by JoAnn Ross
“Haven’t you noticed, Father? The entire world’s gone mad. One more lunatic probably isn’t going to make much of a difference. In heaven or in hell.”
“The bishop isn’t going to like this,” the priest complained, more to himself than to Gage.
“Don’t worry, Father.” Gage surprised the priest with a wink. “I won’t tell him if you don’t.”
Blue eyes observed Gage gravely. “It’s a very strange man, you are, Mr. Patrick Reardon.”
“So I’ve been told.” The most recent person to call him crazy had been his own attorney, when he’d refused to take the stand in his own defense.
“But an innocent man, I’m thinking,” the priest concluded.
Patrick managed a grim smile at that, thinking that this was the first person, including his lawyer, who believed that.
No, he recalled, there’d been another. That detective who’d been the first on the scene. Conlin? Coughlin? Connelly. That was it. Unfortunately, Detective Connelly, wherever he’d disappeared to, had ended up becoming yet another victim of a corrupt system.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you, Father?” Patrick’s smile was a grim, humorless slash. “Death Row is filled with innocent men.” To Patrick’s knowledge, not one of his fellow inmates had admitted to the crime he was to die for.
The priest was forestalled from answering by the arrival of the prison guard. “It’s time,” he announced in a low voice that was reminiscent of the funeral toll of a church bell.
Patrick pushed himself up from the wooden table in the cramped visitor’s room. Although he was admittedly not looking forward to the next few minutes, anticipation flowed warmly in his veins.
Because, from that first moment he’d seen Alexandra Romanov, Patrick had recognized the tempestuous Russian actress to be his destiny. That being the case, he had not a single doubt that he was about to be reunited with the only woman he’d ever loved. The only woman he could ever love.
For all eternity.
* * *
GAGE WAS FORCIBLY and rudely jerked awake. Struggling his way out of the netherworld of nightmares, he dragged a hand down his face and was surprised to find that sweat was pouring down it.
“We’ve just run into a little bad weather,” a feminine voice soothed. “It’s nothing to be alarmed about, Mr. Remington.” The flight attendant, who’d begun hovering over him when he’d first boarded the plane, smiled reassuringly. “Would you like a warm towel?”
“Thanks.”
He took the white towel with hands that were not nearly as steady as he would have liked. It was not that he was afraid of flying. It was the nightmare that had him drenched in sweat. A nightmare he knew, as impossible as it would sound to most people, as it would have sounded to him only a few days ago, had not been a dream at all, but a long buried memory.
Although it made no rational sense, Gage knew that Patrick Reardon was innocent.
And the reason he knew that with such rock solid certainty was because he’d once lived in Patrick Reardon’s skin.
On top of that incredible thought came another. One even more frightening than the memory of his own death.
The woman he’d fallen in love with—again!—was in danger.
Nerves humming, Gage retrieved the phone from the armrest, ran his credit card through the slot and dialed the number of his apartment. Surely by now Blythe would have settled in.
Frustration surged through him when a recorded voice told him that all the circuits were busy, to please try his call again. Gage looked down at his watch. There were still thirty minutes until the plane landed at LAX. Thirty minutes that loomed like an eternity.
* * *
IT WAS RAINING, a torrential downpour that made Blythe decide to retrieve the rest of her suitcases from her car in the morning.
Although she didn’t relish the idea of getting soaked by the drenching rain, Blythe wasn’t particularly disturbed by the Pacific storm raging overhead. Indeed, as she slipped beneath Gage’s crisp navy sheets and breathed in his scent on the pillow beneath her head, she felt immediately soothed.
With thoughts of the man she loved in her mind, she drifted off into a deep and dreamless sleep.
* * *
ALTHOUGH GAGE HAD SPENT countless hours on stakeouts, he’d never known time to move so slowly. As the jet made its descent into Los Angles, visions kept flashing in his mind, one after the other, like those flipping calendar pages marking the progression of time in old black-and-white movies. Movies like Lady Reckless. And Fool’s Gold.
He remembered their fight the night of the New Year’s Eve party. Furious by rumors of her infidelity, not to mention the revelation that the wife he adored had been a high-class prostitute, he’d lost his temper and said cruel, hurtful things he hadn’t really meant.
He had no idea how many hours he’d walked along the Santa Monica beach. But by the time he was ready to return home, he knew that he would have to apologize for having judged her too harshly.
Now that he’d calmed down, he accepted that what she’d done to survive was in the past. He also knew that the stories of her having committed adultery were lies. Alexandra could no more cheat on him than he could on her. They were each other’s destiny. They were soul mates. Now that they’d found each other, nothing—or no one—could come between them.
* * *
THE MAN, dressed all in black, crept past the front door of Bachelor Arms, keeping to the shadows. He paused as he passed the words scratched below the name plaque.
“Believe the legend,” he read aloud. His soft laugh was thick with menace. Hollywood lived on legends. And, he considered darkly, occasionally died on them, as well.
He made his way to the apartment without encountering anyone. Which wasn’t surprising, considering the storm. Residents of Los Angeles were accustomed to warm sunny weather; a little rain and they behaved as if they might melt, like Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.
It grated on his nerves that the film had won an Oscar after Xanadu had turned the project down, calling it nothing but an overwrought remake of the old silent film.
The door to the apartment was, unsurprisingly, locked. But he’d expected that and had come prepared. He inserted the slender metal wire into the lock. With a deft twist of the wrist, it gave way.
The apartment was dark. He flicked on a small penlight and made his way to one of the the bedrooms.
Blythe was dreaming of Gage. They were back in Greece, alone in a secluded cove. They were swimming nude, side by side, in water so clear and so warm it seemed like another world.
Drifting naturally into his arms, Blythe gave herself up to the pleasure of his lips, of the feel of his strong body pressed against hers.
The dream shifted to one of Alexandra and Patrick together at his ranch in Wyoming, lying in front of a fire.
Outside a blizzard was raging; inside there was sizzling warmth, generated more by his clever, wicked touch than the dancing orange-and-red flames.
“You’re my woman.” His voice was as rough as the gray stones of the fireplace.
His hands, as they bruised over her flesh, created sizzling trails of heat. His lips sparked fierce, untamed desires.
“Yes.” Wild to touch him, as he was touching her, needing to possess him as he’d possessed her, she clutched at his shoulders as she took him deep inside her. “And you’re my husband. My lover. My everything.” The words, spoken in her native language, needed no translation.
Their eyes met. Visions blurred as they began to move to the unrelenting rhythm of their shared need. Passion poured out of him into her; love flowed out of her into him.
“Forever,” they said in unison, as they soared, joined for all time, into the flames.
* * *
THE BEDROOM WAS LIT with the stuttering glow of lightning. The man in black stood beside the bed, watching her toss and turn on the mattress, listening to her murmured sighs and soft moans. When she cried out a name, an iro
n fist clenched his heart. His gut. And lower.
He’d always known what she was. He’d understood that she’d been born to tempt men, and until she’d given her heart away to another—a man who could do nothing for her!—he hadn’t minded. It was, after all, the price a man must pay for possessing a goddess.
But now she’d betrayed him. And for that, she must pay.
The hand moved up her cheek, rousing her from the erotic dream. At first Blythe thought that it was Gage. But as she arched against the caress, like a cat wanting to be petted, she realized that there was something wrong.
The fingers on her face were encased in leather. She drew in a sharp breath and recognized the familiar scent of expensive cologne.
“Alan?”
“Shh.” He covered her mouth with a gloved hand. “Don’t scream. And don’t call for help.” He touched the tip of the razor sharp scalpel to her throat. “Do you understand?”
A flash of lightening illuminated a face that was at the same time both familiar and unrecognizable. Madness glowed in the eyes of this man she’d thought she’d known. A man she’d tried so hard to love. Terror, as cold as ice, as sharp as the blade of the scalpel, crawled beneath her flesh.
Forbidden to speak, but afraid that moving would result in a life-threatening wound, Blythe managed the faintest of nods.
“Good girl.” Alan Sturgess flashed a grim, humorless smile. A muscle jerked beside his thin lips. “Now, I want you to get out of that bed very slowly. And then I want you to come with me.”
This had to be another nightmare, Blythe assured herself. It couldn’t really be happening. Soon she would wake up and the sun would be shining and Gage would be home and she would tell him about her decision to marry him—as soon as possible—and then they’d spend the rest of the day and night making slow, wonderful love.
“I said, get the hell out of that bed.”
When she felt the blade prick her skin, Blythe knew this was no idle threat. Folding back the sheets, she gingerly left the bed, grateful for the darkness that kept him from being able to see her body through the translucent white silk nightgown.
“That’s better.” He took hold of her arm. “Now, come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
Her question was answered with a swift, painful backhand to the side of her face that had her head reeling. “I told you not to say a word.” This time he pressed the flat edge of the scalpel against her cheek. “Next time, I’ll use this. Then we’ll see how much work you can get.” His voice was soft, but strained. “How many fans would want to see a scarred, disfigured Alexandra Romanov, do you think?”
Blythe’s first thought, as he took her arm and pulled her into the living room, was that in whatever madness had taken over Alan’s mind, he’d confused her with the murdered actress.
But then there was another rumble of thunder that rattled the windows and a flare of lightning that lit up the sky and the room like the blinding glow of Fourth of July fireworks.
When Blythe saw their reflections in the pewter mirror, she finally understood everything. The man standing behind her, the man with the scalpel pressed against her throat outwardly resembled Alan Sturgess. But behind the madness in his eyes, she viewed the terrifying truth.
The panic bubbled up. For a moment she thought it would overwhelm her. Closing her mind to the terror, she concentrated on extricating herself from this potentially fatal situation.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” she managed in a remarkably reasonable voice, considering the circumstances. “You killed Alexandra, didn’t you, Walter?”
“This is all your fault,” he insisted. “I’m the one who found you. I’m the one who made a star out of a casino hotel hooker. I made you everything you are. Gave you more than you ever dreamed. But it wasn’t enough.” She felt the prick of the blade against her icy skin, felt a trickle of warm blood.
“Walter—”
“Shut up!” His voice was no longer soft or controlled. The strain had been replaced by a ragged emotional tremor. “Or I won’t be responsible for the consequences!”
His fingers curved painfully around her upper arm again as he dragged her out of the apartment. Blythe considered screaming for help, then, knowing all too well his unparalleled skill with a blade, decided she had no choice but to go along with him for now. When she realized where he was taking her, she knew that escape was going to be difficult, if not impossible.
He was literally dragging her up the stairs to the turret that rose above the apartment house. When her foot caught in the hem of the nightgown, she fell to her knees.
“Get up!” Now he was screaming, the madness in his voice equaling that in his eyes. He jerked her to her feet and began dragging her up those steep narrow stairs again.
Her heart was beating wildly in her throat. She’d never realized that it was possible to be ice-cold and sweating all at the same time. The door to the turret opened on a creak of rusty hinges. As he pushed her inside the room, Blythe almost fell again.
“You don’t want to do this,” she said, stalling for time as her fevered brain tried to figure a way out of this nightmare. “Not really.” Although it took every vestige of her acting ability, she managed to force her voice into a calm, yet sultry tone, the tone of a woman cajoling an angry man to reason. “Not after all we’ve been through together, Walter.”
A possessive man, Walter Stern, founder of Xanadu studios, had treated Alexandra like the rest of his expensive playthings. In all ways, until she’d met Patrick, Alexandra had allowed Stern to become her absolute lord.
He watched her like an eagle watched his prey, supervising her scripts, approving every morsel of food that passed between her ruby lips; he chose her clothing, her hairstyles, her cars, her house and her friends.
A cruel man with the inborn instincts of a tyrant, Walter patronized her, taunted her and often humiliated her. But he’d also taken a nobody, and with the mysterious, infinite gift of a creator, had breathed life into her nothingness, fulfilling his promise to make her a star.
“That’s my point, exactly.” His voice turned soft again in a way she found even more terrifying than his out-of-control shout. “I made you, Alexandra Romanov.” He ran the blade down her throat, across her shoulders, the swell of her breasts. “And I’m going to be the one to destroy you.”
The scalpel gleamed deadly in the lightning flashing all around them. With a single, swift slash of the blade, he ripped the white nightgown from neckline to hem.
Gage drove like a maniac on the way from LAX to Bachelor Arms, breaking speed limits and running red lights. As he pulled up in front of the building with a screech of brakes, the total absence of lights told him that the storm had knocked out the power. He grabbed the 9 mm pistol from the glove compartment and dove out of the car. As he ran up the sidewalk, a crack of lightning illuminated the building in a ghostly white glow.
For some reason, his gaze was drawn to the turret. What he saw through the floor-to-ceiling windows made his pounding heart clench.
She was not going to die, Blythe assured herself. Not this time. Not just as she’d reclaimed the love that had been so cruelly taken from her.
Once before she’d tried to reason with this man, once before she’d been arrogant enough to believe that her bountiful arsenal of feminine wiles could prove more powerful than madness. Unfortunately, in the end, she’d failed. And both she and Patrick had paid a fatal price for her feminine arrogance.
This time she would fight. Not just for her own life, but for the life she and Gage would have together.
Fate proved to be on her side as the sound of brakes squealing, followed by a car door slamming outside, distracted Walter/Alan’s attention. Fear, fury, hatred, all echoed in her shout as she suddenly shoved against him with every ounce of strength she possessed. He stumbled, the scalpel clattering to the wooden floor. Both of them dove for it at the same time.
Gage heard her scream. He couldn’t be too late! Not again. He
took the stairs two at a time, cursing viciously when he found the door locked. Furious enough to rip it off the hinges with his bare hands, he instead shoved his shoulder against the wood, splintering the jamb.
He found the man he knew to be Walter Stern standing in the center of the room, a scalpel in his right hand. She was backed up against the wall, her eyes wide, her chest heaving. When he saw that her nightgown had been torn down the front, he thought of all the evil this man had done. And how he would gladly kill him for hurting her.
“It’s over,” he said. “You’re not going to get away with it. Not this time.” Gage gestured with the pistol. “Put the scalpel down. Nice and slow.”
The killer’s only answer was a vicious curse. Then he charged like a mad bull, the deadly blade aimed directly at Gage’s heart.
Instincts honed during years of police training allowed Gage to deftly step aside, avoiding the thrust. There was the sound of glass shattering. Then a high-pitched scream, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting the stone courtyard.
And then there was only the soft, gentle sound of rain falling on the roof as the violent storm passed on.
Epilogue
THE DAY OF THE WEDDING began as yet another California day in paradise. The scent from brightly colored, blossom-laden bushes filled the warm air with their sweet perfume.
In the courtyard of Bachelor Arms, a three-piece string ensemble was entertaining the small gathering of family and guests seated on rented white satin-seated chairs. All the residents of the apartment building were on hand for the triple wedding.
Natasha Kuryan, home from Greece, was in the front row, seated between Blythe’s parents and Connor’s mother, who was dangling a set of keys in front of her fascinated granddaughter. Delicate pink rosebuds bloomed on Katie’s ruffled dress; the elastic band circling her head was adorned with a matching, tiny pink silk rosebud. The baby gurgled happily as she reached for the shiny keys with her pudgy baby hands.
The three grooms, waiting beneath a trellis of sweetly fragrant wisteria, were, of course, uniformly handsome in black tie.