Gift of Gold

the first time. “You think Kincaid killed Sandquist? But why?”
    Verity glanced at her. “It’s not unlikely that a couple of bastards such as those two might have had a falling-out. They might have been partners in crime but that doesn’t mean they were best friends.”
    Jonas tangled his fingers in her hair. “True,” he murmured. “Given the past they shared, the situation could have been ripe for blackmail, or it’s possible Kincaid just decided Sandquist was a liability. After all, Sandquist knew a hell of a lot about Kincaid’s doings here in this house. Drugs, sex, and violence. Plenty of motives.” That fit, he decided. It made sense. He could easily envision Kincaid killing Sandquist. He sensed Verity’s small shudder and his hand tightened reassuringly in her hair.
    “At any rate,” Caitlin continued softly, “when I realized Kincaid was avidly collecting Caitlin Evanger paintings, I began thinking of ways to use one of the paintings as bait. I had always dreamed of seeing Kincaid killed with the rapier he had used on me. I dreamed about it constantly, night after night.” She touched the side of her face, then dropped her hand. “It was an obsession with me. But I didn’t know how to use a rapier, and with this weak leg of mine, there was little chance I could become proficient.”
    Jonas took another mouthful of whiskey and thought that even with two good legs few people could have become skilled enough to take Kincaid in a fencing match. The man had been a brilliant fencer.
    “But somewhere along the line you remembered that you had once seen me use a rapier,” he said musingly. “In fact, I had nearly killed a man with it. Would have killed him if half a dozen lab workers hadn’t found a way to knock me unconscious.”
    Caitlin looked at him. “I knew more about that experiment than you did, Jonas, because I read all the final reports. You didn’t stick around to see what the analysis was.”
    “I knew what had happened,” he told her harshly. “I didn’t need any scientific analysis to tell me I’d nearly lost whatever passes for my soul that day in the lab.”
    Caitlin closed her eyes. “I’m sure you didn’t. It must have been quite a terrifying experience.”
    “One I planned never to repeat,” he assured her coldly. Verity shivered again under his hand.
    “What you didn’t learn that day in the lab was the conclusion the researchers came to afterward,” Caitlin went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “They decided their hypothesis was correct—that the more closely related your current environment or experience was to the past experience connected to the object you were holding, the more likely you were to be overwhelmed by those past emotions. That day in the lab, you nearly killed the lab tech because he was coming toward you with a hypodermic needle. It was only a sedative. You seemed very agitated that day when you picked up the rapier you were using for the tests. He wanted to calm you down.”
    “Those damn lab techs were always trying to use drugs to manipulate my responses,” Jonas growled. “They knew I didn’t want anything. I’d told them a thousand times I refused to mess up an already complicated situation with their medications. The lab tech made a mistake coming at me with that needle. I was already trying to handle a whole tunnel full of emotions left over from a time when men routinely worried about being poisoned.”
    Verity looked up from her position at his knee, her eyes full of understanding. “So when you saw the needle the lab tech was holding, you responded as if you were about to be poisoned by him. You reacted as the man who originally used that rapier would have reacted.”
    Jonas nodded grimly, his attention on Caitlin. “But you learned something else from those reports, didn’t you? You discovered the real secret buried in them. You found out that in some cases, I don’t just sense the emotions of the past, I can pick up other things as well.”
    Verity’s fingers tightened on his leg. “What are you talking about?”
    Caitlin looked at her. “I knew that he could not only tap in to the emotions of the man who had originally used that rapier, but that he could also tap that other man’s skill with it.
    Verity searched Jonas’s face. “What does she mean, Jonas?”
    Jonas finished the last of the whiskey. “I don’t know much about fencing, Verity.”
    “Oh, my God,” she whispered. The full impact of what he was