Books by Maggie Shayne (185 page)

"For her own good?"

"And mine."

"Because you'll both get hurt in the end?" she asked.

He didn't answer, but he did find it in him to get moving toward the coffeepot again. Found a cup, filled it.

"You know, sometimes I think that if only I could have seen into the future, if only I could have known that loving Kimbra would lead me to this horrible, gut-wrenching grief of losing her, maybe I would have turned away from her the day we met. Maybe I wouldn't have taken that risk."

He nodded slowly, as if fully understanding.

"And then I realize," she went on, "that that would have been the biggest mistake of my life. God, when I think of the joy I would have missed. The days we had… the nights." She sniffed. "No. I'd suffer anything in exchange for the love we shared. Anything. I'd never trade it in. Not even if it meant my pain would vanish without a trace."

Lou sipped his coffee and pretended with everything in him that her pointed message was sailing right over his head. It wasn't, of course. But he could pretend.

"But it's not even dark outside yet."

"I know," David said softly. "But, Morgan, you're exhausted." His tone, his eyes, everything, so concerned. Full of love and worry. And yet he was keeping something from her. She knew he was. And it was more than just the fact that he was trying to drug her so she would sleep the night through.

She would be damned before she would let him.

"Come on, sweetie. Drink the tea and then go on up to bed. You need your rest."

She eyed the teacup. Laced, no doubt, with the tranquilizers Dr. Hilman had given him today. God, if he only knew that her life depended on seeing Dante again, on convincing him to do whatever it took to make her immortal…

She lifted the tea to her lips, pretending to sip. Lowered the cup again and then took the napkin from the coffee table and dabbed the poisoned moisture from her lips. "I'll do as you say, David, if you'll tell me what it was you and that blond woman were discussing when I walked in on you this morning."

He glanced at her sharply. "I already told you. I was just telling her where to find her friends. Offering to drive her into town to join them."

"It looked like a bit more than that."

He shrugged carelessly, but didn't hold her probing eyes. "It wasn't easy trying to explain why you would throw your own sister out of your home, Morgan. If it seemed intense, it was because I was struggling to find a way to justify your behavior."

It was intended as a barb, and it bit home. It stung a little to have the one person who had never hurt her suddenly jabbing her that way.

He reached over, took her hand and held it gently. "I don't mean to hurt you, love. It's just so unlike you to be this unfriendly."

"It's unlike you to turn against me," she whispered.

"Oh, Morgan, no. Not against you. Never, ever against you."

"Then what were you and that woman conspiring about? You went dead silent when I walked in. You were discussing something you didn't want me to hear."

He ran his hand through her hair. "Only because I don't want anything upsetting you, as sick as you are right now. I didn't want her demanding explanations of you, and I didn't want you trying to offer them. That's all."

Tears were brimming in her eyes, and she blinked them away, telling herself that it didn't matter that her most beloved, most trusted friend was lying to her. She didn't need him. She only needed Dante.

"Drink your tea, darling. Come on."

He lifted the cup, held it out to her.

Taking the delicate china cup from his large hand, she nodded slowly. "I think I'll take your advice and go up to my room. I'll take it with me, sip it in bed."

"That's a good idea."

He helped her to her feet, and she carried the cup with her to the stairs, started up them. "I seem to have become an awfully light sleeper," she said as he walked beside her, one hand cradling her elbow. "Must be all this time living alone. I've become used to silence, I guess."

"I'll be quiet as a mouse, love. You need your rest." He stopped, opened her bedroom door for her. She offered him a meek and obedient smile, kissed him on the cheek and went inside.

"Good night, Morgan," David said, and he pulled the bedroom door closed.

She walked across the bedroom to the French doors, opened them up and stepped outside. Then she tipped the little teacup upside down, pouring its contents toward the ground below. The stiff sea wind scattered the tea into a thousand droplets before it ever hit the earth.

Sighing, Morgan walked back inside, glanced at the neatly made bed, at her white satin robe hanging from the bedpost and the empty teacup in her hand. She would have to make it convincing. David wasn't a fool.

She set the teacup on the bedside stand. Then she tugged the covers back, rumpled them up a little. When she rearranged them, she put pillows underneath, working them around, plumping and flattening, over and over, before tucking the covers around them. Then she stepped back toward the bedroom door to look from the same point of view David would have when he checked on her, as she knew he would.

Good. It looked good. Just as if she were lying in the bed, burrowed beneath the covers with her back to the door.

She stripped off her jeans, her sweater, dropping them on the floor in plain sight. Even her tennis shoes and white ankle socks. She pulled on the robe. Then, finally, as a last touch, she closed the French doors again and lowered the shades beneath the sheer curtains. She closed all her other bedroom shades, as well, blanketing the room in shadows. Now it would be even more difficult for anyone to tell she wasn't really in the bed, at least without turning on the lights, and she didn't think David would risk waking her to do that.

Finally she tiptoed to the closet, pulled a warm blanket-like shawl of soft black felt from its hanger and draped it over her shoulders. She slid her feet into a pair of tiny slippers, like ballet shoes, only velvet. Then she walked quietly to the bedroom door.

She had to pause there, because her breathing was out of control. Too fast and too loud to go unnoticed. Just the simple acts of the past five minutes and she was out of breath. It was getting worse. By the hour, it was getting worse.

She waited for her breathing to calm, her pulse to slow. Then, finally, she opened the bedroom door, just a crack, and peered out into the hall. It was empty. Silently, she crept out, closing the door slowly behind her. Then, step by carefully placed step, she moved toward the stairs. The living room loomed below her. empty. She started down the stairs, one hand gripping the railing in case she stumbled. So many stairs. God. Where the hell was he? Where was David?

She listened but didn't hear him. Looked but didn't see him.

Finally she reached the bottom, and that was when she heard footsteps above her. Snapping her head up. she saw David coming along the hall toward the top of the stairs, and she quickly got off them, ducked around them at the bottom and ran silently from the living room to the study.

Quickly she took her key from the pocket of her robe and let herself in, closing the doors behind her. Then she paused, leaning back against the doors to catch her breath.

It took time for her heartbeat to slow. Time for her breathing to become closer to normal again. When it did, she opened the safe and removed three of Dante's journals and the CD that contained the only copy of the new screenplay. The one she had been working on for months.

She closed her eyes, drew a steadying breath. She was doing the right thing. She had read the tale, in Dante's own words, of how a woman's love and betrayal had nearly cost him his life and that of his dear friend. She had to prove to him that she wasn't going to do the same thing. This gesture… this would show him.

She sealed the safe closed again, then listened at the doors and, hearing nothing, slipped out, relocking them quickly and moving into the dining room, into the kitchen. At the back door, the alarm panel stood at the ready, its red light blinking. David had armed the damned thing!

Breathlessly, she tried to remember the code, but her mind was whirling with other things. David was coining through the house now. Coming this way! Dammit, when had she told him the alarm codes? Hell, how hard was it for him to guess, even if she hadn't told him? Her birthday.

Right. Her birthday.

She quickly punched in the numbers. The green light flashed on. David was coining through the dining room now, toward the kitchen. His steps got nearer and nearer. She yanked open the kitchen door and darted through it, hugging the books to her chest with one arm. Then she pulled the door closed quickly, but as quietly as possible. She raced toward the large willow tree, mentally counting as she ran. The alarm would reactivate itself in thirty seconds. Morgan hoped to God David wouldn't notice the green light before it turned red again. Reaching the tree, she ducked behind it and kept counting. When she reached thirty, she waited, staring back at the door, expecting it to burst open and David to come outside to see what was going on. But he didn't.

He hadn't even seen her.

Sighing her relief, she turned away from the house and walked down toward the shore and the spot where she had last seen Dante. Then she sat there, shivering and pulling her shawl more closely around her. Waiting. Waiting for him to come. What if he didn't?

The scene from the night before kept replaying in her mind. The way he'd jerked in pain, the blood oozing from around the bolt in his arm, and then him falling. Just plummeting.

How could he have survived?

But he wasn't human. He wasn't alive, really. Biting her lip, she looked down over the side. And there she saw what she hadn't seen before, in the darkness. A ledge. He must have landed on the ledge.

Frowning, she looked around, chose a spot and clambered over the side, lowering herself onto the wide stone ledge, like a natural balcony overlooking the sea. It wasn't easy to cling to the journals, the CD tucked into the pages of the top one, while making her way down. Thank goodness she hadn't tried to bring more of them.

She landed on the ledge. Here, she thought. He must have landed here. She ran her palms along the stone, as if she could still feel him. But she couldn't. Were the tiny stains she saw his blood? They could just as easily be droplets of salt water or rain or dew.

"Where did you go, Dante?" She looked to the left and right but saw nothing. Below, only sea and rock. He couldn't have gone into the sea, could he?

Sighing, wondering if she could manage to climb back up, she stopped and stared into the tangle of vines and the opening beyond them. "A cave," she whispered.

Parting the vines with one arm, she crept inside, into pitch, utter darkness and the constant chill of the deep earth. She drew her shawl closer, straining her eyes to see ahead of her. Stretching out her free arm, she moved it back and forth in front of her as she walked forward in slow, abbreviated steps. She expected cobwebs. There were none. Just smooth, cold stone beneath her slippered feet. She kept expecting to reach an ending of some kind. A drop-off, perhaps, and her feet slid cautiously. But the floor didn't fall away.

Her mind kept telling her to turn back. But everything else, her instinct, her heart and this mindless yearning for Dante, made turning back impossible. She was compelled to move forward. There was nothing to be afraid of, she told herself over and over as the darkness swallowed her. What was the worst that could happen? She could die? She was dying anyway.

She stopped swinging her hand and instead dragged it along the wall, until the wall curved away from her, and she stopped, startled. Okay, okay. She took her time, trying to get oriented, feeling her way. The walls hadn't vanished, just widened. She was in a larger area now. She patted the wall following it around until her hand felt a spot that was different Steel rather than stone. Her fingers scrambled outward to its edges, and she realized she had found a door. She located the handle, an iron ring, and tugged, then pushed and tugged and pushed again until the thing moved, just a little. God, this wasn't going to be easy. Especially given how weak she felt today. Still, she set her precious books aside, summoned what little strength she could find and continued working at the heavy door until finally she managed to drag it open just enough.

Then she paused and leaned back against a bumpy stone wall, panting, breathless. And slowly, as she tried to will her heartbeat to slow, she felt something. Some… awareness. Some sense beyond the normal five—not a smell, not a sound—told her that she was close to him. Dante. He was here, somewhere. She wanted to sniff, but not that exactly. She lifted her head, searching with her mind, scanning the air for that sense of him, finding it, stronger now, thrumming in the very center of her forehead.

"Dante… " she whispered, her heart catching in her chest. That hollow yearning clawed at her belly. She pushed off the wall, bent to feel around until she found her books and hugged them to her, then squeezed herself into the space made by the slightly opened door and through it. "Dante, are you here?"

No reply. Pitch darkness, and yet her voice didn't echo as it should. She moved around, again, using her hand to gauge the shape and size of the room. Flat walls, not curved. And it smelled different. Her thigh bumped something that rocked, and her hand shot to it to steady it.

A small table.

And the item on it… a lantern. Then there should be…

Yes, she patted the table and found the matches. She must be in the room beneath the study, she thought, her heart tripping into a gallop all over again. Was this where he had come?

She set her books on the table, then fumbled in the darkness, lit a match and put its flame to the lantern's wick. When the light shone from the globe, she lifted the lamp and turned.

The coffin was there. Closed. Empty?

Swallowing hard, she looked down, and then she went still. Something dark red had been poured out on the floor. A lot of it, a puddle of it near the door, and then a ribbon that unwound, and another puddle reside the coffin. Oh, God, he had lost so much blood!

Carrying her lamp in a trembling hand, she moved closer, stepping around the drying pools, and for an instant she managed to tear her gaze away from the dull, dusty box and the life blood on the floor, to look around for a hook or… There was an ancient nail sticking out of one of the beams above her head. It was cocked up at an angle, as if it had been put there for this very purpose. She slid the lantern's wire handle over the nail and let it hang there. Then, nervously, licking her lips, she turned back to the coffin.

Was it dark outside yet? It hadn't been when she had found this place. But it had been a while now. Maybe an hour as she had slowly traversed the cave.

Only the length of her back lawn, but that was seventy yards, at least, every step of which had very likely been painted in Dante's blood. In complete darkness Morgan had inched the length of it. And then there was the time she had spent wrestling with the door. Which should have been locked. If Dante had been all right, he would have locked the damned door.