by Kay Hooper
“Do you know what you’re saying? Marry a Logan? For God’s sake, Ian, sleep with her if you have to, but I’d sooner have a painted whore in the family than that—”
Ian stood up.
For a long moment, Brandon Stuart gazed into the ice-blue eyes of his son, and what he saw there shook him badly. Softly, formally, he said, “I apologize for that remark.”
Shaken himself by what he was feeling, by the white-hot rage that had swept through him, Ian turned away and walked over to the windows. He stood with his back to his father, trying to control his anger enough to speak.
“Ian…I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” He heard the thick sound of his own voice, and cleared his throat harshly. “Sorry for what you said? Or sorry for hating a woman you don’t even know?”
Brandon was silent.
Ian laughed shortly and turned to stare at his father. “I want you to understand something. Michele and I are going to be married. For her sake, I hope we can stop this insane feud and live here in peace. For all our sakes, I hope you can accept that. But right now, I don’t give a sweet damn whether you do or not. She’s the most important thing in my life. Everything else can go straight to hell.”
“Including me?” Brandon’s voice was mild, his eyes still watchful.
“If that’s the way it has to be. I won’t fight about this, Dad. And I won’t hear another word against Michele. Ever. Accept it or not, it’s up to you.”
There was a long silence, tension quivering almost visibly in the air between the two men, and then Brandon said irritably, “Stop glaring at me, Ian.” He hesitated, then added a bit dryly, “She must be some lady.”
“She is.” Ian forced himself to relax, knowing that the critical moment had passed safely, that his father was, at least, resigned. It was what he had hoped for when he’d made it plain he was prepared to sever all ties with his father; a genuine affection aside, Brandon Stuart’s sense of family was too strong to allow him to risk losing his only son—no matter what.
“Does Charles Logan know about you two?”
“Not yet.”
“It is,” Brandon said, “an understatement to say he won’t like it.”
“That’s one reason we’re trying to find out who’s behind the sabotage. As things stand now, he’s convinced it’s you and me; one whisper of my relationship with Michele, and she thinks he’ll go right over the edge.”
“She’s right. In fact, I would have expected the same reaction from Jon. I assume he knows?”
“Yes. I think he’s suspected for a while; he wasn’t very surprised to have it confirmed. He’s hardly…comfortable with the idea, but he accepts it. He loves his sister too much to lose her over this. And he agrees someone else is involved in the feud.”
Brandon went to a chair and sat down, frowning. After a moment, he said, “Which brings me back to the original question. Who?”
Slowly, Ian said, “It’s directed at both families, and the intent is apparently to set us at each other’s throats. If it isn’t a business competitor—and it’s beginning to look like that idea was off base—then it has to be someone who hates both sides.” He shook his head. “I don’t believe either Jon or myself has made an enemy that rabid, and I know damn well Michele hasn’t. Which leaves you and Charles Logan. The two of you must have an enemy in common.”
“Besides each other, you mean?” Brandon said wryly.
“Think about it,” Ian urged, sure he was on the right track. “There must be someone who has reason to hate you both, and very bitterly. Someone who would go to a great deal of time, trouble, and money in an all-out attempt to destroy you both, by using the feud to his advantage.”
Shrugging, Brandon said, “I can’t think of anyone I’ve crossed that badly. I may have been ruthless from time to time in business, but not enough to rouse the kind of hate you’re talking about. Maybe he’s after Logan alone, and using me as his weapon.”
“Maybe. But I think he’s after both families. And he’s not just ruthless—he’s deadly. Jon could have been killed in that explosion; God knows what’ll happen next.”
“More of the same, I’d guess. Whoever he is, he seems to favor explosives in elevators.”
Ian sighed, the various kinds of frustration increasing until he thought he’d explode. “Michele traced the device used on their building to the West Coast, and got a list of buyers; the names don’t mean anything to any of us, but one of them may have paid the seller to keep quiet. We’re waiting for a description of that man now.”
Brandon looked a little surprised, but then said, “I’d forgotten. She is an investigator, isn’t she.”
Ian nodded, frowning.
“You look worried,” his father noted.
“I am. I’ve just realized a few things. Whoever he is, this bastard knows us. All of us. He has to assume that, given enough time, if Michele suspected a third party she’d have a good chance of finding out who it was—it’s what she’s trained to do. Now, he’s going to realize sooner or later that his plan isn’t working, and I’m betting on sooner. He’s pushed both sides more than once, and we haven’t struck out at each other.”
“That isn’t like us,” Brandon murmured.
“No, it isn’t. He could be getting nervous about that, especially if he suspects we’re on to him. And the next time he hits…he may not aim at a building.”
—
“Neither way is without tragedy.”
Michele couldn’t get that promise out of her head. She and Jon had spoken little during the drive home, both of them aware that what was important had already been said. Their father had been surprised to see them back so early, but neither of them had chosen to tell him about the explosion in the Stuarts’ building; he’d find out soon enough.
Michele went upstairs and, instead of getting ready for bed, changed into jeans and a thick sweater. She took her hair down and washed away the makeup. She felt edgy and couldn’t seem to get warm. Always, in the forefront of her mind, had been the awareness that someone could be hurt if the feud erupted, but it had occurred to her only tonight that if their common enemy lost patience with the stalemate between the families, he could abandon all caution. And, as Ian had said, he seemed too fond of explosives.
And elevators.
She paced her room restlessly, going over everything in her mind until she could hardly think straight. No matter how hard she tried to come up with answers, only the terrifying possibilities assumed a concrete form. He could decide to turn his attention to people instead of buildings, and if that happened, none of them would be safe.
It was almost midnight when Jon knocked softly on her door and poked his head in. “You have a call,” he told her.
“Ian?”
“No. Said his name was Steve. Your contact on the West Coast?”
Quickly, Michele joined her brother out in the hall. “Yes. Where’s Dad?”
“He’s turned in for the night.” Jon followed her down the stairs to the phone in the entrance hall, and stood waiting to hear if there was any new information.
She picked up the phone. “Steve?”
“Sorry to bother you so late, Michele.” He sounded more than a little bothered himself.
“Never mind, I was up. Do you have the description?”
“No, that isn’t it. Michele…I got a very weird message a little while ago. It’s supposed to be from the man I’ve been trying to find again, the one who sold those timers, but I swear it doesn’t sound like him.”
“What’s the message?”
“Got a pencil? You’d better write this down.”
Michele found a pencil and pad in the drawer of the small table. “Okay. Ready.”
“Here it is: ‘I must warn them. Tell her this immediately. It is vital that she know. Sunday is dangerous. Story I told you was false. Unable to tell you the truth. The buyer is no stranger. Three devices, not one. Only they can stop him. Next days critical.’ ”
Frowni
ng down at her neat printing on the pad, Michele said, “That’s it?”
“That’s it. Block-printed on unlined paper, and signed with scrawled initials. Michele, I never told the man why I was tracing the device, and I never mentioned a woman. But this message…it seems to be meant for you.”
After a moment, Michele handed the pad to Jon and said, “How was it delivered?”
“Pushed under my door here at home. Which is another weird thing. I heard the bell, and when I went to answer it there was no one there. Just a folded sheet of paper. Since the message was damned specific about Sunday being dangerous, I thought I’d better call you right away.”
“I’m glad you did.” One statement on the message echoed in her head. Three devices, not one. And two had been used. “I really appreciate it, Steve.”
“No problem. Hey—I’ll mail the original to you first thing tomorrow. In fact, I’ll express it.”
“Thanks.”
“And if you figure it out,” Steve added wryly, “how about letting me in on it? I’m puzzled as hell.”
Michele conjured a laugh. “I’ll do that.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.” She cradled the receiver slowly and looked at Jon, who was frowning over the message she’d copied. “Does that make any sense to you?” she asked him.
“Who’s it from?”
“Supposedly, the man who sold the timer. But Steve says it doesn’t sound like him.”
“It sounds damned peculiar,” Jon muttered. “She? Did he know you were behind the questions?”
“Not according to Steve.” Michele picked up the phone again and called Ian’s apartment, so worried that she felt almost sick with it. Three devices…and there was no telling when—or if—that third one would be used. If the saboteur’s patience was exhausted, he could have decided to strike twice in one night. The phone rang nearly a dozen times before she broke the connection and tried his office number. No answer. She hung up. “He must still be at the building.”
Jon was making a second copy of the message. When he was done, he handed her the original, then glanced at his watch. “Midnight; we’re already into Saturday.”
“ ‘Sunday is dangerous,’ ” she murmured, staring down at the message as she read. “ ‘Next days critical.’ How would the man who sold the timer know what his customer meant to do—and when? And why warn us?”
“I don’t know. But we can’t afford to ignore any warning, no matter who it’s from, or why.”
“I have to see Ian,” Michele said. She was thinking of the message, but that wasn’t all that filled her mind. The brief moments they’d shared on the terrace had only sharpened her longing to be with him, and she was haunted by the knowledge that if something were to happen to either of them, he’d never know about their child.
Jon looked at her for a moment, then picked up the phone and called for a cab. “I don’t want you driving,” he said gruffly when he hung up. “If this bastard can wire elevators, he can wire cars; stay out of yours until I can have it checked over. And use the stairs at Ian’s building.” He hesitated, then added, “Don’t worry if you aren’t back by morning. I’ll think of something to tell Dad.”
She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, but said fiercely, “I hate all this lying!”
“Better than the alternative,” Jon pointed out. “At least for now. Besides, Dad may not have a chance to ask about you. It’s way past time he was made to listen to a few hard truths. I’ll tell him about the sabotage of the Stuarts’ building and ask him who could have done it, since we didn’t. And I’ll hit him with everything else we know. Maybe I can finally get through to him, at least a little.”
“We’re running out of time.”
“I know.”
A few minutes later, in a cab heading downtown, Michele wondered for the first time if they were being watched. She wanted to reassure herself that the question was a paranoid one, but after all that had happened she knew it wasn’t.
All around you are the shifting patterns of things seen—and unseen.
Odd how the fortune-teller’s predictions kept coming back to her so vividly. As if they had been somehow imprinted on her mind, stamped in her memory but prompted to surface only by some spur she had no conscious control over. She had tried more than once to remember all that had been said, but when she concentrated nothing would come to her except disjointed words and meaningless phrases; it was only when she least expected it that the whispers echoed softly in her mind.
She had no faith in either precognition or predestination; no belief in fortune-tellers or fate. But she couldn’t escape the uneasy feeling that there was a design to all this, that events were being carefully arranged for a specific purpose. And oddest of all was her impression that more than one hand was involved in the pattern.
She felt like a piece on a chessboard, involved in some obscure struggle for power and moved by the whim and the tactics of an invisible hand.
Roused from the unsettling thoughts by the arrival of her cab at Ian’s apartment building, she paid the driver and got out, drawing her coat tighter around her against the cutting force of the rising wind. She hurried into the building, going straight to the security guard’s desk.
“Is Mr. Stuart in?” she asked the same man who had been here on that night weeks before.
“No, ma’am. But he said you were to go up anytime.”
Michele glanced toward the bank of elevators, then located the door to the stairwell nearby. After a slight hesitation, she drew a pen and a small spiral-ringed notebook from her purse, and jotted a quick note.
“I’ll go up,” she told the guard, then folded her note and handed it to him. “Will you give him this as soon as he comes in, please?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The guard was blessedly incurious, merely accepting the note and saying nothing at all when she headed for the stairwell instead of the elevators. Still, she couldn’t help hoping that the man was better at his job than he seemed, or that Ian was responsible for the total lack of curiosity or suspicion where she was concerned.
Ian’s apartment was on the eighth floor, but Michele hardly noticed the climb. She let herself into his apartment, realizing only when she was inside that doors could also be wired to explode. It was a sickening realization.
She shrugged out of her coat and left it lying across the couch with her purse, moving restlessly around the neat, quiet living room. She had barely noticed how Ian’s home looked the first time she was here, her attention wholly caught up with him and the feelings between them. Now she looked, trying to concentrate, trying not to worry because he wasn’t here.
And gradually, as she wandered, she found a kind of peace in what she found. Ties. Connections between them. She found many of her favorite books on his shelves, her favorite music among his records and tapes, prints and watercolors and oils by her favorite artists on his walls. The furnishings were in styles and colors she would have favored, their arrangements lending the spaciousness she preferred.
She settled on the comfortable couch at last, kicking off her shoes and curling up with her cheek resting on a pillow, the sense of him so strongly with her that she felt curiously content and just too tired to think anymore. The edges of fear retreated, and as quiet filled her mind she drifted off to sleep.
At first, she wasn’t sure it was a dream, because why on earth would she dream of the striking old man who had stood outside the fortune-teller’s tent on Martinique? But it had to be a dream, because she knew she was asleep, and he certainly couldn’t be here in the apartment even though she saw him clearly when he emerged from a shadowy corner of the room and stood looking down at her with gentle eyes.
“Have courage, child. It’s nearly over now.”
She wanted to ask him who he was and why he was here, but some part of her understood those answers without having to hear them. He was the hand of destiny, she realized, and his was both a kinder and a more compassionate touch than she had believed,
guidance rather than compulsion. He was light and dark, yin and yang, creative and receptive, forever at odds, forever united, a divided force connected only by a fragile thread, seeking wholeness, struggling for harmony, fighting for love.
Are you? she asked, or thought she asked.
“How poetic you make it sound!” He was amused but kindly and with understanding. “I am Fortune, child. A roll of the dice, a turn of the card, a fork in the road.”
Are you doing this to us?
“I only watch. And try to help. You have all the pieces now. The answers are within reach.” He glanced aside, as if some sound had drawn his attention, then looked back at her with his gentle, unutterably sweet smile. “Courage,” he repeated.
Michele opened her eyes with a start, feeling her heart thudding as she sat up. A glance at the clock glowing on Ian’s stereo told her that less than an hour had passed. She looked around warily. Empty. The room was empty. It had only been a dream, of course, prompted by her own unsettled thoughts of fate and destiny. She drew a shaky breath of relief, but even then couldn’t shake the sense of presence, couldn’t totally dismiss the notion that he had been there, that strange old man, coming to her out of the night because he’d somehow known she was at the end of her rope and needed reassurance.
Of all the wild, impossible ideas…
“Michele?”
She hadn’t heard him come in, but at the sound of his voice she jumped up from the couch and hurried to meet him. His arms closed about her instantly, lifting her off her feet as he held her tightly against him.
“I was so worried about you,” she whispered. “He bought three devices, Ian. There’s one he hasn’t used yet.”
“Three? Are you sure?”
“Steve got a message tonight from the man who sold them, and he called me at home—”
“Easy,” Ian soothed, setting her back on her feet and kissing her gently. She was trembling, clearly strained to the breaking point, and he couldn’t bear to see her that way. Even a diamond could be shattered if the blow fell in just the right place, and Michele had already withstood too much.
He guided her to the couch and sat down, drawing her into his lap and holding her. “You’re tired. Just rest for a little while,” he murmured into the soft, dark cloud of her hair. “We’ll get through this, baby, I promise.”