Intimate Betrayal (10 page)

She looked up high overhead where the mist hadn’t yet reached and realized that she could see the stained glass panels arching
over the nave of the cathedral. The glass was dark; no sunlight shone through. So dark. And then she saw something swirling
down from above—heavy and sharp as an ax.…

As she flung herself out of the path of the hurtling object, she thought she could smell the coppery tang of blood.

Silence reigned. The mist had cleared. Trembling, Barbara Rae looked everywhere for the falling object that had mercifully
missed her head by inches.

But there was nothing there.

Nothing at all.

The next threatening letter was delivered to Annie at her office at Brody Associates. Again, her name was printed in block
letters on the envelope.

You have been warned. But the Tower of Babel continues to rise. The eyes of the Living God are upon you. Everywhere you go,
His footsteps will follow. Heed not the beckonings of Pride. Beware the wrath of the Lord.

The signature was the same:
Jehovah’s Pitchfork.

Feeling a bit shaken, Annie went down the hall to Darcy’s office. “Take a look at this.” She handed over the letter. “It came
this morning.”

Darcy, who had been staring out the window at the Transamerica Pyramid, turned and took the letter. Annie noticed that her
nail polish was chipped—highly unusual for her.

She read it over quickly. “Yikes!” she said.

“Nice, huh?”

“This is scary! Have you got the envelope?”

Annie showed it to her. “San Francisco postmark—with no return address, of course.”

“Well, I suppose it’s just some religious crank,” Darcy said. “It’s unpleasant, but this sort of thing
does
happen occasionally.”

Annie wished it hadn’t come today. She was already feeling edgy. She had a meeting this afternoon at the site to introduce
Matthew to the construction crew, and this evening, Thursday, she was scheduled to have dinner with him—an engagement she
was alternately looking forward to and dreading.

“It’s not the first one,” Annie said. “I got something similar at home a few days ago. I probably should have saved it, but
my instinct at the time was to file it directly in the wastebasket. It was the same sort of religious imagery, with the same
complaint about the cathedral costing too much money. And the signature was the same, ‘Jehovah’s Pitchfork.’”

Darcy shook her head. “Jehovah doesn’t have a pitchfork. He has a lightning bolt or something. The Devil’s the one with the
pitchfork, right?”

Annie nodded.

“On the other hand,” Darcy added, “sometimes it certainly
seems
as if God has a pitchfork. And He’s just kinda prodding us along.”

“Darcy, are you okay?” Annie asked. It struck her that Darcy hadn’t been acting like her normal self all week.

“Who, me? Hey, no worries, mate.”

But Annie wondered. Darcy was avoiding her eyes, which was unusual. “Sure?”

Darcy shrugged. “Maybe I’m getting my period.”

“No, seriously, I mean it. I’ve been worried about you.”

“Thanks for asking, but I’m fine. A little tired maybe, that’s all.”

“Well, d’you have any advice as to what I should do about this letter?”

“I’d make copies and give it to everyone on the site—well, the important people, anyhow. Security, too. It’s probably just
one of the usual harmless nuts, but there’s no point in taking chances. Hell, it’s a threat. I might even show it to the police.”

As Annie headed back to her office with the poison-pen letter, Darcy helped herself to a cheese Danish from the tray in the
office kitchen. Normally she stayed away from the rich breakfast pastries, but today—what the hell. She needed something to
brighten her dark mood, and if sugar and fat would do it…

Annie was too damn intuitive, she thought. It was hard to hide anything from her.

In truth, the past few days since Sam had broken up with her had been utter hell. She couldn’t sleep, she’d been eating all
sorts of things she didn’t usually touch, and she hadn’t been doing any of her exercise routines.

Her work was beginning to suffer too. She couldn’t concentrate. Even though she had several very important things to attend
to, she kept pushing them out of her mind. All she wanted to think about was how she could change Sam’s mind and get him back
in her arms.

She’d been obsessively comparing their birth charts. There
were some communication conflicts—perhaps that’s where the trouble lay. Sam was more secretive than she was. He was lighthearted
on the surface, but he was motivated by deep wells of emotion. A lot of water in his chart. Scorpio and Cancer—strong emotions
tenaciously held.

She’d also been consulting her favorite tarot deck two or three times a day, and the spreads there confirmed the astrological
findings. All indications continued to be favorable for a lasting romance between herself and Sam.

What had happened, she hoped, was that Sam had entered the distancing period of the classic approach-avoid syndrome. He was,
after all, a single man in his early forties, a man who had avoided commitment all his life. He probably panicked every time
he felt himself getting seriously involved with a woman. All Darcy had to remember was not to panic in response.

Being supportive and understanding was the key. Let him feel separate. Let him begin to miss her. Let him realize what he
was losing. And leave the door open so he could easily come back.

She knew that in a situation like this, she was lucky to be working in such close proximity to the man. He could hardly forget
her when he saw her every day! Despite her agitation and sleeplessness, she had been taking extra care every morning with
her clothes and her makeup. She had to look her best and act her best. Inevitably he would compare her behavior with that
of all the other women he’d broken up with and realize that she was special, one in a million.

And once he realized that—she had him.

Darcy wished she could tell Annie. But Sam had insisted on keeping their relationship secret. The architectural design
industry was small and full of gossip, and Sam had been very firm about keeping his private life entirely private.

Even so, Darcy mused, that shouldn’t have stopped her from telling her best friend. After all, women told each other a lot
of things that men never dreamed they told.…

But she’d kept the affair secret from Annie for another reason altogether. For some time she’d suspected that Sam had a bit
of a thing for Annie. There was no sign that Annie reciprocated, but Sam was an attractive man. And if he had broken up with
her because he wanted to start seeing Annie…

God it didn’t bear thinking about.

But if such a thing did happen, Darcy hoped she could be civilized.

A true, unselfish friend.

But, dammit it, she wasn’t sure she could stand it.

Sidney Canin stopped by Annie’s office later that morning, while she was on the phone with a prospective client. His face
was long and gloomy as always. He signaled her from the doorway, pointing to the hold button on her phone.

Sidney rarely interrupted anything. Usually he was content to wait until she was free. She put the caller on hold.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, coming into her office and shutting the door behind him.

“Sorry. I’m right in the middle of an important conversation.”

“This is more important.”

“Can you wait a few minutes? This is a prospective client I’m talking to.”

Nodding, Sidney crossed his arms over his chest. He clearly intended to wait right there in her office, leaning against the
wall and scowling.

Exasperated—she didn’t like Sidney and was beginning to
wonder if she would ever get away from him professionally—Annie ended her phone call as quickly and as gracefully as possible.

“Okay. What’s so important?”

“The cathedral.”

“What about it?”

“There’s a problem.”

According to Sidney, there was always a problem. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

Before he could tell her, Annie’s phone rang again. She could have let voice mail answer it, but Sidney’s demands irritated
her. She picked up the phone while her colleague glared at her.

“Hello, Annie,” said Matthew Carlyle.

At the sound of his deep, husky voice, she felt something stretch and curl in the pit of her belly. At the same moment, she
was conscious of Sidney watching her. Two impossible men…

“We still on for dinner tonight?” he asked.

“Yes. And don’t forget the site meeting at one-thirty.”

“I’ll be there. About tonight—”

“Do you mind if I call you back in a little while? I’ve got someone in my office.”

He gave her his number, and Annie wrote it down and hung up.

“Who was that?” Sidney asked.

“Matthew Carlyle. He’s the new chair of the UPC building committee, which means, essentially, that we’re all working for him
now.”

The scowl on Canin’s face was erased by what appeared to be an expression of pure shock. It turned, quickly, to anger.
“Are you telling me that that murderer is taking Francesca’s place on the committee?”

“Yes. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“It’s worse than ironic! It’s
sick.
Jesus Christ, has the entire world gone mad?”

Annie was surprised for a moment by the intensity of his reaction. Then she remembered that even before the murder there had
been no love lost between Sidney Canin and Matt Carlyle.

“It’s going to be difficult, I suppose, but we’ll all have to live with it,” she said. “Whatever we may think of him personally,
he was lawfully acquitted.”

“That was a foregone conclusion even before the trial. Billionaires kill with impunity. They never go to jail.”

“Well, you might be right, but even so, we’re going to have to work with him. I’m having dinner with him this evening, as
a matter of fact, to try to forge some sort of working relationship—”

“You’re having dinner with him?” Sidney interrupted.

“Yes. Why shouldn’t I?”

“Why shouldn’t you?” he said scathingly, as if the question were the stupidest one he’d ever heard.

“Is there some personal animosity between you and Matthew Carlyle?” she asked. “Seems to me you didn’t like him even before
Francesca died.”

“No, I didn’t,” he said hotly. “I liked Francesca, and Carlyle never treated her right. Her marriage was a torment to her,
and just as she was about to escape it, he killed her.”

Annie decided to ask the question she had long wondered about: “You weren’t her mysterious lover, were you, Sidney?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” he snapped. But the color rose in his usually pale face. “I was her friend and her confidant. That’s
all I was.”

“Well, do you think she had a mysterious lover? Or was that just an invention of the defense attorneys and the press?”

Canin strode to the door and whipped it open. “I don’t know and I don’t care. She’s dead. To hell with it. To hell with everything.
To hell with the fucking cathedral.”

He slammed the door behind him.

Great,
thought Annie. What a day—threatening letters, strange behavior from Darcy, crazy behavior from Sid, and now, to top it off,
she had
two
meetings with Matthew Carlyle.

At the cathedral that afternoon, Matt insisted on seeing everything. And he had about a thousand questions. They were intelligent
questions, though, about technical matters of architecture and design, and Annie could tell that he had done some research.
Apparently he was taking his responsibilities very seriously.

She introduced him to Jack Fletcher, who appeared suitably impressed to meet such a notorious man. Carlyle shook hands with
the subcontractors’ crews that they met during their tour of the site. All of them knew who he was, and several of them took
the opportunity to congratulate him on winning his freedom.

Annie thought that there were some workers among the crews who hated Matthew Carlyle for his wealth and his business success,
but if so they kept their feelings to themselves. Carlyle lacked the easy charm that Sam Brody possessed, so he didn’t exactly
create a sense of instant
camaraderie, but he didn’t piss anybody off either. He grinned and freely shook hands with dozens of people, and the buzz,
she sensed, was positive.

It was positive for her as well. Walking beside him, both of them wearing hard hats as required on the site, Annie felt both
conspicuous and oddly comfortable. On several occasions he touched her, once to help her mount a ladder to some low scaffolding
to examine the marble facing applied in the exquisite Lady Chapel in the apse, and another time he touched her under the elbow
as they clambered over some cans of paint on the floor.

On the second of these occasions, he looked down and caught her eye. She smiled at him, and something sparked. Chemistry.
It had been there all those years ago in London, and it was still beating between them now.

So how did it work, she wondered, that strange confluence of shoulders and limbs and eyes and mouth and those mysteriously
undetectable pheromones that somehow drew one human body to another? Was it all chemical and biological? Was destiny charted
in the hormones? Why, knowing all that she knew about this very dangerous man, did these nonverbal messages still have such
power?

The last person they encountered was Giuseppe Brindesi, who was high on the scaffolding at the east end of the transept aisle.
Matthew wanted to meet him. In fact, he had actually started up the scaffolding ladder when Giuseppe yelled that he’d be coming
down.

“Have the two of you met?” Annie asked as the master craftsman stepped off the scaffolding. She nodded from one man to the
other. “Giuseppe Brindesi, Matthew Carlyle.”

Matthew put out his hand as he had been doing all afternoon. “No, I don’t believe so. Pleased to meet you.”

Giuseppe hesitated a moment before shaking his hand. “I knew your wife, sir,” he said slowly. “Please accept my condolences.”