Jude Deveraux (6 page)

'Great,'
he said, standing and walking her to the door. 'I look forward to it.'

Eden
thought that he wanted to say more, but there was someone waiting to see him,
so he had to let them into his office. She gave a quick glance at the unsmiling
Camden, then hurried from the office. She didn't want to give the young woman
time to ask her any more questions.

Once
outside, Eden got into her cheap rental car and headed toward the grocery
store. But things had changed in twenty-two years, and the grocery she used to
go to had been replaced by a car dealership. She thought she'd just stop in and
ask for directions, but two hours later she'd leased a small SUV. By the time
she'd had lunch (North Carolina barbecue) and had explored a few shops downtown,
it was nearly four o'clock. After she'd filled her new car with groceries, it
was growing dark. She wondered if she'd purposefully postponed seeing the house
until late just so she wouldn't be able to spend much time there. She thought
she'd put the groceries away, then go back to spend the night at the
bed-and-breakfast. She'd not even asked if the electricity had been turned on
in the house, so it would be better to postpone staying.

Even
though Farrington Manor had once been the plantation house for a farm that
covered over a thousand acres, the house was very close to downtown Arundel.
Eden drove to the end of King Street, took a left onto Water Street, drove past
the lush Braddon Park, then turned right over the narrow wooden bridge that
took her to Farrington Manor. As she drove she saw two small houses on the
left, built since she'd lived there and now pretty with flowers and
ten-year-old trees. She saw that the old house that had once been the
overseer's had been completely renovated.

On the
left lay open fields that were leased to local farmers to grow peanuts, cotton,
milo, or soybeans, but on the right was parkland of enormous, mature hardwood
trees. Some of the trees that she'd come to know were now missing, felled by
hurricanes. 'God's way of pruning,' Mrs. Farrington used to say. The high winds
used to terrify Eden, but Mrs. Farrington and Melissa took them in stride,
playing endless games of checkers by candlelight.

When
Eden got close enough such that she knew in the next moment the house was going
to come into view, she turned off her headlights and coasted forward, her arms
on the steering wheel. First a chimney, then the roof came into view. Right
away she saw that the house was in better repair than it had been years ago.
Eden remembered the story of the silver teapot by Paul Revere. Had Mrs.
Farrington known that she had such a teapot? Or had she pulled everything from
under the floorboards and taken it all to a dealer?

Smiling
with happy memories, Eden looked at the house in the moonlight. It was two
stories, flat fronted, with two rows of seven eight-paned windows. At one point
in its long history, the house had had double porches and a door out from the
second story, but when a hurricane had badly damaged the top porch, Mrs.
Farrington's father had removed it. Now there was one wide porch along the
lower front.

Still
smiling, Eden moved forward, her tires barely rolling. Suddenly, she stopped.
There was a light moving about upstairs. A flashlight. Someone was inside the
house!

So now
what do I do? she wondered. Call the sheriff? And what if he comes out to the
house, sirens blazing, only to find out that the person inside the house was a
neighbor? Or maybe it was Braddon Granville. He'd had time enough to finish
with his clients, so maybe he'd decided to visit her. The thought made Eden
smile. She'd liked him and had been flattered by his frank admiration of her.
In the years she'd lived in New York she'd spent many hours in a gym in order
to give Melissa and Stuart time alone. Movies, the gym, and working on her
book. Those things had taken up a lot of her time in the last years, but today
Braddon Granville had made her glad of every sit-up and leg lift. She was proud
of the fact that she was the same size as when she'd lived in Arundel so long
ago. Having a baby when she was so young and her skin so elastic meant that
she'd been able to regain her twenty-four-inch waist.

Eden
parked her car under a tree, out of sight of the windows of the house, and
quietly made her way to the front door. She tried the old doorknob. It was
locked. Maybe he went in through the kitchen door, she thought as  she
used her key to silently unlock the door. She could call out to the person as
she set her things down, but she well knew how isolated the house was. No, it
would be better to be cautious. Above her head, a floorboard creaked then
stopped, as though the person making the sound didn't want to be heard. That
sneaking made her forget her good thoughts. Whoever was in the house shouldn't
be there — and knew it.

Eden
stepped out on the porch and pulled her cell phone out of her handbag. She
didn't think about what she was doing when she called, not the sheriff, but
Braddon Granville. He answered on the first ring.

'Eden!'
he said, his voice full of pleasure at her call. 'Did you change your mind
about tonight? We could have dinner at — '

'Someone's
in my house,' she said.

'I'm
sorry but I can't hear you.'

Eden
tiptoed down the porch steps and went toward her car. 'Someone is in my house,'
she said louder so she could be heard above the frogs. 'He's upstairs with a
flashlight.'

There
was a pause on the phone, then the voice of a man in charge. 'Get out of there
right now,' he said in a tone that was not to be disobeyed. 'Get in your car
and return to town. I'm going to call the sheriff, and he'll be there as fast
as possible, but I want
you
out of there. Understand me?'

'Yes,'
she said, her heart pounding. She already had the door to the car open but then
realized that she'd left her car keys inside the house. She started to tell Mr.
Granville that, but he'd already hung up to call the sheriff.

Now
what? Did she crouch in the bushes and wait in silence for the cavalry to come
and save her? Or did she go back into the house, get her car keys, then roar
away in a torrent of gravel?

Turning
back to the house, Eden looked up at the windows and saw nothing. No moving
light. What if all she'd seen had been a reflection of the moon? Had she been
so spooked by Braddon Granville's story of Mrs. Farrington's evil son that
she'd made something ordinary into something sinister? She called Mr.
Granville's office again but got his machine. She was going to look really
stupid when half a dozen police cars arrived and the only intruder was a reflection
on the windows of a creaking old house.

Okay,
better to face this on her own, she thought, or she was going to be the town's
source of laughter for years to come. Taking a deep breath, she went up the
stairs to the front porch and opened the door. She had intended to call out and
ask if anyone was there, but as soon as she was inside she again heard the
floorboards creak, only this time, the sound came from the living room.

On
tiptoe, Eden crept toward the doorway. Thank heaven that most of the furniture
had been sold or she never would have been able to make her way in silence. If
the house were still as full of furniture as when Mrs. Farrington was alive,
Eden would have had to crawl over and under surfaces to get there.

As it
was, when she got to the doorway, she crouched down low, then looked around the
doorframe. She could see a man's silhouette clearly outlined. He had a small
flashlight, just a penlight really. If he were on the up and up he'd have a
full-size flashlight, wouldn't he? Eden's intuition told her that this man was
looking for something. For the silverware that she and Mrs. Farrington had
hidden inside the walls? For that blasted necklace that had been in every
Lost
Treasures
book ever written?

Suddenly,
from some primitive instinct, she knew he was aware that she was there. In
spite of all her precautions, she was sure he'd heard every sound she'd made.
Had he come downstairs to greet her?

Truthfully,
she didn't care why someone was in the house. Now all she wanted to do was get
out of there and let the sheriff handle him. She just had to turn away, take
three steps, get her car keys, then take another two steps to the front door.
Once she was outside, she could run. And once she was inside her car, she'd be
safe. But when she turned, she must have made a noise, because the man's head
came up and he saw her. One minute he was on the other side of a couch and the
next he was leaping toward her. 'Wait a minute!' he said as his hand shot out
in her direction.

Maybe
he had a reason for being in the house. Maybe he was an innocent person. Maybe
when he reached for her all he wanted to do was talk. But whatever his
intentions, when Eden saw the hand come out of the dark and reach for her, she
panicked.  She wasn't forty-five years old with many years of life
experience, she was seventeen, she was walking home from choir practice, and a
man's hand was reaching out to grab her. Back then she'd been so innocent, so
sheltered from what went on in the world that she didn't know what the man's intentions
were until he tore her blouse and grabbed her breast. After that, she didn't
clearly remember what was done to her.

For
over twenty-seven years, Eden had been eaten with the thought, What if I'd
fought back? What if she hadn't been such a frightened little ninny that all
she'd done was cry and plead with him not to hurt her? When he'd told her he
wasn't going to hurt her if she kept quiet and still, she'd been so young and
innocent that she'd been reassured by his words.
What if I had fought?
was
the question that had plagued her all these years.

Now, it
was as though she was back in that park again and was being given a second
chance.
This
time she was going
to fight.
In an instant, she
dropped her human persona and became a bundle of fighting fury. She kicked and
she clawed; she bit and she hit with her fists. The man kept trying to hold her
and he was saying things, but she couldn't hear him — and wouldn't have
listened if she could. That other man on that night so long ago had talked to
her too. He'd said that he wasn't going to hurt her. But he had hurt her. He'd
hurt her in her mind, her body, and in her life. In one act of cruelty, he had
taken away her future.

When
the sirens sounded outside, the man didn't let go of her but kept trying to
hold her to him, and Eden kept fighting him with all her might. She felt her
teeth sink into skin and muscle. She heard his sounds of pain when her fists
hit him. She felt her nails plow deep furrows into his skin.

She was
still fighting when the front door burst open and men started yelling. The man
was pulled away from her, but Eden was still too blind with memory and fear to
stop fighting.

When
Braddon Granville tried to touch her, she fought him too. She couldn't
understand what he was saying when he called her name and told her his. She hit
the man in the rescue uniform as he held her down so his partner could give her
an injection. She fought until her body succumbed to the drug injected into it
and couldn't fight anymore.

When
Eden awoke she knew she was in a hospital. The smell and the sounds were
unmistakable. She looked around the small room at the picture of the seashells
on a beach hanging on the wall, and at the machine next to her bed, to which
she seemed to be hooked. She saw the hard gray chair by the bed, and the roses
on the table at her side. Sunlight was coming through the window, so she knew
it was morning.

She lay
back against the bed and closed her eyes for a moment. Vaguely, she remembered
what had happened.

'Good
morning.'

Eden
looked up to see Braddon Granville standing beside her, a bouquet of spring
flowers in his arms.

'Feeling
better?' he asked, his voice full of concern.

'Better
than what, Mr. Granville?' she asked, trying to sit up, but she hurt all over,
so she lay back down.

'Brad,
please. After what you and I went through last night, I think we're on a
first-name basis.'

'Who
was he? What did he want?'

'Oh,'
Brad said, looking at the floor.

Instantly,
Eden knew that whoever the man was he hadn't been a thief. She took a deep breath.
'Okay, I'm ready. How big of a fool did I make of myself last night?'

'What
do you remember?'

She
turned her head away. Eden remembered the other attack, but that time she
hadn't woken up in a hospital. Her parents had allowed her to miss school until
her bruises healed, but nothing more. She looked back at Brad. All she seemed
able to remember was hitting, biting, scratching, clawing. Who had she hurt? 'I
don't remember much about last night. I — '

She cut
off because a police officer entered the room, smiling at her. He was young and
strong-looking, and he seemed to be highly amused about something. 'Is there
really only one of you?'

'I beg
your pardon?' Eden said.

'We
were taking bets that there were at least three of you to do what you did to McBride.
Brad, are you sure you want to tangle with this wildcat?'

'Come
on, Clint,' Brad said, chastising the young man but also enjoying his
connection to Eden. 'She's been through enough, so don't tease her. I'm not
sure she remembers what happened last night.'

'I can
believe that,' Clint said. 'But I still need to ask her some questions. What
time did you get home?'

'I
don't know the exact time,' Eden said. She felt as though she'd been thrown by
a horse and trampled on. Every muscle hurt, and every molecule of her body was
tired. 'Could you please tell me what happened?'

Clint
started to ask another question, but Brad stopped him. 'I don't think there're
going to be any charges.'

'Charges?
Are there charges against me?' Eden asked.

Brad
put his hand over hers. 'No, Eden, no one is going to charge
you
with
anything. Young Clint here was wondering if you were going to press charges
against McBride for trespassing and entering.'

'I
guess McBride is the man I . . . ?'

'Nearly
killed with your bare hands?' Clint said, chuckling. 'Yeah, he's the one.
Retired police. He said he'd fought two karate experts who didn't fight as hard
as you did. Of course, between you and me, I don't think he fought back any.
That's why he got so beat up. They had to give him a tetanus shot for the
bites. You should see the one — '

'Clint!'
Brad said sharply, 'would you mind your manners, please?'

'Yes,
sir,' Clint said, obviously speaking to a man he'd known all his life.

'Why
don't you go get some coffee? I'd like to talk to Ms. Palmer now.'

When
they were alone, Brad sat down by the bed and took Eden's hand in his.

'What
did I do to that man and who is he?'

'He's
your next-door neighbor. I started to tell you about him yesterday, but we got
sidetracked. He rented what used to be the washhouse.'

'So why
was he in
my
house?'

'Looking
for the fuse box. I'd told him you'd be taking possession of the house soon, so
he was on the lookoul for you. There're a couple of outdoor lights on timers at
your house and last night they'd come on. But just before you arrived, McBride
was using his table saw and blew out all the breakers in his place. When he
looked at your house and saw that it was dark, he knew that you must be on the
same circuit, so he went over there to find the breaker box. He said the
kitchen door was open, so he called out, but when no one answered, he used the
little light on his keychain to try to find the electrical box. He was
searching for a panel by the fireplace in the living room when he saw you. He
said that when he walked toward you . . . well, you sort of went crazy.'

Pausing,
he looked at Eden for confirmation, but all she could do was turn away. She
didn't want him to see her face.

Brad's
voice lightened. 'I think McBride was glad when we showed up. When you phoned me,
I panicked and called both the sheriff and the rescue people. I was afraid of
what could happen, so I wanted to make a lot of noise when we arrived.'

He
squeezed her hand. She had her face turned away, still unable to look at him.
'Eden, don't be embarrassed. It could have happened to anyone. After all,
you've been living in New York and — '

She
looked back at him. 'Is that what everyone's saying?' She well knew that in a
small town like Arundel this would be a big story. Everyone would be talking about
it. 'People are saying that because I lived in New York that now I attack
anyone who tries to help me?'

Brad
looked like he was going to tell her that, no, no one thought that, but then he
grinned and said, 'Pretty much.' When Eden groaned, he said, 'Look on the
bright side: No one within a hundred-mile radius is going to attack you. Hey!
Maybe later you could give me a few pointers.' He put his fists up like a boxer
and made a few mock thrusts.

In
spite of herself, Eden smiled and tried to sit up. Brad put a hand behind her
back and helped her, then gave her a sip of water from the glass on the table.
'How is Mr. McBride?' she asked.

Brad
raised his eyebrows. 'He'll live, but you banged him up pretty bad. As Clint
said, he didn't fight back. He let you hit him — and claw and bite him — while
he seemed to have mostly tried to keep you from hurting yourself.' He gave her
a crooked grin. 'He's a real hero. But then, I think he's done that all his
life. Clint said they received a fax of his record, and it showed that McBride
was in a lot of fights when he was a cop. Shot, knifed. You name it. But he'd
never met his match until he met you.'

She
narrowed her eyes at him. 'Did your wife like your sense of humor?'

'Hated
it,' Brad said, grinning. 'You know what the best thing about all this is? I
was afraid that McBride was going to be my competition. You and him out there
together. Alone. Him a big, virile-looking kind of guy, and you the
best-looking thing to come to town since Susan Sarandon filmed a movie here. I
was really worried.'

'But
not now?'

'I
think he may ask for a restraining order against you.'

'You
are a truly horrible human being!' Eden said, but she couldn't help smiling.

'There,
that's better.' He looked at his watch. 'Unfortunately, duty calls and I have
to go. They're going to let you go home after the doctor sees you. You're just
tired from the workout. There's not a dent on that pretty little body of
yours.'

'You're
very fresh, aren't you?'

Brad
laughed. 'Fresh. I haven't heard that word in years. Don't you watch reality
TV? Don't you know what people in the real world are saying to each other on
the first date?'

'Not
your generation and not mine,' Eden said primly.

Brad
took her hand in his again and for a moment looked as though he was going to
kiss it, but then he put her hand back on top of the sheet. 'Young Clint gets
off duty in two hours so I'll make sure he drives you home. My housekeeper went
out there this morning, gave the place a good cleaning, and' — he wiggled his
eyebrows — 'turned the breakers back on. I had to sign an affidavit swearing
that you wouldn't be there if she touched your, uh, breaker box.'

In
spite of herself, Eden blushed. 'You're incorrigible. Go on, get out of here.
I'll be fine. It's Mr. McBride I'm concerned about.'

'If I
were you, I'd stay away from him. I doubt if he's your biggest fan. Gotta go.
I'll see you at six tonight and I'll bring dinner. You take a bath, wash your
hair, make yourself pretty, and await my arrival.'

With
that he was gone. As the door closed behind him, Eden grimaced. "Await my
arrival'?' she said. 'Who does he think he is?' But she smiled anyway and
rested against the pillow until she had to get up.

*   *   *

'So
help me, Bill,' Jared said into his cell phone, his teeth clenched, 'if you
don't stop laughing I'll remove two of your teeth the next time I see you —
which will be soon.'

Jared
listened, but his temper didn't abate. 'You didn't tell me she was insane. None
of you happened to mention that fact, and it was nowhere in the papers you had
me read. I thought she was some poor woman who'd had a hard life. I thought —
No, I'm not going soft on you. So help me, Bill, if you start laughing again
I'll . . . ' Jared gave a nasty smile. 'I'll tell the whole department where I
saw you last summer.'

Jared's
smile returned to normal. 'That's better. No, I'm fine. I've been a lot worse,
but I look bad. No, I'm not being vain. I was sent here to seduce information
out of a woman, wasn't I? So tell me how I'm supposed to wine and dine her when
I have a black eye, an arm in a sling, and bruises all over. I tell you, I've
never seen anybody fight like she did! She was blind! Crazy.'

He
listened for a few moments. 'That's nice that the house shrink has a
rationalization for why she attacked me, but it doesn't help any. I think you
ought to send someone else out here to do this job. What about Lopez? He's
great-looking. So what if he's fifteen years younger than she is?'

He
paused. 'I have no idea what she looks like! It was dark and she attacked me. I
saw her snooping around, so I very calmly went to her, then she attacked me. I
wasn't expecting it, and I couldn't very well attack her back, could I? I did
everything I could to get away from her, but she's an agile little thing, I'll
give her that. At one point, when I had almost scooted away from her, she bit
me on the ankle. When I tried to push her head away, she bit my arm. And you
should see the claw marks I have on me!'

Jared
stopped talking and listened to his boss. He knew that Bill had been sent a
full report of what had happened, but Jared wanted to exaggerate everything so,
maybe, Bill would take him off the case. It was one thing to try to sweet-talk
information out of a woman he was attracted to, but quite another to have to be
around a woman whose brain cords didn't connect properly. For all his
undercover work, Jared was no actor. Maybe he could play the tough-guy parts,
but not the romantic ones. That's why he liked women who were reformed bad
girls. They didn't expect much from him — which is just what he gave. His
professional life was difficult, so he didn't want the same in his private
life, what little there was of it.

'There's
something else that wasn't in your reports on her,' Jared said. 'She's
practically engaged to some lawyer in town. Yeah, I know she just got here, but
they must have known each other before because they're already a couple. Last
night as I lay bleeding on a gurney, being sewn up and swabbed down, some kid
of a deputy made it clear to me that little Ms. Palmer belongs to one of the
town's founding families — or whatever they are down here. Lord! Deliver me
from the South. Everybody knows who everybody's great-great-grandfather was and
what his rank was in the war. Civil War, that is. No, I can't calm down!' Jared
said. 'I'm in pain and I'm not the right man for this job. I think you should
send a woman to befriend her. Maybe send an engaged couple, as I think Ms.
Palmer is about two seconds away from being engaged herself. They'll all talk
to each other.'

Jared
took a breath to listen. 'No, nothing. I didn't see anything in the house that
looked out of place. Nothing. I only had about forty-five minutes and I had to
use a penlight. I thought your people said she was spending the night in town.'

Jared
listened to Bill defend his information while he looked out the window at the
river at the bottom of the hill. In the next second, he came alert as he saw someone
coming through the cut in the hedge that separated 'her' house from his.
Yesterday he'd done some exploring of the two connecting properties, mainly
looking for hiding places and avenues of exit. He planned to explore every inch
of the place, probably at night while Ms. Palmer slept the sleep of the
innocent if she was innocent, that is. There were  a  couple 
of   places outside that Jared thought might be good to stick a
couple of surveillance cameras. There were birdhouses and vines up the trees.
He could hide the cords in the vines and the cameras in the bird-houses. No one
would see anything.