Sight Unseen Read online

  She blinked, and the image disappeared to be replaced by the unfinished sculpture of the runner. The damp cloth she had held in her hands had been carefully draped over it, the folds smoothed around its shape.

  She couldn’t remember doing that. She couldn’t remember anything after she had allowed the center of the cloth to touch the head of the figure.

  She glanced toward the windows, surprised to find that the moon was high in the sky, the trail it left across the water now narrow and indistinct. And there was no longer any hint of crimson along the edge of the ocean.

  She turned back to the runner, shrouded now by the cloth. Slowly her head moved from side to side in denial of what had just occurred.

  The bell chimed again, echoing in the stillness. She wasn’t expecting a visitor. She got the occasional solicitor out here, but they never came at night.

  “Coming,” she said, although there was no way anyone at the front door could hear her from back here. Certainly not that slightly tremulous whisper.

  She turned, hurrying now that she had decided something must be wrong. Perhaps the vision had been a warning. A premonition of the news whoever was ringing her doorbell would bring.

  Even the suggestion that there might be a logical explanation for what had just happened made her feel better. Never before had anything like that occurred without her consciously seeking it. Her “gift” had always been hers to control. Hers to use or not.

  She couldn’t imagine living her life any other way. She didn’t want to think about having to.

  “MAY I HELP YOU?”

  Although Gardner hadn’t offered to show Ethan any photographs of the woman he’d sent him to see, there had been two small snapshots attached to the inside front cover of the file the old man had taken from his desk. Ethan had studied them, inconveniently upside down, while Gardner copied down Raine McAllister’s address.

  One of the pictures had been of a freckle-nosed child, smiling broadly at the camera. The other had been of a seemingly self-possessed young woman in a cap and gown, obviously taken at her graduation from college.

  The sea-green eyes of the woman holding the door were exactly the same as they had been in the photos—clear and very direct. Her hair was dark, almost black, but the strong sun of the area where she lived had gilded highlights along its entire length. She wore it shoulder length, as straight as she had during her years in college.

  Her face, becomingly tanned, was devoid of makeup. The freckles, although fainter, were still visible across the bridge of a rather high-arched, patrician nose.

  “My name is Ethan Snow,” he said, watching the small furrow form between her brows as she realized it meant nothing to her. “We have a mutual friend who thought you might be willing to be of some assistance—”

  The furrow disappeared as her mouth tightened. “Whoever sent you was mistaken. I don’t do that anymore.”

  She stepped back. Her hand, which had never released the knob, began to push the door forward.

  Six months of frustration as well as the events of the last forty-eight hours fueled Ethan’s anger. He’d be damned if he’d come all this way and not even get an opportunity to tell her why. He put his left forearm against the door, his fingers wrapping around the edge to keep it from moving.

  Shocked, she looked up, straight into his eyes. Her pupils had dilated, expanding rapidly into the rim of color. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “All you have to do is listen,” he said, still holding the door. “If you want to say no after that, fine. But not until.”

  “You’ve been misinformed.” Her voice was softer, free of the shock and indignation he’d just heard in her question. It sounded more regretful than angry. Or resigned. At least when she added, “I really can’t help you.”

  “You don’t even know what I want.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, I can’t do it.”

  Again she pushed against the door, attempting to close it. Ethan didn’t remove his arm. Nor did he step back.

  “Ten minutes,” he said.

  He was tired. He was hungry. And given the events of the last two days, there was no way in hell he was going to get in the jet and head back to D.C. without at least finding out why Monty Gardner had given him this woman’s name.

  Raine McAllister didn’t look like any intelligence operative he’d ever met. And she certainly didn’t look like a Beltway insider. Not in those skin-tight cutoffs and a tank top.

  Even before he and Griff had talked to the old man, however, Ethan had reached the end of his resources. Now, after what had happened last night, he was even more convinced than he had been then that The Covenant was too dangerous to allow him to give up on this investigation.

  “Whatever you’re here for,” Raine McAllister said, “whoever sent you, I really can’t help you.”

  She had stopped pushing against the door with her slender strength. She simply stood there, her eyes holding his, her face as empty of expression as her voice had been of emotion.

  “Montgomery Gardner.”

  Before he had completed the enunciation of the last name, her face changed. Then, exactly as the old man’s had two nights ago, her eyes seemed to focus on something other than the present. After perhaps five seconds, she closed her mouth, pressing her lips together before she stepped back, opening the door wide enough for Ethan to step through.

  Chapter Two

  “Exactly what does Mr. Gardner think I can do for you?”

  After directing him to the couch, Raine McAllister had perched on an ottoman that belonged to one of the two tall fan chairs in the sunroom she’d led him to. Although there was no ocean view from here, the atmosphere created by white wicker furniture, with its pale-green and yellow cushions, left no doubt this was a beach house.

  The room was both elegant and comfortable. During the day, it would be full of light from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Tonight their jalousies had been closed against the darkness, but with the woodwork painted white and the walls a nearly colorless shell pink, the effect was still spacious and airy.

  “I’m trying to gather information about The Covenant.”

  There was a heartbeat of silence. Ethan wasn’t sure if that was because she didn’t recognize the name or because she was reluctant to reveal to a stranger that she knew anything about the organization.

  Given the cloak of secrecy that shrouded The Covenant’s operations and considering how dangerous he believed the group to be, either was a possibility. He was hopeful, of course, that the latter of the two explanations was the one that made her hesitate.

  “That’s why he sent you? To find out if I can provide you with information about… I’m sorry. What was it? A covenant?”

  Despite what the old man had implied, Raine McAllister seemed genuinely puzzled by the reference. The sinking feeling in the pit of Ethan’s stomach reflected his disappointment.

  “The Covenant,” Ethan corrected. “He gave me your name and address and indicated you might be able to help with an ongoing investigation that otherwise, quite frankly, seems to have reached a dead end.”

  “So…Mr. Gardner sent you here for my help, but he didn’t tell you how or why I might be able to give it? And you didn’t ask.”

  He couldn’t quite read her tone. Bemused, perhaps? Or maybe amused, he amended. Because he’d come all the way down here from Washington based only on an old man’s recommendation that she might be able to help him?

  At the same time he was aware that he’d been let in only because he’d invoked the name of Montgomery Gardner. He didn’t want to destroy whatever advantage that had given him by saying something that could be construed as derogatory about the old man. Not before he was sure this really was the wild-goose chase he was beginning to believe it might be.

  “Since Mr. Gardner is both a former DCI and a lifelong resident of the D.C. area, when he suggested I talk to you, I assumed you had either worked at the agency or had some specialized kno
wledge that he believed might be useful.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, as she appeared to think about what he’d just said.

  “I suppose in a way I did work for him. I guess I just never looked at it like that.”

  “You didn’t consider what you did at the agency work?”

  Even as he posed the question, he was trying to figure out how this woman could have worked for Monty Gardner, whose tenure at the CIA had ended almost twenty-five years ago. He would have guessed her to be in her late twenties. Early thirties at the outside. In either case, she would have been far too young to have been an operative during the old man’s regime.

  “As far as I was concerned, we played games.”

  “Games?”

  “They’d point to some place on a map, and I’d describe to them what was there.”

  Suddenly everything he hadn’t understood when she’d opened the door clicked into place. And he felt like a fool that he hadn’t put it together sooner.

  Short of divine intervention or clairvoyance, Griff had said, I’m not sure how we pierce that veil of secrecy. And in response, the old man had denied any special pull with the Divinity and had suggested they contact this woman.

  Both he and Griff had missed the significance of the thing Gardner hadn’t denied knowledge of. Clairvoyance. Raine McAllister was a clairvoyant.

  Ethan knew very little about the CIA’s experimentation with parapsychology—other than the fact that it had occurred in response to the Soviet Union’s psychic research. And the time frame in which it had taken place fit into the era when Gardner had been the head of the agency, he realized.

  It even made sense of the picture in the old man’s file. It was obvious Raine had been a little girl when she’d taken part in those experiments.

  There was something about the exploitation of a child, despite the genuine concerns about national security during those years, that troubled him. It must have bothered Gard ner, as well. Why else would he have kept in touch with this woman all this time?

  “You were part of the CIA’s psychic research program.”

  He had thought the old man must be onto something, especially in view of what had happened after his and Griff’s visit. Now it seemed that must have occurred, not because Gardner had any information to share, but simply because they’d asked him if he did.

  “Something which, judging from your tone, has apparently fallen out of favor,” she suggested.

  “A long time ago,” he said. “Probably because it didn’t prove to be as valuable as they’d hoped. I never realized the project involved children.”

  His discomfort with that scenario undoubtedly showed. She smiled as if amused at his naiveté.

  “I take it Mr. Gardner also failed to mention what I was doing before they brought me to Langley.”

  There was an almost challenging tilt to Raine’s chin. Ethan wasn’t sure where she was headed with the question, but since Gardner had given him no clue about her, either before or after she’d been involved with the CIA, he told her the truth.

  “He said nothing about you beyond his hope that you could help with the matter I mentioned. Information about The Covenant.”

  “Maybe he was trying to spare me embarrassment.”

  “Embarrassment?” Where the hell was this going?

  “I told fortunes. Read palms and auras. I even read the cards.”

  “Tarot?”

  Despite the polite tone of his question, Ethan was furious at how much time he’d wasted coming down here. What she was saying now was only what he’d expected when he had finally realized her connection with the agency. Carnival sideshow quackery.

  “Occasionally I’d see something about the person I was reading that was…tragic. The first beating I ever got was for telling someone they were going to die,” she said with a laugh. “I didn’t know any better. I didn’t understand the concept of entertaining the customer.”

  The word beating had tightened the muscles in his stomach, although it had been uttered without any inflection. Maybe she’d used the term in jest. An exaggeration of the spankings that were fairly typical methods of discipline when they’d both been children. Something in her eyes belied that comforting thought.

  “So you see, I liked playing Mr. Gardner’s little games,” she said. “They were undemanding. And they were safe.”

  “Then perhaps you’d be willing to play another.”

  Despite his anger and skepticism, Ethan found he was holding his breath as he waited for her answer. He must be even more desperate than he’d thought.

  “For you?”

  “For your country.”

  Her mouth was a little wide in proportion to the rest of her features. The corners ticked up quickly before she looked down at her hands, intertwined in her lap. Slim and tanned, they seemed as delicate as her face. When she looked up again, the smile had disappeared.

  “Like performing a parlor trick, you mean? Reading the cards perhaps.”

  Although the tone was again almost free of inflection, the wording clearly mocked what he’d just asked of her.

  “You seem amused by the idea of helping your country.”

  He sounded like some bureaucratic jerk. Maybe he was, but there was nothing in the least bit funny to him about what The Covenant was trying to do.

  Respect for the old man had caused him to seek this woman out. And it had kept him here, even after he’d learned the truth. Under no other circumstance would he have approached some so-called psychic for help. After what had happened to Gardner, however…

  “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to be flippant. Exactly what do you believe I can do for my country?” The tone of the last was clearly sarcastic, despite her apology.

  “I’d ask that what I’m about to tell you remain in strictest confidence.”

  She lifted one hand as if to indicate their surroundings. “Just who do you think I might tell?”

  “I’d like your word that you won’t tell anyone.”

  Again the corners of her mouth quirked and were then controlled. She was openly making fun of him. And since Ethan wasn’t accustomed to being a source of amusement, it made him uncomfortable.

  Granted, he had always taken his responsibilities, both with the agency and then later with the Phoenix, very seriously. Maybe too seriously. That didn’t ease the spurt of anger he felt at her unspoken ridicule.

  He wondered if he were overreacting because she was a woman. A woman who in any other circumstances he would have been attracted to.

  The admission was surprising, but once he’d made it, he realized how accurate it was. Physically, everything about her appealed to him. It was only the other that made him uncomfortable.

  “Then you have it, of course.” She folded her hands together in her lap again and leaned forward as if eager to hear what he had to say.

  The pose didn’t fool him. Nor did it mitigate his anger. He hadn’t come here to be mocked. Not about something that was an integral part of who and what he was—

  The realization was sudden. And stunning.

  As soon as he had realized what she’d done at the CIA, he had expected to be amused at any claims she would make about her abilities. She had very neatly turned the tables on him instead. Deliberately giving him a dose of his own medicine? he wondered.

  He’d been careful not to reveal his skepticism that her “gifts” could prove useful. Careful neither by word nor tone to indicate that he would have walked out immediately after learning about them except for the old man’s confidence in her and what had happened two nights ago. So unless she was prescient—

  Again, the natural conclusion of that train of thought surprised him. He glanced up, meeting clear green eyes, and found that, although her face was completely controlled, they were full of laughter. As if she knew exactly what he’d been thinking.

  It was both disconcerting and annoying. He wasn’t accustomed to being manipulated, yet that was exactly how he felt. As if she we
re the one conducting the interview. As if she were the one making the evaluation.

  As if she had found him wanting.

  “You were about to tell me about the needs of my country, Mr. Snow,” she prodded at his silence.

  He took a breath, trying to gather his wits. He had to balance his innate distrust of everything Raine McAllister represented with the very real concerns he had about national security if The Covenant wasn’t stopped.

  And, too, there was his respect for Montgomery Gardner’s judgment. If the old man was right—if it was remotely possible this woman could help—then he had an obligation to pursue this.

  “We have reason to believe that members of The Covenant are funding, if not actively carrying out, domestic terrorism. We believe they are doing so in an attempt to provoke a response from our government against not only the known terrorist groups, but against the entire Muslim world. To set off an American jihad, if you will.”

  That was the word Bertha Reynolds had used during the final confrontation with Phoenix agent John Edmonds. Jihad. Holy war.

  “The agency I work for,” Ethan continued, choosing his words with care, “had some success several months ago in identifying a few individuals involved in that plan. At the time we were hopeful they were the only members of The Covenant who were in on the plot. That their actions were an aberration in an otherwise legitimate and benign charitable foundation.”

  When he glanced up, he realized that she was listening intently. At least she was no longer making fun of him.

  “Recently,” he went on, thinking about the most telling evidence they’d gathered, “there have been at least two bombing attempts that we believe may be tied to the organization. The problem is we can’t prove any of this. They’ve taken great pains to ensure that their membership list remains secret. We’ve had no success identifying their leaders. Then…Mr. Gardner suggested you could help.”

  “And now that you know why he suggested that?”

  Ethan had a feeling that if he attempted to prevaricate, she’d see right through him. Maybe literally.