Myrddin eased his bony limbs down onto a low table not meant for sitting. “Yes, a broken neck. And yes, she was riding a horse shortly before it happened. But Aubrey—” he leaned forward with as much tenderness as he could muster “—she was fleeing Max and Simon’s men on horseback and protecting those tiles of hers. And yours.”
“What?” My mother? My mother had been a gloves-and-hat British-born lady who’d never raised her voice and would have been more concerned with tainting her manicure than with protecting tiles made of ground-up gemstones.
“Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, your mother was an excellent horsewoman. Sharpshooter, too. She was fast but not fast enough to outrun a dozen men after shooting another six of them.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“They took a package off her body. Tiles.” Myrddin laughed. “Tiles she’d made herself to fool Simon. It took him almost a year to find out they were fake and that you had the real ones in a false-bottomed trunk.”
My head was reeling. My mother had been murdered? My mother had had a secret life—and I’d followed in her footsteps?
“I didn’t know what they were. They were in a trunk with her other treasures and some weird recipes for plaster crafts. That’s the only reason I kept the tiles.” I’d been nauseated every time I’d looked at them. “Their only value to me was that they’d belonged to my mother. I didn’t even know what they were.”
“Simon found that out too late. He thought you knew your identity. That the tiles had been passed to you. That’s why he sent a man to assassinate you.”
Simon. Simon had been the one. It made sense now. I nodded furiously, suddenly seeing it again through eighteen-year-old eyes. “That guy meant to kill me. If Matthew hadn’t shown up…”
“Matthew worked for Simon.”
His words sank in. I shook my head. “No. No way. That man followed me and I ran into the medieval studies seminar and he took twenty of us hostage. He killed fifteen of my classmates, for pity’s sake! Then this young lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force showed up. Special Operations, he said. There on vacation. He saved me.”
How he’d gotten there or why he’d been armed, I never knew. I’d been eighteen and falling hard into love and I’d simply accepted his explanation in that naive way that very young women do when they’d led a sheltered life. Nothing but being with him had seemed important.
I could still feel his arm around me as he’d fired back at the gunman. I could still see the smoke as he’d led me to the rooftop of the building. Matthew had whipped off his belt and looped it over a cable at the roofline and twisted the belt around his wrist. Then he’d wrapped one arm around my waist, and we’d plunged over the side of the building, riding the cable to safety.
Instead of taking me to the police, Matthew took me away to the countryside. To somewhere in the thatch-roofed Cotswolds. He’d said the police could be bought and paid for and could do nothing to help us. We hid in the countryside for three months, and when we realized I was pregnant, he smuggled me into the Scottish highlands and told me to wait for his return. He never came back.
“He may have saved you, Aubrey, but his mission was to kill you.”
“I don’t believe you.” I scanned the walls of our hiding place. I had to get out. I needed air.
“It’s true. He went along as backup, in case the assassin failed. The man who was supposed to kill you got a little carried away. Panicked when you led him into a classroom full of students. Matthew was supposed to finish the job. Fortunately for you, he was also working for a higher power than the Adrianos. Simon had to abandon his plans when he realized you were gone, but his men did find your tiles eventually, exactly where Matthew said they’d find them.”
“Matthew would never betray me.” I was thinking seriously of leaving Myrddin in his hellhole for suggesting such a thing.
“He didn’t betray you. Not intentionally.” Myrddin rose from his makeshift seat. “Simon tortured the boy. Your lieutenant—he wasn’t really a lieutenant—gave up the location of the tiles with his dying breath. Your Matthew never did give up your whereabouts, though. All he would say was that you’d left him after you miscarried his child.”
I let my head loll against the wall. I shut my eyes and willed away any show of tears. So Matthew had died protecting me. At the hands of Simon Adriano. I had probably known in my heart for years that Matthew was dead, but I’d never let myself believe it. I had held on to the hope that someday I’d have back everything I’d lost—Matthew, Lilah, the Joan of Arc manuscript, peace of mind, something sweeter than the freedom to be unfettered by the bonds of normal relationships.
“Max found you almost ten years later. Lured you to Paris on a phony sabbatical. He knew you’d never stay on your own accord, so he set you up. Turned you into a criminal so you’d end up working for Simon.”
I blinked at him. “Why? Why would he do that if he’d tried to kill me before? Why didn’t he just kill me then?” Maybe it would have been better that way.
“He thought you knew who you were. He thought you’d lead him to others like you. So he let you live. And made you useful to him at the same time. But he didn’t trust his own son not to make a mess of things. He never told Simon that the fearless Dr. Moon and poor little Aubrey were the same woman. And Max didn’t know you’d never been told of your true legacy. That was his failing, and probably the one thing that kept you alive.”
For so many years I’d wanted answers. Nothing more. And now I had them. The problem was, so did Simon Adriano. Now, somehow, Simon knew the truth. But how? Had Max Adriano, dying somewhere in a hospital, had a change of heart about his secrets and passed them on?
It was bad enough to be on his blacklist when he didn’t know who I was, but now to learn that he’d tried to kill me when I’d been an innocent eighteen-year-old girl? That he’d killed my mother, that he’d killed my lover and that he knew my true identity, whatever that meant? If he knew about my life as Lauren Hartford, how much longer before he found out about Lilah and went after her? How could I warn her without putting her in more danger? I could only hope that she had a little bit of Joan of Arc’s blood flowing through her veins, too.
Something clicked in the walls. A quiet whirring. The sliding of arched walls on two sides of us.
“When one door closes, another one opens,” Myrddin whispered. “Sometimes your only choice is to wait for it.”
We stood on a narrow plateau. The passageway led up more slender steps above us and looked the same below where it dipped deep into the earth.
Steps. Why did it have to be steps?
“How did you know about this passage?” I asked, following Myrddin carefully down the steps. My knee screamed with each downward motion. “What if Simon finds us here?”
“Simon doesn’t know about it. I told you, I knew Simon’s father, Max, quite well. When I was a boy, Max’s father showed the passages to me. Of course, back then it was kerosene lanterns, not battery packs. Max modernized it over the years.”
“So you used to run with the bad guys, but now you’re a good guy?”
Myrddin paused on the steps to look back at me through the heavy wrinkles around his eyes. “I never said I was a good guy. I never said I was anything. The only thing you need to know, Aubrey, is that we’re on the same side.”
I followed him down at least fifty steps before having to rest. “What’s up the stairs?”
“The passageway connects every treasure trove in case the Adrianos came under attack and needed to hide their most valuable treasures or escape with them. The vaults, certain bedrooms, Simon’s office.”
“And he doesn’t know?” I asked for the third time.
“No. His father never trusted him. That’s part of the Adriano legacy. It’s because of what sons have done to their fathers for centuries. Later, when the son becomes the father, he fears history will repeat itself. It usually does.” The old man was at least twenty steps ahead of me. �
�You should get that knee seen to, you know.”
Damn. I was slowing him down? Time to head back to that obscure little beach town with the eye candy of a knee doctor and relax and work the kinks out of my knee for good! Right after I figured out how to keep Lilah safe.
“Myrddin? Where does this passageway come out?”
“About thirty meters from the main gate. The tunnel levels off underground and comes up in a clump of bushes not far from the private beach.”
“Meet me at my automobile,” I said. “You go ahead and I’ll follow as best I can.”
“I’d hate to leave you behind. Would you like for me to carry the tiles?”
Arrogant tease. Arrogant smelly tease. “No, you go ahead. I’ll carry the tiles.”
“Suit yourself. But don’t get caught.”
I watched him walk ahead, turning on lanterns as he went. The weight of the briefcase and the tiles tore at me. I descended the steps sideways, which made the knee pain much more manageable but was incredibly slow. When the tunnel leveled out, I could walk normally and made better time. The last few steps swerved upward and I knew I was near the parking lot. I poked my head out of the bushes and then fully emerged from the tunnel.
A new pair of guards milled about at the main gate, but their attention was on the video monitors inside. I half ran, half limped to the automobile, spotting Myrddin bending down low in the front seat. Anxiously I fished in my dress pocket for the key and opened the trunk. I slipped in the tapestry of tiles, dumped in the briefcase, then closed it with the kind of solid click only an expensive German automobile makes. I turned to run to the driver’s seat and heard a click.
“Leaving without saying goodbye?”
Holding my breath, I turned and stared into the blue eyes of Eric Cabordes. Then I lowered my gaze to the gun in his hand and nearly went cross-eyed. I exhaled and let my breathing become heavy as I looked from the gun to the man. I wet my lips.
“Maybe we could just say, ‘Until we meet again.’”
His face showed no emotion at all. “Turn around,” he said.
My pulse quickened. “Why? So you can shoot me in the back of the head? No, I’d rather watch.” My jaw wound tighter until it hurt. “I’d rather see the look in your eyes when you pull the trigger. I don’t want to miss anything.”
“Turn around.” He still didn’t raise his voice.
“No. If you’re going to kill me, you do it on my terms.”
He rolled his eyes. “Turn around. Please. And put your hands up.”
I took a deep breath and grudgingly obeyed.
“Goodbye.” A whisper. That was all.
I closed my eyes and waited for bullet to splinter bone.
Nothing happened. Slowly I turned to look over my shoulder at Eric Cabordes, but he was gone.
Chapter 7
I left the headlights off until I hit the main road—a winding two-lane ripple of blackness—then gunned the engine of the rented Mercedes. Surprised as we lurched onto the pavement, Myrddin raised an eyebrow at me but said nothing. A sound like a mewling kitten rose from the passenger seat. I didn’t know if it was the old man’s stomach or his fear was showing through, but I was already on the verge of rolling down all four windows to air out the vinegar smell of his soiled clothes.
“Take a left up there,” the old man instructed, pointing a gnarled finger to a strip of brown earth ahead and a flourishing field of drooping yellow sunflowers I’d seen earlier in the last rays of sunlight. The headlights bounced off the stone fences that lined the intersection. “That way leads out,” Myrddin added.
I grunted. How many times had I been here, with and without Caleb? “I know these roads.”
“And I know the ones you don’t know.” Myrddin seemed stronger now than he had in the oubliette or even in the tunnel, as if he’d caught his second wind or was running on willpower alone. I glanced across the seat at him and recognized the excited gleam in his eyes. Damn. Just like me most of the time. Relishing having a purpose.
I nodded to the road as we zipped along. “This one’s faster.”
“It is. But they’ll catch up with you faster, too.” Then a smile played across his thin lips. “Haven’t you ever heard of taking the road less traveled?”
I nodded. Hell of a thing to ask a former English teacher if she’s familiar with a Robert Frost poem or its sentiments. All my life I’d been on the road less traveled, and more than once I’d made my own path, usually not the one I’d intended.
“Then take the next road or Simon and his boys will find us and those artifacts before you reach the next city.”
He had a point. I fishtailed the Mercedes onto the dirt road and bumped along over a wide grass path through the sunflower field. My knee throbbed as I crushed the accelerator to the floor. My ears rang, too, but not as loudly since I’d put the tiles in the trunk. It was more like the barely audible sound of a cheap burglar alarm in a jewelry store.
The kitten sound mewled again from Myrddin’s seat, but he didn’t seem to hear it. Probably a little deaf, I told myself. Poor guy had lived for who knew how long in miserable conditions, half-starved. I’d find a place to get him a loaf of bread or a cup of soup as soon as I felt it was reasonably safe to venture out. For now, we needed to put some serious distance between the Adriano palazzo and us.
Simon had murdered my lover. All these years I’d been allowed to roam the world freely and been very well paid, and I’d thought it was because he favored me. Instead I’d learned that it was so I could lead Max Adriano to others of my kind. Max had had his subordinates, including Simon, give me a long leash instead of killing me, all because they’d been misinformed about how much I knew. And now Simon knew how much I knew. Or how little.
Simon had made it quite clear that I was expendable. If he ever got another chance, he’d kill me.
“You’re distracted,” Myrddin said after what seemed like an hour had passed with me lost in thought.
“It’s been an eventful night. I have a lot to think about.”
“Better if you focus on surviving and stop thinking so hard. You tend to analyze too much.” He said it as if he knew me. Myrddin pointed to where the road vanished into blackness. “Turn up there.” Then he continued, “Sometimes you have no time to study the alternatives, no time to make plans. All you can do is jump.”
I slammed on the brakes and spun the steering wheel hard. When the automobile finished screeching to a halt, I looked out my window and down, a long way down, to where waters dashed over rocks in the moonlight. I let out a frustrated yelp. We’d come damned close to plunging over the guardrail and onto the rocks below.
“I told you, you’re distracted. You’d better get a grip on your emotions. And your first priority, as long as you’ve got those tiles in your possession, is to stay alive. You’re second priority is to make sure Simon never sees that book.”
My chest heaved as I sat gripping the steering wheel. Foam danced over the jagged rocks below. The waves struck earth with a thunder louder than the ringing in my ears. I couldn’t look away. I’d seen my own mortality tonight. Years of hanging from rooftops by a thread, and nothing had ever been as close to the bone as Simon’s notification that I’d be working for him for the rest of my life, however long he chose for that to be. I wasn’t sure that kind of life was worth living. No, I was sure that it wasn’t. Not anymore.
As for my current priorities, my top one wasn’t the tiles or the book. It was Lilah and making sure she never got pulled into my own miserable life.
Several local automobiles passed us, blowing their horns to insult my driving skills. They sped into the night as if their tires knew the road by rote and they weren’t the least bit concerned with the inconsistent lack of a guardrail to keep them from tumbling down onto the rocks.
“Aubrey.”
Myrddin’s voice snapped me backward. “Wh-what?” I shook myself and crawled away from the edge, back onto the road. I waited for another automobile to pass before I
maneuvered the Mercedes toward the south.
“Focus,” he warned. “You’re not any good dead.”
I slammed one fist against the steering wheel and kicked at the accelerator. How was I supposed to focus? I didn’t know what to think or how to feel! What the hell was all that about tonight? Simon’s change in attitude toward me, my discovery that my mother had led a secret life, the revelation that my lover had been a hired killer.
“And Cabordes,” I said aloud. “The gun. The disappearing act. What the hell—” I punctuated my profanities with another pound of my fist on the steering wheel “—is going on?”
It was almost as if all my unlucky stars had lined up in one night…or an early midlife crisis of catastrophic proportions had struck. One thing was for certain: my life would never be the same.
Myrddin rolled his eyes. “You either ask too many questions or you ask the wrong questions.” Then he gestured ahead. “Slow down. This road isn’t well marked. And watch where you’re going or you’ll blow out a tire on the decries ahead.”
I swerved to miss the remnants of an automobile accident that had left glass and metal sparkling on the road. A flash of errant meal bumped under my front right tire and clanged under the Mercedes before disappearing in my rearview mirror. “I’m driving,” I reminded him angrily as I took the next curve a little faster than I should have.
“Is that what you call that?”
“If you think you could do a better job—”
“Of course I can do it better. Look at you. You’re letting your anger and your emotions get to you. That’ll get you killed.”
I ignored him and waited for the automobile riding my rear bumper to pass. Just being on this road was a life-or-death choice. The last thing I needed tonight was for someone to lecture me on my emotions, especially the ones I’d always been so good at hiding. I’m a Pisces and I’ll be emotional and dramatic when I damned well feel like it. That’s why it was so important to balance my emotions with so much analysis. Studying the situation, researching, planning—that was my scarecrow, the thing I held up to my fears to frighten them away. That’s how I lived my life. And how I stayed alive. All the planning was absolutely necessary for my heists and had served me well. As for planning my own life, it seldom paid off, but that didn’t stop me. Instead of all the planning, maybe what I really needed was to follow my heart. But I’d lost that opportunity when I’d wedded my life to the Adrianos.
Lorna Tedder Page 9