by Kay Hooper
“Did you two get any closer before he died?”
“No. But at least the old ghosts were quieter after so many years. There was a kind of peace between us. And I’m glad of that.”
Rachel nodded. “I’m not sure if I should thank you for telling me all this, but I’m glad you did.” She paused, then added, “I still don’t understand, though, what it is you’re looking for in the furniture.”
Readily now, Cameron said, “One of the things our father always said, one of his promised rewards, was a large piece of property overseas. An island, in fact. He swore he owned it, that he had the deed. But when he died, it was never found.”
“You’re looking for the deed to an island?”
“Rachel, my father was a devious old bastard, and he loved playing games. He told us once that he’d hidden the deed here in the house. That was when we were boys, and Duncan and I both searched for it. We never found it. Maybe it never existed. But it occurred to me that it would have been just like him to hide something important in a piece of discarded furniture.”
“I see.”
Cameron smiled at her. “It probably isn’t here. Probably never existed. But, just once, I’d like to win one of my father’s games. The promise of that keeps me looking.”
“Thank you for telling me, Cam.”
“I’m just sorry I didn’t confide in you before.” He shrugged. “But you’ve been busy, with a lot on your mind. Naturally, if I do find the deed, you’ll be the first to know. I’d like to keep looking.”
“Of course.”
His expression lightened. “Thanks, Rachel. Now I think I’ll go get my sketch pad and then meet Kathie for dinner. I’ll probably see you tomorrow.”
“Good night, Cam.”
“Good night, honey.”
Rachel sat there on the arm of the chair for a long time after Cameron left. She heard him go upstairs, then come down again a couple of minutes later. Heard the front door close, and his car start up outside. Heard him drive away.
She wondered why he had lied to her.
There were holes in his story, several of them. For one thing, he’d had thirty years to search the house; why was it only now important to him to get his hands on a possibly nonexistent deed? Granted, furniture was just now being moved out of the house, but Cameron had to know already how thorough Darby was, and that a deed to an island would have been useless to Darby even if she was disposed to steal it—which she wasn’t.
No, the deed was probably nonexistent.
So what was Cameron really looking for?
• • •
“Do you really keep a diary?”
Mercy pushed herself up a bit so she could smile down at him. “It’s more of a journal. But, yes. I’ll show it to you if you like. It was the only place I could safely make a fool of myself over you.”
He toyed with a strand of her dark hair. “I never guessed. Never even imagined you could feel anything for me.”
“I couldn’t let you know. Mysterious, enigmatic Nick, who never seemed to give me a second look—until the night he offered me a ride and we ended up stark naked on the rug in front of my fireplace. Was that planned, by the way?”
Nicholas smiled slightly. “That, love, was the most incredibly lucky night of my life. I kissed you because I had to, figuring I’d get my face slapped. But when you responded …”
“You thought I might be agreeable to a nice, undemanding affair?”
“I thought it was the most I could hope for.”
Mercy shook her head. “And I thought it was the most you wanted from me. Just a warm body in your bed now and then. You were always so damned careful to make sure neither of us owed the other a thing.”
“I didn’t want you to feel any pressure.”
“And didn’t want to risk yourself?”
“That too.”
She leaned down and kissed him, but pushed herself away when he showed definite signs of losing interest in talk. “Wait a minute.”
“Why?”
“Because we aren’t finished talking.”
Nicholas looked at her warily. “No?”
“No. We have to reach an understanding here.”
“I thought we just had.”
She firmly pushed his hand away when it began roaming over her hip. “Nick, I’m serious. I walked a high wire for nearly a year trying to figure out what you wanted of me. So now I want you to tell me.”
He slid a hand into her hair and pulled her down so he could kiss her. Against her mouth, he said huskily, “I want you with me for the rest of my life. I want to go to sleep with you and wake up with you—and maybe even make babies with you.”
More than satisfied with the answer, Mercy smiled and murmured, “What excellent ideas. So when do we go for blood tests?”
“Are we getting married?”
“Well, I won’t have babies out of wedlock. Not the way I was raised. So if you want babies, you’ll have to marry me.”
Nicholas surrounded her face with his hands and gazed at her for a long time. Whatever he was looking for, he found, because he smiled slowly, his eyes alight. And his ugly face wasn’t ugly at all.
“I love you, Mercy.”
“I love you too.”
He pulled her over on top of him. “Enough to see this face across the breakfast table for the next thirty or forty years?”
“Oh, easily.” She kissed his chin. “I love this face.”
His arms tightened around her. “You’re a remarkable woman.”
“That’s good. I found myself a remarkable man.” She folded her hands on his hard chest and rested her chin on them. “And speaking of how remarkable you are …”
He groaned, but he was also smiling. “Let me guess. That singular curiosity of yours is back at work, and you want to know once again what I’m up to.”
“You love me,” she said. “You must trust me.”
“It’s not a matter of trust, Mercy.”
“Then what is it a matter of?”
He hesitated, then spoke slowly. “Experience. Habit. In some situations, the fewer people who know what’s going on, the safer it is for all concerned.”
“Then you’re into something dangerous. I thought you were.”
Again, Nicholas hesitated. “It’s … no place I haven’t been before.”
“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me much.” She lifted her head and looked at him gravely. “What was it—military? Or something a lot more secretive?”
“The latter. I was recruited when I was barely out of my teens, and the adventure appealed to me. Also the education. I showed an aptitude for finance, so they trained me to understand that. I was used as an investigator more than anything else, an information broker.”
“But not always.”
“No. There were dangerous situations. Times when I had to use a gun as well as my brain. International finance is a marketplace worth hundreds of billions of dollars, so the stakes are always high.”
“Did you work for the CIA?”
“Close, but no. The people I worked for didn’t list their address and number in the phone book.” “Worked for. Past tense?”
He nodded. “For years now. But I still have some connections, informants, resources.”
“Which you’re using now. To do what, Nick? What are you and Adam Delafield up to?”
This time Nicholas barely hesitated. He told her about Duncan’s plane crash and what Adam believed had caused it. He told her whom they suspected and why, and what they planned.
It was a story that took time to tell, and when most of Mercy’s questions had been answered, they were sitting up in bed drinking wine and eating cheese and crackers, with Mercy wearing his shirt and Nicholas wearing nothing.
“Well, I can see why you’ve been preoccupied,” she said finally.
“I have had a few things on my mind.”
“Nick, you’re taking an awful risk. From what I’ve been hearing lately, Jordan Walsh is pure po
ison. And according to the grapevine, people who do business with him have a nasty habit of turning up dead.”
“I know.”
“Isn’t there some other way?”
“Doesn’t appear to be. As yet, the only connection we’ve found between Duncan and Walsh is that loan and the notes he made in his journal, and neither tells us much.”
“No idea who this ‘old friend’ is?”
“None. Duncan had a lot of friends. A lot of old friends. You saw them at the funeral, men and women from all over the country, the world, most of them clearly devastated by his death. We had to count them all as possibles, and it’s a long list. We’re checking them out one by one. But so far there isn’t a sign of a connection to Walsh.”
Mercy brooded for a moment, then said, “Along other lines, I suppose it would be useless to ask you if Adam is working for the same people you used to work for?”
“That isn’t my story.” Nicholas smiled. “But let’s just say that legitimate American businessmen who are smarter than most and can handle themselves in tight situations are a definite asset.”
“Mmm. How honest has he been with Rachel?”
“I don’t know.”
Mercy eyed him.
“I swear. All I can tell you is that Adam is utterly committed to finding out who killed Duncan and his wife, and even more determined to make sure nothing happens to Rachel.”
“Because of the loan Duncan made him?”
“He owes his success to Duncan, and he’s a man who pays his debts. Even more, Duncan believed in him. At that point in his life the belief and trust were worth more than gold.” He had briefly touched on what happened to Adam, the betrayal and prison, simply as an explanation of why Duncan had offered the loan.
“And is that why he’s romancing Rachel? Because he owed Duncan?”
Nicholas smiled at her belligerent question. “No, I think the romancing is all on his own account.”
Mercy stared at him. “Do you trust him, Nick?”
“Yes.”
“It’s odd that he looks so much like Tom.”
“He didn’t arrange it that way, if that’s what you’re asking me. No surgery, not even hair dye. He simply looks enough like your brother to be his double.” Nick shrugged. “I’ve encountered stranger things in my life, that’s all I can tell you.”
“He won’t hurt her, will he?”
“I don’t think so. Certainly not deliberately. Mercy, I don’t know all of Adam’s secrets, but I know one thing. In some way I don’t understand and he’s never explained, he is somehow connected to Rachel. And has been for a long time, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. She’s always been his focus. Finding out who killed Duncan and his wife is justice and repayment of a debt, but Adam’s here for much more than that. In some way he’s here for Rachel. Came here for her even before we knew she’d be in danger.”
“But he never met her until a couple of weeks ago.”
“As far as I know.”
Mercy shook her head. “This whole thing is so—I don’t know. Bizarre. Almost unbelievable. That somebody brought down that plane to kill Duncan, and now is trying to kill Rachel. Why?”
“If we knew that, we’d have all the pieces of the puzzle.”
“Nick, I want to help.”
“No.”
“Nick—”
“I don’t want you involved.”
“Look, I wasn’t proposing to pick up a gun and go hunting, but I was Duncan’s assistant for five years. I owe him too. And I know there’s something I can do to help.”
“Mercy, what we’ve set in motion has found its own momentum now, and I want you to stay out of it. There’s nothing you can do anyway. Please—I don’t want to have to worry about you.”
She opened her mouth to tell him about her computer search, then changed her mind. Chances were, she wouldn’t find anything anyway.
“Mercy?”
“All right. I’ll stay at the bank and mind my own business. If you promise not to keep me in the dark from now on.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Now, do you want to put this tray on the floor? It’s getting in my way.”
SEVENTEEN
he long stone corridor stretched before her, but Rachel had no intention of going that way. Not this time. Not again.
She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Adam like that again.
She turned around and walked steadily, relieved when the stone walls gave way to smooth, painted Sheetrock, and the candle sconces became electrical fixtures.
“Secrets. Everybody’s got secrets.”
Rachel stopped, listening. The whisper had seemed to come from no particular direction—and all directions.
“Who’s there?”
“Look for secrets, Rachel.”
“Tom?”
“Secret things in secret places.”
Frustrated, she said, “Why won’t you tell me where to look? What to look for?”
“You already know.”
“No, I don’t. I-”
“You know. You only have to remember.”
“Help me!”
“I can’t.”
“Tom, please!”
She saw him then as he stepped out of the shadows just ahead of her. It was Tom and yet … not.
“This is a house of secrets, Rachel. Don’t you know that yet?”
She took a step toward him. “Whose secrets?”
He shook his head, and the faint light glinted off the polished surface of his face. His mask. “I can’t hurt you.”
She frowned, baffled. “Knowing who the secrets belong to will hurt me?”
“Yes.”
“It’s someone I trust?”
He was silent. “Someone I love?”
“Remember about secret places, Rachel. Remember.”
He backed away, out of the light.
Rachel started forward quickly. “Tom? Wait!”
But hard as she tried, she couldn’t catch up to him. He was always just ahead, within sight and out of reach.
Then she realized that the Sheetrock walls had given way to stone ones again, and her steps slowed. “No. Not here. I don’t want to be here.”
“You have to.”
“I’ve already looked. You made me look. I don’t want to look ever again.”
The door was just ahead. But there were no sounds coming from inside it, not this time. And there was no lock this time.
“Open the door, Rachel.”
“What will I see?”
“What you must. Open the door.”
The voice came, suddenly, from inside that room.
Slowly, she reached out for the handle and opened the door.
At first, all she saw was darkness. But then light glowed from a small central point, getting brighter until she could see him. There were no torturers now. Just him, standing in the center of the chilly room.
“Tom?”
“No. Yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
He reached up and took off his Tom face, revealing an Adam face beneath it that was cracked and stained. An Adam mask.
And Adam’s voice said, “Which one of us do you want, Rachel?”
“I … want you.”
“Who am I?”
“Adam.”
“Am I?”
“Don’t do this to me! Don’t play these games!”
“Games? Rachel, I would never play games with you.”
What she saw wavered suddenly, like heat shimmering off pavement on a summer’s day, and she heard Adam’s urgent voice coming from outside the room.
“Don’t listen to him, Rachel. It isn’t me. Don’t you understand? He wants you back.”
She backed away from the open door. “What? Who?”
“Thomas Sheridan. He wants you back.”
“But he’s dead.”
“Yes, Rachel. He’s dead.”
The ma
n inside the room came toward her, arms outstretched. “Rachel. My Rachel. Come to me, darling—”
Worms squirmed from the eyeholes of his Adam mask, and blood dripped from the mouth.
Rachel turned, crying out, and ran.
Behind her, the footsteps were loud and close.
Adam jerked upright in bed, the sounds of her screams ringing in his ears, and stared around the hotel room that was bright with early morning light. Bright, and empty of any threat.
A dream. Just another dream.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
Rachel huddled against the headboard of her bed, hugging her drawn-up knees as she waited for the shakes to stop, for her breathing to return to normal. It took a long time.
A very long time.
When Adam showed up early that morning, he found Rachel in the sunroom with coffee and an untouched breakfast on the table. He paused in the doorway, watching her, unannounced since Fiona had merely told him where Rachel was.
She looked tired, he thought. More than that, really. Her face was too drawn and pale, her eyes too dark. Almost haunted.
It certainly was not the inexpressive face she had worn when he had first talked to her in this house. Her face had been masklike, the animated beauty she had been known for as a girl buried so that the only hints of its existence had been her slow smiles. She had appeared to feel nothing deeply. At some point in the past couple of weeks, however, Rachel had most certainly begun to feel again.
Adam wanted to believe he was responsible for that change. He just wished the face he saw when he looked in his own mirror had not been one shared by a dead man. And he wished he could take Rachel far away from all this.
As he watched Rachel, she looked down at her left wrist, flexing and turning it absently. She was no longer wearing the elastic bandage, but obviously still felt the sprain, if only a little.
Adam drew a breath and came into the room. “Good morning.”
“Adam.” She came out of her chair and into his arms as if it were the most natural thing on earth.
He held her tightly for a long while, then bent his head and kissed her. He couldn’t hide his desire, and she was so responsive, it stole his breath and made his heart ache. There was, he thought, something almost desperate in the way she clung to him.