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  Jack smiled. “Think I could meet her someday?”

  “As long as I don’t have to go with you.”

  “Ah.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You and I, little sister, are a therapist’s dream.” At the library door he stopped. “Let’s do it in here. Ready?”

  “I hope so.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “IF YOU START CRYING AGAIN, I’LL…” JACK SAID under his breath to Darci.

  “I am not crying. I just got a little misty, that’s all. And besides, what would you do to me?” She glared at him.

  “Nothing,” he said, checking his rifle yet again. Concealed in his black clothing were three handguns, two knives, four round throwing disks that Darci called “ninja things,” and a vial of poison. “I don’t know what you’re so upset about, just because you’re wearing a black leotard. You don’t look bad. If you weren’t like a sister to me, that is.” Grinning, he slipped another knife into a concealed pocket of his loose trousers.

  “I’m not upset about that, it’s just the memories that wearing a catsuit bring back to me. I bought mine when I was with Adam the first time. I wore it into the tunnels that first night. That all seems so very long ago now.”

  “Come on, buck up,” Jack said. “You looked into this and you said it would be all right.”

  “I can’t see the future. If I could, I’d look ahead and see how I find Adam, then I’d go get him.”

  “That’s my girl! Not if, but how. So, now, dry your eyes and let’s get out of here.”

  “I’m not sure we should do this,” Darci said. “Maybe Greg and the FBI should handle it.”

  “We’ve been through this enough,” Jack said. They’d spent yesterday afternoon and into the night with Darci putting herself into trances to see what she could concerning the whereabouts of John Barrett Hallbrooke. Jack had given her everything he could find that his father had touched so she could feel the items and see what she could.

  “Safe,” was the main word that she came up with. His father was safe. Finally, they’d begun looking at what was around Hallbrooke in her visions. It was confusing because Darci’s visions often showed where he’d been in the past. She’d touch an item on his desk and know that he’d liked or not liked the person who had given him the gift.

  “He’s rich but people outdo themselves in trying to give him expensive gifts,” Jack said as he picked up an eighteen-carat-gold paperweight. By 10:00 P.M. they gave up on the office and went into his bedroom to try to find something personal, but they found nothing. At midnight they went up to the attic and found a trunk full of old photos.

  Darci held some pictures of Jack as a young man up against his face and compared them. “Big change,” she said. “Did they have to use a jackhammer to get rid of that nose?”

  “By the time the steering wheel smashed it flat it was easy to remove the pieces.”

  She held the photo tightly. “I can feel the anger in you back then, and I can almost see Millie’s angry spirit hovering over you.”

  Jack didn’t say anything, but she knew how glad he was to be rid of that spirit.

  Darci held up another photo. “This is your mother, isn’t it? She was very pretty.”

  Jack had seen few photos of his mother and knew little about her. Although he’d asked his father many times, he’d never received any answers. “So this is where you tell me that he loved her and my father’s coldness is from his misery at her death.”

  “No,” Darci said. “As far as I can tell, your father was born cold. Displays of emotions disgust him. I think he feels emotions, but he didn’t feel any love for your mother.”

  “So why’d he marry her?”

  “To procreate himself, of course. Continue the species.”

  Jack laughed. “Failed there, didn’t he? He got me instead.”

  “I don’t think he feels that he failed,” Darci said softly.

  “What about my mother?”

  “Money. All she wanted was money. She was much colder than your father. Truly cold. She resented every penny your father gave to anyone besides her.” She looked at Jack. “I think you were lucky that the mother you knew was Greg’s mother.”

  Jack took a photo and looked at it. His beautiful socialite mother. She’d died in a swimming accident when he was only three. “How did she die? I was never told the details.”

  “Drunk,” Darci said. “With two lovers. She jumped into the swimming pool, but it had been emptied for the spring cleaning. She broke her neck.”

  “Ah,” Jack said and put the photos down. It was probably much better that he didn’t remember her, and hadn’t grown up near her.

  At 3:00 A.M. they at last got a break. They’d been going through Jack’s father’s filing cabinets. Everything was meticulously organized, all of it boring and predictable.

  “No receipts for objects believed to be magic,” Jack said as he tossed aside a folder with a single piece of paper in it.

  When a little charge went up Darci’s arm, she reached for the folder, but she didn’t open it. “This is where your father is.”

  “Yeah?” he said, opening the folder. Inside was a deed of ownership to a house about a hundred miles from where they were. “I know this place! I’ve been there. I went with Greg and his parents when we were eight.” He looked at her. “You’re sure he’s here? He owns this, so I doubt if the kidnappers would have taken him there.”

  Darci put her hand on Jack’s arm. “I think we should tell the FBI where your father is and let them go get him.”

  “This isn’t the place the FBI knows about? Where the ransom drop is?”

  “No. I can’t feel that it is. I think they believe he’s in another state. I’m not sure about that, though. I got all I could from Greg’s glass, but he didn’t know much.”

  “If I tell the FBI, they’ll go in with a dozen men and helicopters and my father will end up dead. I’m going in to get him myself. Alone.”

  “Without me?” Darci asked innocently.

  “That’s right. Without you.”

  “And how do you plan to leave me behind?” She stared at him for a moment, then Jack sneezed.

  When he was on his twelfth sneeze, he said, “You don’t play fair.”

  “Never have, never will. Let’s get some sleep and tomorrow—”

  “By tomorrow night my father will be dead,” Jack said, blowing his nose. “Whoever has him is going to get the money today and kill him tonight. And, no, don’t try to find that out psychically. I’ve worked on cases like this for years and I know what happens.”

  Darci sat back on the floor and looked up at Jack. She’d felt a lot of things that she hadn’t told him about. The main thing was that Jack needed to do this. He needed to find his father if he was to heal old wounds. And he also needed Darci. She wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but she could tell that he needed her to make it all happen.

  In the end, Jack had his way and they started getting dressed. It would be the foggy light of dawn by the time they got there, so Jack had them both dress in black. They’d rummaged in Chrissy’s room and found a black one-piece leotard that Darci could wear.

  Jack had been unprepared when Darci looked at herself in the mirror and started crying. While he was dressing and loading himself with weapons, she sniffled and talked about Adam and their life together.

  He got her into the car, with a cooler full of food in the back, and he drove while Darci talked. After the first few minutes he managed to direct her away from her wondrous life with Adam Montgomery and onto what happened when she’d helped the actor Lincoln Aimes find his son.

  What interested Jack was that she could read Aimes’s mind when she touched him. Since he’d met Darci they’d had no time to explore what could be done between the two of them. Irrationally, Jack felt a wave of jealousy over Aimes and Darci.

  “Aimes’s son can heal?” Jack asked in wonder.

  “Yes. I think he has more