by Неизвестный
She swallowed. “No.”
From the panic in her eyes, he wondered if she knew what a driver’s license was. Where the hell did she come from, really? With her odd accent and her out-of-kilter fears. She’d made a vague reference to “the hills.” He knew there were rural areas of Pennsylvania where people lived in isolated communities. Maybe she belonged to one of those crazy religious cults where one guy ran the whole show. Or maybe there was a bunch of elders telling everyone else what to do. Was she being forced to marry one of the old men? Was that why she’d run away? Or had she been abducted by aliens and just escaped from the mother ship? Yeah, sure.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-two,” she answered in a quavery voice.
He nodded.
“Can you cook?”
She looked toward the stove. “You could teach me.”
“It’s not my best skill.”
She jumped back in with more suggestions. “I can sew. And . . . make beds. And I know how to make soap and preserve books.”
“Preserve books?”
She flushed. “Well, I guess you don’t do that here.”
The almost desperate expression on her face made his stomach clench. He didn’t know her background. He wasn’t sure he could trust her, and he was worried about his wild, out-of-control response to her. Yeah, let’s not forget about that.
Or was that part of the reason he was willing to keep her close? He hated questioning his own motives. But even if he’d have to watch himself around her, he wasn’t going to toss her out. At least not without proof that she was up to something underhanded.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he said, “We can give it a try.”
The look of relief that flooded her face was almost too much to take. She wanted this. More than she was letting on.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Because he was having trouble coping with his own emotions, he asked, “Do you want something to eat?”
She hesitated, her tongue flicking out to stroke her lower lip.
“You’re hungry, right? But you don’t want to ask for food.”
“Yes,” she admitted in a low voice.
“You don’t have to second-guess everything with me,” he said, wondering if it was true.
He thought about his larder. He had a lot of meat in the freezer and the food he took on camping trips. There was also a stock of canned goods for when he had clients staying over.
“Canned beef soup all right?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I guess you’re not a vegetarian.”
“A what?”
“You eat meat.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“No.”
While he opened a can from the pantry, he noted that she was watching him carefully, as though she had never seen a can opener and wanted to learn how to do it.
He stirred the soup, put some in another mug, and set it in the microwave. This time her expression was wide-eyed, and he was sure she had never seen the appliance before.
“You cook it in there? In the cup?”
“It’s already cooked. The microwave heats it up.”
“Oh.”
When the timer rang after a couple of minutes, she took her lower lip between her teeth. “It does it so fast?”
“Well, it depends on how much you have. With more food, it takes longer.”
“Oh,” she said again, like he was explaining Einstein’s theory of relativity.
He took out the mug with a potholder and set it on the counter, along with a couple of spoons. “Be careful. The mug’s hotter than the soup. Use the handle.”
“Okay.”
After carrying her soup to the table, he poured the rest of the can into another mug. It wasn’t his favorite meal, but he could handle it.
She sipped cautiously. “It’s good.”
“Probably, you’re used to homemade.”
“Yes.”
“You know how to slaughter cattle?”
“I’ve never done it.”
When she didn’t offer any more comments, he leaned back and watched her eat. She was trying not to gulp the simple meal, but he could see she was hungry, and he felt guilty about taking part of the soup when he was only sipping it to keep her company.
Getting up, he found a box of crackers in the pantry, took out half a dozen, and put them on a plate, which he passed to her.
She ate them quickly.
“Finish up. Then you should get to bed.”
Obediently, she spooned up the meat and vegetables at the bottom of the mug.
When she’d finished and looked up, he stood and reached for the crockery.
“I’ve made extra work for you. Let me wash those,” she said.
“No need. I’ll just put them in the dishwasher.”
“The dishwasher. Right,” she said, and he had the feeling again that she’d come from another universe. Or at least an environment without modern conveniences.
Staying matter-of-fact, he showed her how to stack the mugs in the appliance. Then he escorted her to a bedroom next to the bathroom where she’d showered.
She tensed and he wondered what she thought he was going to do—grab her? He took a step back, but because he didn’t want her to stumble around in the dark if she got up in the middle of the night, he pointed out the overhead light switch, as well as the lamp on the bedside table.
Then he left, because he couldn’t help feeling awkward standing in a bedroom with her.
WHEN she’d closed the door, Kenna breathed out a little sigh. He’d left her alone, when he could have continued the heated scene they’d started in the kitchen. But since then, it was obvious that he was working hard to distance himself from the intimacy.
She might have thanked him for that—if she’d felt comfortable bringing up the subject.
There was a door from her bedroom into the bathroom. After stepping through, she used the toilet, marveling at the way she could flush it when she was finished.
Back in her bedroom, she switched the lamp on and off, enchanted by the way the warm light flooded from under the shade at the press of a button. Then she turned off the overhead light at the switch and slipped into the bed. It was wide and comfortable, more comfortable than any bed she had ever slept in. And the coverings and pillows felt soft next to her skin.
She lay there for several minutes, staring around at the room, hardly able to believe that she was really here. In a lodge. In another universe. Then she pressed the switch on the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. Well, not quite darkness. A little light came in around the covering over the window.
Wriggling down under the covers, she lay with her eyes closed, trying to come to grips with everything that had happened. She’d fooled Talon Marshall into believing her story about escaping from the hills. No, she should call him Talon. And had she fooled him? Certainly he knew there was something strange about her—at least from his point of view. Could she keep him on her side?
Even though she hated herself for lying to him, she wanted to stay here. Because she was attracted to him? Or because this was an ideal place to learn about this world?
Both things were true. But one thing she knew: she didn’t understand him. They were alone in an isolated house where they had shared a passionate kiss, and in her world she was sure he would have taken advantage of that, taken advantage of her. She wouldn’t be lying in this bed alone, or maybe she would, after he’d finished with her.
But it hadn’t turned out that way. And now she had time to think about what she should do.
Using him made her stomach knot. The moral thing to do was leave, but she had connected with him. If she left, she’d have to start all over again and try to trick another man. Who might not be as chivalrous.
Was she rationalizing? Or was Vandar reaching out and controlling her?
She shuddered. Maybe he wasn’t reaching out, but he’d planted compulsions in her mind,
compulsions she couldn’t ignore. Which meant that she didn’t even know if her decisions were her own—or his.
IN his warm and comfortable office, Ramsay Gallagher disconnected from his online brokerage account and pushed his chair away from the desk. As he expected, his finances were in good shape, even with the recent economic downturn. He was a seasoned investor; he knew when to buy stocks and when to pull back and buy municipal bonds and CDs. Some of his money was in land that would only go up in value. And he had buried gold, if he needed it.
But an unaccustomed sense of anxiety had overtaken him, prompting him to take a financial inventory. And earlier, he’d checked his name through a private online database. As far as he could tell, nobody in cyberspace was checking up on him.
No surprise there, either. Over the years, he’d made himself difficult to find. None of his contacts had the address of this house. What mail he received was delivered to a post office box thirty miles away. And he was untraceable on the Internet.
The financial and privacy checks he’d just run should have put his doubts at rest, but the feeling of anxiety remained.
Standing up, he paced to the darkened window and looked out at the stars shining down on his mountaintop. In the cities, the ambient light dimmed the glory of the sky. Out here, the resplendency of the stars shone out as it had for thousands of years.
The window was large, and he could see many familiar constellations. Their names and stories came from mankind’s superstitious past, but that didn’t detract from his enjoyment of the familiar patterns.
He had studied the meaning of the star patterns and studied many ancient techniques for acquiring knowledge.
If a computer couldn’t help him, there were other alternatives he could try.
Leaving his office, he walked down the hall to a door that was hidden in the paneling. When he pressed first at the top and then halfway down the flat surface, the door slid to the side, and he reached through to turn on a light switch. The outside door was wood. Behind it was a blast door that would withstand anything but a direct nuclear strike, and maybe even that.
After sealing the entrance, he descended a flight of steps, then another, into a set of secure rooms that he had carved out of the living rock below his chalet.
If need be, he could take refuge in this hidden apartment, waiting out any danger that threatened him from the world above. He had installed a computer connection, as well as feeds from video cameras that gave him a view of the chalet’s exterior and the surrounding area.
He wasn’t under siege, but this place was more than a stronghold in time of danger. It also isolated him from contact with the world.
One area was outfitted as a lounge. To its left was a bedroom. He walked through to another pocket door. Beyond it was a chamber with rock walls that looked like the cave of a primitive people. Before stepping inside, he stripped off his modern clothing and laid them on the bed, then untied the leather band that held his dark hair at the back of his neck.
After shaking out his hair so that it hung freely around his broad shoulders, he turned to a narrow closet beside the door and brought out a leather loincloth, leather shirt, and an old-fashioned hunting knife, which he donned.
He closed the door with a leather flap hanging from a pole, then walked barefoot into the primitive environment beyond. Inside the secret chamber, it looked like he had stepped back into the ancient past.
Fur rugs covered the stone floor, and a fire pit with a hidden chimney occupied the center of the room. Fresh kindling and logs were already laid in the stone fire circle. Continuing with the illusion that he was in another time and place, he knelt on one of the buffalo robes and removed flint and steel from under one of the rocks.
Expertly, he began to strike the flint against the steel until he could drop a spark onto the kindling. The dry tinder flared up, and he leaned over to blow on the flame. When the fire was burning nicely, he removed a leather pouch from the same place where he’d gotten the flint and steel.
In it was a mixture he had learned about long ago from the elders of an Indian tribe. He had collected this batch of leaves, bark, and berries from the mountains, dried them on the screened porch at the back of the chalet, and pulverized them with an old-fashioned apothecary mortar and pestle.
He poured a heap of the powerful hallucinogen into the palm of his hand, judging the amount by eye. Then he slowly sprinkled the powder into the flames.
As the herbs hit the fire, pungent smoke flared up, and he leaned over the fire, taking several deep breaths.
The burning mixture made him light-headed, but he took in several more deep breaths before lying down on the buffalo robe and closing his eyes, chanting words from a Native American religious ceremony.
No longer able to speak coherently, he lay with his head swimming, bright colors dancing behind his closed lids. He appreciated the light show, and he let himself drift with it, knowing he couldn’t speed up the process. Finally, the lights began to fade, and he saw an outdoor scene. Trees. A rural area.
He knew that it was night, yet in the vision he could see as well as if it were daylight.
As he watched, the figure of a woman winked into existence. One minute she wasn’t there. In the next, she stepped from the shelter of some rocks into a woods.
She was small and slender, with curly brown hair and light eyes. She was dressed in jeans and a jacket. And . . . sandals.
Had she stepped out of a cave?
No, it seemed as though she had come out of the rocks—from somewhere else.
He didn’t know what that meant. Somewhere else? Where else could there be?
Before he could deal with that, another image assaulted him.
Lightning crackled in the sky above the woman, and he saw her running through the darkness—even though the scene came to him with unnatural light.
Wind whipped the branches of the trees around her. Then a massive oak wavered in the tempest. He tried to shout a warning, but his voice was carried away by the wind as the tree came crashing down on her.
When she disappeared in a sea of leaves, he thought she must be dead. Then, to his astonishment, he saw a pale hand emerge from the mass of green. As she struggled to free herself, he drew in a sigh of relief.
He didn’t know who she was. He wasn’t sure why he should care what happened to her. But his chest tightened as he looked at the massive tree that trapped her.
While the branches rocked, then settled down, she fell back into the leaves as though she had put out a massive effort to free herself.
An animal came speeding into the scene. It was a wolf that reached the tree before carefully picking his way to the woman, where he stood staring into her face before trotting away.
For a long moment after that, she lay still. Then, at the edge of the scene he saw the glow of fire.
He caught his breath, terrified that she was going to die.
As the glow increased, the smoke from the vision drifted toward Ramsay, mixing with the drugged smoke in the ceremonial room, and he started to cough. As his chest heaved, the vision began to waver. Though he tried to hold it fast, it dissolved in a shower of gold and silver sparks.
Another time he might have appreciated the twinkling display. Now it brought frustration and anger.
“Shit!”
His curse rang out through the darkened cave. When he tried to recapture the vision, more sparks flashed, this time setting off small explosions inside his head.
The vision could have been a fantasy, but he didn’t think so. It had been too specific and too tied to some other reality.
He needed to find out more about what he had seen and what was going to happen next. Had the woman died in the fire? Had the wolf brought help?
He didn’t know exactly when the incident had taken place. Was he seeing it in real time, or had it already happened? And where was it? Not around here. The trees were all wrong. And the terrain. He thought it was somewhere in the eastern United States, but he cou
ldn’t even be sure of that.
Were there wolves in the East?
His mind turned to the animal. Was it real? Or was it a symbol of something that was important to the vision but still hidden?
As he tried to put the pieces together, more pain welled inside his head, and his fingers clawed at the buffalo skin rug.
He knew that he couldn’t push the vision, but he knew something else as well.
The woman was going to be important to him. In a way he didn’t yet understand.
What would she be to him? A lover? A friend? An enemy? Or did she herald a shift, an entirely different direction in the journey that was his life?
It had happened before—abrupt changes in his biography.
He pushed himself up and looked around the cave. It was a deliberately primitive environment. But he lived in an age that was far from primitive. Perhaps there was some way to use modern search capabilities to track her down.
Could he find out where she was?
He longed to sprinkle more herbs on the fire and go into another vision. But he knew that the ceremony wasn’t going to work twice in a row.
Still, he could speculate on how the relationship would play out. Would she be his ally? Or would he end up having to kill her to protect himself?
CHAPTER NINE
TALON WALKED QUIETLY down the hall, then listened outside Kenna’s door. When he heard nothing, he turned the knob and eased the door open. After allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light, he saw her buried under the covers, lying with her eyes closed.
His chest tightened as he gazed at her. She was such a strange combination of traits. She seemed so innocent. She’d been upset by the things she didn’t know, but she had determination.
To do what? Escape from her past or run a con on Talon Marshall? Long con or short? Well, he guessed that depended on how long she wanted to hang around.
He’d told her they would give her staying here “a try,” when he knew that he was leaning toward keeping her close, even though it might be one of the biggest mistakes he ever made. She was a temptation. Did he want to let her stay to prove that he could keep his hands off of her?