They didn’t come up with anything, but somehow Colleen felt happier. They’d discussed the situation rationally, politely, and Bret had listened intently to everything she’d had to say.
At eleven he said that they needed to go to their rooms, he was expecting to hear from Bill Dwyer by eleven-thirty.
“Just who is Dwyer?” Colleen asked, yawning as she and Bret stepped into their room.
Bret shrugged. “He’s an attach;aae with the diplomatic force here. I only met him briefly, but he was very cordial, and he helped me when I was covering that problem with the wine. He seemed grateful that I kept it from panicking vacationing Americans.” Bret paused, then shrugged again. “All I really asked him to do was get some police protection for Sandy and MacHowell. But he was eager to get involved, probably because there really isn’t that much for him to do here.”
He threw himself onto the bed, next to the phone, laced his fingers behind his head and smiled at her. There was a definite silver glitter in his eyes. “Why don’t you take your shower while I wait for my call?”
“I suppose I could,” Colleen murmured.
She showered with high excitement already coursing through her body. She combed her hair until it gleamed and touched her body with scented talc and a spray of perfume. Then she wrapped herself in one of the oversize towels and opened the door, ready to be ravished.
But Bret was on the phone. He glanced at her, gave her a remote smile, then stared at the pencil he was idly tapping against the bedside table. Curious, Colleen moved into the room and perched beside him. As she listened to his conversation, she realized that he was talking to Sandy.
Which was fine, really. Except that he talked and talked, soft words, soothing words, encouraging words. Things were going to be all right. Yes, they’d all be together soon. Yes, he missed her, too.
“What?” Colleen asked without thinking.
Bret waved her question impatiently aside and kept talking. She walked angrily back into the bathroom, then returned to stand in front of him. At last he hung up the receiver, looked up and smiled at her.
“That was touching,” Colleen said sweetly.
He grimaced. “She needs a lot of reassurance.”
“Ummm.”
“But she’s feeling better now. Dwyer is there, and apparently she likes him.”
“How nice.”
“Are you ready to make up for your brutalization of my poor body on the plane?” he teased, reaching for her.
Colleen took a small step backward, eluding him. “I certainly am,” she promised sweetly. “They say that the very best thing for burns is cold water,” she told him, and as she spoke, she doused him with a bucket of ice water that she’d been hiding behind her back.
“Colleen!” He jumped to his feet, this time reaching for her with such swiftness that she couldn’t elude his arms. She was pulled against his body, trembling at the strength of his muscles beneath his damp clothes.
She lifted her chin to him, still smiling. “Sandy doesn’t need to get that much assurance on my time,” she said pointedly. He still felt rigid and tense, and the eyes that surveyed her shot silver sparks.
“I’m ready, I’m ready!” she protested, and she let her towel fall as she pressed ever closer to him.
His arms tightened around her. She could feel the heat of his arousal through his clothing. He nipped lightly at her earlobe and whispered, “You’re going to make it all better?”
She nodded, a little breathless when she finally discovered that she could speak.
“Ummm. I’m going to kiss you…all over.”
“Promise?” His hands smoothed down her spine and caressed her buttocks, lifting her to the length of his frame.
In seconds she was lying on the bed, and he was beside her. She began working at the buttons on his shirt, then touched her lips to the pulse at his throat before pausing momentarily to stare into his eyes.
“All over,” she said solemnly. “I promise….”
And then she fell silent because she meant to keep that promise.
CHAPTER 11
First thing in the morning Bret called the police in the States. He had expected them to have discovered something about Rutger’s death, but he was disappointed. They hadn’t found a clue to the murderer. It had all been very neat: no fingerprints, no weapon, nothing at all to help them.
Except, perhaps, the secrets of his past.
Carly made a perfunctory long-distance check with the office; then they started west along the autobahn in a rented VW. At noon they took the turnoff at Melk, drove by the huge and forbidding monastery and in another thirty minutes reached Dernstein, where the main attraction was the ruin of the castle where Richard Lion-Heart had been held in captivity by Leopold V of Austria.
It was a beautiful place, built along the Danube. Tourists were everywhere, but they managed to secure a table at a restaurant right on the water. The Danube, gray that day rather than a poetic blue, ran by them in glorious splendor, and high above the ruins stood sentinel.
They ordered beer and sauerbraten and idly discussed the story layout, should they have a story. It was somewhere during the cover-art conversation that Bret turned rather impatiently to Colleen. “What is your problem? You keep sighing, and you have all the enthusiasm of a wet blanket.”
Colleen took a sip of her beer, coughing a little when it seemed to go down the wrong channel. “I just don’t think I really understand what we’re doing. I mean, this is lovely. Absolutely beautiful. I’d love to be here on vacation, staring at the Danube all day. But we’re not on vacation, and I just don’t see that any of this is doing any good. Do you really think that anyone who is after us is going to believe that we’re dawdling along like tourists?”
Bret shrugged. “Maybe not. I just don’t have any better ideas at the moment. Do you? We can hardly tear apart every mountain. They stretch forever once you reach the western border. Who the hell knows, maybe they aren’t even near the western border. We’re searching for a needle in who knows how many haystacks.”
“If we had Holfer’s piece of the puzzle,” Colleen commented, “we might know.”
“It’s my fault that we don’t, right, because I stopped you from chasing your beautiful blonde?”
“Possibly,” Colleen retorted. What had she said to him about Wilhelm Holfer? She lowered her eyes, trying to remember. Yes, she had eventually described him as a striking man, handsome, with beautiful blond hair. Was Bret jealous? How nice, for a change. She couldn’t help but be grateful that, for the moment at least, the fragile and elegant Miss Tyrell was no longer with them.
“And that’s another thing!” she announced before Bret could respond. “I don’t understand anything about this friend of yours, Bill Dwyer. He must have been in Vienna, but rather than waiting for you and Carly and me, he flew out to meet Sandy and MacHowell. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for him to talk to us first?”
“First of all,” Bret said, “he’s an acquaintance, not a friend. We’re lucky to get any help from him at all. Second, he probably thinks MacHowell is more important than either of us. And then…” He paused, grinning as he mused.
“Then what?”
“Maybe he’s heard about Sandy Tyrell. She is a rather gorgeous creature, you know. Bill is young and single. Maybe he wanted to give her a shoulder to lean on.”
“Jealous?” Colleen inquired sweetly.
“Would you two please go for a walk,” Carly suggested. “Wear off some combat energy. It’s not far to the top of the ruins. There’s a beautiful view. Just beautiful. You’ll be too breathless to argue on the way, and you’ll give my tender ears a break!”
Colleen sat back in her chair with a sigh and stared across the table at Bret. His eyes seemed to match the color of the Danube, gray and churning. They had been heading toward another of their whiplash disagreements, and she knew she was as much to blame as he was. She didn’t have any answers; she just felt restless and discouraged. She turned
her eyes to him, smiling.
“We might as well. Objectively, if we’re getting a bit of a vacation out of this, we might as well use it. Carly, sure you don’t want to come?”
“Heavens no, I did it before. Back in ‘65, when I was stationed at Garmisch-Partenkirchen. I’ll wait here. Besides, our friends in the Tirol might give us a call, and this way I can let the hotel know where to find me if they do.”
Colleen and Bret walked through the narrow winding streets, alive with shops and flowers, that led to the upward trail to the ruins. They found a sign in several languages warning that it was a twenty-minute walk up. “Sure you’re up for this?” Bret queried Colleen, glancing down at her shoes. They were sandals with little heels.
“Of course,” she returned.
For fifteen minutes she preceded him. In places there were steps, in other places just dirt and pebbles. It began to feel as if she were walking straight up. She was breathing raggedly and grabbing onto an occasional bush to keep her footing long before the first ten minutes were up. She finally paused several feet ahead of Bret, gasping and trying to slow her heartbeat before he caught up to her.
The view was already breathtaking. She could look down and see the town, the spires and the roofs, and the Danube, shimmering beneath the sun. Clouds were beginning to roll in, casting a mist over the mountain.
Bret was panting behind her. She clicked her tongue in disapproval. “You smoke too much,” she told him with a saccharine note of concern.
He shot her a dry glance. “And you don’t?”
“No, not really.” She patted his cheek and started on ahead of him again, calling over her shoulder, “I’m far more moderate. In everything, don’t you think?”
“No,” he said flatly, and a second later he passed her.
They walked for several more minutes before they passed a couple heading downhill, who gave them a cheerful greeting in German. They both responded, glad of the chance to stop again for a breather. Colleen moved to the outside of the path to allow the others room and was surprised when Bret suddenly gripped her arm.
“What’s the matter?” she asked him, startled, as he pulled her back into the center of the trail. “This isn’t the Empire State Building, you know. No guardrails, nothing. You’ve got to watch your step, especially in those stupid heels.”
He released her before she could reply and started up the trail again. “I think twenty minutes must have a different meaning to Austrians, even when it’s written in English!” he muttered.
Silently Colleen agreed. It was a beautiful walk, but it was long.
“Ah!” Bret exclaimed. She almost crashed into his back. They had reached a plateau and a section of the wall.
“We’re here!” Colleen said joyfully.
Bret shook his head, grimacing. “No, that’s where we’re supposed to be.” He pointed upward, where there were the remains of more walls, arched doorways, parapets, and even a complete chamber. He set his hands on her shoulders and pulled her back against his chest. “But we’re close!”
Slabs of rock set in the loose dirt formed the only road up. Bret took Colleen’s hand, and she was glad. A fall wouldn’t have sent her plummeting down the mountain, but it would have caused her some nasty scratches.
A few minutes later they reached the top, and Colleen was glad that they had come. The breeze was just perfect, cool and inviting. The ruins were intriguing. It was fascinating to wonder about the people who had once walked there, the knights and the ladies, rulers and serfs. The Danube seemed to be a silver ribbon far below them.
Colleen paused in front of a wall with a complete Norman arched window. Bret climbed higher, through another archway to what must have been a parapet.
He breathed deeply, enjoying the view. Then suddenly, and quite inexplicably, he felt as if the hair were rising on the back of his neck, and a chill shook him.
He closed his eyes and listened. Then he heard it, a shifting of stone and dirt, as if there were someone there with them.
But there wasn’t. They hadn’t passed another person since they had seen the German tourists going down.
He opened his eyes again. It was far from nightfall, but a coming storm had darkened the sky all around them. It seemed that he could touch the dark, brooding clouds, and the wind was whipping all around them. Far below the Danube churned a deeper and deeper indigo gray.
He heard it again: the scattering of pebbles. He remembered his words of warning to Colleen. There were no guardrails here. A step in the wrong direction and… nothing. Nothing but jagged spears of rock for hundreds and hundreds of feet.
He turned around in something approaching panic; he couldn’t see her. “Colleen!”
The wind seemed to tear his voice away. Suddenly he heard the fall of something heavy, not a pebble, but a good-size rock.
“Colleen!” Half stumbling, he hurried back to the archway where he had left her, his heart pounding wildly. There were dozens of places here where someone could hide. Behind a wall, in the brush…
“Colleen!” He stopped twenty feet away from her, breathing more easily. She was fine. The wind was whipping her hair about her fine features like a velvet cloak. Her eyes were very wide and brilliant, catching the last of the sun.
“Bret! You should have seen it! It scared the life out of me. That boulder just came—”
He had her hand by then and was pulling her back. “Come on. We’re going down.”
“Bret, I…”
They both heard it that time: another shifting of dirt and rock. Bret stared at her for one second. She looked so small and slim in her light cotton sundress. Fresh and feminine and fragile—and totally vulnerable.
“Let’s go!” he told her and dragged her behind him.
He had been wrong. Night was coming, and quickly now. Bracken and trees seemed to reach out for them; the stone steps were slick and damp, and the dirt seemed to provide no traction. They passed the first stretch of wall and kept going. Halfway down the path seemed to broaden again. For a while it was a simple walk; the lights of the town below were coming closer. Then the path veered, and the steps gave way to rock. Colleen gasped, spinning and tripping. He turned to pull her up, and his eyes caught sight of something on the trail behind them. Something dark moved quickly and disappeared into the brush.
“Come on!” he implored her. Gasping, she fell again. Two steps to the left and she would have been hanging by a fingerhold. Hanging over the cliff, with nothing below.
“A house!” Colleen said with a gasp a few minutes later, and Bret was grateful to see it. It meant that they were almost back to the street. Almost back to people, in full view, where an “accident” could not occur.
“Hurry!” he muttered. The sound behind them was suddenly no longer furtive; they could hear footsteps hurrying in their wake.
Bret pushed Colleen ahead of him. “Run!” he told her, and then he turned, ready to face the attacker and buy her time.
But even as he spun, knees slightly bent, arms braced to lunge, his eyes widened in amazement. His body went lax, and he began to laugh. A second later Colleen was beside him, wrapping her arm around his waist as they panted and laughed together.
Their “attacker” was in full view now. He couldn’t have been more than ten years old, and he was looking at them both as if they were definitely crazy. He passed them with a pleasant Guten Tag.
Bret and Colleen grimaced at one another. He slipped an arm around her shoulders, and they started to follow the boy at a leisurely pace.
“This is getting to me,” Bret groaned.
“You! My dress is ripped, my legs are scratched to ribbons and I don’t think my heart will ever beat normally again!”
“Does it beat normally?”
“What?”
“Your heart. I think it’s rather frosty, myself.”
“Hey, you’re the one who’s made of stone.”
“Am I?” He paused. “I was thinking of you up there. That it would be nice to
lock you away in a high tower, where you couldn’t get into any trouble.”
“Ummm, where I’d be in a place where you could float in and see me and then forget that I exist while you wander around the globe at your convenience.”
“You really don’t trust anyone. You can’t talk without getting nasty, can you? Your parents died, Colleen. They didn’t leave you. And you—”
“Talk?” she protested, swinging at him. He saw that she was on the verge of tears, and he wanted to put his arms around her again, yet he feared that she wouldn’t let him.
“You’re the one who can never—” She broke off suddenly, staring past him.
“What is it?” Bret demanded tensely.
“Carly. He’s sitting in that little cemetery at the start of the path.”
Bret followed her gaze; she was right.
“What do you suppose he’s doing?” she murmured curiously.
“Well, he’s not praying over departed strangers,” Bret muttered in reply. “He’s waiting for us. Something must be up. Come on, let’s hurry.”
The ground was level enough for them to run, and they did. Carly must have heard their approach because he stood and came around the iron gate to meet them on the path.
“What’s wrong?” Bret demanded. Not only Carly’s presence but the dark tension in his features warned them there was something very wrong indeed.
Carly hesitated for a second, gazing into Colleen’s anxious eyes.
Colleen’s mind, riddled with guilt over her dislike of Sandy, instantly moved in the other woman’s direction. “Oh, no! It’s Sandy!” she whispered. “Something’s happened to Sandy.”
“No, no. Sandy is fine. Healthy, I mean. It’s, uh…” He paused, sighing unhappily. “It’s MacHowell.”
“MacHowell?” Bret echoed.
“He’s dead,” Carly said.
“How? What? When?”
Carly shook his head. “I spoke to Bill Dwyer briefly. He said he’ll give us all the details when he sees us. Sandy was with him, and Dwyer had to get a sedative for her. We’ve got to leave right now. We’ve got to meet them at the Ch;afateau Moreau outside Salzburg tonight.”
Double Entendre Page 19