, in turn, has left her entire estate to the Institute."
    Dylan blinked owlishly. "You know about the wills?"
    "Trask and I figured it out."
    "Ultimately everything Liz possesses will go to the Dimensions Trust," Dylan said with evident satisfaction.
    "You're her personal meditation guide, aren't you? You're the one who sent her away the morning that I went to see her."
    Dylan's fist tightened around the gun. "When she hung up the phone and said you were planning to drop by after her meditation session, I realized you were starting to ask too many questions. And you were involved with Trask. It was all getting very complicated."
    "You couldn't risk having me talk to Liz, could you?"
    "No.