When the Shadows Fall: A Romantic Thriller (Blackwood Security Book 14)

by Elise Noble

  I trooped downstairs a few minutes after seven with Vanessa in tow, only to find a group of girls clustered around a sofa in the living room. Not the Britneys, thank goodness—they’d been keeping a low profile since the shart incident—but one of them was crying.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Hillary’s crush is in the hospital,” a brunette explained. “She’s devastated.”

  “Was there an accident?” I hadn’t heard an ambulance, but Asher had turned the volume on the TV up loud to cover the sound of our conversation. Linton Hall had thin walls. He’d already faced questions about our laughter the other night, and he’d had to pretend he was watching a stand-up show.

  “No!” a redhead said. “It was totally deliberate.”

  “What was deliberate?”

  “Celebgossip.com says a masked man broke into his mansion in Malibu and cut off his you-know-what. Then made him eat it!”

  “What? Whose house?”

  “Brock Keaton’s, of course. Hillary’s been in love with him forever.”

  A chill ran through me. Actually, it was more of an iceberg, and it ploughed into my stomach.

  “Somebody broke into Brock Keaton’s house and cut off his…”

  “His penis,” the brunette whispered. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”

  I had a fairly good idea. If I’d had to write a list of who I thought might have done it, that list would’ve had precisely one name on it. Personal time, my ass. I didn’t know whether to kiss his feet or yell at him.

  Instead, I traipsed back up the hill to Asher’s shed and dialled. This time, Rafael picked up.

  “Good vacation?” I asked.

  “It was…satisfying.”

  “Let me guess—you went to LA?”

  “I don’t think we need to go into the details.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? And how did you even know it was him?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I sent you twenty messages, and you didn’t reply to any of them.”

  “Black said everything was under control.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  Rafael’s voice softened. Just a tiny bit, but it was there. “I’ll call next time.”

  Next time? Good grief. But a little of the fight went out of me. Rafael had cut my rapist’s fetid dick off, and if Hillary and her friends were to be believed, he’d also made Brock eat the sorry remains. That motherfucker wouldn’t be able to hurt another girl the way he’d hurt me.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. “For everything.”

  “How’s the job going?”

  “Nate hid the latest batch of bugs in a box of chocolates and my roommate tried to eat them, but apart from that…”

  A rare laugh from Rafael. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

  “See ya.”

  Aaaaand he was gone.

  As I walked back down the hill, I tried to sort through the muddle of thoughts in my head. Asher. Rafael. The case. Vanessa. How was Lenny? I missed life at Riverley and its brutal simplicity.

  Everything was jumbled.

  Which was perhaps why I almost missed him. Almost, but not quite. The waiter from the Grove walked towards me pushing a wheelbarrow, this time dressed in the black cargo pants and maroon polo shirt worn by all the groundsmen. I still had my phone in my hand, and I managed to snap a photo of him.

  “You’re not meant to be out here alone,” he said as we passed. Thankfully, there was no spark of recognition in his eyes.

  “Sorry. I was with my friend, but she got ahead.”

  “Stay together next time.”

  I felt like punching the air. All the pieces were finally falling into place.

  CHAPTER 35 - SKY

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON, AND the clouds were heavy with rain. I was counting down the minutes until it would be dark enough for me to sneak out of New Hall and into Asher’s apartment, which would hopefully be sooner rather than later because everything was grey, grey, grey. Miss Brooks was on guard downstairs again, and this time she’d brought her cello. The strains of a haunting tune drifted up the stairs, and it would have been quite lovely if anyone but that old bag had been playing it.

  The day had been pretty much a write-off. Half of the teachers were in—unusual for a Sunday—which meant I was shit out of luck when it came to planting bugs. I’d dragged myself out for a run this morning, careful to avoid the waiter-slash-art-thief, and I’d shocked myself by actually doing my biology homework.

  My phone pinged with a message from Vanessa. She’d spent the morning trying to convince me that we should snoop around the art department just in case anyone had hidden a hot painting there, which seemed quite unlikely, and in the end, I’d begged Asher to call her and insist they work on the song they were writing together. That had bought me an hour of peace, but it seemed it wasn’t to last.

  Vanessa: Come over! We’re in the creepy music room in the west wing.

  Me: Can’t. Teachers everywhere and I’m not allowed near Asher.

  Vanessa: He says they’re all going to some meeting. It’ll be dead quiet.

  A meeting? My synapses fired. What kind of a meeting? A regular staff meeting, or could it be the special meeting that Saul and Dr. Merritt were discussing the other day? We’d confirmed it was Dr. Merrit now. Who told Asher about the meeting? Did he have any more information?

  Me: Which is the creepy music room?

  The whole damn school was creepy. That description didn’t narrow it down much.

  Vanessa: Asher says you went there before with him.

  Me: Five minutes.

  I stuffed in an earpiece, told Ryder I was going to the main building, and slid down the tree trunk. The heavens opened the moment I hit the ground, and by the time I hauled open the back door, I was soaked through to my knickers. Bloody brilliant. I wasn’t exactly vain, but I didn’t particularly want Asher to see me looking like a drowned rat. A roll of thunder rumbled overhead, and I almost missed the footsteps coming in my direction. Crap! I ducked into an alcove seconds before Dr. Merritt ambled past. So much for everyone being in a meeting. Well, I wasn’t going back to my room, not in that storm. I’d wait it out.

  My shoes squelched all the way to the music room, and I was still dripping when I pushed the door open. Asher and Vanessa both stopped mid-note and stared.

  “What happened?” Vanessa asked.

  I gestured to the window just as a bolt of lightning lit up the grounds. “Hello? It’s pissing down out there.”

  Asher pulled his sweater over his head. “Here, put this on.”

  “I’m fine, honestly. I’ll dry out faster without it. I can’t stay long, anyway—there are still teachers around out there.”

  “Nobody ever comes in here,” Vanessa told me, shuddering. “It’s meant to be haunted.”

  “Really? Has anyone ever seen a ghost?”

  “Hayley Blankfeld swears she followed a shadowy figure along the hallway, and she heard the piano playing, but when she opened the door, there was nobody in here.”

  “Doesn’t bother me,” Asher said. “It means nobody ever uses this room, and the piano’s the best in the building.”

  “I just don’t want us to get caught together again. You said there was a meeting?”

  “Yeah, some planning session for the next theatre production. Uncle Saul wants me to go for dinner with the clan afterwards.” He grimaced. “Sorry.”

  Dammit, false alarm. But perhaps if I stuck around, I could sneak in another bug or two.

  “Sounds fun.”

  “I’ll probably get another lecture on my career path. Did I tell you that Uncle Ezra wants me to be a concert pianist?” Asher began bashing out “Bohemian Rhapsody” and singing too. Badly. “What d’ya think?”

  “I need earplugs.”

  Vanessa elbowed him. “Play it properly. He really is good.”

  “Okay, okay.�
��

  She was right. Asher really was good. In so many ways including, it turned out, on the piano. Vanessa joined in singing, and it was like having my own private concert. Although I did feel a little like dead wood in their company—at school, I’d managed to play about three notes on the recorder, and I usually got those in the wrong order.

  “Play something else.”

  The bugs could wait for a few minutes. I’d have happily listened to Asher and Vanessa all night.

  “Do you want to hear the song we’ve been working on?” Vanessa asked.

  “I’d love to.”

  I leaned against the wall by the door, and the lights went out. Vanessa gave a shriek.

  “What happened?” she yelped.

  “Sorry, that was just me. I hit the light switch by accident. No biggie.” I turned the lights on again. “No ghost either.”

  “I’m so jumpy tonight. I think it’s the storm.”

  As if on cue, another fork of lightning snaked across the sky, illuminating the driving rain. I hoped it didn’t get my tree. I’d be in the shit if that happened.

  “Ready?” Asher asked, and he didn’t give Vanessa a chance to answer before he started playing. She opened her mouth to sing, but before she got a note out, I heard a click from the bookcase next to me.

  “Wait!”

  “What?” she asked.

  “I heard a noise.”

  “The ghost?”

  “Not the freaking ghost.”

  No, it was worse. The bookcase was moving, sliding slowly to the left to reveal a yawning hole in the wall. Asher was at my side in an instant.

  “What the hell…?”

  I pulled out my phone. Why didn’t it have any service? At least the flashlight function was still working, and I shone it into the hole. Rough wooden stairs led downwards, far enough that I couldn’t see the bottom. My heart raced, and I forced myself to breathe slowly. Emmy wouldn’t hyperventilate. Could we finally have found the Master’s lair? I mean, Emmy and Black kept all sorts of goodies in their basement, didn’t they? And this passage didn’t appear anywhere on our schematics. Alaric had checked out the main part of the cellar on my interview day, and he said there was nothing there but dust and junk.

  “Do you think…?” Vanessa asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Asher gave us a curious look. “What are you two talking about?”

  Oh, fuck. How did a girl tell the guy she was really starting to like that she suspected his family of stealing millions of dollars’ worth of famous artworks?

  She didn’t. She stalled.

  “Could we perhaps discuss this later?”

  “Sky…”

  I turned away for a moment.

  “Ryder?” I whispered. No answer. Where was he? I stuck a finger into my ear to check the widget was turned on, and it came away wet. Ah, crap. The fucking thing had probably short-circuited.

  Right. Okay. Take deep breaths and think this through. I needed to take a look in that cellar, but first I had to let Blackwood know what I was doing.

  “Vanessa, I’m just gonna run back to our room and—”

  The door started closing. Shit, shit, shit! Could we open it again? Maybe, maybe not. I had no idea why it had opened in the first place. I only had a split second to make a decision, and my gut took over.

  “Sky, no!” Vanessa squeaked.

  The bookcase closed behind me, leaving only darkness. Pitch bloody black.

  “Sky?” Asher whispered in my ear, and I nearly had a heart attack.

  “Why the hell did you follow me?”

  “Because I care about you and I didn’t want you getting trapped in a dark cellar on your own?”

  “Oh.”

  “Why on earth did you come in here?”

  “Temporary insanity?”

  It wasn’t just the paintings that were missing; I’d lost my damn mind as well. I felt Asher turn around, and his ass bumped mine.

  “No kidding. I can’t find a handle or a catch or anything.”

  “Hold on…”

  I turned the flashlight on again, but the back of the bookcase was made of smooth wood. There was nothing to grip hold of and nothing to turn or pull. Now what? We didn’t have a lot of choice, did we? We’d have to go down the stairs.

  “Do you have your phone?” I asked.

  “I left it on the piano.”

  Brilliant. “I’ve got about a quarter of my battery left.”

  “So let’s get out of here. I’ll go first.”

  “No, you won’t. I take responsibility for my bad decisions.”

  At the bottom, a passage curved to the right. I ran a hand over the wall—it seemed to be carved from rock, and when I looked up, the roof was curved rather than flat. What was this place? An old water channel someone had happened across? Or a man-made hidey-hole? Whatever it was, it went on for what seemed like miles. A maze. A catacomb. Smaller passages led off to the sides, and I half expected to walk around a bend and find a pile of old bones. Somewhere, something was dripping, and the whole place felt damp.

  “Is that a light up ahead?” Asher whispered.

  I shut off my phone, and sure enough, the faintest glimmer showed, highlighting the outline of an arch. Turn back? Press on? How the hell were we gonna get out of this wretched place? I hadn’t seen anything that looked like an exit yet.

  Asher reached out and squeezed my hand. “Should we keep going?”

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  Forward we crept, and the air felt warmer here. Drier. The darkness was disorientating, but I was almost certain we were going uphill.

  Finally, the passage emptied out into a cavern, forty feet long at a guess. And this… This was no catacomb. It had a parquet fucking floor, and a twinkling chandelier hung from the ceiling. The rows of wooden benches arranged on either side reminded me of church pews, all facing what looked like an ornamental wardrobe. What was in it? Other chambers led off the main room, some with doors and some without.

  “This is creepy as fuck,” Asher said.

  My sentiments exactly.

  “Surely one of these doors has to be an exit?”

  We hugged the wall as we scurried through the cavern, trying each door in turn. The lights were on, so somebody was home, but where were they? The place made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

  And then we found it. Or rather, we found them. I eased a door open to reveal rows of slim wooden crates stacked neatly in size order. I’d seen crates like that before, twice in fact. Once in the boot of Beth’s car when I stole it, and once when she picked up the Picasso and brought it to Riverley. They were the kind of protective crates that valuable paintings were shipped in. And there had to be at least a hundred of them. I tiptoed closer. Each crate had a name written on the side in black marker. Madonna and Child with Angel. I presumed it didn’t mean the singer. Garden of Eden by Night. The Shepherd’s Watch. I ran to the other end of the row, to the larger paintings. Where was she? Was she here?

  The Girl with the Emerald Ring.

  Holy fuck, they still had her!

  My moment of elation was short-lived, however. The snick of a semi-automatic being cocked sent my head whipping around, and my stomach dropped to the polished floor when I saw Saul Rosenberg standing in the doorway.

  “Step away from there.”

  Asher swivelled too. I didn’t take my eyes off the gun, but I heard the confusion in his voice.

  “Uncle, what are you doing? Why do you have a gun?”

  “For protection.”

  “Against what?”

  “Against people who stick their noses where they don’t belong.”

  “We’re just lost, okay? We found a door hidden behind a bookcase, and then it closed behind us. Can you tell us how to get out of here? And put the damn gun down. We’re not burglars.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”

  No, it wasn’t. I’d seen too much.

  “What
is this place?” Asher asked, still refreshingly naïve.

  Saul motioned at me with the gun. “Out. Slowly. You too, Asher.”

  He wasn’t going to let us go. Not me, anyway. His eyes betrayed him. They were hard and calculating, two steely orbs that watched me carefully as I made my way to the door. Okay, I could do this. I’d practised a thousand times with Rafael. Once I was close enough, I could grab the pistol and clonk him over the head with it. I’d nearly given Rafael a concussion once; dealing with a middle-aged schoolteacher should be child’s play. Asher obviously didn’t have a clue what was going on, and I felt shitty about that, but I couldn’t stop to explain.

  We closed the distance. Ten feet, eight, six…

  I sprang. Grabbed the pistol. Blocked out Saul’s howl of pain as his finger twisted in the trigger guard, but the bloody thing got jammed at the knuckle when I tried to wrench the gun out of his hand. I was about to go in with a left-handed uppercut when a bullet whistled over my head. The bang left my ears ringing.

  “Get back, or the next one goes through your brain.”

  I raised my hands slowly. My old friend the waiter had joined the party, and he didn’t look as if he wanted to celebrate. Asher hadn’t moved. Hardly surprising when the scuffle had lasted five seconds at most.

  “I knew you were trouble when I saw you in the forest.”

  “And I knew you were trouble when I saw you hightail it out of the Grove’s parking lot.” Oh, that startled him. “Got careless, didn’t you?”

  Saul rolled to his hands and knees, coughing. “Get her out of here.”

  “Where should we put her, boss?”

  “Confiscate her phone and put her in the storage closet beside the Holy Ark.” The what? “That bitch broke my finger.”

  “What about him?” The waiter jerked his head towards Asher.

  “Him too.”

  Half a dozen others had appeared in the doorway, and I recognised Dr. Merritt and the track coach among them. One man I could deal with, two or three even, but not eight when at least two of them had guns.

  “Uncle?” Asher’s voice rose in panic. “What’s going on?”

  “Get them both out of here right now.”

  CHAPTER 36 - SKY

  OUR PRISON WAS more of a room than a closet, but nonetheless, we were stuck in there. I’d tripped up the step as they dragged me inside, and my knee ached like fuck. I let the pain spur me on.