by Cait London
“‘Witch’? Makes you wonder about our ancestors at Salem, doesn’t it? If the Borg bloodline had anything to do with that? We are all in danger. This has to be finished here and now. There’s too much at stake.”
“Yes, there is. I feel it.” Greer drew in her breath and seemed to brace herself as she looked toward the river. “He stood nearby the river that day, calling to you. Yes, it’s the same man. His father was strong—damn him. Rolf has had a lifetime of learning how to feed off other’s energies. Revenge and hatred run through his blood. He’s worse than the rest of his family because he can control his temper—to a degree. Sometimes it slips from his grasp, and that is the time he’s the most vulnerable. He has no conscience. That’s the first thing I sensed about him, that he had killed and ruined lives. I should have gone after him.”
Greer stroked her shawl slowly, thoughtfully. “He got stronger each time, building his hatred for us each day. He’s consumed with the need for revenge. He’s empty inside, that black, burning, unfed hole eating him. Getting Thorgood’s brooch won’t cure that. He’ll always want more.”
She looked at Owen, who stood back a few feet, his eyes skimming the area, his body alert. “You knew Rolf was here. You know him. Rather, you know something of him, from your bloodline and from something else.”
Owen nodded solemnly. “Maybe. This is new to me. I’m uneasy, but then, I’m afraid for Leona…for all of you, and for Janice.”
The dew seemed like tiny jewels on the spiderweb, red and green and purple colors trembling within them. Then a chill prickled Leona’s skin, followed by a furious masculine pulse—she’d recognize those particular vibrations anywhere. She turned to Owen. “You know who he really is, too, don’t you?”
At one o’clock that afternoon, Leona stood alone and watched Greer’s jet take off into the clear blue day. Greer had been reluctant to leave, but Owen and Leona had convinced her. Rolf Erling would merely bide his time and resurface when he chose.
Before departing, Greer had held Leona’s hands and advised, “Block out everything but that tight tunnel focused on him. Know that you are stronger and that his will belongs to you. Know that your sisters and I are with you. Together we form a much stronger bond than he can tear apart. See Thorgood’s brooch in your mind. Know that you are the one to wear it, that Rolf’s evil makes him unworthy. Find his weakest spot. I suspect it’s his temper and his ego—and search until you find one tiny opening. Make it bigger in your mind. See a river of energy flow from him. See it flow into you. Feel it making you stronger. Take some energy now—from me.”
They’d held hands and suddenly a warm familiar pulse flowed from Greer to Leona. “Take it,” Greer had whispered softly. “You’re going to need it. Get him, Leona. I should have gone after him and fought him, taken everything from him, and I didn’t.”
“You know I love you,” Leona had managed unevenly; she’d only seen Greer’s uncontrolled anger once before, when retrieving her ten-year-old triplets from the institute. Leona had the uneasy sensation that if Greer wanted to, she could “fry” an opponent. If it were true that Leona could match Greer in power, could she also strip the mind of another?
She might have to….
Once Greer’s plane was out of sight, Leona moved quickly.
Owen was to meet her later. He’d been called to the police department; a detective wanted to know more about the revolver found in Robyn White’s apartment.
The bright day outside the airport had almost blinded Leona, the maple trees would soon be tipped with autumn orange. A slight wind lifted her hair, and she knew death would call soon.
“Be careful how deep you go into Rolf’s mind,” Greer had warned. “There’s a borderline, and once passed, that darkness can become your own. I stopped there, and admit my fear. If I’d gone past that, I might have seen what had happened to Daniel and my mother.”
Her mind on her mother’s warnings, Leona glanced at a tomato-red car in the short-term garage. Missy’s car had been that color. Then she saw another red car, darker, more like wine, the color of a bloodstain, and another. They seemed to be like blood droplets, leading to an open wound.
Owen and Greer had had a private chat without her. Leona didn’t doubt it was filled with instructions to call. But when Greer had reached for Owen, and he had lowered to place her forehead against hers, Leona had become uneasy. And Owen wasn’t answering her questions.
She recognized the chilling stillness before the image flipped into her mind…. She saw her image in a windshield, her face pale, the wind churning her hair into a storm of fire. Owen’s face appeared, a sword tip at his throat. Her hair turned long and black, and her face wasn’t her own. Black, bottomless eyes turned to stare at her.
Leona began to run. She had to see Owen and quickly. Nothing could happen to him.
While they’d stood in the Shaws’ field, Owen revealed the names of two men he suspected: Vernon and Alex. He’d made Leona promise not to see either one of them until he was with her.
“That’s impossible,” she’d said immediately. “I’ve dined with Alex, in his home. I’ve helped him look for furniture,” she’d argued. “He isn’t anything like the man in my shop that day.”
Owen had glanced uneasily at Greer. “According to Jonas Saber, Alex Cheslav was never married. He lived with his mother in Utah. When she died, and Cheslav had retired, he sold everything and moved here. I’ll ask Jonas to check out Rolf Erling’s death in prison. Someone else probably took Erling’s place in the grave. He’d need a body build—height and weight similar to his. From talking to your Alex through that closed door, I sensed that he was a tall, fit man, not the seventy-year-old, retired office worker you described. I almost did break down that door.”
“I don’t know…. Jonas Saber? How will he be able to help us?”
“He ranches a little, hunts a lot—people, mostly. And an investigator of sorts.”
Leona had stared at him blankly, and Owen had shrugged lightly. “Pays to have friends. Jonas and I—we have something in common—that old gray-eyes thing.”
Before he’d said good-bye to Greer and Leona, Owen had promised not to confront either Alex or Vernon—until Leona was with him.
Her mind on everything that had happened, Leona hurried to her car to return home and collect Max.
She was just about to unlock the door when she sensed someone behind her. “Hello, Leona. I’ve been waiting for you,” a man’s voice crooned softly as the needle slid into her arm.
Through the haze quickly weighing her down into darkness, Leona saw the flat, black eyes of a killer.
They were the same as she’d seen in that windshield. She should have paid attention to her extrasensory perceptions.
“That will have to change,” she heard a woman slur, and recognized the voice as her own.
“We’ve got a little problem, Shaw.”
Across the police department’s table from Owen, the detective nodded toward the revolver wrapped in plastic. Tom Roman spoke in the same clipped mode as the deputy coroner. “Ran a check on the prints. It’s got your fingerprints on it. We’d like to know how it got in Robyn White’s apartment.”
“She must have taken it.” Owen glanced at the clock on the police department’s wall. At two o’clock, Leona would have already put her mother on that homebound jet.
Tom Roman had the stern, seasoned look of a man who had seen everything. Foster, the young woman beside him, was doing her best to look tough and experienced. Clearly Roman didn’t like her assignment to him. He seemed irritated when Foster tried to interject. “That revolver has been fired recently.”
“I’ve cleaned it, but I didn’t shoot it. I don’t know how it got to Robyn’s apartment.”
It had been fired just after Owen had been marked for the kill. Owen decided it was easier to slant the truth just a bit. “I’ve been busy trying to get my sister settled, and I had a few emergencies at the house. We’ve only been here a little over three weeks. I put
the revolver away and went on about my business.”
“That’s no excuse. A loose firearm is everyone’s business. When a gun is missing, it gets reported.” Roman’s stern look at the young woman said he suspected Owen knew more than he was saying. “What I want to know about is your relationship with Missy Franklin. You’ve been having an affair with her, haven’t you?”
“No.” Owen thought of that morning when Leona had found Missy in his house, then added, “She came after me. I’m involved with someone else.”
“A Ms. Leona Chablis. We ran a license check on your pickup and checked around her neighborhood. Seems your truck was seen at her place late last night. All night, in fact.”
“That’s right. How did you know I’m seeing Leona?”
When Foster leaned forward, clearly poised to take part in the interview, Roman shot her a dark look. Clearly not happy about his shut-up-and-learn look, she took a deep breath and sat back in her chair. Roman nodded, turned to Owen and continued, “from the coroner’s report she was at your house when Robyn White’s body was found. And from notes on Missy’s desk…Ms. Chablis’ phone number, the name of her shop. We checked the other shops there. Your pickup showed up on the parking lot’s security tapes. Wasn’t hard to connect the dots.”
The detective sat back in his chair and eyed Owen. “Okay, Shaw. Here’s what we’ve got: Missy Franklin had a thing for you. She wrote that you were sleeping together and that you liked redheads. Not hard to translate a lot of hearts around a man’s name. Pretty hard to do two women at one time, isn’t it? Some guys take drugs to do that.”
“I wasn’t involved with Missy, and I’ve never taken performance drugs.”
Roman tapped his pencil on the table. “Funny thing about you, Shaw. People around you turn up dead. First Robyn White, then Missy Franklin’s body is found in the river near your place. Her neck was broken, expertly snapped. The coroner places her death about midnight or so. Where were you at that time?”
“With Leona and her mother. I stayed the night. I was with them until you called this morning.” Owen explained that Greer was just visiting for overnight, and added a little inventive reason for her brief visit. “Ms. Chablis and myself are planning to get married. Her mother wanted to meet me.”
“You work fast. It took me two years to get my wife to agree to an engagement, and another two to get married. I’ll need names, addresses, and a check on that, Foster. Get busy. Now back to you, Shaw,” Roman said, as the young woman left the room. “There’s something strange about this whole mess, including that old six-shooter. Want to tell me about it?”
Owen suspected that the detective would probably run a background on him. If he did, a report on his father’s gun would turn up. “A friend borrowed it from my father. She said it misfired while being cleaned and a man died.”
Roman shoved a pad at Owen. “Write that part out for me, will you?”
An hour and a half later, Owen stepped out into the bright September sunshine; Tom Roman’s “Don’t leave town anytime soon” was still fresh in his ears. The detective wanted answers from Leona, too, but she wasn’t answering her cell, home, or shop telephones.
Owen drove to Leona’s house and found Max alone. He collected the dog and headed for Timeless Vintage. The CLOSED sign was still on the front door, and Owen circled to the back. Owen punched in the security code he’d seen Leona use and went inside. Leona wasn’t there.
A drive-through check at the airport’s short-term parking revealed her car was still there.
With Max at his side, Owen stepped inside Alex’s house.
While Owen searched for Leona, the dog hadn’t barked, but his hackles were raised, his body tense. One look in the old overgrown, musty greenhouse had shown it empty. Entry through the back sunporch had been easy. The old house creaked slightly as though protesting the intrusion, and Max growled. A quick pat quieted him as Owen went into the kitchen. He circled the rooms, then moved upstairs. Clearly in the process of renovation, the house was empty.
Owen hurried downstairs and left the house. The garage, an old building needing repair and overgrown with vines, stood near the backyard. Owen noted that the grass running from the garage to the house was pressed flat. It was dying, a path beginning to form. The twin doors in the front of the building had been padlocked. “If Leona is in there…”
He picked the lock in the side door. When the door resisted opening, Owen put his shoulder against it. One shove, and he entered the shadows. Max growled again and padded into the garage. He circled the big black shiny SUV while Owen checked the interior. It was empty—except for the high-tech sound gear on the passenger floorboard. A man’s ball cap lay on the dashboard, the emblem advertising the local lumberyard; it was a hat like Vernon had worn. In the rear of the SUV was a toolbox, filled with tiny cameras like the one at Leona’s. A box of sound gear in the passenger seat proved to be high-tech, able to catch distant sounds.
When he left, Owen was careful to leave everything as he’d found it.
When he returned to his truck, he found Leona’s rune bracelet on the seat. Beneath it was a note in her handwriting. Owen studied the script more closely. Someone was very good, but not good enough to imitate her handwriting. The note read: Go home. Wait for my call. There will be instructions at your house.
When he let Max sniff the note, the dog’s hackles rose, and he bared his teeth. Fear for Leona chilled Owen as he glanced around the street. With his ability to blend into any circumstance, the Aislings’ predator could be watching from any of the spacious, well-tended yards and magnificient plantation-style homes. Before Owen and Max could get to him, Erling could kill Leona.
Owen patted Max’s head. “That’s what I thought. Erling wrote it, not her. It’s a trap, we know that, don’t we, boy? But for now, I’d better play his game. Leona’s life is at stake. Where the hell is she?”
On his way to the ranch, Owen called Sue Ann. She hadn’t seen Leona, either.
Eighteen
LEONA FOUGHT THE POUNDING PAIN IN HER BRAIN; SHE forced herself to surface from the black, swirling bog.
The dream she’d just had still wrapped around her. The streaming wisps had seemed too real. His compelling black eyes had been close to hers as he’d crooned her name. A man’s hand had laid open on her chest, pressing gently, yet the pain of being crushed was excruciating….
He was playing, testing Leona’s pain limits, her reception to his power…. She had to fight….
Shaking free of the nightmare, she opened her lids slowly. Her extrasensory nerves jumped; her survival instincts pushed away the cloud in her brain. When light pierced her eyes she closed her lids again. This time, she let her senses prowl.
Cleaning scents mixed with the heavy reek of liquor and the stench of dirty clothing filled her nostrils. A man was singing a country music song in another room, and from the clatter of dishes and his footsteps, he was moving around and cooking.
Leona opened her eyes again and adjusted to the softly lit room. She was lying on an opened recliner, her arms tethered behind her. She moved her hands experimentally and noted metal circling her right wrist, biting into her flesh. Her cuff bracelet was on her left, pressed too tightly to her.
His back to a wall, Vernon sat on a tarp on the hardwood flooring. He appeared unconscious, his bib overalls soiled. Liquor bottles and prescriptions filled the toolbox beside him. On a nearby table was Leona’s large monogrammed travel bag. She glimpsed her usual tote stuffed on top.
The room’s decor was elegant, a chandelier overhead, surrounded by unlikely acoustical tile to block sound. The walls were covered in tile, and an elaborate mix of drums, guitar cases, and several music keyboards filled one end. Digital and microphone equipment clustered around the music instruments. A bold B.B. had been scrolled on the bass drum. Several contemporary red couches stood in front of the sound equipment. At the opposite end of the room was a large-screen television and heavy-duty exercise equipment, including weights and a be
nch. The nearby wall was filled with framed photographs, gold records, and a wall clock. A large poster of Billy Balleau and his band dominated the arrangements.
Vernon would have access to Billy Balleau’s home while he was on tour. Leona was in the country music star’s home! And whoever was in the next room was probably Rolf Erling, the man who wanted to kill her!
The drapes were closed, but the digital wall clock read 8:00 P.M. It had been hours since that needle had sunk into her arm!
Leona struggled against her bonds, but she couldn’t move. Flashbacks of being bound as a child hit her in terrifying waves. But she wasn’t a child any longer, she was a woman. Leona breathed quietly, forcing back her panic. She focused on Owen, calling out to him with her senses, willing him to find her…. Owen…Owen…
She wasn’t surprised to see the tall, physically fit man carrying in a silver platter, a tea towel tossed over his shoulder. “Hello, Leona Fiona,” he said cheerfully.
With the air of a man playing host, he placed the platter loaded with a wine decanter and elegant glasses on the table beside her. His long hair was damp and curled around that sharp, cruel face. His thin lips barely curved in what served as a pleased smile. There was no mistaking those mesmerizing black eyes. His clothing was evidently couture: a casual-male style from the best of the European designers; a light, blue long-sleeve sweater clung to his powerful muscles, his slacks seemed to flow with his movements, and he wore his Italian loafers without stockings.