Gabriel's Fate

by Craig, Emma

  Heavy curtains hid the day outside from his eyes, and prevented the sun from dispelling the gloomy atmosphere now pervading the room. Gabriel didn’t like the room this morning. He frowned into it, blinking his eyes in an effort to bring everything into sharper focus. Dammit, he wished she’d stayed with him until morning.

  But she hadn’t. And the first thing he needed to do was open those blasted curtains so the sunshine could get in. This cavernous, empty room was giving him the willies. Naked, he strode to the windows and flung the curtains aside. Since he was on the third floor of the Melrose, he didn’t think he’d shock any Los Angelenos who happened to be strolling by on the street below.

  He turned and frowned. The day was sunny, but the sunlight didn’t seem to be helping his room—or his mood—any. He turned and grimaced at the furniture, trying to figure out why he felt so suddenly incomplete.

  It must be because Sophie’d gone away. His frown deepened. He wished she’d at least awakened him to say good-bye. Her clothes were gone; she probably hadn’t wanted to let Juniper wake up all alone in the room they shared.

  Damn, this room looked bare. He scanned it for a moment, wondering why that should be.

  “Shoot.” Narrowing his eyes, he squinted around the room again, surveying it closely. He didn’t see his clothes.

  Maybe she’d tidied up. He’d been pretty excited last night; he guessed he’d flung his clothes everywhere.

  But this morning they weren’t anywhere. Gabriel hurried to the closet. Nothing. He checked the bureau. Nothing. He looked under the bed, in the bed, threw the chair cushions around, and even stuck his head out the window and stared at the sidewalk beneath the room. Nothing.

  Sophie Madrigal, the conniving little harpy, had stolen his clothes!

  “Now why in the name of gracious did she do that?”

  The truth hit him like a blow to the heart, and he sank onto the bed, for the first time in his life reeling from something a woman had done to him. “She’s going after Hardwick. God damn.”

  She’d used him. That’s what she’d been up to last night. She’d lured him into bed and seduced him, lulled his senses, played on his softer emotions with her little boy’s story, and tricked him. She’d taken his clothes with her when she’d absconded to give herself time. Without anything to wear, he sure as hell couldn’t follow her right away.

  Gabriel glowered around the room and cursed savagely. How the devil was he supposed to get more clothes? He couldn’t very well stroll over to Sophie’s favorite store, the Broadway, damn her soul to perdition, buck naked, now could he?

  “Damn her!”

  The worst part of it—the absolutely worst possible part of it—was that he was even more hurt than he was angry.

  Damnation, the wench had suckered him in like a pro. Even made him fall in love with her, which was a notion so outrageous as to be incomprehensible—yet she’d done it.

  Trapped between rage and heartache, Gabriel buried his face in his hands for several agonizing minutes before he sucked in a gigantic breath, filling lungs that hurt almost as much as his heart did. Then he rose from the bed, replaced the cushions and drawers he’d yanked around in his panic, wrapped himself in a sheet, pulled the bell cord, and waited for a bell man to answer his ring.

  * * * *

  It took two hours for someone from the hotel to go out, buy ready-made goods in his size, bring them back to the hotel, and for Gabriel to dress. Inquiries he’d made as he’d waited in screaming impatience for his new clothes to arrive had been answered as he expected them to be: The Madrigal party had already checked out of the hotel.

  No big surprise there. It wasn’t a surprise, either, that they hadn’t given the hotel desk any indication of where they intended to go now. He was almost certain they wouldn’t stay in Los Angeles.

  He thought about a newspaper partway through the first hour of his imprisonment, and sent for a daily. Thank God Los Angeles was big enough to warrant a daily newspaper. He scanned the headlines first, looking for news of a murder overnight. He didn’t see any, although there might not have been time for one to be reported and written up.

  After his first quick perusal, he roamed more carefully through the paper, searching for the names Hardwick or Madrigal. He told himself he was glad when he didn’t see them printed in the paper, because that meant could most likely still accomplish the job he’d been hired to do. Hell, he’d almost lost sight of his purpose, thanks to Sophie. The she-devil.

  He hated the fact that he was relieved Sophie’s name wasn’t in the paper, because it probably meant she hadn’t yet accomplished murder. And hadn’t been killed. Or locked up. Not that he cared at this point. He only wanted to arrest Hardwick before Sophie got him.

  Or Hardwick got Sophie. The idea made his blood run cold, which made him want to kick himself down the stairs—and maybe back up them again.

  “Hell, she’s a doxy and a no-good cheat. You know better than to care about someone like that. You cut your eyeteeth years ago. No woman can’t get to you.”

  In total disgust, with himself, with Sophie, and with life, Gabriel slapped the newspaper onto the bed. “Who the hell are you trying to kid, Caine?”

  He couldn’t think of an answer to save himself.

  * * * *

  “Are you sure, Sophie?” Juniper looked at her niece with her big, blue eyes fairly radiating doubt.

  “Of course, I’m sure.” She was also hurting, miserable, and enraged, but she didn’t want to tell Juniper so. At the moment, she was deriving some very slight comfort from petting Tybalt, who was curled up like a cinnamon bun on her lap and snoring contentedly. Which made one of them.

  Juniper shook her head. “I don’t like it.”

  Sophie glared at her. “Nonsense. I know what I’m doing.” She was taken aback to see Juniper’s lips pinch into a tight line, as if she were angry. Juniper seldom got angry.

  “I don’t like it that we just took off, Sophie. We should at least have left a message for Mr. Caine.”

  “Fiddlesticks.” Sophie’s heart gave such an enormous spasm, she was surprised she didn’t faint.

  Juniper’s head wagged back and forth. “That’s not right, Sophie. He’s been our good friend this last month or so. We should never have just left without even leaving a note or something to explain our abrupt departure.”

  If there was one person in the universe about whom Sophie didn’t want to talk, it was Gabriel Caine. She stared out through the window and pretended not to hear her aunt.

  “Sophie?”

  Still Sophie watched the buildings of Los Angeles slip past the train’s window and didn’t speak.

  “Sophie.” Silence.

  Juniper muttered something under her breath, and Sophie hoped she’d give up the subject. Her luck, however, was running universally bad today, for Juniper went on with relentless persistence. Sophie’s free hand formed its fingers into claws. She kept stroking Tybalt with the other hand as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

  “And Dmitri. I don’t like leaving Dmitri to make excuses for us. It’s not the way the Madrigal family has been used to doing business, Sophie. We’ve always been punctilious about keeping our engagements and giving the people who hire us a solid reading.”

  “A solid showing of bunkum and rot,” Sophie muttered, feeling more than ordinarily beleaguered.

  “That’s not fair! You’re being perfectly awful, Sophie, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself! This insane obsession of yours is going to be the ruination of the business, and that’s not even the worst of it! The worst of it is that it’s turning you into a creature I don’t even know anymore. In fact,” she said with uncommon spirit, “I don’t even want to know the creature you’ve become, because she’s a spiteful, single-minded, detestable person.”

  Sophie turned her head and stared, stunned, at her aunt. Never, in all the years she’d known Juniper Madrigal—which added up to all the years of Sophie’s life—had she heard Juniper scold another
person. That it should be she, Sophie Madrigal, already overburdened by life’s tragedies, who was the recipient of this particular reproof seemed to Sophie to be the crowning injustice. She wanted to cry. She wanted to drum her heels on the floor and jam her fingers in her ears and stick out her tongue and throw a temper tantrum.

  “And furthermore,” Juniper went on, shocking Sophie yet more, “I think you’ve treated Mr. Caine abominably.” She huffed again, and Sophie almost heard her aunt’s unspoken, “So there.”

  “Leaving him at the hotel without a word. And you know he cares about you, Sophie!” The accusatory look in Juniper’s eyes was almost more than Sophie could bear.

  Unfortunately, Juniper was correct. Little did she know the extent to which Sophie had hoodwinked Gabriel.

  And it had all been for naught. She wanted to shriek and scream every time she thought about the farce her last night in Los Angeles had turned into. First she’d been thoroughly and enchantingly loved by Gabriel—and it had been enchanting. If Sophie had doubted before, last night had expelled any lingering reservations about the two of them belonging together. They did. And she’d ruined it through base deception and flummery.

  The irony didn’t escape her. She, who had spent years accusing her family of being frauds and cranks and charlatans, had perpetrated the most egregious deception of them all. And she’d done it to a man she’d come to love.

  Her throat tightened. She tried to swallow and couldn’t because a huge obstruction, throbbing and aching, wouldn’t let her. Her eyes burned. She kept petting Tybalt, who seemed in that moment her only connection to the life that was slipping away from her.

  Then, after she and Gabriel had made beautiful love and become a unit that might, if she’d let it, have grown into something rock solid and perfect, she’d tricked him. She and Gabriel had a chance there, for one evening, to lay the foundations of a life together; to forge an enduring bond—the sort of bond that seldom occurs in life. As a rule, people ran around as if in blindfolds, aimlessly careening here and there, bumping into this person and that, never knowing what they wanted and, therefore, never finding it. The Universal Mind, as Juniper preferred to think of God, was to Sophie a devious, cunning intelligence. It had thrown her and Gabriel together—undoubtedly as a cruel prank, Sophie thought bitterly—and given them a chance at happiness.

  But the time wasn’t right. Sophie had a job to do first. It was another connivance of that same Universal Mind that had made Sophie’s and Gabriel’s objectives diametrically opposed to each other. She couldn’t achieve her goal without destroying his, and he couldn’t achieve his without ruining hers.

  It wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair.

  The most unfair part of all was that she’d lured him, seduced him, deceived him, and left him, thereby ruining the very tiny chance they’d had for achieving a unity of souls. And she’d done it for nothing. Ivo Hardwick had already fled by the time she stole Gabriel’s clothes and stranded him, sleeping peacefully under the delusion, which she’d meticulously fostered, that she would be there for him when he awoke.

  Offhand, Sophie couldn’t recall ever hating herself as much as she did this morning.

  Thank God for Emerald Huffy. A taciturn, relatively unpleasant individual, and one whom Sophie didn’t personally care for, he was good at his job. He’d told her where Hardwick had gone.

  A twinge of self-mockery made Sophie’s mouth twist. Of course, Huffy would never do anything to impede Hardwick’s progress. That, as he’d be the first to tell Sophie, wasn’t his job. The longer Hardwick continued to escape his doom at Sophie’s hands, the longer Huffy would get paid. But Huffy kept a good watch on Sophie’s prey and hadn’t yet failed to keep her informed of his various destinations.

  Juniper was right in that she might be jeopardizing the Madrigal family business, too. Sophie’d left Dmitri to make her excuses to Mrs. Crenshaw, who had hired them to conduct a séance this evening. But Sophie couldn’t conduct a séance this evening because Ivo Hardwick had eluded her again, and she’d sooner disappoint a client than allow Hardwick to escape death at her hands.

  This time he’d run to San Francisco. She thought grimly that he was taking shorter and shorter hops in his effort to escape his fate. Maybe he was running out of money or something. Sophie didn’t care. She’d find him in San Francisco and kill him there. It didn’t matter to her where she accomplished the deed, as long as she wiped Ivo Hardwick off the face of the earth forever.

  If he escaped her reprisal in San Francisco, she’d track him down again. If the family business folded, she’d be sorry to see it go. Even though she considered the family business one of knavery and deceit, the Madrigals were, for the most part, a good-hearted lot. They never hurt anyone.

  Not like Ivo Hardwick. Or Sophie herself.

  “Oh, Sophie, I wish there was something I could do or say to make you understand what you’re doing to yourself.”

  Sophie had been so engrossed in her own black thoughts that Juniper, who had been silent for several minutes, made her jump. Tybalt jumped, too, opened his eyes, and glanced up at her in mild rebuke. She said, “I’m sorry, Tybalt.” Accepting as usual, Tybalt sighed, closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep once more.

  With reluctance, Sophie allowed herself to look from her dog to her aunt. It occurred to her that she was used to Juniper behaving much as Tybalt behaved. Until today, Juniper had not protested Sophie’s acting out her plan for vengeance except in the mild, ineffective way Tybalt protested being suddenly awakened from a sound sleep.

  She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that her aunt had finally turned against her. She probably ought to expect to be bitten by Tybalt one day soon.

  “I’m sorry you don’t approve,” she said coldly.

  “No, you’re not. You’re not sorry in the least. You don’t care about anything or anybody but yourself.”

  Sophie’s mouth dropped open. Never, in the whole history of the world, had Juniper said anything so downright straightforward.

  “You’ve taken Joshua’s death and twisted it until you’re determined to become as bad as the man who killed him. Joshua. Precious little Joshua. It’s awful, what you’re doing, Sophie Madrigal. Awful.” Juniper snatched a handkerchief from her handbag and blew her nose defiantly. She’d also started crying, probably from terror at her own boldness.

  Breathing hard, Sophie ground out, “I won’t talk about it with you, Aunt Juniper. I won’t talk about it with anyone.”

  She could scarcely believe it when Juniper, her cheeks burning fire and her dripping blue eyes crackling, declared, “How convenient for you, to be sure! It doesn’t matter how many other people you hurt in your determined pursuit of self-destruction, as long as they don’t talk to you about it. Well, I don’t want to talk about it, either. In fact, don’t want to talk to you at all!”

  Juniper Madrigal, a woman whom Sophie would have sworn didn’t have a cross bone in her body, flung herself out of her seat on the train and marched away from Sophie. Sophie didn’t know where she was going, and she didn’t ask. She didn’t dare ask, actually.

  As she watched Juniper’s retreating back, which at this moment looked as if it were strapped to a poker or some other steely implement, every cell in Sophie’s body cried out in regret and confusion.

  * * * *

  Gabriel knew she’d have gone to the train station, so that’s the first place he headed after he paid his shot at the Melrose Hotel. Damnation. He wasn’t hurting for money, but he hadn’t expected to have to buy new clothes on this journey.

  “Damn her.”

  He’d been damning her ever since he’d realized what she’d done. It felt better to damn her than to consider the tremendous wound she’d dealt him. His insides felt as if they’d been scooped out with a serrated trowel, tramped on with hobnailed boots, twisted into knots, and then thrown, indiscriminately, back into his body. He’d never hurt so much—not even when he was a kid.

  Hell, when he was a kid, the wo
rst thing that had happened to him was realizing his father and mother weren’t flawless. Sophie had torn his heart in two—and, until he’d met her, he hadn’t even believed he possessed a heart.

  “Damn her.”

  He had no idea how he was going to find out where the Madrigals had headed, but judging from their past performances, Gabriel figured he could do worse than start at the train station.

  The man at the ticket window looked bored. “Tall woman, short woman, midget, and a white wicker basket? Mister, this is Los Angeles. It maybe ain’t New York City, but it’s no one-horse town. I can’t remember everybody who buys a ticket.”

  “You’d remember these people. At least the tall blonde. She’s somebody you can’t easily forget.”

  The ticket man obviously didn’t believe him. He sneered. “I’ve seen all kinds of women, friend. I don’t recall a one of them.”

  Damn. Gabriel gave up on him and went to the next window. He wished to heaven that Sophie had performed this stunt in a smaller city. Los Angeles, although not a booming metropolis, was too damned big for Gabriel’s comfort, and its train station had too damned many ticket windows.

  “Yeah? Lemme think.” The second ticket man scratched his chin. Then he scratched his head. “I dunno, Mister. I mighta seen ‘em. This is a busy station, though, and things get crazy sometimes.”

  “Thanks.” Gabriel moved to the third ticket window, waited in line, and asked his questions again.

  This ticket man at least appeared interested. “What yo lookin’ for ‘em for? They done something?”

  “It’s a family matter,” said Gabriel. He didn’t want to get into explanations that wouldn’t make sense to this man. Hell, they didn’t make sense to him.

  “Family matter, eh?” The man looked skeptical.