Page 71 of It takes a Psychic

Leona folded her arms around her midsection. “Sabotage.”

“Yep.”

“This is all about that yellow pyramid crystal, isn’t it? The cult crowd thinks we have it and they really believe it’s the key to resurrecting Vance.”

“Looks like it.”

“We need to do something. We need to act. We can’t just hang around waiting for stuff to happen.”

“I agree,” Oliver said. “Tonight I’m going to pay a late-night call on the local rez-screen broadcasting station.”

“Well, I suppose that’s better than doing nothing.”

“Thanks for your encouragement and support.”

She winced. “You know what I meant.”

His mouth kicked up in the little twitch that signaled amusement. “You’re not the wait-and-see type, are you?”

“Apparently not.” She glanced at the messenger bag in the back seat. “Why did you buy the Bluestone document if you knew it was a forgery?”

“Curiosity. I’d like to know who went to the trouble and expense of producing a fraudulent edition of a document relating to an Old World research project that was scrapped back in the twentieth century.”

Leona got a ping. “How did you find out about it?”

“Another very good question. I rely on a handful of independent book and artifact scouts who work in the gray market.”

“I see,” Leona said.

“Are you going to go all judgy on me?”

“Nope. As you pointed out, every museum dabbles in the gray market from time to time. Goes with the territory. Are you saying you got the lead on the Bluestone document from one of your scouts?”

“Yes. It felt solid so I set up the appointment with Thacker. Meanwhile, I was also planning to attend the Antiquarian Society’s reception to retrieve Pandora’s box.”

Another frisson of knowing shivered across her senses. “We are assuming that someone manipulated things to make sure that I was there, but they could not have known you would be there, too.”

“No, pretty sure my presence on the scene was not part of the plan.”

She glanced at him. “Regardless, we were both supposed to end up here in Lost Creek, weren’t we?”

“Looks like it.”

“Talk about a complicated strategy.”

Oliver tapped a finger on the wheel. “There are two kinds of planners. Those like me, who prefer the simplest, least complicated approach—and then there are the jugglers.”

“Jugglers?”

“They go for elaborate, complicated scenarios because it makes them feel smarter than everyone else. In control. But in reality, they are jugglers who pride themselves on keeping a lot of spinning plates in the air.That works great right up until a plate falls off a pole. Lose one and the others become unstable.”

“I don’t like thinking of you and me as a couple of spinning plates.”

“The good news for us is that our juggler lost control back at the start,” Oliver said. “They just don’t know it yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m sure the juggler never anticipated that we would become allies. If anything, we should have been rivals.”

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