“Where did your grandmother get the sets of fake ID?” Fallon asked.

“From an old family firm that specializes in that kind of high-end art. They’ve been in business for generations. Grandma always said that if they were good enough for J&J, they were good enough for her.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that she uses the Harper family’s services.”

Isabella smiled into her cup. “Good guess.”

Understanding whispered through him. “Why did you come to Scargill Cove, Isabella?”

“To find you, of course,” she said very steadily. “Grandma always told me that if anything ever happened to her or if I got into the kind of trouble that I couldn’t handle on my own, I should contact Jones & Jones.”

“Why did it take you this long to tell me the truth?”

“Because I had to be sure I could trust you. We are all influenced by our upbringing. I was raised in a family of conspiracy theorists. I have certain hardwired eccentricities.”

“In other words, you don’t trust anyone outside the family.”

“I trust you, Fallon, now that I’ve had a chance to know you. But I had to be sure. My grandmother’s life, assuming she is still alive, depends on it.”

“And if she is dead?”

Isabella’s eyes darkened. “Then I will avenge her.”

He steepled his fingers, thinking. “What makes you think someone would try to kill her?”

“Because they don’t want her to expose the conspiracy on her website, of course. But I’m praying that she outwitted them. Grandma is really, really good when it comes to this kind of stuff. With luck, the bastards believe that she’s dead.”

Wheels within wheels, Fallon thought. Classic conspiracy theory logic. No context, no hard facts, no problem.

“Why would they believe she’s dead?” he asked.

“There’s plenty of documentation confirming her death.” Isabella waved that off. “There was a notice in the local paper. A death certificate was filed. According to the records, Grandma was cremated. It’s all very neat and tidy.”

“But you’re not buying any of it?”

“It’s possible that they found her,” Isabella conceded. “But I think there is also a very good chance that she is alive and has gone into hiding. I have no way to contact her. That was part of the plan, you see. She told me that if she ever had to disappear, we had to make it look solid.”

“But she told you to come to J&J for help?”

“Yes.” Isabella watched him with a steely determination. “They’re after me, too. I got away once, but I might not be so lucky a second time.”

Fallon went stone cold. “Someone tried to kill you?”

“In Phoenix about a month ago. They found me at the department store where I was working. That’s when it hit me.” Isabella broke off. Tears glistened in her eyes.

“When what hit you?” he prompted.

“That they might have found her, after all.” Isabella opened her desk drawer, yanked a tissue out of the small box she kept there and wiped her eyes. “I had been telling myself that she was following the emergency plan. Gone into hiding. But if they found me, maybe they found her, too. Maybe she really is dead.”

Isabella was crying. He had no clue what to do in a situation like this.

“Isabella,” he said.

“Sorry,” she said. She sniffed into the tissue. “It’s just that if she really is gone, it’s as if she never even lived. She set things up that way. Her only legacy is her website, and it just sits there online like some kind of virtual tombstone. I can hardly bring myself to look at it.”

“Isabella,” he said again. And stopped because he could not think of anything else to say.

“If she’s dead, it’s my fault because I told her about the conspiracy,” Isabella said into the tissue.

He was on his feet without conscious thought. He rounded his desk, yanking the clean, neatly folded white handkerchief out of his pocket. She took the handkerchief from him, looked at it for a few seconds as if she had never seen one and then she started to cry quietly into it.

He hauled her gently to her feet, wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly, as if he could somehow shield her from the dark fantasy world she had constructed.

With a small cry, she dropped the damp handkerchief onto the desk, buried her face against the front of his black pullover and sobbed in earnest.

He stood there with her while the fog off the ocean rolled in, cloaking the town and the office windows, isolating them from the rest of the world.

After a while, Isabella stopped crying. She raised her head and gave him a shaky smile.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Lately that’s been happening to me without warning. I’m fine one minute and then I think about how she might actually be dead and that maybe I’m just fooling myself and all of a sudden I’m crying.”

“It’s all right,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He realized that she was trying to step back. Reluctantly he opened his arms and released her.

She sat down, carefully refolded the damp handkerchief and handed it to him. She grabbed another tissue and blew her nose one last time. She tossed the tissue into the trash basket, drank some tea and composed herself.

He stood in the center of the office for a few seconds, unsure of what to do next. When nothing helpful came to mind, he went back to his desk, swallowed more coffee and forced himself to focus on the problem at hand.

“Using your line of logic,” he began.

She gave him a wan smile. “That’s a polite way of saying you don’t believe me.”

Out of nowhere anger flashed through him. “Damn it, don’t put words in my mouth. I’m trying to gather facts here.”

She sighed. “I know. I apologize. I’ve been a little emotional lately.”

“Understandable,” he said gruffly.

She nodded, very serious. “Yes, I think so. I’ve been under a lot of stress.”

“That’s certainly one word for it,” he agreed. “All right, let’s try this again. You said someone tried to kill you a few weeks ago in Phoenix?”

“Yes. Well, two men tried to kidnap me. I’m sure they planned to kill me.”

“How did you escape?” he asked.

She moved one hand in a vague motion. “Turns out there’s a flip side of my talent. I can find things and people, all right. But I can use my ability to conceal them, as well. I can tell someone to get lost. Literally. That’s what I did with the two thugs they sent after me.”

He ignored the pronoun. They was very popular with conspiracy buffs. There was always a mysterious they manipulating things from behind the scenes.

“How does it work?” he asked.

She blinked. “How does what work?”

“Your talent.”

“How does any talent work?” She gave a little shrug. “I have to have physical contact to do it, that’s all I know. They had me cornered on a mall roof. I sent them down an emergency stairwell and out onto the street. I don’t know what happened to them after that. I assume they walked for a while until they came out of the trance.”

“Or got run down?”

“I told them to only cross at the lights,” she said. “When I put people into a get-lost trance, they tend to follow orders very precisely.”

“Sounds like a form of hypnotic suggestion.”

“I suppose so.”

“Why did you tell them to only cross at the lights?”

“I assumed that if two guys from the company I used to work for got run down on a Phoenix street, it would create more problems than it would solve,” she said. “Dead bodies have a way of causing trouble.”

But the lack of dead bodies meant no police records or any other kind of evidence that would lend credibility to her story, he thought. He was starting to understand how Alice had felt when she fell down the rabbit hole. He had to deal with the very real possibility that Isabella was as lost in a conspiracy fantasy as the Sentinel. But one thing was clear, Isabella believed every word she was saying.