Fired Up

Rollins?”
    “Yes, of course. The gallery is at the back of the house.”
    Barbara put down her coffee cup and got to her feet. She led the way along a hall and stopped at a door that could have doubled as a bank vault. She punched in a code.
    “George had this gallery built especially for the collection. State-of-the-art security all the way.”
    “I remember,” Chloe said.
    Barbara opened the heavy door and stood back graciously.
    Chloe moved into the shadowed room. The space was filled with glass cases crammed with objects. A number of stone statues dotted the gallery. She set her satchel on a nearby table and started to open it. There was something wrong with the leather buckle. She could not seem to grasp it properly. A wave of dizziness hit her. She tried to focus, but the room was spinning and nothing made sense.
    Tentacles of darkness reached out, wrapped around her and dragged her down into the depths.

47
    “LET’S GO BACK TO THE START OF THIS THING,” FALLON SAID. “How did they drug you?”
    “I don’t know. I went out for a couple of beers with an old friend and client,” Jack said. “Jerry Bergstrom. That’s all I remember.”
    “Eat anything?”
    “No.”
    “Given the timing, whatever they used to knock you out had to be in the beer,” Fallon said.
    “I know what you’re thinking. But I just can’t see Jerry getting involved with Nightshade.”
    “The enhancement formula causes some major personality changes. None of them are good, trust me.”
    “He was the same old Jerry. He seemed genuinely worried about me.”
    “There’s a para-hypnotist mixed up in this thing,” Fallon reminded him. “The woman who showed up at Drake Stone’s house in Vegas.”
    “I’ve been thinking about that.” He went to stand at the window of the office. “It’s possible that she got to Jerry. Maybe she gave him the drug and hypnotized him into using it on me. I’ll have Chloe talk to him, see if she can pull up any lost memories the way she did with Stone.”
    “Do it,” Fallon said. “Meanwhile, I think you’re on to something here with this chain of gyms. The question now is, what do we do about it?”
    “Shut them down?”
    “Why am I always having to remind people that we’re not the cops or the FBI.”
    “You didn’t hesitate to put those five Nightshade labs out of business a while back.”
    “We had no choice,” Fallon growled. “Zack and the Council agreed that with five labs running there was just too much of the formula being produced. We had to cut off at least some of the supply. We managed to make it look like accidental fires in all five cases. It helped that the labs were widely scattered up and down the West Coast and shared no obvious connection. But if three gyms here in the Northwest that just happen to be owned by the same private corporation go up in smoke someone will ask questions.”
    “Nightshade will guess it was Arcane,” Jack said. “But do you care?”
    “It’s not Nightshade I’m worried about. They’ve got to know we’re the folks who took down those labs. The problem with burning down the gyms would be arson investigators. We do not need that kind of attention from the authorities.”
    “The drawback to being a clandestine organization. Okay, so what are you going to do?”
    “I’m thinking about that,” Fallon said. “At this point Nightshade doesn’t know that we’ve identified three of their recruiting centers. They haven’t even closed down the one on Capitol Hill where they held you for twenty-four hours.”
    “That’s because they’re depending on the amnesia drug they gave me to keep my memories suppressed.”
    “Lucky for us. I’ve got a couple of low- end auras watching the gym there in Seattle. We’ll see what turns up.”
    “Are you going to try to get someone inside?”
    “That’s not an option,” Fallon said, flat and unequivocal. “In order to do that an agent would have to subject himself to the formula. I can’t allow anyone to take that risk.”
    “Maybe you can turn one of the Nightshade agents.”
    “Even if that were possible, he or she wouldn’t be reliable. Like I said, there are serious personality changes with the drug. But with luck we’ll get something useful from plain, old-fashioned surveillance on the gyms. The problem with surveillance is that it takes people, a lot of people. I don’t have an unlimited number of agents to throw at this thing. Look, I’ve got to make some calls. Get