Haunting Rachel

by Kay Hooper

  “Is that what you thought when we did finally meet? That I was still mourning him?”

  “I knew how you’d looked at me in the moments after the crash, and in the hospital, when you thought I was Tom.” His gaze returned to her face, dark and grave. “Yes, I thought you were still mourning him. And I knew that my looking so much like him would only complicate that.”

  “I was still mourning him,” Rachel said. She paused, seeing his face tighten and those eyes grow even bleaker. Then she said, “It had become almost a habit, I think. Something I hadn’t questioned until you showed up. Then I had to face it, because you were here and I was feeling things for you. I was so confused at first.”

  “I know.”

  She looked at the locket still lying open in her hand, and slowly closed it. “And this … I’m glad it helped you. I’m grateful to anything that helped you survive that place. And I’m glad you told me about Tom. But he’s gone, Adam. He’s been gone a long time.”

  “Is he? We both saw him yesterday, Rachel. We both saw what he did for you. And I was told that several times a man was spotted following us, watching. A big blond man, athletic, polished. He kept to the shadows, and walked as if he wouldn’t make a sound. There’s no way of knowing, of course, but it’s a possibility I can’t eliminate.”

  Steadily, she said, “Nick said maybe we all have guardian angels. And maybe they look the way we expect them to look. I don’t have any other answer, Adam. All I know is that Tom is dead—and we’re alive.”

  “You loved him.”

  “Yes, I loved him. I was a nineteen-year-old girl with my life ahead of me, and I thought that life was with him. But ten years changes a lot of things. It changes people. It changed me. I’m not that girl anymore, Adam. Just like you’re not the young man who flew to South America to do a job. We both got through what we had to, and it changed us.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?” Still holding the locket, Rachel left her chair and knelt beside his. She put the locket in his hand. “This belongs to you. It was yours much longer than it ever was Tom’s—or mine.”

  He looked at the locket for a moment, then at her. “I promised—”

  “You promised you’d bring it back to me. You did. And you delivered Tom’s message.”

  He nodded, silent.

  “I think we should change the initials on one side. I don’t think Tom would mind.” “Rachel—”

  “I love you, Adam. Don’t you know that?”

  He caught his breath. “I hoped.”

  Rachel linked her fingers together behind his neck and smiled slowly. “In case you’re wondering, you are not a substitute for Tom. And I am not in any way confused about my feelings, not anymore. I love you with everything inside of me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  His arms went around her, tightly. “Rachel …”

  Unnoticed by either of them, the locket slipped from his fingers.

  And glinted gold in the carpet.

  EPILOGUE

  A year later

  achel was surprised to be there.

  She was at the garden gate, the one that opened onto the path that led through the woods and to the river.

  The gate was open.

  She passed through it and followed the path toward the woods, conscious of an odd sense within her. There was a tinge of sadness, but, more than that, there was a kind of joy.

  When she entered the woods, she paused on the path, looking ahead to a very bright light.

  “Hi.”

  Rachel turned her head to see Adam beside her. He reached out and took her hand, and the twining of their fingers made her smile.

  “Hi. Why are we here?”

  He nodded toward the bright light ahead. “One last visit, I think.”

  She looked ahead, and saw a man standing with the light behind him. She knew who he was, even though he wore no mask this time.

  And this time, Tom didn’t speak. But he was smiling, and his face was at peace. He spread his hands wide in a gesture taking in the both of them.

  Then he turned and walked away into the light.

  Rachel opened her eyes slowly, and for a moment just lay there thinking about the brief dream. She raised her head and looked down at Adam, not surprised to find him awake.

  And she didn’t even have to ask.

  “That hasn’t happened in a while,” she said.

  “No. I guess he thought we needed an ending.” Adam smiled.

  Rachel smiled and reached to touch his face, the gold of her wedding band glinting in the morning light. “Or he did.”

  Adam’s arms went around her. “I prefer beginnings.”

  “So do I,” Rachel said. “Oh, so do I …”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KAY HOOPER, who has more than four million copies of her books in print worldwide, has won numerous awards and high praise for her novels. Kay lives in North Carolina, where she is currently working on her next novel.

  If you loved

  HAUNTING RACHEL

  you won’t want to miss a taste of her

  heartstopping thriller,

  SENSE OF EVIL

  available from

  BANTAM BOOKS

  in hardcover

  PROLOGUE

  The voices wouldn’t leave him alone.

  Neither would the nightmares.

  He threw back the covers and stumbled from the bed. A full moon beamed enough light into the house for him to find his way to the sink in the bathroom.

  He carefully avoided looking into the mirror, but was highly conscious of his shadowy reflection as he fumbled for a drinking cup and turned on the tap. He drank three cups of water, vaguely surprised that he was so thirsty and yet … not.

  He was usually thirsty these days.

  It was part of the change.

  He splashed his face with the cold water again and again, not caring about the mess he was making. By the third splash, he realized he was crying.

  Wimp. Spineless coward.

  “I’m not,” he muttered, sending the next handful of water to wet his aching head.

  You’re afraid. Pissing-in-your-pants afraid.

  Half-consciously, he pressed his thighs together. “I’m not. I can do it. I told you I could do it.”

  Then do it now.

  He froze, bent over the sink, water dribbling from his cupped hands. “Now?”

  Now.

  “But … it’s not ready yet. If I do it now—”

  Coward. I should have known you couldn’t go through with it. I should have known you’d fail me.

  He straightened slowly, this time looking deliberately into the dim mirror. Even with the moonlight, all he could make out was the shadowy shape of his head, dark blurs of features, faint gleam of eyes. The murky outline of a stranger.

  What choice did he have?

  Just look at yourself. Wimp. Spineless coward. You’ll never be a real man, will you?

  He could feel water dripping off his chin. Or maybe it was the last of the tears. He sucked in air, so deep his chest hurt, then let it out slowly.

  Maybe you can buy a backbone—

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  “I’m ready to do it.”

  I don’t believe you.

  He turned off the taps and walked out of the bathroom. Went back to his bedroom, where the moonlight spilled through the big window to spotlight the old steamer trunk set against the wall beneath it. He knelt down and carefully opened it.

  The raised lid blocked off some of the moonlight, but he didn’t need light for this. He reached inside, let his fingers search gingerly until they felt the cold steel. He lifted the knife and held it in the light, turning it this way and that, fascinated by the gleam of the razor-sharp serrated edge.

  “I’m ready,” he murmured. “I’m ready to kill her.”

  * * *

  The voices wouldn’t leave her alone.

  Neither would the nightmares.

 
She had drawn the drapes before going to bed in an effort to close out the moonlight, but even though the room was dark, she was very conscious of that huge moon painting everything on the other side of her window with the stark, eerie light that made her feel so uneasy.

  She hated full moons.

  The clock on her nightstand told her it was nearly three in the morning. The hot, sandpapery feel of her eyelids told her she really needed to try to go back to sleep. But the whisper of the voices in her head told her that even trying would be useless, at least for a while.

  She pushed back the covers and slid from her bed. She didn’t need light to show her the way to the kitchen, but once there turned on the light over the stove so she wouldn’t burn herself Hot chocolate, that was the ticket.

  And if that didn’t work, there was an emergency bottle of whiskey in the back of the pantry for just such a night as this. It was probably two-thirds empty by now.

  There had been a few nights like this, especially in the last year or so.

  She got what she needed and heated the pan of milk slowly, stirring the liquid so it wouldn’t stick. Adding in chocolate syrup while the milk heated, because that was the way she liked to make her hot chocolate. In the silence of the house, with no other sounds to distract her, it was difficult to keep her own mind quiet. She didn’t want to listen to the whispering there, but it was like catching a word or two of an overheard conversation and knowing you needed to listen more closely because they were talking about you.

  But she was tired. It got harder and harder, as time went on, to bounce back. Harder for her body to recover. Harder for her mind to heal.

  Given her druthers, she would put off tuning in to the voices until tomorrow. Or the next day, maybe.

  The hot chocolate was ready. She turned off the burner and poured the steaming milk into a mug. She put the pan in the sink, then picked up her mug and carried it toward the little round table in the breakfast nook.

  Almost there, she was stopped in her tracks by a wave of red-hot pain that washed over her body with the suddenness of a blow. Her mug crashed to the floor, landing unbroken but spattering her bare legs with hot chocolate.

  She barely felt that pain.

  Eyes closed, sucked into the red and screaming maelstrom of someone else’s agony, she tried to keep breathing despite the repeated blows that splintered bones and shredded lungs. She could taste blood, feel it bubbling up in her mouth. She could feel the wet heat of it soaking her blouse and running down her arms as she lifted her hands in a pitiful attempt to ward off the attack.

  I know what you did. I know. I know. You bitch, I know what you did—

  She jerked and cried out as a more powerful thrust than all the rest drove the serrated knife into her chest, penetrating her heart with such force, she knew the only thing that stopped it going deeper still was the hilt. Her hands fumbled, touching what felt like blood-wet gloved hands, large and strong, that retreated immediately to leave her weakly holding the handle of the knife impaling her heart. She felt a single agonized throb of her heart that forced more blood to bubble, hot and thick, into her mouth, and then it was over.

  Almost over.

  She opened her eyes and found herself bending over the table, her hands flat on the pale, polished surface. Both hands were covered with blood, and between them, scrawled in her own handwriting across the table, was a single bloody word.

  HASTINGS

  She straightened slowly, her entire body aching, and held her hands out in front of her, watching as the blood slowly faded, until it was gone. Her hands were clean and unmarked. When she looked at the table again, there was no sign of a word written there in blood.

  “Hastings,” she murmured. “Well, shit.”

  Read on for a peek at

  ONCE A THIEF

  Kay Hooper’s newest page-turner featuring

  a dangerously charismatic master jewel thief

  available from

  BANTAM BOOKS

  Museum exhibit director Morgan West is days away from unveiling the much-anticipated Mysteries Past show—a priceless jewel collection on loan from millionaire Max Bannister. But when Morgan discovers that a criminal mastermind is waiting and watching for just the right time to strike, the stage is set for a complex game of cat-and-mouse …

  Barely feeling the cold, hard marble beneath her feet, Morgan darted through one of the two big archways without immediately knowing why she’d made the choice. Then she realized. There had to be more than one of them and they’d be after the most portable valuables, wouldn’t they? Jewelry, then—and a large display of precious gems lay in the direction she hadn’t chosen.

  Along her route were several larger and less valuable— to the thieves—displays of statuary, weapons, and assorted artifacts, many large enough to offer a hiding place.

  She made another desperate turn through an archway that appeared to house a room dimmer than some of the others, and found herself neatly caught. A long arm that seemed made of iron rather than flesh lifted her literally off her feet, clamped her arms to her sides, and hauled her back against a body that had all the softness of granite, and a big, dark hand covered her mouth before she could do more than gasp.

  For one terrified instant, Morgan had the eerie thought that one of the darkly looming statues of fierce warriors from the past had reached out and grabbed her. Then a low voice hissed in her ear, and the impression of supernatural doings faded. “Shhhh!”

  He wasn’t a security guard. The hand over her mouth was encased in a thin, supple black glove, and as much of his arm as she could see was also wearing black. Several hard objects in the vicinity of his waist dug into her back painfully. Then he pulled her impossibly closer as running footsteps approached, and she distinctly felt the roughness of wool—a ski mask?—as his hard jaw brushed against her temple.

  Better the devil you know than the one you don’t … The thought ran through her mind, but for some reason she didn’t struggle in the man’s powerful embrace— probably because she didn’t know the devil out in the hallway any better than she knew this one. Instead, she concentrated on controlling her ragged breathing so that it wouldn’t be audible, her eyes fixed on the archway of the room. She realized only then that she’d bolted into a room with only one door. Her captor had literally carried her back into a corner and in the shadows behind one of the fierce warrior statues, and she doubted they were visible from the doorway.

  The footsteps in the hall slowed abruptly, and she caught a glimpse of a rather menacing face further distorted by an angry scowl as her pursuer looked into the room. She stiffened, but he went on without pausing more than briefly. As the footsteps faded, she began to struggle; the steely arm around her tightened with an additional strength that nearly cracked her ribs.

  Three breathless seconds later, she realized why

  “Ed.” The voice, low and harsh, was no more than a few feet down the hallway.

  Morgan went very still.

  There was an indistinguishable murmur of at least two voices out there, and then the first voice became audible—and quite definitely angry.

  “I thought she came this way. Dammit, she could be anywhere in this mausoleum—the place is huge!”

  “Did she get a look at you?” Ed’s voice was calmer.

  “No, the hall was too dark. When I tapped her boyfriend to sleep, she ran like a rabbit. Why the hell did he have to pick tonight to come here? If he wanted romance, he should have taken her to his place. Judging by what I saw of her, she’d have kept him busy between the sheets for a week.”

  Feeling herself stiffen again, this time indignantly, Morgan was conscious of an absurd embarrassment that the man holding her so tightly against him had heard that lewd comment.

  “Never mind,” Ed said impatiently. “We’re covering all the doors, so she can’t get out, and the phone lines have been cut. Go back to your post and wait. We’ll be finished in another half hour, and out of here. She’ll be locked in until morning,
so she can’t do us any harm.”

  “I don’t like it, Ed.”

  “You don’t have to like it. And stop using my name, you fool. Get back to your post.”

  There was a moment of taut silence, and then Ed’s unhappy minion passed the archway on his route back to his post, an even more distorted scowl darkening his face.

  Morgan heard his footsteps fade into silence; strain as she would, she couldn’t hear anything from Ed. At least five minutes must have passed, with agonizing slowness, before her captor finally relaxed slightly and eased her down so that her feet touched the cold floor. His voice sounded again, soft and no more than a sibilant whisper, next to her ear.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. Understand? But you have to be still and quiet, or you’ll bring them down on us.”

  Morgan nodded her understanding. As soon as he released her, she took half a step away and turned to confront him. “If you aren’t with them, what are you—” she began in a whisper, then broke off as the question was answered.

  He was a tall man, an inch or two over six feet, with wide shoulders and a wiry slenderness about the rest of him that spoke of honed strength rather than muscled bulk. She’d felt that strength. Enveloped in black from head to foot, he had a compact and very efficient-looking tool belt strapped to his lean waist. And from the black ski mask gleamed the greenest pair of eyes she’d ever seen.

  “Oh.” She knew then what he was doing here. “Oh, Christ.”

  “Not nearly,” he murmured.

  Morgan felt a burst of pure irritation at his ill-timed humor but somehow managed to keep her voice low. “You’re just another thief.”

  “Please.” He sounded injured. “Such a commonplace word. An ugly word, even. I prefer to call myself a privateer.”

  “Wrong,” she snapped, still in a low voice that would have been inaudible a couple of feet away. “This isn’t a ship on the high sea, and we aren’t at war. You’re a common, ordinary, run-of-the-mill criminal.” She could have sworn those vivid green eyes gleamed with sheer amusement.