by Julie Miller
So she’d met with A.J., had put in a call to Bill Brady to arrange their meeting and had driven back to the overcast gloom of the Meade estate to finally explore the catacombs.
The house seemed oddly deserted, with only Aaron lurking in the hallways and Jericho resting in his room. That meant Paulie was upstairs too. Cole was still at the hospital with the family emergency that had transformed him from caring lover to cold-hearted cop. With Chad and Lana gone for meetings, she practically had the run of the house.
Her elation wasn’t anywhere near where it would have been twenty-four hours ago. Still, Tori changed into her running shoes, grabbed her flashlight and opened the door that led down into the pit called the catacombs.
There were some lights available as she crept down the stairs. A serpentine wire had been draped along the stone walls, powering a dim light bulb about every twenty feet or so. But she relied on the flashlight to find her way through the maze.
The temperature dropped a degree or two with every few steps she descended. The dank, musty air reminded her of the cold chill that swept through the secret passageway into her room. She should have worn a jacket over her blouse, but she was too close to finding the truth to want to go back for one. She trailed her hand along the walls. “Yuck.” Then she snatched her hand away and wiped the dusty slime that clung to her fingers on her pant leg.
Several feet down the first stone corridor, she stopped to get her bearings. To the left was the wine cellar, stacked high with vintage bottles and locked behind an iron gate. Straight ahead she found the vault where Jericho stored the records and collectibles Chad had mentioned.
No paintings or artifacts yet.
She turned at the next right and discovered the corridor doubled back on itself. She followed the twists and turns and tried her keys in every locked door she passed. An empty room, abandoned to decades of stone crumbling into dust, bit by bit. Next, she found a vault, sealed with a refrigerator-like door instead of a wooden one.
Her heart beat faster as she stepped inside and found a treasure trove of paintings, wrapped and stacked and well-preserved. She searched through each shelf and opened any crate large enough to hide the statue. Her breath puffed out on a cloud in the chilly air.
“Nothing.”
Disappointed but undaunted, she closed the vault. She had to shine her light on the floor to find her footprints, to see which direction she’d come from and where she should go. Choosing the less-traveled path, she turned another corner and followed the long corridor to the end of the line. The Meade family vault.
Blaming the sudden eruption of goose bumps across her skin on the cold air, she unlocked the iron gate and stepped inside to view the names and dates carved into the stones on the wall. Jericho’s wife. His parents. An uncle. His brother, Chad’s father. Four blank stones, each the size of a small television, completed the set.
She shone her light at the ceiling and down into the corners, hoping there might be yet another exit, another hidden passage to check. But there was nothing but dust and slime.
She’d been so certain she’d find the Horseman down here. So sure that Chad’s bookkeeping and Daniel’s lies and Jericho’s hidden keys would lead her to the catacombs. Her disappointment was as palpable as the air she was breathing.
Backing out through the gate, she was reaching to close it when… She hit the bottom right stone with her light again. “It couldn’t be.”
Dust had collected in every other crevice, but the groove surrounding that stone was relatively clean. She tried not to raise her hopes. “I’ve come this far, I might as well try it.”
Tori kneeled down. She laid her flashlight on the floor, ignoring the giant, distorted shadows it cast up on the wall. She ran her fingertips around the edge of the stone block. It was loose. Rocking it back and forth, she moved it out an inch from the wall. Then she could get her hands beneath it, lift it and pull. She breathed out as her arms took the weight and her muscles clenched to keep from crushing her fingers underneath.
The block fell to the floor and she shoved it aside. She grabbed her flashlight and pointed it into the opening. But the glint of something bright and shiny reflected into her eyes and she had to look away.
Her heart thumped in her chest as she closed her eyes and reached inside. Her fingers closed around something cold and bumpy. The adrenaline rush was singing in her ears now. She pulled. Heavy. “Oh, mister, this better be you.”
She dropped the light to reach in with both hands and pull out the object. She dragged it a few inches until it caught on something. Shifting her position, she braced her feet against the wall for leverage and used the strength of her legs to pull as well. It fought her efforts until sheer willpower freed it from its snag and out tumbled a golden knight astride his noble steed, with rubies for armor and a history more valuable than any jewel carried inside his heart. It clunked to the floor between her legs and Tori whooped for joy.
“Yeah! We’re going home.”
She still hadn’t failed a mission. She’d nearly botched this one as badly as the debacle with Ian Davies by getting involved with Cole, but she hadn’t failed. Her personal life might still be a shambles, but she had this.
She gave a bone-deep sigh, stirring the dust and making herself sneeze. Funny. This victory didn’t seem so sweet, after all.
Returning to her senses, she scrambled to her feet and reached down to pick up the statue. It would be heavy to lift, but not impossible to carry. “Oh my God.”
Tori froze bent over like that, her hands on the statue. Looking behind it now, she could see what it had snagged on inside the vault. A man’s hand.
Or, more accurately, the flesh-eaten skeletal remains of a man’s hand, with “one, two, three, four” fingers.
Inside her head she was screaming. Daniel Meade. Cole needed to see this. Daniel had been buried along with the statue he’d stolen.
She shut down her squeamish reaction as the federal agent in her took over. With a little more maneuvering, she pulled out enough of the corpse to get a look at the remnants of his tailored suit and the bloodstain and bullet hole over the left side of his chest. “One in the heart.” She checked the skull and let the body rest. “And one in the head.”
A professional hit.
“Lancelot?” No. He’d have taken the statue with him.
Who else benefited from Daniel’s death?
Tori cut short her speculation. There might be bullets to run ballistics tests on, trace elements to check. The sooner she could get this dead body to Cole and the cops, the sooner they could ID his killer.
She didn’t bother to lock the gate. She hoisted the statue onto her hip and anchored it with her left arm. Using her light to retrace her footsteps, she hurried down the corridor. She couldn’t run, and she had to stop once at the base of the stairs to catch her breath. But minutes later she emerged into the kitchen.
The cameras. Oh, damn, where were the cameras?
She stopped for a towel to wrap around the statue, then walked sedately out into the main part of the house. She was going to grab her purse and walk straight out to her car. She’d call Cole from there. She’d drive away from this nightmare house and find him and tell him his debt to Jericho was paid.
She headed for the front door, brushing the dust off her clothes and shaking the cobwebs out of her hair. A shower could wait too. She paused at the foyer table near the base of the staircase and shifted the Horseman to her other hip so she could dig her keys out of her purse and sling it over her shoulder.
“I’ll take that.”
Tori turned her head to the woman’s voice at the top of the stairs. She wasn’t going to just walk out of here, after all. “Good afternoon, Lana.”
“Don’t be smart with me.”
She wasn’t surprised to see the gun Lana carried as she came down the steps. Nor was she surprised to see loverboy Aaron entering from the dining room with his gun drawn as well. Tori nibbled on her bottom lip so she wouldn’t laugh
at the irony of her brain finally putting two and two together. He worked for Lancelot.
“You wouldn’t know Martín Lukasiewicz by any chance, would you, Aaron?”
“Martín is a patriot for my homeland. Hand it over.” He jerked the statue from her grip, but it was too heavy to control and he dropped it.
Tori cringed when it hit. But only the floor was dented. The Horseman stayed true. “Careful. You don’t want to break that before you get it home or collect your money. Which is it? Are you a patriot or an entrepreneur? I like you better without the wig, by the way.”
“Shut up.” Aaron wasn’t the brightest guy on the block, but judging by yesterday’s shooting, he knew how to use that gun.
“I promised I’d get it back for you, didn’t I, darling?” Lana had reached the main floor now. “So you finally found out where Daniel had hidden it. That jackass wasn’t any good to me when he was alive, and he was even more trouble dead.”
Where Daniel had hidden it. Not hidden with Daniel. Lana didn’t know her ex-fiancé was buried in the basement. Aaron didn’t, either, or he’d already have the statue.
Oh God, where was Cole? He needed to know everything. Even if she didn’t get out of this, he needed to know the truth so he could free himself of the Meades. She needed the intervention of a divine hero now more than ever. But those guns weren’t part of any fairy tale, and the only one she could depend on right now was herself.
Tori forced herself to breathe evenly, in and out. She’d taken out an armed assailant before. Two of them would be tricky.
Her heart sank.
Three would be damn near impossible.
A man in a black stocking cap and gloves opened the front door and invited himself in. Tori curled her toes inside her shoes, antsy with the need to take action, but sensing the odds weren’t in her favor yet. He pulled off his gloves. Black skin. He peeled back his mask and hope surged within her.
“Bill.”
But hope died. The bandage on his ear was proof enough that he was the man who’d attacked her in her room last night. She swung around to Lana and Aaron. That meant…
“That’s right, Agent Westin. We’ve known who you are all along.” Lana was practically cooing with the thoroughness of her plan. “Agent Brady works for me. I paid him a lot of money to recruit whoever was most qualified to find that statue for us.”
“And to do a few odd jobs, too.”
At Bill’s interruption Lana snapped, “Yes, and if you were any better at them, Backer wouldn’t be dead. The police will tie him to Miss Westin, and that will bring them straight to us.”
“That’s why we’re getting rid of her, right?” Aaron was practically slathering at the prospect.
“Backer’s dead?” The situation was spinning beyond Tori’s grasp. “Then why did you try to kill me last night if you needed me to find the statue?”
“Because you became a liability.” Lana crept closer.
Tori could see she carried something in her other hand. A syringe. Instinctively, she backed away, but her hip butted the table. She had nowhere to go.
“You were helping him,” Lana continued. “Running errands. I could control him until you came along.”
Tori planted her feet and stood her ground against the other woman. Her hands curled into fists. “Cole.”
“Yes. Cole Taylor. Like a second son to Jericho.” Something ugly and hateful leaped through the beauty of Lana’s face. “I run this business. Not that sick old man, not his selfish son or incompetent nephew. I deserve to take over. But I can’t. I have to run it through a man. But Daniel disappeared and Cole wouldn’t have me.”
“So you hooked your talons into Chad and tried to discredit Cole.”
Lana threw out her hands. “Distract him, discredit him. Bill and I arranged for another family tragedy to keep him occupied today. Once Jericho changes his will to inherit Chad, I’ll arrange for a much more personal tragedy.”
“You greedy bitch.”
Before Tori could guess her intent, Lana lunged. Tori automatically dodged to the side and brought her fist down hard on Lana’s wrist. The other woman cursed, but the gun sailed through the air. She jerked Lana in front of her to use as a shield against Bill and Aaron. Too late, she realized she’d made a huge tactical mistake.
Lana swung around, jabbed the needle into her shoulder and emptied the syringe. Pain spread down Tori’s arm and up into her chest. She clasped at the wound and stumbled as the walls around her suddenly began to spin. Lana grabbed her beneath the chin and shoved her up against the table. She spat her words in Tori’s face.
“Cole’s not here to charge to your rescue this time. I guess you’ll just have to die.”
“What did you give me?”
“The same thing I’ve been feeding Jericho for weeks, only I gave you a much larger dose. It’s an experimental chemical from Aaron’s homeland. You can be our second test subject.” She winked, and Tori almost gagged. “I think your death will come a lot faster than his.”
When released, Tori’s knees buckled and she slid to the floor. The three of them were converging now, but Tori couldn’t make any sense of their words. A heavy weight was gathering in her chest, pushing her down. Like a woman drowning, she opened her mouth and gulped air. But there was no relief. She couldn’t breathe. She was still so dizzy.
A faint sound pierced the damp air and every head swiveled toward the open door. A siren. A glimmer of hope sparked in Tori’s heart and cleared her head for a moment.
“Dammit, woman, you waste too much time with all your drama!” Aaron’s words were almost unintelligible in his anger. “We go now!”
Lana turned on him. “Don’t you dare lecture me.”
“We have to return this to Lancelot before he makes good on his word and destroys us all.” Ah, yes, wasn’t love grand between two murdering thieves?
“Honey, you’ve got bigger problems to worry about than—”
“Boys, girls, we need to stay focused here.” Bill foolishly tried to intervene.
Aaron whirled around and pointed his gun, shouting something damning in his native tongue. Tori closed her eyes, conserving what energy she could. A giant fist wrapped around her lungs and continued to squeeze. She could hear several sirens now.
The bickering trio had dismissed her. They seemed to shout and run in circles. Tori tried to scoot her way along the wall, working her way toward the door, fighting the chaos inside her head.
“Get her!” Rough hands picked her up on either side and she was vaguely aware of being half carried, half dragged along the polished wood floor toward the back of the house.
“KCPD! Drop your guns!” She knew that voice.
Tori crashed to the floor and the air exploded all around her. She curled up into a ball, desperate to breathe, desperate to see, desperate to know what was real and what was hallucination.
She lurched as a man fell beside her. She saw a shiny golden light and reached for it. Her fingers closed around it, cold and lifeless. She snatched them away. Another body fell. And then another.
The world went silent, and Tori raised her heavy eyelids. She wasn’t dead yet. She didn’t want to die.
Something warm brushed across her forehead. “Tori? Victoria? Stay with me.”
A shadowy face tried to swim into focus. She reached up to touch it. It was warm and full of life. Strong arms picked her up and carried her into the light. She let her eyes drift shut and snuggled against the heat.
Her divine horseman had come to save her.
Chapter Thirteen
One week. Seven days too long to wait through this hell. Seven days wasted in a lifetime that would never be long enough to make up for all the mistakes he’d made.
Cole’s eyes burned from his bedside vigil. Yeah, he’d grabbed a few hours of sleep here and there. He’d made sure someone was always in the room, just in case. He’d done everything the DA’s office had asked of him, and when the investigation was officially declared closed,
he’d gone to the barber and cut his hair—trimming away everything that represented his life with the Meades and reclaiming the man he used to be.
He’d spent the rest of his time here. Holding Tori’s unresponsive hand. Listening to doctors. Watching monitors. Praying.
His family had come and gone, and would return. Now he just needed Tori to wake up. She’d been pumped full of enough synthetic toxin to shut down her lungs and stop her heart. That night in the E.R. had been the worst night of his life. But the doctors had stabilized her. Frank Westin had been called in as Tori’s closest next-of-kin, and he authorized Dr. Kramer to use the trial antidote he’d created on his granddaughter. She’d been asleep ever since.
He studied her beautiful face, framed by a halo of that coppery hair, and rose to kiss the fading bruise on her cheek. “I love you,” he whispered. “You fight this thing like you fight everything else, and you come back to me.”
Then he sat back down in his chair, clinging to the most real thing he’d ever known. He laid his head on the bed and let fatigue claim him.
COLE HEARD THE DRUMMING sound in his ears. Then he felt the repetitive strokes across the back of his hand and snapped his eyes open. Joy surged through him and he sat up, turning his hand to capture Tori’s drumming fingers within his own.
Those pretty green eyes were smiling at him and there was a healthy blush of color on her cheeks. “It’s about time you woke up.”
“Speak for yourself.” He rose to his feet and moved to her pillow to brush a wayward strand of hair from her eyes.
Was she too fragile to crush in his arms? Could he kiss her? Would she want him to? The relief that had propelled him to his feet vanished and uncertainty turned his legs to jelly. He plopped back onto his seat.
“When? How?”
“The doctor left about twenty minutes ago. I told him not to wake you. He said my body just needed time to recover from the shock to my system. If I wasn’t in top physical condition like I was, I wouldn’t have survived.” Her chest heaved with a cleansing sigh, the first deep, normal breath he’d seen her take since finding her collapsed on the floor in Jericho’s house. “You look different. I like it.”