“Where does Blake Sefton fit into this?”

“Sefton must have been one of the few survivors of the Vortex project. It was a small team working in close proximity. He would have been acquainted with everyone involved. He may have managed to keep track of some of the others who escaped the assassin.”

“Including my grandmother?”

“Yes. If he knew her real identity, he probably knew she died in that house fire. If he knew that much, there’s a high probability that he was aware of your mother. He may have known she was living in Fogg Lake.”

Olivia mulled that over for a moment. “You think the killer learned about my mother from Blake Sefton?”

“It fits,” Harlan said. “After he got the information he needed from Sefton, he murdered him. There must have been a fortune in artifacts in that house, so the killer arranged to take possession of it with the offshore trust. He never found the Vortex relics in Sefton’s vault, but he sold off the items in the gallery over the course of the past year.”

“Assassins probably need cash like everyone else,” Olivia said. “But he murdered my mother almost a year ago. Why wait so long to come after me?”

“He must have known about you but it was obvious you were an aura reader, not an oracle. He probably decided to try to find another oracle who could operate the camera. Or maybe he tried to tune the camera to his vibe. Eventually he gave up and pinned his hopes on you. But by then you were involved with the Foundation. That made things very dangerous for him.”

“How did the camera end up in Gwendolyn Swan’s shop?”

“I can think of one possibility that would explain it,” Harlan said.

Olivia’s eyes widened. “Gwendolyn Swan is involved in this thing?”

“At the moment, I am assigning a high probability to that scenario.”

Olivia stilled. “She called me.”

“Who called you?”

“Gwendolyn Swan. She hired me to verify the provenance of some artifacts she had acquired. She said she was worried they might have been stolen. I walked into her shop and saw the camera. I was drawn to it immediately. Swan sold it to me for less than a hundred dollars.”

“And then she and the killer waited to see if you could resonate with it. They needed proof this time, and they had to be very careful. They were playing with fire.”

“The Foundation,” Olivia whispered.

“Lark and LeClair’s biggest client. Arganbright and Pine know you personally. If you disappeared they would be sure to investigate.”

“So there was no point taking the risk of grabbing me unless they were confident I could resonate with the camera. They were waiting and watching me and then you showed up.”

“They realized I was after you, too,” Harlan said. “Whoever is behind this must be in a full-blown panic by now.”