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“I put my hand on his arm. I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to thank him for trying to warn me about Margaret Moore. But he suddenly remembered exactly why I made him nervous.”
Ambrose smiled a wicked smile. “Oh, right. You’ve got the magic touch. No wonder you scared him.”
“I don’t scare you,” Pallas said.
“Nope, but if you ever do I’ll just get out my manacle and chain.”
“That sounds... kinky.”
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
He awoke tothe luxurious warmth of Pallas’ soft, sleek body curled against him. He draped an arm around her waist, trying to draw her closer yet. He told himself he should go back to sleep, but he made the mistake of opening his eyes. There was still a lot of night on the other side of the window, but he could perceive the subtle light of impending dawn.
Pallas stirred. “What?”
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.
“Too late. I’m awake.” She turned onto her back and stretched her arms overhead. “So why are we both having this conversation at”—she paused and turned her head to look at the clock on the bedside table—“four ten in the morning?”
“I dreamed about the video of my night in the Institute.” He levered himself up on his elbow. “We’re missing something in it.”
“What makes you so sure of that?”
“The fact that Guthrie and Moore murdered Geddings to keep him from selling it to me.”
“They didn’t want the drug experiments and the dope dealing exposed,” Pallas said. “Sounds like a motive for murder to me.”
“That’s just it.” Ambrose pushed the covers aside and sat up. “There’s nothing on that video that exposes the experiments or the dealing. It shows me going to sleep, waking up, climbing out of bed, and walking toward the door. Then we see Dr.Fenner getting me back into bed. Yes, I’m sure he gave me a sedative out in the hallway when I got up to see what was going on, and afterward he sat me down in a chair while he wiped the blood off my hands, but there’s nothing on the video that shows that. The video doesn’t incriminate anyone. What made Geddings think I would pay for it?”
“Maybe he thought he could scam you, tell you there was some actual evidence on it,” Pallas said. “He was in the drug-dealing business. By definition he was good at lying. He was planning to leave town. He probably thought that by the time you were able to view the video he would have disappeared.”
“Maybe.” Ambrose swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his trousers. “But there’s something else that’s been bothering me about that video.”
Pallas sat up. “What?”
He pulled on the trousers and got to his feet. “I went to sleep so damn easily that night.”
“You said Fenner told you that was often the case when people underwent sleep studies.”
“It shouldn’t have been the case, not with me.” Ambrose picked up his phone and looked at her. “And even if I did somehow magically go to sleep that easily, I should have awakened after about twenty or thirty minutes. But that night I went out and stayed out until Brooke Kendrick screamed. That was around two in the morning. When I did get out of bed, I wasn’t dreaming; I was in my other vision. It was disorienting.”
She watched him carry the phone to the table and sit down. “What are you going to do?”
“Watch that damn video we found in Geddings’s go bag again. This time I need to pay more attention to the details at the beginning. Maybe I missed something the first time around.”
Pallas got out of bed and pulled on the plush hotel robe. “I’ll watch it with you. Let me get my sketchbook and make some coffee.”
“Thanks. But why the sketchbook?”
“When I draw things I see them in a different light. Literally.”
—
An hour laterPallas sat back and positioned her sketchbook on the table so that they could both see what she had created. Ambrose studied the images. They were all scenes of Dr.Fenner reattaching the electrodes that connected to the black box. The images reminded him of the drawings done by courtroom sketch artists—minimalist pictures designed to capture the emotion and drama of the moment.
“Fenner looks very, very intent,” he said.
