Haunting Rachel

by Kay Hooper

  She took them out of the chest and looked at them, and put them aside, and when the chest was empty, she slowly put everything back.

  When she picked up the book of poetry, an envelope fell out.

  At first, Rachel thought it was just one of the love letters that had gotten separated from the others, but when she opened the envelope, she found something else entirely.

  “I knew it was here somewhere.”

  She looked quickly toward the top of the stairs to find Cameron standing there. He was fully dressed, as he always was when he left his room in the morning, and he looked very tired. Almost absently, he added, “I saw the attic door open and the light on when I came out of my room, so I came to see … I never thought to look up here.”

  “This is a check written from you to Tom,” Rachel said slowly. “For ten thousand dollars. And it’s dated the day of his last trip.”

  “Yes. I gave it to him just a few minutes before he went to you to say good-bye. Remember? I was here that weekend on one of my visits. I gave him the check, but he left straight from here, didn’t have a chance to deposit the money or take it home. He never carried anything but cash on trips, and when the check never turned up and you never said anything, I figured there was a chance he’d left it here somewhere.”

  “This is what you’ve been looking for? Why?”

  Cameron drew a breath. “Because I didn’t want you to find it. I didn’t want you to know it was … my fault Tom was killed.”

  “What?”

  “He had a cargo run only as far as Mexico, Rachel. I hired him to fly from there down to South America. We’d done it before, but—”

  “Cam, I don’t understand. Why did you hire Tom to fly to South America?”

  “I had a man down there who bought emeralds for me. Raw emeralds. But it was so damned hard to get them back here without, well, without going through customs.”

  Even a week ago, Rachel would have been shocked to hear that. But now she felt only a little surprise, and a small wrench of disappointment. “Tom did that? He brought gems into the country for you?”

  Cameron nodded, avoiding her steady gaze. “The money didn’t mean anything to him, of course. He enjoyed the thrill of it. More and more with every trip, in fact. I guess the fast cars and fast planes weren’t exciting enough after a while.”

  Remembering how Tom had been the last time she had seen him alive, Rachel could well believe that. He had been the picture of a man looking forward to enjoyment, eager to leave her despite their approaching wedding date, promising blithely and carelessly to return. And now she had a good idea of how to explain his sometimes secretive smiles as well as her own instinctive feelings that he’d been doing something dangerous.

  She wondered how many others besides her uncle had found Thomas Sheridan ready and willing to bend or break a few laws just for the thrill of it.

  “I’m sorry, Rachel.”

  Rachel returned the check to the envelope and held it out to him, smiling a little sadly. “Don’t worry about it, Cam. You aren’t to blame for what happened to Tom.”

  He stepped forward to take the envelope, his expression lightening with a relief obvious in his voice. “I stopped buying the gems after that. And if I had it to do over again—”

  “Yes. I imagine Tom might make a different choice too.” But would he, given the chance? Rachel wasn’t sure. And that was the saddest realization of all.

  Cam retreated to the stairs, but paused at the top to look back at her. “Fiona was still up when I got in last night. She told me what happened here yesterday. About Graham. I don’t know what to say, Rachel.”

  She managed a smile. “We’ll talk about it later, Cam.”

  “Of course.” He hesitated, then went on down the stairs.

  Rachel knelt there a few moments longer, her hands folded in her lap and her thoughts years away. Then she finished putting all the mementos back in the chest and closed the lid on them.

  The clock on the nightstand said only eight A.M. when she slipped back into bed beside Adam. He was still sleeping deeply, but made a satisfied little sound and gathered her close even so, and she relaxed in his arms with a wonderfully content sense of homecoming.

  Nothing nagged at her now. There was no sense of something left undone, and her subconscious—or whatever the voice in her head had been—was silent now.

  She decided that she would retrieve Cameron’s letters from the untagged secretary in the basement, which Darby had promised to make sure he was given the opportunity to search first—and burn them. It would be less painful all around, Rachel thought. And it felt like the right decision. She made a mental note to tell Darby the plans had changed, and that was her last clear thought. Without even realizing she was going to, Rachel fell asleep.

  She woke a couple of hours later, alone in the bed, and was almost immediately aware of the faint sounds of Adam in the shower. She stretched languidly for a moment, smiling, then got out of bed and found her robe, which had somehow gotten itself pushed off the bed and to the floor. Their clothes from the day before also were scattered, and she grinned to herself as she moved around the room picking up her things and his, and laying them neatly on the foot of the bed.

  When she heard something metallic fall from his pants pocket, she thought it was the safe deposit box key. But something gold glinted up at her from the carpet.

  Rachel laid the pants aside and bent down to see what had fallen.

  A locket.

  She picked it up in suddenly nerveless fingers, and slowly straightened, staring at it as it lay in her palm. It was easy to see, on one side of the locket, the initials TS. And when she turned it over …

  The initials RG.

  Rachel found her way to a chair without even realizing she was moving, and sat there, dry-mouthed, thoughts whirling.

  But it couldn’t be.

  The locket had vanished with Tom, he’d always worn it, never took it off even to shower or sleep. He’d had it around his neck when she had last seen him, when he had come to tell her about the unexpected trip and to say good-bye to her.

  How could Adam have it?

  This couldn’t be the same locket. The initials were the same, but that could be a coincidence, surely. Had to be.

  Unless …

  With trembling fingers, she carefully opened the locket. On one side, a St. Christopher medal.

  Her picture on the other.

  “Oh, my God,” Rachel whispered.

  “You kept me alive,” Adam said.

  She looked up to where he stood in the doorway of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his lean waist and a look of terrible foreboding on his face, and what he’d said made no sense to her.

  “How did you get this?” she asked.

  Adam came into the room far enough to reach the chair across from hers. He did not sit down, but gripped the back of it with both hands. His knuckles showed white through taut skin, but his voice was even, calm. “Thomas Sheridan gave it to me.”

  Rachel shook her head. “No. No, he wouldn’t have. He couldn’t have.”

  “He did, Rachel.”

  “When? Where? How—how did you know him?” She drew a shaky breath. “And why in God’s name didn’t you tell me before now?”

  He answered the last question first. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “What? Adam—”

  “Rachel, I didn’t know how to tell you. I still don’t.”

  Her whirling thoughts settled, and she said slowly, “Start at the beginning. How did you know him?”

  “We met … in South America.” The words were careful, measured. “In the prison.”

  “I … don’t understand. You said you were in that prison months after Tom’s plane went down.”

  “Yes. He wasn’t killed in the crash, Rachel. His plane was shot down, and he survived.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. They thought he was running guns in, weapons to help fuel what was obviously going to b
e a coup. The cargo line he flew for had done that sort of thing before, so it was under suspicion.”

  Rachel wanted to say that Tom wouldn’t have done that, but she was reasonably sure he would have.

  “He wasn’t even carrying any cargo, according to what he told me. But they didn’t know that, or chose not to believe it. They shot him down. But he didn’t die.”

  “He was still alive months later? When you were put in that awful place?”

  Adam nodded. “Barely. He’d been injured in the crash, and they—well, the guards of the old regime were no better than those who dealt with me.”

  Rachel bit her bottom hp, afraid to probe for details.

  He hesitated, then said steadily, “I was put into a cell next to his. Given Tom’s condition, his appearance, I didn’t realize how alike we were myself, not then. There was a loose stone in the wall between us. Not big, barely room enough to see each other, to talk without attracting the attention of the guards. So we did.

  “I think he knew he was dying. I’ve wondered since if he held on just long enough to do what he had to do.”

  Rachel swallowed hard. “What?”

  “Tell someone he could trust about you. My face wasn’t as—damaged—as his, so he knew I could have been his twin, even though I didn’t. It must have reassured him somehow. Then again, in his condition, he probably would have talked to anybody who spoke English. He gave me the locket and made me promise that if I ever got out of that place, I’d find you and return the locket to you. Make sure you were all right. He wanted you to know that he loved you. That he was sorry he couldn’t keep his promise.”

  Quick tears burned her eyes, and Rachel looked down at the locket in her hands. “He never could keep his promises,” she murmured. She looked back at him. “You should have told me, Adam. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why?” Adam held out a hand almost beseechingly. “Do you think I wanted to tell you that Thomas Sheridan didn’t die quick and painless in a plane crash, as you’d always thought? That he lived on for months? That he suffered? That his last days were pure hell?”

  Rachel flinched.

  Adam nodded jerkily, his mouth twisting. “Oh, yeah, that was really something I wanted to tell you. Just like I really wanted to tell you that your name was the last word on his lips, Rachel. Of course, it was a scream, but I heard it clearly enough.”

  “Don’t,” she choked out.

  He swore under his breath, hesitated, then went over to the bed and gathered his clothes, dressing quickly, his movements automatic. Maybe he did it just to give them both a minute or two to collect themselves. Or maybe such naked words demanded the frail protection of clothing, Rachel thought dimly.

  Dressed now, Adam moved back toward her, sitting down in the chair across from hers. His face was very pale, his shoulders were hunched, as though to ward off a blow. His voice was suddenly very quiet and calm. “We didn’t really have much time to talk. He was in bad shape then, and fading fast. Whatever he was waiting for, after we started talking, he didn’t last long. A few weeks. He was delirious at the end.”

  Rachel tried and failed to get a terrible image out of her head. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

  It was Adam’s turn to flinch. But he didn’t look at her. Instead, he clasped his hands before him and stared at them. Still in that calm voice, he went on. “I was mostly alone after that, in that cell day after day and night after night, except the few times the guards had a merciful impulse and let me get some fresh air outside in a walled courtyard. There wasn’t much to do except count the days. And stare at that locket.”

  He drew a breath. “I knew your face better than I knew my own. Years before we met. When I said you kept me alive, I wasn’t kidding. You did. You were my lodestar. You represented all that was beautiful in the world outside that jail. I’d stare at your picture by the hour, open and close the locket, polish the gold.”

  “Adam—”

  He didn’t let her interrupt, just kept talking in that calm voice as if too much had been stored up inside him for too long.

  “I fell in love with you before I ever heard the sound of your voice. And with every month that passed, that love grew stronger.” A rough laugh escaped him. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. It was just a picture of you, without personality, so how could I believe I loved you?”

  “How could you?”

  “It’s nothing I can explain, but that locket was a real, tangible connection to you, Rachel. I felt it. Maybe because you’d given it to Tom in love, or maybe because he’d been so damned determined that his last message reach you. I don’t know. All I do know is that when I went to sleep at night, you were in my dreams. And in my dreams I heard your voice, and felt your worries and sorrows, and knew you. I left that prison and spent time with you. Almost every night.”

  Slowly, Rachel said, “I was dreaming about Tom a lot in those first years.”

  Adam nodded. “But sometimes, in your dreams, he was just out of reach, wasn’t he? Not easy to see. You spoke to him, and sometimes he answered you, but sometimes he was just there, watching. Because sometimes he was me, Rachel.”

  “People don’t dream the same dreams,” she protested.

  “We did, the whole time I was in that prison. And we’ve been dreaming the same dreams the last couple of weeks. Do you want me to describe the house with all the rooms and hallways? The masked men? The way Tom and I kept wearing masks of each other? And that stonewalled room where they hung me up and beat me?”

  Rachel was silent.

  Adam went on, his voice calm again, almost detached. “The locket was a connection to you. I don’t know how I was able to keep the guards from finding it, but I did, just as Tom had. And somehow, it made all the months, and finally all the years, bearable. I just kept telling myself that I had to survive, I had to beat the bastards and live long enough to get out, because I had to find you, just as I’d promised I would. And not only for Tom’s sake, but for mine as well.

  “When that dictator was finally overthrown, and the first decent regime in decades took over, they opened the cell doors and told us we could go home. Even so, since I was an American, it took several weeks for me to get home.”

  He paused. “Then, of course, I had to face reality. As badly as I wanted to go and see you, there was no way I could, not then. I was in fairly bad shape and looked like hell, aside from being dead broke. And then there was the story I had to tell you.”

  Adam looked at her finally, his eyes very dark and still. “I didn’t want to. It seemed to me that it wasn’t something you needed to know. Thomas Sheridan was dead. Period. How he died didn’t really matter. I figured you’d gone on with your life, and there was no need to distress you by hearing such terrible things from a stranger.”

  He shook his head. “That’s what I told myself. But I barely waited long enough to settle with the company before I started looking for you. I knew where to start, of course, and it didn’t take me long to find out you’d gone to New York. That you were okay, happy, I assumed. I could hardly approach you in any sense, I knew that. Especially since I’d found a picture of Thomas Sheridan by then, and knew just how like him I appeared. But I couldn’t quite let go either. So I came here to Richmond. Saw this house, found out all I could about your family.”

  “You didn’t know Nick was Dad’s partner?”

  Adam hesitated. “He wasn’t Duncan’s partner then. Rachel, it was my suggestion that Nick approach Duncan about joining the bank.”

  She stared at him. “Why?”

  “Several reasons. I had contacted Nick almost as soon as I got out of prison, and I knew he was looking to set up in some kind of financial business, that he wanted to settle down for a while. I knew he’d be damned good at it, and that he’d be able to lighten some of your father’s burdens.”

  “I never thought of him as burdened,” Rachel murmured.

  “It wasn’t more than he could handle, Rachel, I just got the feeling from what I
’d found out about him that taking on a junior partner might give him more time to do some of the things he seemed interested in. And I wanted someone near your family, in a position to let me know if anything happened. If anything changed.”

  “I see. Then later, when you called looking for Nick, it was a ruse?”

  “That wasn’t quite the way it happened. I’m sorry, Rachel, for lying about that. But without explaining about the locket and why I was in Richmond, it was the only way I could think to account for how I happened to get that loan from your father. In reality, I approached him openly, approached the bank, I mean. I told Duncan it was because I knew Nick, and Nick was out of Richmond at the time. The rest happened just as I said. Duncan listened to me, and offered the private loan.”

  “He must have been shocked that you looked so much like Tom.”

  “Surprised, yes. I don’t think much shocked him, though.” Adam shrugged. “In any case, I went back to California and got to work. I came out here once or twice a year, as I told you. And kept in touch more often with Nick.”

  Rachel drew a breath and kept her voice steady. “Then Mom and Dad were killed.”

  He nodded. “And I found the bits of that timer, realized there was more to it than a tragic plane crash. I saw you at the funeral, but I stayed back, out of sight. I thought the way I looked might be one blow more than you could take just then. Nick and I had already decided to find out what was going on. I knew it was only a matter of time until we met. But you’d told him you were going back to New York until the estate was nearly settled, and I wasn’t about to introduce myself to you when you were burying your parents.”

  Rachel said, “After I came back to Richmond, just before my car’s brakes gave way, I saw you watching me.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I frightened you.”

  “Why didn’t you approach me then?”

  Adam’s gaze dropped to his hands once again. “Nick had said he’d introduce us, and we’d already realized we could get access to Duncan’s private papers only through you, but I wasn’t ready to face you. By then I knew what everybody said, that you’d buried your heart with Tom, that you were still mourning him even after so many years.”