Once Greg was alone with Darci, he didn’t know where to begin. On the other hand, she was probably reading his mind. “You didn’t do that to Jack’s ear?” he said when she was seated.
“No,” she answered as she drained her glass of ginger ale.
He saw that she looked tired. Her file said that after what had happened with the witches she’d been hospitalized for exhaustion. After the fire in Alabama and whatever she’d done with Lincoln Aimes, the surveillance crew said she’d not gone outside her house for two weeks.
Pouring her another glass of ginger ale, he handed it to her.
“Would you please tell me what’s going on?” she asked.
At that, Greg relaxed and took the seat across from her. Smiling, he said, “That’s exactly what I was going to ask you. How can you and Jack talk to each other…you know, without words?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly, looking away. “I thought that I could hear only my husband and even he couldn’t hear my thoughts.”
She looked about twenty years older than when she’d entered his office the first time today. Obviously, holding all those people downstairs had taken their toll on her. In a way he almost felt sorry for her. On the other hand, he was terrified of her. “Maybe you and Jack are soul mates,” he said, trying to make a joke.
When she turned blazing eyes on him, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. What did she do to people who displeased her?
But she just looked away. “No, we’re not soul mates. We’re—I don’t know why he can hear me and me him.” She looked back at Greg. “What’s he so angry about?”
“His father—”
“No,” Darci said, waving her hand. “I can feel his anger at his father—the man who’s missing, right?”
Greg nodded.
“That anger is superficial. There’s a deeper anger in him, though, and it sets my teeth on edge.”
Greg had to take a drink to keep from making a sarcastic remark. What could scare a person who could do what she’d done this morning?
“There’s something…no, someone from long ago. He is…protected.”
Greg smiled. “More lives than a cat. He was in a car wreck that should have killed him, but he was miraculously thrown free and survived. His face had been smashed, but when it was fixed he was much better looking than he had been. He was a different person.”
“Yes, I’m sure he was. She protected him and changed him.”
“She?”
“Yes. I feel that there’s a woman around him, surrounding him. She’s powerful and she’s…” Darci looked at Greg, smiling. “She’s jealous. She doesn’t like me at all.”
Greg wanted to light candles and say prayers, but he made himself remain calm. His training hadn’t prepared him for discussions about jealous ghosts.
“Has Jack ever had a lasting relationship?”
Greg chuckled. “Never longer that a few months, but…”
“But what?”
“I think there was a woman a couple of years ago. I’m not sure because Jack was undercover so I didn’t see him often. When we did see each other, we talked only of business.”
“She died, right?”
“Yeah, in the same car wreck that nearly killed Jack.”
Nodding, Darci sipped her drink for a moment. “No, she wouldn’t like for Jack to love anyone but her.”
“By ‘she,’ you mean a ghost?”
“In this case, maybe an EF. ‘Evil force,’ ” she added. “She either loves Jack with all her soul, or hates him enough to want revenge.”
“I’ve known Jack all his life and I’d be willing to bet he’s never done anything bad to a woman.”
“But who knows what happened a hundred or so years ago?”
“Ah. Right. Hundred years ago.” Greg swallowed a few times and thought, Why me? Why had he been chosen by this young woman? But the answer to that question and to a lot of questions in his life was: Jack. Greg cleared his throat. “What was that about your car keys?”
“They were humming,” Darci said cheerfully, holding them up. “Here, can you feel them?”
Tentatively, as though he were being asked to hold a hot branding iron, Greg took the keys. He released his breath when he felt nothing. Raising his eyebrows, he looked at Darci in question.
“I found that small key inside a little statue. I’ve always felt it had some importance to me, to what I’m trying to do.”
Greg wanted to ask questions but he restrained himself.
“You see, Mr. Ryerson, I’m trying to find out what happened to my husband. He was kidnapped…again.”
As Greg watched her struggle to keep the tears back, he was quiet and waited.
“I’m sure you know that my husband was kidnapped when he was a child. The experience so scarred him that when I met him, he was a driven man. I could feel his pain. So much had been taken from him that he was nearly empty inside, but he…”
Breaking off, she looked away for a moment, then turned back to Greg. “I’m using what powers God gave me in an attempt to find my husband and his sister, but I’ve made little progress so far. Last year I met someone—”
“Lincoln Aimes.”
“Yes,” Darci said, smiling. “A lovely man, inside and out. Through Linc I met someone else, an old blind man who has since told me some things.”
Greg waited for her to continue, hoping she’d tell him more, but she seemed to decide against it.
“Let’s just say that I know that before I can find my husband and sister-in-law I need to find some other things.”
“Things?”
“Objects.” She held up the small key on her ring. “I found this key under very odd circumstances and I believe that it opens something that will help me find my husband.” She looked at Greg. “Today I knew you wanted me to help you find this Mr. Hallbrooke, and I could feel that this man Jack was related to him. Related by blood, not by caring.”
“Yes,” Greg said. “There’s no love between them.”
“She won’t allow him to love anyone,” Darci said as she looked back at her keys. “I want to help, but I don’t like that man Jack. He sends very ugly thoughts to me. I wanted to hurt him. I’m sorry for that, but as much as I wanted to hurt him, I couldn’t do it. I can’t reach him. I’m not used to that kind of force around someone.”
“Sort of psychic-proof clothing, huh?”
“More or less,” she said, smiling a bit. “I wanted nothing to do with him, but when I got outside and took my car keys out, they were humming.”
“Humming?”
“Vibrating, and the vibrations became stronger the closer I got to the building. I apologize for what happened down there, but those people weren’t going to allow me to follow the key up the stairs.”
“I understand completely,” Greg said, then smiled for the first time when Darci laughed.
“Wonder what they’ll say in their reports?” he asked, laughing with her, glad to see some humor in what he’d seen that morning. “So what happened to the key when you handed it to Jack?”
“It hummed so loudly it was almost operatic.”
“But he felt nothing?”
“Nothing at all.”
Getting up, Greg paced about the room. He knew where she was headed. She wanted to use Jack to do some witchcraft-voodoo thing with some key she’d found heaven only knew where.
“I think, no, I know that this man Jack, your friend, can somehow lead me to something or someone who can help me find my husband and sister-in-law.”
Greg wanted to ask a thousand questions, but the most important one was, Will Jack be safe? Car wrecks and gun battles were one thing, but black magic was another.
Darci stood up. “Why don’t I go home and let you think about this? I’ll return tomorrow at three. Be sure and put me on your appointment book.”
“After today I don’t think anyone will try to stop you from entering the building.”
“Oh, they won’t remember th
is tomorrow,” she said lightly, then swallowed. “I mean, maybe they won’t.”
Greg was remembering one of the reports he’d read in which an agent said he believed that Darci could do much, much more than any of them knew about. Could she take away people’s memories of an event?
“Tomorrow, then,” he said as he walked her to the door.
At the door, she put her hand on his arm and looked into his eyes for a moment. It was as though she was trying to say something to him or to read his thoughts, but he heard and felt nothing.
She gave him a little smile, then turned and left.
Chapter Four
“IT’S THE FBI,” DARCI MUTTERED, “AND THEY couldn’t come up with anything more original than for me to be the maid and you to be the chauffeur.” The FBI didn’t really suspect Jack’s relatives of kidnapping, but they thought that if any lead was going to come through, it would be from inside that house, so they wanted an agent there.
Jack gave her a one-sided grin as he looked about the sparse room. “So this is how the servants live.”
Darci looked at the two narrow beds in the room and tried to quell her anger at the FBI. Yesterday Greg had told her that she and Jack would be working together in the Hallbrooke mansion. He hadn’t said that Jack and Darci were supposed to be a married couple, and that she was supposed to clean the house while Jack lounged around outside, waiting for one of his relatives to want to go somewhere.
But where would they want to go? Until J. Barrett was found, only their living expenses would be paid by the executors of his estate. The bills they ran up outside the house were their own. Yesterday Darci had spent the day at the FBI building, locked away with Jack and Greg as they experimented with how Jack and Darci could hear each other without using their voices.
Darci tried to tell them that she’d figured out that she wasn’t hearing Jack but the voice of an angry, hate-filled woman. It was the voice of a woman who hovered around Jack. She’d tried to explain that, but all she received was Jack’s sarcasm.
“Like a rain cloud?” he’d said. “Over me and no one else?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you using your bad temper to cover what you must have felt all your life? Are you trying to make me believe that there haven’t been times when you’ve heard her loud and clear?”
“I’m not working with this nut case,” Jack said to Greg, starting to rise from his chair.
Greg turned to Darci. “Yeah, he’s heard her, and, yeah, she’s protected him.” His jaw was clenched tight. This morning the director of the FBI had received another call from the president demanding to know what was being done to find Hallbrooke. Three of the charities supported by Hallbrooke had started to lobby for more government funds. If it leaked to the media that Hallbrooke was missing it wouldn’t be healthy for the president’s reelection campaign.
It was beginning to look as though Greg’s future with the FBI depended on this case, and he didn’t want to deal with Jack’s hostility toward Darci. Where was the Jack Greg had known all his life? The man who was charming no matter what the circumstances? Years ago, when they’d wheeled Jack into surgery, his face crushed, he’d still been making jokes.
“You two can fight it out after you find Hallbrooke,” Greg had snapped, then handed each of them a file folder and told them a car was waiting.
Two hours later they’d been hired by Jack’s aunt and uncle as maid and chauffeur. Since the FBI had made all the other employees quit, they were to start immediately.
“They don’t know where he is,” Darci said, dropping her duffle bag onto one of the twin beds. The FBI had packed the bag so she didn’t even know what was inside it. She looked at the other bed two feet from hers. If this odious man Jack tried anything, how would she stop him? She seemed to have no power over him.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Jack said, sneering, and looking Darci up and down in a contemptuous way.
This morning Greg had pulled Darci aside to talk to her in private. “I want to apologize for the way Jack’s been treating you. We’ve been together since we were toddlers and I’ve never seen him treat anyone this way.”
“It’s not him,” Darci said. “It’s—”
“I know,” Greg said, sighing. “It’s her.”
Hours later she and Jack were inside the Hallbrooke mansion and their jobs were to serve their employers.
Jack knew he had to leave the little bedroom or he’d explode. When he was growing up, Greg’s parents had lived in a pretty little cottage at the back of the estate, but the FBI had conveniently burned half of it down last night so Jack and Darci would have to stay inside the main house.
Damn them! Jack thought as he left the house and made his way to the garage. Maybe if he washed and waxed all six of his father’s cars he’d release some of his anger.
By the time he reached the garage, he’d settled down somewhat, and as he filled a bucket full of hot water and suds, he began to release more of his rage.
This morning he’d seen his relatives for the first time in years. He knew he looked different now but, somehow, he’d still expected one of them to recognize him. No one did. Aunt Theo had been the one to interview him. She hadn’t changed much. She was still scrawny, still haughty. She’d barely glanced at Jack.
Behind her stood her husband Randall, a man with a pedigree back to the Mayflower, but with no morals, no ambition, and a truly fabulous ability to spend money.
Half dozing on a couch had been Uncle Gus, someone who believed that luxury was his right.
Theodora and Gus were Jack’s father’s much-younger siblings. Whereas the eldest son had been raised with an iron fist, these two, the unexpected result of a weekend liaison his widowed grandfather’d had with a much-younger woman, had been indulged and cosseted all their lives. They had grown up believing they were entitled to whatever the world had to offer.
As Jack had stood on the carpet answering perfunctory questions about his qualifications, he’d easily been able to imagine what would happen to the Hallbrooke billions if these leeches got hold of them. There were some brochures on top of the piano: cars, yachts, real estate in Monaco.
When Jack was a child he’d overheard his father tell his lawyer that he didn’t plan to leave anyone a penny when he died. “I shall give all of it away before then.” It had taken all Jack’s strength to keep from bursting into the room and shouting that he didn’t want his father’s dirty ol’ money anyway.
But as Jack looked at his relatives, he thought that perhaps when his father had said he meant to leave behind no money he’d been doing Jack a favor.
“Of course not,” Jack said aloud as he dipped the sponge into the water and began soaping the Bentley. His father had never done a kind thing in his life. He gave away millions, true, but he refused to meet with any of the people involved with the charities. “I pay them to stay away from me,” his father had said when he refused to accept yet another plaque that honored and thanked him.
So now Jack was back at his father’s house, and he had no idea where to begin trying to find his father. None of his relatives were going to confide in a man they thought was a chauffeur. Jack had seen his twin cousins, seventeen years old and already bored with life. They were both like their mother Theo, snobs to the core, and had barely looked at him.
Jack turned the hose on the car and for a moment he felt rage run through him. There was the girl—that woman—that Darci. Throughout the interview she’d meekly stood behind him, her head down, her hands clasped in front of her. Demure, quiet, insignificant.
Yet throughout the interview she’d been “talking” to him. He’d wanted to shut her out, but he couldn’t.
He’s not here, she said.
Do you think the house hasn’t been searched? he snapped back at her.
He’s not here in their minds, she said, then added, Not that I can read minds.
Jack could hardly answer the stupid questions his aunt put to him. Did he have a criminal record?
Did he obey traffic laws? Had he ever been arrested? Was he an experienced driver?
He’d lied convincingly in spite of the fact that Darci was playing with his mind. Just before they’d left the FBI building, Greg had asked Jack to “lighten up,” but he’d been unable to. His dislike of Darci Montgomery, the Hillbilly Honey, threatened to overwhelm him.
After the interview—Darci had not been asked if she knew how to clean—Theo’s son had pointed them toward the kitchen. He’d been too lazy to walk all the way down the corridor to show them their room.
Once they were inside the room, Darci had tried to talk to Jack, but he’d left, unable to bear being near her.
He told himself that he disliked her because she said she was a psychic and he knew that such people didn’t exist. Some logic, buried deep inside his mind, knew that he’d seen the way she’d frozen the agents in place, but he still didn’t believe. It had to have been a trick.
Jack grabbed some clean cloths and began to wipe the water off the car. There was a part of him that knew he was being irrational, but another part just couldn’t stop. Never in his life had he disliked a person as much as he despised Darci Montgomery. Hated her.
Just thinking about his hatred of her made him slam paste wax onto the car’s surface with renewed energy.
It was late in the day when he went back into the house and what he saw made him blink in disbelief. His aunt Theo was in the kitchen chopping carrots and his uncle Gus was broiling steaks.
Quietly, his mouth open in disbelief, Jack went through the kitchen to the living room. Randall was wearing a ruffled apron and dusting the mantel. He smiled at Jack and kept dusting.
Jack went up the stairs two at a time. In the hallway were dirty plates of food, piles of soiled clothing, and a mound of dirty bed linens. A quick glance showed him that his twin cousins were cleaning out their rooms.
Gritting his teeth, Jack yelled, Darci! so loud that it made his body vibrate. When neither of the twins moved, he knew he’d shouted inside his head.
Instantly, a vision of a room came into his head. It was the blue bedroom on the third floor. Again, he took the stairs two at a time, strode down the hall angrily, then flung open the door.
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