by Nora Roberts
He was going to take her to Venice.
He was still grinning as he struggled to tug out his studs. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a blur of motion. Pain exploded in his head, a burst of red light behind his eyes. His knees buckled as he tried to turn, tried to strike out. The second blow had him crashing into a table and falling into the black.
The storm broke. Miranda was still a mile from home when the rain flooded over her windshield. Lightning slashed so close that its companion burst of thunder shook the car. It was going to be a mean one. She forced herself to slow her speed though she wanted nothing more at that moment than to be home, to be dry and warm and inside.
Fog was sneaking along the ground, masking the shoulder of the road. To narrow her concentration, she switched off the radio, shifted forward in her seat.
But her mind played it all back.
The call from Florence, then the mugging. John Carter flying out while she was delayed. The bronze had been in the safe in her mother’s office. Who had access to the safe? Only Elizabeth.
But if Miranda’s association with Ryan had taught her anything, it was that locks were made to be picked.
Richard had run tests; therefore, he had gained access to the bronze. Who had worked with him? Who had brought the gun to the Institute and used it?
John? She tried to imagine it but kept seeing his homely, concerned face. Vincente? Loud, friendly, avuncular Vincente? Could either of them have pumped two bullets into Richard, have struck Elise?
And why in her office, why at an event with hundreds of people wandering the lower levels? Why take such a risk?
Because it had impact, Miranda realized. Because it once again put her name in the paper in a scandal. Because it had ruined the opening of the exhibit and overshadowed all the effort she’d put into it.
It was personal, it had to be. But what had she done to create that kind of animosity and obsession? Who had she harmed? John, she thought. If she was disgraced beyond repair, if she was forced to resign from the Institute, he would be the logical choice for her replacement. It would mean a promotion, a larger salary, more power and prestige.
Could it be that simple?
Or Vincente. He’d known her the longest, been the closest to her. Was there something she’d done to cause resentment, envy? Was it a matter of money to buy the jewels, the clothes, the big, splashy trips that made his young wife happy?
Who else was left? Giovanni and Richard were dead, Elise was in the hospital. Elizabeth . . .
Could that lifetime of resentment have bloomed into this kind of hate?
Leave it for the police, she told herself, and rolled the worst of the tension out of her shoulders when she pulled the car to the front of the house. In less than thirty-six hours she would pass this nasty ball over to Cook.
It meant spending most of her evening working out every step she could tell him. And all the steps she couldn’t.
She picked up her briefcase. Richard’s book was inside it, and she intended to read it cover to cover tonight. Maybe she’d missed something on the one quick skim she’d had time for.
The fact that her umbrella was in the trunk rather than on the seat beside her only proved her thoughts were too scattered and distracted for logical reasoning. She used the briefcase as a shield, holding it over her head as she made a dash to the porch.
She was soaked through anyway.
Inside, she dragged a hand through her hair to scatter the rain, and called out for Andrew. She hadn’t seen him since she left the hospital the night before, but his car was parked in its usual spot. It was time, she’d decided, they too had a talk.
It was time she told him everything, trusted him enough for that.
She called out again as she started upstairs. Damn it, she wanted to get out of her wet clothes, take a hot bath. Why wouldn’t he at least answer?
Probably sleeping, she thought. The man slept like the dead. Well, he was going to have to do a Lazarus, because she wanted to tell him everything she could before their mother arrived.
“Andrew?” His door wasn’t quite closed, but she gave it a perfunctory knock before nudging it open. The room was pitch-dark, and though she imagined he would curse viciously, she reached for the light switch that would turn on the floor lamp. She muttered an oath of her own when the lamp stayed dark.
The power was still on. Damn it, he hadn’t replaced the bulb again. She started forward, intending to give him a good shake, and tripped over him.
“Andrew, for God’s sake!” In a brilliant flash of lightning she saw him at her feet, still wearing the tux he’d put on the night before.
It wasn’t the first time she’d come across him passed out in his clothes, sprawled on the floor and stinking of liquor.
The anger came first, one hot spurt of it that pushed her to just turn around, just walk out and leave him where he’d fallen. Then the disappointment, the grief flooded in.
“How could you do this to yourself again?” she murmured. She crouched down, hoping he wasn’t so far gone that she couldn’t rouse him and get him into bed.
It struck her suddenly that she didn’t smell whiskey, or the sick sweat that carried it. She reached down, shook him, then with a sigh laid a hand on his head.
And felt the sticky warmth. Blood.
“Oh God. Andrew. No, oh please.” Her smeared and trembling fingers probed for a pulse. And the bedside lamp switched on.
“He’s not dead. Yet.” The voice was soft, with a light laugh at the edges. “Would you like to keep him alive, Miranda?”
Normally Ryan hated to repeat himself, but he let himself into Elizabeth’s suite exactly as he’d done before. It wasn’t the time for fancywork. The rooms were silent and empty, but that didn’t matter to him.
He’d have found a way around, or through, any occupant.
In the bedroom, he took out the jewelry case precisely as he had two nights ago. And removed the locket.
It was only a hunch, just a kernel of ice in his gut, but he’d learned to follow his instincts. He studied the old photographs, saw no particular resemblance. Then again, perhaps around the eyes. Maybe there was something around the woman’s eyes.
Using a small probe, he popped the elegant little oval out. She’d had it inscribed under her photo, not her husband’s. He’d thought she would.
And his blood was cool and steady as he read it: Miranda, on the occasion of your sixteenth birthday. Never forget where you come from or where you wish to go. Gran
“We’ve got you,” he said quietly, and slipped the locket into his pocket. He was already pulling his phone out as he hurried back out to the corridor.
“Elise.” Miranda forced herself to speak calmly, to keep her eyes on Elise’s face and not on the gun that was pointed dead-center at her chest. “He’s badly hurt. I need to call an ambulance.”
“He’ll keep for a while.” With her free hand, she tapped the neat bandage on the back of her own head. “I did. It’s amazing how quickly you can bounce back from a good bash on the head. You thought he was drunk, didn’t you?” Her eyes glittered with delight at the thought. “That’s really perfect. If I’d thought of it and had time, I’d have gotten a bottle and poured it over him. Just to set the scene. Don’t worry, I only hit him twice—not nearly as often, or as hard, as I hit Giovanni. But then Andrew didn’t see me. Giovanni did.”
Terrified Andrew would bleed to death while she did nothing, Miranda snatched up a T-shirt from the littered floor, balled it, and pressed it to the wound.
“Giovanni was your friend. How could you have killed him?”
“I wouldn’t have had to if you’d left him out of it. His blood’s on your hands, just like Andrew’s is right now.”
Miranda curled her fingers into her palm. “And Richard.”
“Oh, Richard. He killed himself.” A faint line of irritation dug between her eyebrows. “He started falling apart right after Giovanni. Falling apart, piece by piece. Cried like a baby, to
ld me it had to stop. No one was supposed to die, he said. Well.” She moved her shoulders. “Plans changed. The minute he sent you that ridiculous e-mail, he was dead.”
“But you sent the others, the faxes.”
“Oh yes.” With her free hand, Elise twisted the delicate gold chain draped around her neck. “Did they frighten you, Miranda? Confuse you? Make you wonder?”
“Yes.” Keeping her movements slow, she tugged a blanket from the foot of the bed and settled it over her brother. “You killed Rinaldi too.”
“That man was a constant annoyance. He kept insisting the bronze was real—as if a plumber would know anything about it. He even stormed into Elizabeth’s office, babbling, rambling. But it made her start thinking. I could tell.”
“You have the bronze, but you’ll never be able to sell it.”
“Sell it? Why should I want to sell it? Do you think this is about money?” She pressed a hand to her stomach as she laughed. “It’s never been about money. It’s you. It’s you and me, Miranda, like it’s always been.”
Lightning shimmered against the glass of the window behind Elise, ragged forks of it digging into the sky. “I’ve never done anything to you.”
“You were born! You were born with everything right at your fingertips. The prized daughter of the house. The eminent Dr. Jones of the Maine Joneses, with your highly respected parents, your fucking bloodline, your servants, your snooty grandmother in her big house on the hill.”
She gestured wildly, turning Miranda’s stomach to a greasy wave as the gun swung in every direction. “You know where I was born? In a charity ward, and I lived in a lousy two-room apartment because my father wouldn’t acknowledge me, wouldn’t accept the responsibility. I deserved everything you had, and I got it. But I had to work for it, to beg for scholarships. I made sure I went to the same colleges as you did. I watched you, Miranda. You never even knew I was there.”
“No.” Miranda removed the cloth from Andrew’s head. She thought the flow of blood was slowing. She prayed it wasn’t wishful thinking.
“Then again, you didn’t do much socializing, did you? Amazing how all this money made you so boring. And I had to scrimp and save while all the time you were living in a nice house, being waited on, reaping in glory.”
“Let me call an ambulance for Andrew.”
“Shut up! Shut the hell up. I’m not finished.” She stepped forward, jabbing with the gun. “You shut the hell up and listen to me or I’ll shoot the sorry son of a bitch here and now.”
“Don’t!” Instinctively, Miranda shifted her body between the gun and Andrew. “Don’t hurt him, Elise. I’ll listen.”
“And keep your mouth shut. Jesus, I hate that mouth of yours. You talk and everybody listens. Like you spit gold coins.” She kicked a discarded shoe across the floor until it rapped solidly into the wall. “It should have been me, it should always have been me, and it would have been if the son of a bitch who got my mother pregnant, who promised her everything hadn’t been married to your grandmother.”
“My grandmother?” Miranda shook her head even as her fingers slid slowly down to check Andrew’s pulse. “You’re trying to tell me my grandfather was your father?”
“The old bastard just couldn’t keep his zipper up, even into his sixties. My mother was young and stupid and she thought he’d ditch his ice bitch of a wife and marry her. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
To punctuate her feelings, she snatched up an agate paperweight from the occasional table and winged it over Miranda’s head. It boomed against the wall like a cannonball.
“She let herself be used. Let him get away without paying, never did one goddamn thing to make him pay, so we lived hand to mouth.” Her eyes glittered with fury as she shoved the table over.
Another Jones, Miranda thought frantically, another careless liaison and inconvenient pregnancy. She shifted to the balls of her feet, braced. But the gun swung back, its barrel aimed toward the center of her body. And Elise smiled beautifully.
“I watched you. I watched you for years. I planned for years. You were my goal as long as I can remember. I went into the same field. I was every bit as good as you. Better. I went to work for you. I married your useless brother, I made myself invaluable to your mother. I’m more of a daughter to her than you’ve ever been.”
“Oh yes,” Miranda said with perfect sincerity. “You are. Believe me, I mean nothing to her.”
“You’re the centerpiece. I’d have had your position sooner or later. You’d have been the one scrambling for scraps. Remember the David? That was quite a coup for you, wasn’t it?”
“So you stole it, had Harry copy it.”
“Harry was very enthusiastic. It’s so pitifully easy to manipulate men. They look at me and they think, She’s so delicate, so lovely. And all they want to do is fuck and protect.”
She laughed again, sliding her gaze down to Andrew. “I’ll say this for your brother. He had some good moves in bed. It was a nice side benefit, but breaking his heart was better. Watching him slide into the bottle because he couldn’t figure out what he’d done to turn me away. Poor, poor Andrew.”
Then her expression changed again, as capricious as the lightning outside and just as volatile. “I was going to reel him back eventually, after I’d finished everything. Finished you. What a beautiful irony that would be. I still will,” she added, with a smile blooming again. “That cheap little number he’s screwing now won’t even be a memory when I move back to Maine. That is, if I let him live.”
“There’s no need to hurt him. It’s not him, Elise. Let me call an ambulance. You can keep the gun on me. I won’t try to get away. Just let me call an ambulance for him.”
“Not used to begging, are you? But you do it well. You do everything so well, Miranda. I’ll think about it.” She cocked her head in warning as Miranda rose. “Careful. I wouldn’t kill you, not at first, but I’d cripple you.”
“What do you want?” Miranda demanded. “What the hell do you want?”
“I want you to listen!” She shouted it, waving the gun so that the barrel jumped from Miranda’s heart to her head and back again. “I want you to stand there and listen to what I say, to do what I tell you, to crawl when I’m finished. I want it all.”
“All right.” How much time? Miranda thought frantically. How much time was left before Elise snapped, before the gun went off? “I’m listening. The David was really only practice, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, you’re smart. Always so smart. It was backup. I knew I could put a chink in your reputation with it. But I’m patient. There was bound to be something bigger—with the way your star was rising, there was going to be something more important. Then there was The Dark Lady. I knew, as soon as Elizabeth told me she was sending for you, that there was an important piece coming in, I knew this would be the one. She trusted me. I made certain she trusted me. Kowtowing to her every whim for years.
“Standjo’s going to be mine too,” she added matter-of-factly. “I’ll be in the director’s chair by the time I’m forty.”
Miranda slid her gaze to the side, scanning for a weapon.
“You look at me! You look at me when I talk to you.”
“I’m looking at you, Elise. I’m listening. It was The Dark Lady.”
“Have you ever seen a more magnificent piece? Anything quite so powerful?”
“No.” The rain was pounding like battle drums against the window. “No, I haven’t. You wanted her. I can’t blame you. But you couldn’t do it alone. So you had Richard.”
“Richard was in love with me. I was very fond of Richard,” she said almost dreamily. “I might have married him, for a while at least. He was useful, he could have continued to be very useful. We ran the tests at night. I had the combination to Elizabeth’s safe. It was ridiculously easy. All I had to do was arrange for you to be delayed. I did specify that you weren’t to be seriously hurt. I wanted to keep you healthy until I could ruin you.”
“Richard made the cop
y.”
“As I said, he was very useful. I did some of the work myself. We wanted it to pass basic tests, even to fool some of the more involved ones. You were perfect, Miranda. You knew when you saw it, just as I did. It was unmistakable. You could feel it, couldn’t you? The power of that piece, the glory in it.”
“Yes, I could feel it.” She thought she heard Andrew stir, but couldn’t be sure. “You leaked the project to the press.”
“Elizabeth is so strict about such things. Rules and regulations, proper channels, integrity. She reacted exactly as expected—it didn’t hurt that I gave her subtle little nudges, all the while claiming that I was sure you didn’t mean it. You’d just gotten caught up. You were so enthusiastic. I was your champion, Miranda. I was brilliant.”
The phone rang while they stared at each other. And Elise smiled slowly. “We’ll just let the machine pick that up, shall we. We have so much more to talk about.”
• • •
Why the hell didn’t she answer? Ryan fought his way through the storm, tires skidding on wet pavement as he pushed for speed. She’d left the Institute to go home. She wasn’t picking up her cell phone, or the phone at the house. Steering one-handed, he punched in information and got the number for the hospital.
“Elise Warfield,” he demanded. “She’s a patient.”