The Key Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  “Friday night?” Flynn sipped his coffee. “Is that a social event?”

  “Simon’s coming over to fool around.” Restlessly, Brad wandered the office as he spoke. “He’s bringing his mother.”

  “Sneaky.”

  “You do what you can. That’s one great kid, and he’s not as complicated as his mother is.”

  “My impression is she had a rough road, and blazed the trail out of it on her own. Which eases right into the theme of her clue.”

  “She’s an amazing woman.”

  “How stuck on her are you?”

  “All the way.” Trying to settle, Brad leaned against the windowsill. “Problem is, she doesn’t trust me. I’m making progress, though. At least she doesn’t freeze up or go on the defensive every time I look at her these days. But sometimes she looks at me like I’ve just dropped in from another planet and I have not come in peace.”

  “She’s a package deal. Women who are part of a package have to be more careful. If they’re smart. Zoe’s smart.”

  “I’m nuts about that kid. The more I’m around him, the more I want to be. I’d like to know the story on his father.”

  Flynn shook his head at Brad’s questioning look. “Sorry, my sources are very closemouthed on that subject. You could try the direct approach and ask her yourself.”

  Brad nodded. “One more thing, then I’ve got to take off. Are you going to write the story?”

  “The Daughters of Glass,” Flynn said aloud, looking off into middle distance as if reading a headline written on air. “Dateline Pleasant Valley, Pennsylvania. Two Celtic gods visited the scenic Laurel Highlands to challenge three local women to locate the keys to the legendary Box of Souls.”

  He laughed a little, lifted his coffee again. “It’d be a hell of a story. Adventure, intrigue, romance, money, personal risk, personal triumph, and the power of the gods, all right here in our quiet hometown. Yeah. I thought about it—to write it, and do it right. When I first got into this, I thought, Jesus, Jesus, this could be the story of the century. Of course, I could just as easily be hauled off and put in a padded room, but that wouldn’t have stopped me.”

  “What did?”

  “It would put them on the spot, wouldn’t it? Again. Some people would believe it, many wouldn’t, but everybody would ask them questions, hammer at them for answers and statements. They—well, none of us—would ever be able to live a normal life after that.”

  He looked down into his coffee, gave another little shrug. “And that’s what this is about, at the base. All of us being able to live the way we want to, the way we’re entitled to. It’s different if Jordan writes it, turns it into a book. Then it’s fiction. But I won’t be writing it up for the paper.”

  “You were always the best of us.”

  Flynn paused with his coffee mug halfway to his lips. “Huh?”

  “The most clear-sighted, the most clear-hearted. That’s why you stayed in the Valley, at the paper, when you wanted to go. Maybe that’s why Jordan and I could leave. Because we knew you’d be here when we got back.”

  It was a rare thing for Flynn’s tongue to tie itself in knots, but it did so now. “Well” was all he could manage.

  “I’ve got to get to Pittsburgh.” Brad set his coffee aside and rose. “Call me on the cell if anything comes up while I’m gone.”

  Still speechless, Flynn only nodded.

  ZOE measured and mixed Mrs. Hanson’s color. Her neighbor liked strong red highlights in the brown. Zoe had come up with a combination of toners that suited them both, and had been doing Mrs. Hanson’s cut and color once a month for three years.

  She was the only client Zoe serviced at home. Memories of growing up with hair on the floor and chemicals in the air had caused her to vow never to turn her home into a business.

  But Mrs. Hanson was different, and the hour or so Zoe spent once a month doing her hair in the kitchen was more like a visit than a job.

  She still remembered the day she’d moved into this house, how Mrs. Hanson, whose hair had been an unfortunate boot-black color then—had come over to welcome her and Simon to the neighborhood.

  She’d brought chocolate chip cookies, and after taking a long look at Simon, had nodded in approval. Then she’d offered her services as official sitter, claiming that with her own sons grown up she missed having a boy around the house.

  She was the first friend Zoe made in the Valley, and had become not only a surrogate grandmother to Simon but a mother to Zoe as well.

  “I saw your young man come by the other night.” Mrs. Hanson’s blue eyes twinkled in her pretty face as she perched on the stool in Zoe’s kitchen.

  “I don’t have a man, young or old.” Zoe parted hair, dabbed the gray roots with color.

  “Handsome young man,” Mrs. Hanson continued, undaunted. “Looks like his father some, who I knew a bit when he was the same age. Those roses he brought you are holding up well. Look how nice they’ve opened up.”

  Zoe glanced at the table. “I’ve been trimming the stems and changing the water to keep them fresh.”

  “Just like having a sunbeam on the table. Yellow roses suit you. It takes a smart man to know that. Simon’s full of Brad this and Brad that. Tells me he’s good with the boy.”

  “He is. They get along like a house afire.” As she worked, Zoe’s brows knit. “Bradley seems very fond of Simon.”

  “I imagine he’s very fond of Simon’s mama, too.”

  “We’re friends—or I’m working my way up to that. He makes me nervous.”

  Mrs. Hanson gave a quick hoot of laughter. “Man looks like that, he’s supposed to make a woman nervous.”

  “Not that way. Well, yes, that way.” Zoe laughed and scooped more color onto her brush. “But just altogether nervous.”

  “He kiss you yet?” At Zoe’s long silence, Mrs. Hanson let out a satisfied cackle. “Good. He didn’t look slow to me. How was it?”

  “I had to check after to make sure the top of my head was still there, because it felt like it’d blown clean off.”

  “About damn time. I was a little worried about you, sweetheart. Working day and night, seemed to me. Never taking time for yourself. Last little while, I see those nice girls you’ve taken up with, and handsome Brad Vane coming around, it does my heart good.”

  She reached back to give Zoe’s hand a pat. “Still working night and day, especially now that you’re putting that business together, but I like seeing it.”

  “I wouldn’t be able to have this business without you watching Simon after school so many afternoons.”

  Mrs. Hanson made a dismissive sound and waved Zoe’s words away. “You know very well I love having that boy around. He’s like one of my own. I don’t see nearly enough of my grandchildren what with Jack moving down to Baltimore and Deke off in California. I don’t know what I’d do without Simon. He brightens up my day.”

  “He thinks of you and Mr. Hanson as his grandparents. It takes a weight off me.”

  “Tell me how things are coming with the salon. I just can’t wait until you open up for business, put that tight-assed Carly’s nose out of joint when you start stealing her customers. I heard from Sara Bennett that the new girl Carly hired to replace you isn’t working out.”

  “That’s too bad.” But she said it with a snicker. “I wouldn’t wish her bad luck, except for the way she fired me. Saying I took money out of the till,” Zoe continued, firing up. “Calling me a thief.”

  “Easy there.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Zoe apologized when she realized she’d given Mrs. Hanson’s hair a tug. “I start seeing red whenever I think about it. I did good work for her.”

  “Too good. And too many of her regulars wanted you doing their hair, not her. Came down to jealousy, and that’s that.”

  “You know Marcie? She does nails there? I called her up a couple days ago, just to feel her out. She’s going to work for me.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “We’ve got to
keep it quiet until I’m all set up. I don’t want Carly firing her, putting her out of work before I open. But she’s ready to give her notice as soon as I say. And she’s friends with a stylist working out at the mall who’s getting married first of the year and wants to find something closer to town. So I said how about in town, and Marcie’s going to have her come see me. She says she’s really good.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re putting it all together.”

  “It feels right, you know? I got Chris on board to do massages and some of the body treatments. And my friend Dana? She’s hired this woman to work in her bookstore, and she has this friend who just moved back to the Valley and used to work at a spa out in Colorado. I’m going to be talking to her, too. It’s so exciting—as long as I don’t think about the payroll.”

  “You’re going to do fine. Better than fine.”

  “The plumber was in today, setting things up for my shampoo sinks. I got the lights in, and I’m going to be working on the stations. Sometimes I just look around up there and think this has got to be a dream.”

  “You don’t have to earn dreams, Zoe. And you’ve earned this.”

  S H E had earned it, Zoe thought later as she washed out the color brush and bowl. Or she was earning it. Still, so much of it was like a gift. She promised herself she would never take it for granted.

  She would do good work. She would be a good partner, and a good employer. She knew what it was to work for someone who was more interested in filling up the spaces in the appointment book than in the basic needs of her operators. Someone who’d forgotten what it was to stand on your feet hour after hour until they burned, until the small of your back ached like a bad tooth.

  But she wouldn’t forget.

  Maybe this wasn’t the road she’d expected to take, all those years ago when she was a young girl who imagined having pretty things and a quiet life that she would earn by using her brain.

  But it was the road she’d taken, and she was making it the right road.

  “You could go back, change it all.”

  She turned from the sink and looked at Kane. Surprise, shock, even fear were buried under thick layers of fog. She knew they were there but couldn’t quite feel them.

  He was beautiful, with a dark beauty. The black hair and deep eyes, the sharp bones sculpted under pure white skin. He was taller than she’d pictured. Not powerfully built like Pitte, but with a graceful, elegant body that she imagined could move as swiftly as a snake.

  “I wondered when you would come.” Her voice sounded hollow, as if formed more in her mind than with her mouth.

  “I’ve watched you. A pleasant pastime.” He stepped closer, and his hand brushed her cheek. “You’re very lovely. Too lovely to labor as you do. Too lovely to spend your life working on the appearance of others. You always wanted more. No one understood.”

  “No. It made Mama angry. It hurt her feelings.”

  “She never knew you. She used you like a slave.”

  “She needed help. She did her best.”

  “And when you needed help?” His voice was gentle, his face full of understanding. “Poor young thing. Used, betrayed, discarded. And a lifetime of payment for one reckless act. What if it had never happened? Your life would be so different. Don’t you wonder?”

  “No, I—”

  “Look.” He held up a sphere of crystal. “Look at what could have been.”

  Helpless to do otherwise, she looked, and fell into the scene.

  And swiveled in a deep leather chair to gaze out a wide corner window at the spears and towers of a great city. She had a phone to her ear and a satisfied expression on her face.

  “No, I can’t. I’m leaving for Rome tonight. A little business, a lot of pleasure.” She glanced at the slim gold watch on her wrist. “The pleasure is a little bonus from upstairs for bringing in the Quartermain account. A week at the Hastler. Of course I’ll send you a postcard.”

  She laughed, swiveled back to face the office as her assistant brought in a tall, slim china cup. “I’ll talk to you when I get back. Ciao.”

  “Your latte, Ms. McCourt. Your car will be here in fifteen minutes.”

  “Thanks. The Modesto file?”

  “Already in your briefcase.”

  “You’re the best. You know how to reach me, but as of Tuesday I’m off the clock. So unless it’s dire, pretend I’ve gone to Venus and can’t be reached.”

  “Count on it. Nobody deserves a vacation more than you. Have a wonderful time in Rome.”

  “I plan to.”

  Sipping her latte, she turned to her computer, brought up a file to check some final details.

  She loved her work. Some people would say it was just numbers, accounting, black or red ink. But to Zoe it was a challenge, even an adventure. She handled finance for some of the biggest and most complex corporations in the world, and she handled it very well.

  A long way from doing books for Mama’s hair business, she mused. A very long way.

  She’d studied hard to earn that scholarship to college, worked hard to complete her degree and secure an entry-level position with one of New York’s most prestigious international banking firms.

  And then she’d worked her way up. A corner office on the fiftieth floor, her own staff, all before she hit thirty.

  She had a beautiful apartment, an exciting life, a career she loved sinking her teeth into day after day. She’d traveled to all those places she’d wondered about when she snuck out to walk the woods at night as a girl.

  She had what she’d never been able to explain to her family that she needed. She had respect.

  Satisfied, she logged off, sipped the last of the latte. She pushed away from the desk, picked up her briefcase, tossed her coat over her arm.

  Rome was waiting.

  Work would come first, but then it was play. She was planning to carve out a nice chunk of time for shopping. Something in leather, something in gold. A sortie to Armani or Versace. Maybe both. Who deserved it more?

  She started toward the door, then stopped, turned back. There was a nagging sensation, a tug at the back of her mind. She was forgetting something. Something important.

  “Your car’s here, Ms. McCourt.”

  “Yes, I’m coming.”

  She started for the door again. But no. No, she couldn’t just leave.

  “Simon.” Her head spun, so viciously she had to brace a hand on the wall. “Where’s Simon?”

  She rushed through the door, shouting for him. And fell back through the crystal and onto her kitchen floor.

  “I wasn’t ever afraid,” Zoe told Malory and Dana. “Not even when I landed on the floor. It was more, ‘hmmm, how about that.’ ”

  “That’s all he said to you?” Dana demanded.

  “Yes. He was very smooth.” Zoe said as she worked on attaching her stations to the wall. “Very sympathetic. Not frightening at all.”

  “Because he was trying to seduce you,” Malory concluded.

  “That’s the way I see it.” Zoe gave the station a test shake, nodded. “ ‘Wouldn’t you like things to be this way, instead of the way they turned out?’ He made it seem like it was just a matter of stepping this way instead of that.”

  “The fork in the path.” Dana set her hands on her hips.

  “Exactly.” Zoe lined up the last screw, then drilled the hole. “Here’s the chance to have a high-powered career, a spiffy life, fly off to Rome for a week. All you have to do is one little thing. Not get pregnant at sixteen. He figured out he can’t threaten me with Simon, so what if he just eliminates him from the equation.”

  “He’s underestimating you.”

  Zoe glanced up at Malory. “Oh, yeah, he is, because nothing in that crystal ball comes close to what I have with Simon. And you know what? It doesn’t come close to what I’m doing here, with both of you.”

  She smiled and pushed herself to her feet. “I was wearing really great shoes, though. I think they were Manolo Blahnik, like what’s-he
r-name, Sarah Jessica Parker, wears.”

  “Hmm. Excellent and sexy shoes, or a nine-year-old boy.” Dana tapped a finger on her chin. “Tough choice.”

  “I think I’ll be sticking with Payless for the time being.” She stepped back to study the completed station. “He doesn’t scare me.” She let out a laugh, then set down the drill. “I was so sure he would, but he doesn’t.”

  “Don’t let your guard down,” Malory warned her. “He’s not going to take a simple ‘no thanks’ for an answer.”

  “That’s the one he’s going to keep getting. Anyway, he’s made me think about the clue again. Choices. The moment of truth, you called it, Malory, in the paintings. I guess I had one, the night Simon was conceived, or when I made the decision to have him. But I think there has to be another, either one that I’ve already made or one I have to make.”

  “We can make a list,” Malory began and made Dana laugh.

  “How did I know she would say that?”

  “A list,” Malory continued with a bland look for her friend, “of important events and decisions Zoe’s made, and of minor ones that had important results. Just the way she thought about the Valley as a forest with paths. This time it’s her life as the forest. We look for intersections, connections, how one choice led to others, how any of them pertains to the key.”

  “I’ve been playing around with that already and I was thinking . . .” She lined up the next station, pulled out her measuring tape, then just set it down. “The decisions you made, the things both of you did that led you to your keys, involved Flynn and Jordan. Brad and I are the only ones left, so it follows that mine’s going to involve him. That puts him on the front line with me.”

  “Brad can handle himself,” Dana assured her.

  “I’m certain he can. And I can handle myself. I’m just not sure I can handle him. I can’t afford to make a mistake, not about the key, not about myself and Simon.”

  “Are you worried that being closer to Brad, forming a personal relationship with him, could be a mistake?” Malory asked her.

  “Actually, I’m starting to worry that not being closer to him might be a mistake. That’s making it harder to be practical.”