A Will And A Way

by Nora Roberts

  She was going to die. Her mind was numb from the thought of it. She heard the tires scream as Michael dragged at the wheel. The car tilted, nearly going over. She saw trees rush by as the car slid on the slippery edge of the lane. Almost, for an instant, the rubber seemed to grip the gravel beneath. But the turn was too sharp, the speed too fast. Out of control, the car spiraled toward the trees.

  “I love you,” she whispered, and grabbed for him before the world went black.

  He came to slowly. He hurt, and for a time didn’t understand why. There was noise. Eventually he turned his head toward it. When he opened his eyes, Michael saw a boy with wide eyes and black hair gawking through the window.

  “Mister, hey, mister. You okay?”

  Dazed, Michael pushed open the door. “Get help,” he managed, fighting against blacking out again. He took deep gulps of air to clear his head as the boy dashed off through the woods. “Pandora.” Fear broke through the fog. In seconds, he was leaning over her.

  His fingers shook as he reached for the pulse of her neck, but he found it. Blood from a cut on her forehead ran down her face and onto his hands. With his fingers pressed against the wound, he fumbled in the glove compartment for the first-aid kit. He’d stopped the bleeding and was checking her for broken bones when she moaned. He had to stop himself from dragging her against him and holding on.

  “Take it easy,” he murmured when she began to stir. “Don’t move around.” When she opened her eyes, he saw they were glazed and unfocused. “You’re all right.” Gently he cupped her face in his hands and continued to reassure her. Her eyes focused gradually. As they did, she reached for his hand.

  “The brakes….”

  “Yeah.” He rested his cheek against hers a moment. “It was a hell of a trip, but it looks like we made it.”

  Confused, she looked around. The car was stopped, leaning drunkenly against a tree. It had been the deep, slushy snow that had slowed them down enough to prevent the crash from being fatal. “We—you’re all right?” The tears started when she reached out and took his face in her hands as he had with hers. “You’re all right.”

  “Terrific.” His wrist throbbed like a jackhammer and his head ached unbelievably, but he was alive. When she started to move, he held her still. “No, don’t move around. I don’t know how badly you’re hurt. There was a kid. He’s gone for help.”

  “It’s just my head.” She started to take his hand, and saw the blood. “Oh God, you’re bleeding. Where?” Before she could begin her frantic search, he gripped her hands together.

  “It’s not me. It’s you. Your head’s cut. You probably have a concussion.”

  Shaky, she lifted her hand and touched the bandage. The wound beneath it hurt, but she drew on that. If she hurt, she was alive. “I thought I was dead.” She closed her eyes but tears slipped through the lashes. “I thought we were both dead.”

  “We’re both fine.” They heard the siren wail up the mountain road. He was silent until she opened her eyes again. “You know what happened?”

  Her head ached badly, but it was clear. “Attempted murder.”

  He nodded, not turning when the ambulance pulled into the slushy lane. “I’m through waiting, Pandora. I’m through waiting all around.”

  Lieutenant Randall found Michael in the emergency-room lounge. He unwrapped his muffler, unbuttoned his coat and sat down on the hard wooden bench. “Looks like you’ve had some trouble.”

  “Big time.”

  Randall nodded toward the Ace bandage on Michael’s wrist. “Bad?”

  “Just a sprain. Few cuts and bruises and a hell of a headache. Last time I saw it, my car looked something like an accordion.”

  “We’re taking it in. Anything we should look for?”

  “Brake lines. It seemed I didn’t have any when I started the trip down the mountain.”

  “When’s the last time you used your car?” Randall had his notepad in hand.

  “Ten days, two weeks.” Wearily, Michael rubbed a temple. “I drove into New York to talk to police about the robbery in my apartment.”

  “Where do you keep your car?”

  “In the garage.”

  “Locked?”

  “The garage?” Michael kept his eye on the hallway where Pandora had been wheeled away. “No. My uncle had installed one of those remote control devices a few years back. Never worked unless you turned on the television. Anyway, he took it out again and never replaced the lock. Pandora’s car’s in there,” he remembered suddenly. “If—”

  “We’ll check it out,” Randall said easily. “Miss McVie was with you?”

  “Yeah, she’s with a doctor.” For the first time in weeks, Michael found himself craving a cigarette. “Her head was cut.” He looked down at his hands and remembered her blood on them. “I’m going to find out who did this, Lieutenant, and then I’m going to—”

  “Don’t say anything to me I might have to use later,” Randall warned. There were some people who threatened as a means to let off steam or relieve tension. Randall didn’t think Michael Donahue was one of them. “Let me do my job, Mr. Donahue.”

  Michael gave him a long, steady look. “Someone’s been playing games, deadly ones, with someone very important to me. If you were in my place, would you twiddle your thumbs and wait?”

  Randall smiled, just a little. “You know, Donahue, I never miss your show. Great entertainment. Some of this business sounds just like one of your shows.”

  “Like one of my shows,” Michael repeated slowly.

  “Problem is, things don’t work the same way out here in the world as they do on television. But it sure is a pleasure to watch. Here comes your lady.”

  Michael sprang up and headed for her.

  “I’m fine,” she told him before he could ask.

  “Not entirely.” Behind her a young, white coated doctor stood impatiently. “Miss McVie has a concussion.”

  “He put a few stitches in my head and wants to hold me prisoner.” She gave the doctor a sweet smile and linked arms with Michael. “Let’s go home.”

  “Just a minute.” Keeping her beside him, Michael turned to the doctor. “You want her in the hospital?”

  “Michael—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Anyone suffering from a concussion should be routinely checked. Miss McVie would be wise to remain overnight with professional care.”

  “I’m not staying in the hospital because I have a bump on the head. Good afternoon, Lieutenant.”

  “Miss McVie.”

  Lifting her chin, she looked back at the doctor. “Now, Doctor…”

  “Barnhouse.”

  “Dr. Barnhouse,” she began. “I will take your advice to a point. I’ll rest, avoid stress. At the first sign of nausea or dizziness, I’ll be on your doorstep. I can assure you, now that you’ve convinced Michael I’m an invalid, I’ll be properly smothered and hovered over. You’ll have to be satisfied with that.”

  Far from satisfied, the doctor directed himself to Michael. “I can’t force her to stay, of course.”

  Michael lifted a brow. “If you think I can, you’ve got a lot to learn about women.”

  Resigned, Barnhouse turned back to Pandora. “I want to see you in a week, sooner if any of the symptoms we discussed show up. You’re to rest for twenty-four hours. That means horizontally.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” She offered a hand, which he took grudgingly. “You were very gentle. Thank you.”

  His lips twitched. “A week,” he repeated and strode back down the hall.

  “If I didn’t know better,” Michael mused, “I’d say he wanted to keep you here just to look at you.”

  “Of course. I look stunning with blood running down my face and a hole in my head.”

  “I thought so.” He kissed her cheek, but used the gesture to get a closer look at her wound. The stitches were small and neat, disappearing into her hairline. After counting six of them, his determination iced. “Come on, we’ll go home so I c
an start pampering you.”

  “I’ll take you myself.” Randall gestured toward the door. “I might as well look around a bit while I’m there.”

  Sweeney clucked like a mother hen and had Pandora bundled into bed five minutes after she’d walked in the door. If she’d had the strength, Pandora would have argued for form’s sake. Instead she let herself be tucked under a comforter, fed soup and sweet tea, and fussed over. Though the doctor had assured her it was perfectly safe to sleep, she thought of the old wives’ tale and struggled to stay awake. Armed with a sketch pad and pencil, she whiled away the time designing. But when she began to tire of that, she began to think.

  Murder. It would have been nothing less than murder. Murder for gain, she mused, an impossible thing for her to understand. She’d told herself before that her life was threatened, but somehow it had seemed remote. She had only to touch her own forehead now to prove just how direct it had become.

  An uncle, a cousin, an aunt? Which one wanted Jolley’s fortune so badly to murder for it? Not for the first time, Pandora wished she knew them better, understood them better. She realized she’d simply followed Jolley’s lead and dismissed them as boring.

  And that was true enough, Pandora assured herself. She’d been to a party or two with all of them. Monroe would huff, Biff would preen, Ginger would prattle, and so on. But boring or not, one of them had slipped over the line of civilized behavior. And they were willing to step over her to do it. Slowly, from memory, she began to sketch each of her relatives. Perhaps that way, she’d see something that was buried in her subconscious.

  When Michael came in, she had sketches lined in rows over her spread. “Quite a rogues’ gallery.”

  He’d come straight from the garage, where he and Randall had found the still-wet brake fluid on the concrete. Not all of it, Michael mused. Whoever had tampered with the brakes had left enough fluid in so that the car would react normally for the first few miles. And then, nothing. Michael had already concluded that the police would find a hole in the lines. Just as they’d find one in the lines of Pandora’s, to match the dark puddle beneath her car. It had been every bit as lethal as his.

  He wasn’t ready to tell Pandora that whoever had tried to kill them had been as close as the garage a day, perhaps two, before. Instead he looked at her sketches.

  “What do you see?” she demanded.

  “That you have tremendous talent and should give serious thought to painting.”

  “I mean in their faces.” Impatient with herself, she drew her legs up Indian style. “There’s just nothing there. No spark, no streak of anything that tells me this one’s capable of killing.”

  “Anyone’s capable of killing. Oh yes,” Michael added when she opened her mouth to disagree. “Anyone. It’s simply that the motive has to fit the personality, the circumstances, the need. When a person’s threatened, he kills. For some it’s only when their lives or the lives of someone they love are threatened.”

  “That’s entirely different.”

  “No.” He sat on the bed. “It’s a matter of different degrees. Some people kill because their home is threatened, their possessions. Some kill because a desire is threatened. Wealth, power, those are very strong desires.

  “So a very ordinary, even conventional person might kill to achieve that desire.”

  He gestured to her sketches. “One of them tried. Aunt Patience with her round little face and myopic eyes.”

  “You can’t seriously believe—”

  “She’s devoted to Morgan, obsessively so. She’s never married. Why? Because she’s always taken care of him.”

  He picked up the next sketch. “Or there’s Morgan himself, stout, blunt, hard-nosed. He thought Jolley was mad and a nuisance.”

  “They all did.”

  “Exactly. Carlson, straitlaced, humorless, and Jolley’s only surviving son.”

  “He tried contesting the will.”

  “Going the conventional route. Still, he knew his father was shrewd, perhaps better than anyone. Who’s to say he wouldn’t cover his bases in a more direct way? Biff…” He had a laugh as he looked at the sketch. Pandora had drawn him precisely as he was. Self-absorbed.

  “I can’t see him getting his hands dirty.”

  “For a slice of a hundred fifty million? I can. Pretty little Ginger. One wonders if she can possibly be as sweet and spacey as she appears. And Hank.” Pandora had drawn him with his arm muscle flexed. “Would he settle for a couple of thousand when he could have millions?”

  “I don’t know—that’s just the point.” Pandora shuffled the sketches. “Even when I have them all lined up in front of me, I don’t know.”

  “Lined up,” Michael murmured. “Maybe that is the answer. I think it’s time we had a nice, family party.”

  “Party? You don’t mean actually invite them all here.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “They won’t come.”

  “Oh yes, they will.” He was already thinking ahead. “You can bank on it. A little hint that things aren’t going well around here, and they’ll jump at the chance to give us an extra push. You see the doctor in a week. If he gives you a clean bill of health, we’re going to start a little game of our own.”

  “What game?”

  “In a week,” he repeated, and took her face in his hands. It was narrow, dominated by the mop of hair and sharp eyes. Not beautiful, but special. It had taken him a long time to admit it. “A bit pale.”

  “I’m always pale with a concussion. Are you going to pamper me?”

  “At least.” But his smile faded as he gathered her close. “Oh God, I thought I’d lost you.”

  The trace of desperation in his voice urged her to soothe. “We’d both have been lost if you hadn’t handled the car so well.” She snuggled into his shoulder. It was real and solid, like the one she’d sometimes imagined leaning on. It wouldn’t hurt, just this once, to pretend it would always be there. “I never thought we’d walk away from that one.”

  “But we did.” He drew back to look at her. She looked tired and drawn, but he knew her will was as strong as ever. “And now we’re going to talk about what you said to me right before we crashed.”

  “Wasn’t I screaming?”

  “No.”

  “If I criticized your driving, I apologize.”

  He tightened his grip on her chin. “You told me you loved me.” He watched her mouth fall open in genuine surprise. Some men might have been insulted. Michael could bless his sense of humor. “It could technically be called a deathbed confession.”

  Had she? She could only remember reaching for him in those last seconds, knowing they were about to die together. “I was hysterical,” she began, and tried to draw back.

  “It didn’t sound like raving to me.”

  “Michael, you heard Dr. Barnhouse. I’m not supposed to have any stress. If you want to be helpful, see about some more tea.”

  “I’ve something better for relaxing the muscles and soothing the nerves.” He laid her back against the pillows, sliding down with her. Sweetly, tenderly, he ran his lips down the lines of her cheekbones. “I want to hear you tell me again, here.”

  “Michael—”

  “No, lie back.” And his hands, gentle and calm, stilled her. “I need to touch you, just touch you. There’s plenty of time for the rest.”

  He was so kind, so patient. More than once she’d wondered how such a restive, volatile man could have such comforting hands. Taking off only his shoes, he slipped into bed with her. He held her in the crook of his arm and stroked until he felt her sigh of relief. “I’m going to take care of you,” he murmured. “When you’re well, we’ll take care of each other.”

  “I’ll be fine tomorrow.” But her voice was thick and sleepy.

  “Sure you will.” He’d keep her in bed another twenty-four hours if he had to chain her. “You haven’t told me again. Are you in love with me, Pandora?”

  She was so tired, so drained. It seemed
she’d reached a point where she could fight nothing. “What if I am?” She managed to tilt her head back to stare at him. His fingers rubbed gently at her temple, easing even the dull echo of pain. “People fall in and out of love all the time.”

  “People.” He lowered his head so that he could just skim her lips with his. “Not Pandora. It infuriates you, doesn’t it?”

  She wanted to glare but closed her eyes instead. “Yes. I’m doing my best to reverse the situation.”

  He snuggled down beside her, content for now. She loved him. He still had time to make her like the idea. “Let me know how it works out,” he said, and lulled her to sleep.

  Chapter Twelve

  Michael studied the dark stains on the garage floor with a kind of grim fascination. Draining the brake fluid from an intended victim’s car was a hackneyed device, one expected from time to time on any self-respecting action-adventure show. Viewers and readers alike developed a certain fondness for old, reliable angles in the same way they appreciated the new and different. Though it took on a different picture when it became personal, the car careering out of control down a steep mountain road was as old as the Model T.

  He’d used it himself, just as he’d used the anonymous gift of champagne. And the bogus-telegram routine, he mused as an idea began to stir. Just last season one of Logan’s heroines of the week had been locked in a cellar—left in the dark after going to investigate a window slamming in the wind. It too was a classic. Each and every one of the ploys used against himself and Pandora could have been lifted from one of his own plots. Randall had pointed it out, though he’d been joking. It didn’t seem very funny.

  Michael cursed himself, knowing he should have seen the pattern before. Perhaps he hadn’t simply because it had been a pattern, a trite one by Hollywood standards. Whether it was accidental or planned, Michael decided he wasn’t about to be outplotted. He’d make his next move taking a page from the classic mystery novels. Going into the house, Michael went to the phone and began to structure his scene.

  He was just completing his last call when Pandora came down the hall toward him. “Michael, you’ve got to do something about Sweeney.”