by Linda Howard
The temptation was more than she could withstand. After carefully repacking the laptop and the papers, and making certain her money was secure, she turned out the lights and slipped off her shoes. She couldn’t relax her guard more than that, not after four days of only fitful naps, but that was enough.
A sigh shuddered from her lips as she stretched out on the bed. Every muscle in her body ached from the release of tension, the chance to relax and rest. Turning on her side, she curled into a ball and hugged the pillow to her, and then she slept.
She dreamed of Niall. The dreams were chaotic, turbulent, full of swords and battlefields. She dreamed of a castle, a great dark one, and the sight of it sent shivers of dread through her. The people whispered about the castle, and about the lord who lived there. He was a ruthless, brutal warrior who slew all who dared cross him. Decent folk kept their daughters away from the castle, for otherwise the lasses lost their virtue to him, and he wed none of them.
She dreamed of him sitting sprawled before the huge fire in the great central hall, black eyes narrowed and unreadable as he watched his men drink and eat. His hair was long and thick, braided at the temples.
A saucy wench plopped herself in his lap, and in her dream Grace held her breath, afraid of what this dream Niall might do. He merely smiled at the serving wench, a slow curve of his mouth that made Grace’s breath catch yet again. Then, in the way of dreams, the image shifted and moved on, and she slept more peacefully.
He felt it again, that sensation of being watched.
Niall lifted the wench from his lap with a promise of more attention when they were abed that night, but his alert gaze was moving around the hall. Who watched him, and why? He was lord of this castle and as such was accustomed to people looking to him for answers, for approval, or just to measure his mood. A lot of people looked at him, and to him, but this was different.
This was… watching.
There seemed nothing amiss in the hall. The air was smoky, the men loud. Laughter spilled from one bench and others turned to hear the jest. The serving wenches moved about, filling cups, fielding advances, bestowing smiles or frowns depending on how welcome was each advance. All was normal.
But still he felt that presence, the same one that had pulled him from his bed a few nights past. There was a softness that made him think it was a woman who watched him. Perhaps she found him to her liking, but she was shy. She couldn’t come to him boldly as most of the wenches did when they wanted a night of hard riding. She merely watched, and yearned.
But, looking around, he could find no lass who fit that description, and he scowled in frustration. If indeed a woman watched him, he would know her identity. Perhaps she had no reason other than a lass’s soft feelings, but Niall never forgot the Treasure he had sworn to protect. Any unusual occurrence heightened his alertness, and his hand unconsciously sought the blade at his belt. His black eyes narrowed as they swept the smoky hall, probing the shadows, reading men’s expressions in an instant, and passing on if nothing was amiss. The women, too, were carefully judged.
Again, he found nothing unusual.
But twice now he had felt himself watched, felt that other presence. He did not think it mere imagination. Niall had fought too many battles against foes both open and unseen, and he trusted his warrior’s instincts which had grown even more acute over the years.
His probing regard of the hall had been noticed, and the noise of many voices was quieting, uneasy glances sliding his way. Niall was aware of the whispered tales that had spread over the years. He was Black Niall, a warrior so fearsome he’d never been defeated in open fight, so canny he’d never been taken unawares. His own men trained with him, knew he bruised when hit, bled when cut, knew he sweated and groaned and cursed just as they did, but still… why was he so vigorous at an age when most men were losing their teeth and becoming graybeards? It was as if the hand of time had left him untouched. His hair remained black, his body strong, and illness didn’t touch him.
He sometimes wondered, uneasily, if Valcour had damned him to immortality by appointing him Guardian of the Treasure for which so many of his brothers-in-arms had died.
He didn’t like to think so. He would do his duty, uphold his vow, but he did it with bitterness. He guarded God’s treasures, but God had not guarded the guardians. Niall had not prayed, had not been to mass or confession, in more than thirteen years. His belief had died on a black night in October, along with so many of his friends, his brethren. It was for them he remained on guard, for otherwise they would have died in vain.
But he did not want to spend eternity guarding the secrets of a God whom he no longer worshipped. What a bitter joke that would be!
His mouth twisted with cold amusement, and restlessly he rose from his chair. His gaze sought and found the wench who had whispered so naughtily in his ear, and with a motion of his head he directed her toward the stair, and his chamber. As always, when the blackness of spirit was upon him, the relief he sought was in a woman’s body.
As soon as he’d stood, a woman had moved forward to remove his cup, and now he heard a hissing sound from her.
“What ails you, Alice?” he asked without looking around.
“Have a care with that lass,” she grumbled, earning an amused glance from him.
“Why is that?” He was fond of Alice. She had worked in the castle from the time of his return, a widow who had desperately needed even the most sinister of shelters for herself and her bairns. She was roughly his age, but was now a grandmother. Having been blessed with rather stringent common sense, over the years she had gradually assumed responsibility for household matters, and he was pleased with the situation.
She settled her cap more firmly over her springy gray hair. “She says ye’ll wed ’er, if she catches yer bairn in her belly.”
Niall’s eyes grew cold. Marriage and children were not for him, not with his life dedicated to guarding the Treasure. The women who shared his bed knew from the outset that he would not wed them, that he was interested only in bed sport, and he had always taken care that they were experienced in the ways of avoiding conception. It annoyed him that a woman, no matter how saucy or pretty, should try to trap him in such a way. With Alice’s warning, however, he wouldn’t let it happen.
He nodded briefly, then took himself up the stairs to rid his bedchamber of the untrustworthy wench. Before he left the hall, however, he took one last look around, hoping to espy the woman who had been watching him, whose feminine concentration he had felt.
There was nothing, but he knew she had been there. He had felt her. He would find her.
Chapter 7
THERE WAS NOTHING UNUSUAL ABOUT THE WOMAN WHO GOT OFF the bus in Chicago. No one had paid her any attention, not the agent who had sold her the ticket, not the driver, not the other passengers who sat absorbed in their own lives, their own troubles, their own reasons for being on the bus.
Her hair was blond and curly, one of those frizz jobs that didn’t look good on anyone but required no maintenance beyond washing. Her clothes were clean but nondescript, the kind that could be bought at any discount store: baggy jeans, inexpensive athletic shoes, a navy blue sweatshirt. Nothing about her luggage attracted attention, either. It was a cheap nylon model, in a particularly unappealing shade of brown that the designer had tried to brighten by adding a red stripe down one side. It hadn’t worked.
Maybe it was a little unusual that she’d worn sunglasses the entire trip, because, after all, the bus windows were tinted, but there was one other passenger who also wore sunglasses, so overall there was nothing about her that would make anyone look twice.
When the bus lurched to a stop at the depot in Chicago, Grace silently produced her luggage receipt and took possession of the ugly brown duffel. She would have preferred keeping the laptop with her, but people tended to notice if someone carried a computer everywhere. With that in mind, she had packed the computer in its protective case, then further buffered it in the duffel with her m
eager supply of clothing.
It had been a week since her world had shattered, a week exactly.
Her life then had ended, and another had begun. She didn’t feel the same, didn’t look the same, didn’t think the same way she had before she had lost everything and been thrown into a life in the streets and on the run. The sharp paring knife rode in a scabbard on her belt, and was covered by the sweatshirt. The screwdriver she had taken from the storage building on that horrible first day was tucked into her right sock; it wasn’t as good a weapon as the knife, but she had honed it against a rock until she was satisfied with its sharpness.
She had exhausted the Eau Claire library’s fund of knowledge about the Templars. She had learned a lot, including the significance of the date on which the Order had been destroyed: Friday the thirteenth, giving birth to the superstition about the combination of day and date. Interesting, but not what she had wanted. She had searched in vain for any reference, in either the Templars’ recorded history or in Scotland’s history, to Niall of Scotland.
She had to dig deeper, and Chicago, with its vast library on things Gaelic, was a good place to start. Remaining another day in Eau Claire would have been risky, anyway. Parrish’s men would have tried to pick up her trail outside Eau Claire, but when they didn’t find anything they would return to the town. Any halfway competent goon would begin checking the motels, and though she’d been careful to alter her appearance by either wearing the blond wig or tucking her hair up under the baseball cap, eventually they would find her.
She felt stronger now, no longer operating in a barely controlled panic, but at the same time she was alert. She had slept, and she had forced herself to eat a peanut butter sandwich at least once a day. Eating was still difficult, and her jeans were even looser now than they had been before. The belt she wore, bought at another Kmart, was a necessity. She had even washed the jeans in hot water in an effort to shrink them, but any shrinkage must have been in length instead of width, because they still hung on her. If she lost much more weight, even the belt wouldn’t help. She didn’t intend to spend any more of her precious store of money on new clothes, so what she already had would have to do.
She had formulated a plan. Rather than living off her cash until it was all gone, she had to have a job. There were underground jobs in Chicago, washing dishes or cleaning houses, and those suited her perfectly. No one would become concerned if one day she didn’t show. On the other hand, those types of jobs would be low-paying, and while they would tide her over for now, she would soon need something better. For that, she would need to develop another identity, and back it up with documentation.
Being what she was, a researcher, that was the approach she had used to find out how to establish a new identity. In this instance, the Eau Claire library had provided her with the information she needed.
It seemed relatively simple, though it would take time. First she would need a dead person, someone who had been born about the same time she had, but who had died young enough that there wouldn’t be a job history, school records, or traffic violations to follow Grace around after she assumed the girl’s identity. Once she had a name, she could write to the proper department at the state capital and get a copy of the birth certificate. With the birth certificate, she could get a social security number; with that, she could get a driver’s license, establish credit, become a new person.
She stored the duffel in a locker and carefully tucked the key in her front pants pocket. Then she located a phone book and flipped through the directory until she found the listing for cemeteries. After jotting down the names, she stopped a maintenance worker and asked which cemetery was the nearest, then went to someone else, a ticket agent, and asked for directions.
Two hours later, after having ridden on five different buses, she arrived back at the bus depot.
She bought a newspaper, found a seat, put on her glasses, and began looking through the tiny, densely printed classifieds for a place to stay. She didn’t want crummy and couldn’t afford comfortable, so run-down was the best alternative. By comparing prices, she eliminated both ends of the scale, and that left several places that fell in the middle. Two were boardinghouses, and she put those at the top of her list. Two phone calls later, she had a place to stay and directions on how to get there, including which El train and buses to take.
The best thing about a large city, she thought as she walked toward the El station, was the intracity transportation system. The buses had made getting to the cemetery easy enough. She could have walked to the boardinghouse; a week ago the distance would have daunted her, but now five miles seemed like nothing. She could easily walk five miles in an hour and a half. But the trains and buses were cheap and fast, so why should she? Half an hour later she got off the train, walked a block just in time to get on the bus she needed, and five minutes after that was walking down the street looking at house numbers.
The boardinghouse was a square, lumpish three-story building that hadn’t seen a new coat of pain in several years. A three-foot-high picket fence, sagging in places, separated the scraggly, minuscule patch of lawn from the broken sidewalk. There was no gate. Grace walked up to the door and pushed the buzzer.
“Yeah.” The voice was the same one that had answered the telephone: deep and raspy, but somehow female.
“I called about the room for rent—”
“Yeah, okay,” the voice interrupted brusquely. Grace waited, and heard heavy steps clomping toward the door.
Grace had put on her sunglasses again as soon as she’d finished reading the classifieds, and was deeply grateful for that protection when the door was unlocked and swung open to reveal one of the most astonishing creatures she’d ever seen. At least the woman couldn’t see her gawking.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” the landlady said impatiently, and in silence Grace entered the house. Without another word the woman—and now Grace wasn’t so certain of the gender—closed and locked the door, then clomped back the way she’d come. Grace followed, bag in hand.
The woman was easily six feet tall, rangy and loose-limbed. Her hair was bleached lemony white, and cut in short spikes. Her skin was a smooth, pale brown, like heavily creamed coffee, hinting at some exotic ancestry. A huge sunflower earring dangled from one ear, while a row of studs marched up the outer rim of the other. Her shoulders were broad and bony, her feet and hands big. Her feet looked bigger than they probably were because she was wearing hiking boots and thick socks. Her ensemble was completed by a black T-shirt with a loose yellow tank top layered over it, and tight black bicycle shorts with narrow lime-green stripes on the sides. She managed to look both ominous and festive.
“You a working girl?”
The question was fired at her as the landlady led her into an office so tiny it had to be a converted closet. There was a small, scarred wooden desk, an ancient office chair behind it, a two-drawer filing cabinet, and what looked like a kitchen chair. It was scrupulously neat, the two pens, stapler, receipt book, and telephone lined up like soldiers for inspection. The woman took a seat behind the desk.
“Not yet,” Grace replied, taking off her sunglasses now that she had her reaction under control. She would have preferred leaving them on, but that would look suspicious. She sat in the other chair, and placed the bag beside her. “I just got into town, but I intend to look for a job tomorrow.”
The landlady lit a long, thin cigarette and eyed Grace through the billow of blue smoke. Every finger was decorated with an ornate ring, and Grace found herself watching the movements of those big, oddly graceful hands.
Suddenly the woman snorted. “I guess not,” she said shrewdly. “Honey, a working girl is a whore. Didn’t think you looked the type, despite the cheap wig. No makeup, and you’re wearing a wedding ring. You on the run from your old man?”
Grace looked down at her hands, and gently turned the plain gold band Ford had given her when they married. “No,” she murmured.
“He’s dead, huh?”
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Surprised, Grace looked up.
“You ain’t divorced, or you wouldn’t be wearing the ring. First thing, you split from an asshole, the ring comes off.” Sharp green eyes flicked over Grace’s clothes. “Your clothes are too big, too; looks like you’ve lost some weight. Misery takes away the appetite, don’t it?”
She understood, Grace realized, both terrified and comforted. In less than two minutes this strange, tough, disturbingly astute woman had sized her up and accurately read details no one else had even noticed. “Yes,” she said, because some answer seemed indicated.
Whatever she saw in Grace’s face, whatever deductions she drew from it, the woman abruptly seemed to make up her mind. “M’name’s Harmony,” she said, leaning over the desk and holding out her hand. “Harmony Johnson. More people named Johnson than Smith or Brown or Jones, you know that?”
Grace shook it; it was like shaking a man’s bigger, rougher hand. “Julia Wynne,” she said, using the name she’d taken from a small marker on an unkempt grave. The girl, born five years before Grace, had died just after her eleventh birthday. The marker had read: “Our Angel.”
“Rooms are seventy a week,” Harmony Johnson said. “They’re damn clean. I don’t allow no drugs, no parties, no whores. I got outta that, and I don’t want it in my house. You clean up after yourself in the bathroom. I’ll clean your room if you want, but that’s another ten bucks a week. Most people do for themselves.”
“I’ll do the cleaning,” Grace said.
“Thought so. You can have a hot plate, coffeemaker in your room, but no major cooking. I like to cook a big breakfast. Most of my people eat breakfast with me. How you feed yourself the rest of the time is your problem.” She gave Grace another once-over. “Don’t guess you’re too worried about food right now, but time’ll take care of that.”