“Hallie!”
Jake. Hallie’s heart surged with relief. Somehow he’d gotten himself released from jail and had known to come for her. Desperately she tried to answer him, to call out, but the gag between her teeth muffled her voice.
“Hallie?”
Jake’s voice seemed to be moving away now. She had to do something … give him a sign … alert him.
Panicked, Hallie kicked at the stack of books closest to her feet. Like the walls of Jericho, they came tumbling down, burying her beneath an avalanche of leather and parchment. Stunned and too sore to move, Hallie lay beneath the pile of books, listening.
There was the sound of footsteps hurrying up the altar steps, followed by a rattling at the door. “Sweetheart?”
Hallie gave the fallen books on top of her a violent kick, an act which was duly rewarded with a loud thump.
“Move away from the door and lie flat on the floor,” she heard Jake yell. “I’m going to shoot the lock off.”
Hallie did as instructed, curling into a tight ball and carefully tucking her face against her chest. After a long moment, she heard the discharge from a gun, and with a splintering crash the lock exploded inward.
Throwing his weight against the door, Jake burst into the room. Wildly he scanned the shadowy cubicle for his wife and when he spied her, an anguished cry escaped his lips.
There, circled in a shaft of light from the open door, was Hallie’s still figure. Except for a length of bright hair and a tangle of blue skirts, she was almost completely buried beneath a pile of books. Jake fell to his knees and began to push the books, off her body, terrified that she’d been badly injured.
“Sweetheart?” he gently touched her shoulder. To his relief, she raised her head to look back at him, sobbing into the gag.
“Don’t cry, Mission Lady. I’m here,” he crooned, deftly removing the filthy cloth from between her teeth. Sweeping the rest of the hymnals aside, Jake gathered Hallie into his arms, cradling her close. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
“I hurt everywhere,” she replied with a sound halfway between a sob and a hiccup. “But I’ll be all right.”
Jake crushed her against his chest, groaning. “God! I’ve never been so afraid in my life as when I returned home from the jail and found you missing.”
“Not nearly as afraid as I was when you were arrested. How did you get out of jail?”
“Arabella’s cook told the police that he’d spoken to her shortly after I left.” Jake turned Hallie onto her belly and draped her across his knees. “The parlor maid confirmed the story. They had no choice but to release me.” He gave the knotted rope at her wrists a tug. It loosened slightly.
“When I arrived home, Coralie LaFlume was at the house. The prostitute who was beaten finally regained consciousness, and she was able to identify her attacker.” Jake pulled out the last of the knots. “It was Marius.”
Hallie lay still for a moment, absorbing the news. “I found the mate to Arabella’s glove in Marius’s trash bin, but before I could take it to the police, someone hit me from behind.” She pointed to the sore spot at the back of her head. “I was knocked unconscious. When I woke up, I was in the closet, tied up.”
“Poor sweetheart,” Jake whispered, kissing the injured place. “Hop and Coralie have gone for the police. After you’ve spoken with them, I’m going to take you home and tuck you into bed with a warm brick at your feet.” He helped her sit up and then began to untie her ankles.
“I’d rather have you warm me,” she murmured, closing her eyes with a sigh as the ropes dropped away.
“And I’d like to warm you,” he replied, drawing her back into his embrace. With that, he tipped his head forward and hungrily captured her lips with his. For one brief moment, Jake let himself savor the sweetness of Hallie’s kiss, relieved to have her safe and in his arms once again.
Hallie eagerly returned his kiss, a kiss that, in her opinion, was much too brief.
Smiling tenderly at his wife’s disappointed expression, Jake explained, “Marius has fled, and I need to help the police find him. I don’t want him to have another chance to hurt you.”
Hallie curled up in Jake’s lap, her head resting on his shoulder. She felt so warm and safe nestled against the muscular strength of his body. “No one can hurt me while I’m in your arms,” she sighed, snuggling closer.
“Such a touching display of faith,” Marius observed, leveling his pistol at the embracing couple. He didn’t miss the way Jake tightened his grip on his wife, nor did he fail to note the man’s protective demeanor. Good. Then the gossip was true. Jake Parrish was madly in love with his wife. Marius smiled with satisfaction. It would devastate him to watch her die.
“Where did you come from, DeYoung?” Jake snapped, glancing around for his gun. “I searched the church thoroughly.” Damn! He’d set his pistol by the door when he found Hallie, and it lay just out of his reach.
“Obviously not thoroughly enough,” Marius replied coolly.
“Why, Marius?” Hallie whispered, staring up at the man who had always seemed to be the personification of the word “goodness.” “I thought we were friends.”
“Sometimes friends get in one’s way.”
Jake subtly shifted Hallie on his lap as he inched toward his gun. Her voluminous skirts camouflaged his motions, and he thanked God for crinoline skirts.
“What do you want, DeYoung?” he ground out, giving Hallie a furtive nudge in the side. She seemed to sense what he was about and moved accordingly.
“Thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
“Stop speaking in riddles.”
“Hardly a riddle. But, of course, if you had spent more time at church and less time sniffing after Dr. Gardiner’s skirts, you would understand exactly what I mean.” The preacher advanced one step forward. “The translation is quite simple: vengeance. I mean to bring you down. To punish you. To make you suffer for the crimes of your blood.”
“And what exactly have I done to deserve punishment?”
“He walked in all the sins of his father,” quoted Marius, idly tapping his finger against the trigger of the gun. “Are you not the son of Reed Parrish?”
“What has my father got to do with anything?” Jake snaked his hand beneath the fabric of Hallie’s outspread skirts, effectively disguising his movement as he reached for his pistol.
“Your father … and mine.”
That brought Jake up short.
Marius laughed at Jake’s shocked expression. “Oh, yes. It’s true … brother. Not that our father ever acknowledged me.” His voice seethed with venom. “After all, my mother was just a housemaid, and I was nothing more than the unfortunate result of a youthful indiscretion.”
Hallie opened her mouth to speak, but quickly clamped it shut again as Jake gave her a warning squeeze. The way Marius was waving the gun at them terrified her.
“Our grandfather sent his randy son on a grand tour of Europe as punishment for his dalliance,” the preacher rasped, his handsome face twisting into a mask of bitterness. “As for my mother, she was turned out without a reference.”
His voice began to rise, taking on the booming, sonorous quality he used during his most inspirational sermons. “I was born in a New York tenement to a mother forced into prostitution to keep food in her mouth. You were born in a mansion to a mother from a wealthy family.”
Marius’s eyes narrowed as he studied his half brother. “I used to see you riding with your parents in their carriage. You inherited your mother’s beauty and our father’s arrogance. How I hated you.” His voice was soft now. Chillingly so. “Nothing was too good for the mighty Parrish heir … the Parrish son. While you spent your early years being loved and coddled, I spent mine in a one-room hellhole trying to make myself
invisible while my mother entertained her friends.”
The sight of his mother pleasuring those men, her hands always clad in scarlet silk gloves, was indelibly etched into his brain. The darker scenes, those filled with horror and degradation, had been ruthlessly locked away in the deepest dungeons of his memory. Memories to be hidden but not forgotten, shackled to his subconscious by his shame.
“By the time I was seven, I knew every perverse sexual act by heart. I’d even experienced a few myself, seeing as how some of the men preferred young boys.”
Hallie gasped. “Your mother let them use you so?”
“Gladly,” he snapped. “After all, the price for young boys far exceeded that for wornout whores. The money she made from allowing some old reprobate to use me was enough to support her opium habit for a month.” He shifted his gaze from Hallie’s compassion-filled face to stare down at the gun in his hand. “When I was nine, my mother was murdered. Strangled by a dissatisfied customer.”
And he’d felt nothing when he’d found her. By the time he was eight, Marius had taken to roaming the city streets, picking pockets, sometimes staying away from the tenement for days on end. She had been killed during the hottest part of the summer and had lain there for several days before he’d discovered her.
Marius almost gagged as he remembered the smell. Her face had been bloated beyond all recognition, her peeling skin a deep angry purple. On her hands had been the tattered remains of the red gloves with their faux diamond buttons, gloves which had been a gift from his father nine years earlier.
She had been his mother and he’d felt nothing.
After his mother’s death, he’d been claimed by his only living relative, an itinerant street preacher by the name of Uriah DeYoung. For the next eight years, young Marius was dragged from town to town, spending his days listening while his uncle preached hellfire and redemption to unrepentant sinners. Marius had quickly learned that the word “hell” was synonymous with night, for it was then that Uriah had turned his attention to the redemption of his nephew’s soul, a soul tainted almost beyond salvation by the stain of his bastardy.
In sin did thy mother conceive thee! He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin!
Marius’s body still bore the scars from his uncle’s whip. When he was seventeen, he killed the preacher and escaped back to New York. It was then that he took an interest in seeking vengeance against the mighty Parrish family, intent on making them suffer as he’d suffered. Especially Jake, the favored son.
“Fine,” Jake snorted. “You think you have reason to hate me.” He was now close enough to the gun for his fingers to graze the handle. “But what reason did you have to kill Serena and Arabella?” His hand brushed against the pistol again, this time it moved, making a loud scraping sound against the wood floor.
That noise was enough to draw Marius’s attention. With a bellow of fury, he pulled the trigger of his gun. The crash of the explosion reverberated through the sanctuary, it’s deafening roar almost drowning out Jake’s cry of pain.
“Jake!” Hallie screamed as she felt her husband’s body jerk with the impact of the bullet.
As quick as the lash from a whip, Marius grabbed Jake’s gun. Before Hallie could react, she was pulled up against the preacher’s body, where he held her immobile, the barrel of Jake’s pistol pressed against her temple.
“Damn it, Marius!” Jake shouted, clutching at his wounded shoulder as he struggled to his knees. Luckily, the bullet had merely grazed the upper part of his shoulder. “This is between you and me. Hallie isn’t a part of this. Let her go.”
“But she’s part of you. As were your parents, as was Serena.” The preacher cocked his head to one side, his finger tapping spasmodically on the trigger of the pistol. “Killing you outright was never my intention. That would have been too easy. I wanted to make you suffer first. I wanted to rob you of your friends and family, and then strip you of your honor. I started my vengeance by killing your parents … my father.”
Jake felt as if someone had stabbed him in his belly and was turning the blade with agonizing slowness. His sweet mother and jovial father had been killed because of Marius’s misguided sense of vengeance.
“I used dynamite to start the fire, just like I used it on the Mission House. Hallie was supposed to die in the flames.” Marius looked down at the woman in his arms and shook his head regretfully. “I hated the idea of killing you, my dear. I actually felt real fondness for you. But you’d had the poor judgment to become enamored with Jake and he with you, so you had to die. I even hit you over the head to ensure that you wouldn’t escape. I hadn’t counted on your lover’s heroics.”
“You could have killed everyone in the house!” Hallie gasped.
“Whores.” He shrugged dismissively.
“Like the two women you beat and left for dead?” Jake asked, trying to buy time while his mind scrambled for a plan. He had to get that pistol away from Marius. He knew the weapon to have a hair trigger, and it was only a matter of time before the preacher’s habit of tapping his finger would discharge it.
Marius smiled coldly. “Cissy was a fool. She didn’t know how to satisfy my, shall we say, unique sexual tastes, and therefore she was punished. As for the other woman, she recognized my voice and tried to blackmail me. The greedy bitch said she would tell everyone about my predilection for red silk gloves … and other things, if I didn’t pay her off. Her, I meant to kill.”
“Red gloves? Like the ones found on Arabella and Serena’s hands?” Jake narrowed his eyes as he studied Marius’s stance. Perhaps he could throw the man off balance and wrest Hallie away. Then he discarded the idea. Marius’s finger was too tautly flexed on the gun’s trigger to risk it.
“Ah, yes. Sweet Arabella. Now she knew how to satisfy a man.” Marius closed his eyes for a moment, remembering how wonderfully deft she had been with a switch. “But, of course, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Hallie drew in her breath sharply at his words.
“It’s true, my dear.” The preacher nodded. “Your husband never did anything more provocative with Arabella than dance. She was helping him learn to dance on that gimp leg of his. He wanted to surprise you.”
Hallie’s heart surged with tenderness at the revelation and, despite the gravity of their situation, she smiled at Jake. Silently, she mouthed the words, “I love you.”
Jake nodded, one corner of his mouth curling up at her soundless proclamation. He loved her, too—too much to let her die at Marius’s hands.
“So sad about Arabella.” The preacher sighed as he shifted his attention back to Jake. “But don’t you see? I had to kill her. Everyone knew that you were visiting her, and it was assumed that the two of you were having … relations. I was presented with the perfect opportunity to bring you down. I tried to make it look like you’d had a lovers’ quarrel and that you’d killed her. You would have hung for sure. How I relished the thought of the high and mighty Parrish heir coming to such an ignoble end!”
He tightened his grip on Hallie with a nasty laugh. “Do you want to know what brought me the most pleasure in all of this?”
When Marius received no reply, he laughed again. “Planting a child in Serena’s belly. In one of her drug-induced states, she confessed how she’d been preventing the conception of your child. I knew you’d believe that your seed was fruitless when you found her pregnant by another man, and I exalted in your humiliation.”
“Damn you to hell, DeYoung!” Jake expelled, his hands curling into fists. If it hadn’t been for the gun pressed against Hallie’s temple, he’d have killed the man with his bare hands. “I assume it was you who introduced Serena to opium?”
“And morphine as well,” chuckled Marius. “I used to make her perform like the lowest of whores to earn her drugs. She became quite adept at satisfying my special needs.”
Jake noted th
en, that in his preoccupation, Marius had let the barrel of the gun slip away from Hallie’s head.
“You killed Serena,” Jake stated with deadly calm. His muscles tensed as he prepared to spring.
“I destroyed Serena’s mind and, yes, then I killed her.
In her half-witted state, she’d become dangerous. She talked too freely. Now you’re going to watch while I kill Hallie.”
With a feral growl, Jake lunged forward, hurling himself against Hallie, Just as she was thrown to the floor, the report of a gun roared through the sanctuary.
“Jake!” Hallie screamed, as a spray of gore splattered everywhere. In one frantic motion, she rolled onto her back, only to find Marius looming over her. She stared up at him for a second, too horrified to move. Then something deep inside of her snapped, and she began to scream uncontrollably.
Torrents of crimson blood streamed over bone fragments of gleaming white, springing like a fountainhead from the gaping wound in the center of the preacher’s forehead. His mouth, drawn into a twisted smile, was opening and closing as if he was trying to speak. For a long moment, his wrathful gaze bore into hers. Then his eyes rolled up, and there was a hideous thump! thump! as his body tumbled backward down the altar stairs.
“Hush, sweetheart,” Jake whispered, pulling her into his arms. He winced violently at the pain from his wounded shoulder, but no amount of pain was going to make him release his Hallie.
Hugging his wife protectively, Jake focused his attention on the tattered-looking man standing at the bottom of the stairs. For a moment, the man seemed frozen in place. Then he shifted his grief-filled gaze from the corpse at his feet and stared back at Jake. Neither man spoke.
Serena’s eyes, Jake thought, noting the intense cerulean hue of the man’s eyes. Poor Serena. She had been an instrument of Marius’s vengeance, a victim to be pitied and forgiven. And in his heart, he did forgive her.
Slowly Jake nodded his thanks to Serena’s father. “We owe you our lives, King.”
“All these months of hating you … watching and waiting for the opportunity to avenge my daughter’s death. I followed you here to kill you. And now …” with a sob, Cyrus dropped his spent pistol and buried his face in his hands. “Dear God! I almost killed an innocent man.”
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