“Back to my place so you can sleep.”

“I can nap in the car.”

“What’s the point? It’s not like we’ve got any more clues to follow up on at the moment. Phone Las Vegas. Give them the information we just got about the guy with the briefcase, Waddell. Let Arganbright and Lucas Pine do their thing while you sleep.”

For a moment she thought he was going to argue. Instead North took out his phone and called Las Vegas. By the time he was finished she was pulling into the garage of her apartment tower.

She shut down the engine and unclipped her seat belt. Automatically she checked the SUV’s oversized mirrors. No auras flashed in the glass. She started to open her door but a thought made her pause.

“It occurs to me that everything about this situation involves paranormal light, specifically the kind that you can handle,” she said.

“I’ve got my grandfather’s talent,” North said. “My dad has it, too, but he got a slightly different version.”

“No two talents are exactly identical.”

“No, but psychic signatures tend to be passed down through the bloodline.”

“That’s what your father sensed when he picked up that metal rod.”

“Yes. And what I sensed in this light grenade.”

“Hmm.”

North looked at her. The cold garage lights glittered on his mirrored glasses.

“What?” he said.

“Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it occurs to me that the fact that you started losing your talent a few weeks ago, not long before your father picked up that artifact that carries your grandfather’s signature, is one heck of a coincidence. And now, tonight, we nearly got burned by a light grenade that also carries your grandfather’s psychic DNA.”

North sat silently for a time.

“I’m open to conspiracy theories,” he said finally. “Got one?”

“No. Just looking at what appear to be a couple of themes.”

“Paranormal light,” North said, “and Griffin Chastain’s psychic signature.”

“Right.”

“There’s something you probably don’t know about my grandfather. He worked on the Bluestone Project. He was assigned to the Fogg Lake lab. He disappeared shortly after my father was born. There were rumors at the time that he betrayed his country. That he sold secrets to the old Soviet Union. The general assumption was that he either disappeared behind the Iron Curtain or was murdered by the spy who recruited him.”

“What does your family think?”

“We think he was murdered, but not by a Cold War spy. Our theory is his research partner killed him.”

“Why?”

“Because the partner wanted to steal the devices he and Griffin Chastain had developed,” North said. “Devices like this light grenade. And maybe that crystal gun Matt Harper described. I wonder if that was what was used on Dad.”

“Are you telling me your grandfather and his partner were working on paranormal weapons?”

North looked down at the light grenade he cradled in his hands. “Apparently.”

“And now, after all these years, some of those weapons are starting to surface. Who was Griffin Chastain’s research partner?”