by Sylvie Kurtz
His cell phone bleated, stopping both of them mid-action.
“Business,” he said, palming the receiver. “I’ll take it outside.”
Through the living room window, Juliana watched him pace the length of the porch, listening with rapt attention to the speaker. Business, he’d said. About Briana? About the Phantom? Had they located them?
* * *
“I’ve got the information you wanted,” Jeb Harris said. Though it was nearly nine, Lucas heard the squad room drone with activity around the younger agent. “I don’t see how this relates to the Phantom.”
“Yours is not to wonder,” Lucas said, salivating to get straight to the point. “You’re a smart kid. You’ll get the hang eventually.”
“Yeah, well, you owe me. Regan almost busted me while I was doing your search and retrieve. He’s really hot under the collar about you not responding to your pages. Thought he’d pop an artery on the spot.”
Temple would understand what Lucas was trying to achieve, but then Temple saw the SOP manual as a guide not a bible. Unfortunately, according to Regan, skipping rank would prove an even more unforgivable sin than playing turtle for a day or two while the job got done. “He’ll get over it when he has the Phantom to parade in front of the SAC and the press.”
“I hope you’re right. Where do you want to start?”
Turning away from the house, Lucas switched the phone from one ear to the other. “Juliana Shales. The last six years.”
“There really isn’t much,” Harris said while he shuffled papers. “She worked as a gemologist for Farakis Jewelers in downtown Nashua until five and a half years ago. Then, after taking a year off, she opened Precision Jewels in South Nashua near the mall. She’s got one full-time assistant, Callie Mercier, and a couple of part-timers—Sara Coles and Ben Reeves. She’s got a steady business and a good reputation.”
Lucas paced in order to keep his voice calm, his impatience in check. “Married?”
“No, but she’s got one daughter, Briana Hope Shales.”
Shales? He frowned. “Divorced?”
“No.”
The hairs on the back of his neck bristled. “How old is the baby?”
“She was born on September 25…let’s see…one, two, five years ago—”
“Five years?” Lucas stopped in his tracks. His nerves jangled as if he were connected to a live wire. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, is there a problem?”
Slowly he turned. Yeah, there was a problem. A big problem. “Who’s the father?”
“Unknown.”
The word hit him like a punch. Unknown. After all they’d shared. Unknown! His gaze connected with Juliana’s through the living room window. Pale blue curtains frothed around her head, covering her hair like a Madonna’s veil. Her blue-gray eyes widened with alarm, and in her fear, he saw the truth. Taking away five from just over six years and getting nine months didn’t take a genius.
Briana was his.
He was a father. He had a daughter.
Joy briefly flickered, then died. Juliana had left him because she was pregnant. What had she thought? That he would flee? That he wouldn’t take responsibility for his actions? Had she understood so little about him, about what he felt for her? Rather than take the chance of being rejected, she’d turned her back on him, walked away, and she’d kept his child from him for all these years.
Briana was missing. His first sight of his child might be as a corpse.
Fire spread through his veins. His jaw ached from the force of grinding his teeth. His muscles quaked with the seismic force of his anger. He wanted to shake Juliana. He wanted to blister her with his rage. He wanted to whip her with his words until she explained why she’d been so stupid, so cruel.
As if she sensed the depth of his fury, she recoiled from the window and disappeared.
“Hey, you still there?” Harris asked.
“Yeah, I’m here.” She could try to hide from him, but she wouldn’t leave. Not while her—their!—daughter was missing. He would get his answers—all of them. “What else do you have?”
“That’s about it for Juliana Shales. Clean record. Clean finances. The rest of the names you gave me are a bunch of all-American white bread. Not so much as a speeding ticket on any of them, except one.”
“Who?”
“Albert Tilton.”
Chapter 6
Lucas found Juliana in the kitchen. She sat at the table, chair drawn tightly under her. Her elbows rested on the white-washed wood, her hands splayed flat on the table top, her gaze stared straight ahead. Striding forward, he had every intention of demanding answers, but couldn’t find his voice through the thick lump of anger.
He leaned his fists on the table, pushed his weight onto them and skewered her with his gaze. Trying to sort through the maze of his emotions, his all-consuming need to understand came out as one word. “Briana.”
The pulse at Juliana’s throat jangled irregularly. “What about her?”
“She’s mine?”
Juliana’s eyes were bleak, gray like clouds heavy with rain. She nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The question ripped from his throat.
“I-I thought…” Her features contorted. She shook her head helplessly.
“What, Juliana, what did you think? How dare you keep such a thing from me? How can you possibly justify your actions?”
She lowered her gaze, laced her fingers together. “I thought it was the best thing to do—for all of us.”
At that moment, he hated her with all the passion and fury he’d hated the man who’d shot his father for the five hundred and sixty-eight dollars in a teller’s drawer.
He was out of control. He needed to calm down, cool down. With his temper at full throttle, he’d do or say something he’d regret, and lose whatever chance he had to get to know his child. But he couldn’t completely let go.
“I want a picture of her.”
Juliana nodded once, then scraped the chair back. He followed her stiff gait to the living room where she crouched beside a cedar chest. The cover creaked. From beneath a red, white, and blue quilt she extracted a resin frame decorated with sculpted alphabet blocks. She pressed the frame against her heart, then slowly rose, tears streaming down her face.
She had kept his daughter from him. She had deliberately hidden her.
“Juliana.” The plea for an explanation croaked from him, harsh and raw.
She flinched. Her body braced against his fury.
He grabbed the picture frame from her hand, then swerved and left.
Once in the car, he sat with the frame upside down in his lap. Part of him couldn’t wait to look upon his daughter’s face; part of him feared the moment.
He reached overhead and turned on the dome light. Blobs of red, blue and yellow stained the cream-colored resin along the back edge of the frame. He ran a finger along the bumps, then holding his breath, he turned the frame over.
He took in the background first. Snow. A hill. Tracks in the snow. A purple sled. A turquoise jacket and snow pants. Pink hat. Pink mittens. A young girl’s smiling face.
His breath came out in a tortured groan.
She looked like his sister Nadya had when she’d been a bratty five—only Nadya had worn two pigtails, not one. She looked like his pixie of a niece Alexandra who would be six in May. Briana’s hair was brown like his mother’s, a lighter shade than his own. Her cheekbones, high and prominent even at such a tender age, were a gift from his father. In her eyes, he saw a reflection of Juliana’s. In the shape of her face, a mirror image of his own.
Briana. Their child. His daughter.
This changed everything.
* * *
“What’s wrong with your dog?” Briana asked. She hunkered beside the dog’s bed—which he’d brought to the kitchen earlier when they’d come down to make dinner together—but made no attempt to pet Bijou.
“I don’t know.”
He’d been worried ab
out Bijou for the last couple of weeks. He’d noticed a progressive decline. Her hair, usually lustrous and silky, hung limp. Her eyes, like shiny beads of dark jasper, had lost their shine. Now the brightest thing about the dog was the collar of pink diamonds around her neck. Her boundless energy had waned like a battery running on empty, making her go slower and slower and slower every day. Her appetite had exhausted its greed. She hadn’t begged from the table in days. Instead, he’d had to spend time convincing her to accept the tasty morsels he prepared for her.
She was twenty-one. Old by dog standards. But Bijou was not an ordinary dog. She was special. Abandoned like him. By a wardrobe mistress whose new love didn’t care for the tiny dog. So she’d put Bijou outside with the night’s garbage and left her to fend for herself.
He’d watched her self-assured little body hop the ladder of empty boxes, pick out the choicest morsels from the Dumpster, then pull a discarded costume from the refuse and make a nest by the stage back door. And he’d known she was a soul mate when she’d laid her head on the cape’s fur collar, wrapped her paws around the shredded black silk and drawn the bright red brooch to her, holding it against her heart like a child would a doll.
She’d loved the pink diamonds he’d chosen especially for her from Mrs. Van Waldenburg’s collection, and they’d loved her, too. They’d shared their fire with her, kept her young and active all these years.
He knelt beside the child, fingered the stones on Bijou’s collar. They still shone bright, still looked strong. Could their power be abating?
He glanced at Briana, thought of how enchanting she was, then shook his head. No, the child would mature. She was a jewel now, but give her a couple of years and she would grow as rude and as inconsiderate as the rest of the loitering teenage brats who jeered at him when he bought his groceries late at night.
No, he needed Bijou, not a replacement. What she needed, he decided, was stronger magic. He smiled. A sixty-five carat sapphire should do the trick. The diamonds and rubies couldn’t hurt, either. He’d thought he’d keep the Nadyenka Sapphire for himself, but he now saw Bijou needed it more.
Tomorrow, after he returned Briana, he would stop at the fabric store and get some brown velvet. He would make Bijou a collar fit for a queen.
“I think you should take her to a vet,” Briana said, eyebrows scrunched pensively. “My cat looked just like that before he died.” She reached for the dull hair and stroked Bijou’s coat gently. “Now Mom won’t get me another one because she says it’s too hard when they die.”
“Bijou doesn’t need a vet. I have just the right thing for her. By tomorrow night, she’ll be herself again.”
She wouldn’t leave him. She would always be there.
* * *
“Sleep well?” Juliana asked through the half-opened front door, not quite sure how to deal with Lucas. She’d heard him leave after he’d grabbed Briana’s picture from her. The sharp, strident fall of his footsteps on the porch’s wood had reverberated with his rage. The squealing of tires out of the driveway a few minutes later had echoed the bitterness of his feelings. But she’d known his departure provided only a temporary reprieve. The Phantom was still at large, after all, and the way to him was through Briana.
“I’ve slept better.” He rose from the wicker rocker and stretched the kinks out of his shoulders, making her wonder just how long he’d sat there. He wore age-softened jeans, molding him in all the right places, making it much too easy for her imagination to fill in the details. His running shoes looked road-weary, his gray sweatshirt and his navy polo shirt appeared fresh, if sleep-wrinkled. He cupped Briana’s picture in his left hand. What had he thought? What was he feeling?
She’d woken up stiff and sore, slumped on the living room couch. A peek through the curtains had shown her her car, as well as a green Jeep, in the driveway, and Lucas asleep on the porch. After a quick shower and a change of clothes, she’d felt almost human again, but Lucas’s wrath still hung above her like a sword ready to chop her to pieces. She’d decided to face him now rather than wait. Now she wasn’t sure. He still looked wild and seething with anger.
“Might as well come in,” she said, opening the front door all the way. She wasn’t above begging for a little time—she just didn’t want the neighbors to see her groveling like a guilty puppy. “You’re not exactly being inconspicuous in that chair.”
“And what would the Jones’s think if they saw a strange man sleeping on prim-and-proper Juliana Shales’s front porch.”
He knew her too well. Knew all her soft spots, her chinks, her quirks.
Knew how to hurt her.
She understood his need, would have felt the same if she stood in his shoes. She handed him the mug of coffee she’d poured for herself. “Sounds like you need this more than I do.”
The mailbox squealed as she dug out yesterday’s mail. She nearly cried when she saw Briana’s National Geographic—not the kids’ version, the adults’. Briana thought the pictures were more fascinating, and reading the articles together, snuggled on the couch or on her bed, had been one of their favorite shared activities.
A car trolled slowly down the sleepy street, a series of whaps marking its path. The newspaper landed with a thwack at the base of the stairs. She bent over to pick it up. A cell phone fell from its folds. No sooner had she finished picking it up than it rang.
“Tell your special agent there’s no point in trying to trace the origin of the gadget,” the Phantom said without preamble. “I paid cash and gave a false name and address. The service is a calling card.”
“How’s Briana?” She glanced up at Lucas. His fatigue vanished with her words. A predator’s mask settled firmly over his features. His body readied to pounce into action.
“She’s fine. She has quite a healthy appetite. We had six multi-grain pancakes apiece, plus a bowl of fresh strawberries, and orange juice—freshly squeezed, naturally.”
“I want to talk to her.”
“There’s no time. I told you, Miss Shales, that I would take good care of your daughter. I do keep my word.”
“For what that’s worth.” Shut up, you idiot. Don’t get him mad. Not before you have Briana back in your arms. “You’re a thief, a kidnapper, a—”
“I do get the picture. Shall we go on with our business?”
“Yes, of course.” Control, stay in control. She swallowed, let out a shuddering breath. Briana was all right. She had to be all right. “Where do I meet you?”
“I want you to wrap the Nadyenka Sapphire very carefully and stow it into your red tote bag. The one with the strange-looking cat on the front. It’s distinctive and can’t be missed. Then I want you to get into your car, not the Jeep, and start driving.”
“Which direction?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll call you once you’re moving.”
Lucas spoke into his cell phone. Panic swarmed into her bloodstream. No, no. She shook her head madly from side to side. Don’t ruin this, Lucas!
“Tell Vassilovich he’s to ride with you.”
“Why?”
“I think you already know the answer to that. I would hurry, if I were you. We’re actually on quite a tight schedule. I trust you have a full tank of gas. If not, I suggest you make a gas station your first stop.”
“Wait—”
The Phantom had already hung up.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she yelled at Lucas, venting her frustration on him. “I told you. No FBI. No agents. This is between him and me, and I really don’t care if you capture your Phantom.”
“What did he say?”
She pushed past him and headed toward the kitchen, trusting he’d follow. “We’re going for a road trip. You, me, and the Nadyenka Sapphire. My car, not yours. That’s it. Do you understand?”
“Juliana—”
She snatched the brooch from the table, wrapped it in a clean kitchen towel. “How much gas did you leave in the car after your joy ride last night?”
�
�Filled it up before I came back.”
“Well, that’s one relief.” She marched to the front closet and searched amid hers and Briana’s boots and outdoor gear for the Laurel Birch tote bag she used to lug their library books, dumped the books on the floor, and placed the wrapped Sapphire in the bag. How had he known about it? Goose bumps trooped up her arms. He was a shadow following her every move. “I mean it, Lucas, I don’t want to see any agents following us.”
“You won’t.”
Her head snapped back, and she stared at him. “This isn’t a game to me.”
“For me either. There’s safety in numbers.”
“Or, if the Phantom recognizes your agents, the death of a child. Can your conscience accept that? Mine can’t.”
“She will be safe.” Lucas took her chin in his hand. The intensity of his gaze ruffled her insides. “Briana is my daughter, too. Don’t you forget that.”
She was his daughter, and he was staking his claim. Holding out a shaky hand, Juliana asked, “Keys?”
“I’ll drive.” He strode toward the door.
“I will.” She grabbed her bag and followed. “I need something to keep me busy. I’ll go crazy just sitting there.”
“He’ll want to talk to you. You can’t talk and drive.”
She decided against arguing. The last thing they needed was to get into an accident because she couldn’t concentrate on the Phantom’s instructions and the road at the same time.
They had barely backed out the driveway when the phone rang.
“Head east on one-oh-one. Take the one-oh-one A exit. Go south.” The Phantom gave her no chance to comment.
She punched the off button and relayed the message to Lucas. Her muscles already shook with a need to act, her heart sped with anticipation, her nerves unraveled with worry. Where were they going? How long before she held Briana safely in her arms again? Would Lucas ruin her chances to get her baby back?