Danger in a Red Dress (19 page)

Mrs. Manly hadn’t sent her into a trap. Had she?

Hannah walked forward, grateful for her flat rubber-soled shoes. They gave her the traction she needed to cross the rough stone . . . to the wall at the end of the tunnel. The wall with a thick metal door.

The hinges and the lock showed spots of rust, and the lever shrieked as she pressed it down.

It didn’t open.

She pushed it up.

It didn’t open.

She licked her dry lips, and frantically shot the flashlight around the cave.

There. There on the floor. A dull glint of metal. A key on a ring.

She grabbed it, fit it in the lock, and turned. Inside the lock mechanism, she felt a grinding as years of rust were dislodged. The tumblers and pins rasped past one another, moving slowly when she needed to hurry. Hurry.

She pushed against the key. The shaft began to twist, to warp. Just as she feared it would break off in the lock, the mechanism clicked into place.

She pressed her hand against the door. It was cold. Freezing against her palm. What was on the other side? The police? A furious, murderous Carrick? Or a cold-eyed, accusing Trent?

Yet she had to go forward.

She knelt on the rough stone floor, set the picture frame down, and opened the back. Just as Mrs. Manly promised, there was money. Hundreds, fifties and twenties. It would save her life—if her life could be saved. If she could escape Balfour House and the estate without being detected.

She stuffed the cash into the capacious pockets in her skirt, then lifted the photograph away from the glass. It showed a glowing Melinda, dressed in her wedding gown, clinging to handsome Nathan’s arm.

Hannah had no time, but she couldn’t leave the picture here to be found by the searchers or, worse, never to be found at all. Carefully she folded it down the middle, then ripped it in half and tucked Mrs. Manly’s image into her breast pocket. With a violence that spoke volumes, she crumpled Nathan and tossed him aside.

Standing, she pulled the key from the lock. She turned off her flashlight and placed it in her pocket. Pressing the lever down, she leaned against the door. Something fought against her, something more powerful than rusty old hinges. She cracked the door an inch.

The wind gusted through the opening with all the vigor of an incoming winter storm. She held on to the handle, desperate that the door not slam back and alert any searchers of her whereabouts. Taking a breath, she stepped out of the cool cave and into the blasting wind. Carefully, she shut the door. She locked it.

The searchers inside wouldn’t easily follow her.

She stood in the extension of the cave. In the distance, she could see a faint lightening of the night.
The entrance.
And beyond that entrance, she could hear the roar of the ocean.

No wonder the metal hardware on the door was rusting. Day and night, night and day, the wind blew salt spray up the fifty-foot-long passage toward the door.

Briefly, she turned on her flashlight and shone it around. The walls were narrowing. Here and there the rock ceiling had collapsed. She turned off the light—and walked. The scent of the sea grew greater, the rocks slippery with spray. The closer she got, the stronger the wind, the more she was sure she was in deep trouble. Mrs. Manly had promised her the beach.

She was walking into the waves.

She placed her hand against one wall, and she didn’t stop. She didn’t stop when the icy water filled her shoes. She didn’t stop when the brutally cold waves rose to her thighs. She caught her breath in agony as a wave broke against her stomach. Her teeth chattered, and tears of frozen pain trickled down her cheeks. She plowed steadily forward, hoping the water didn’t lift the cash out of her pockets, realizing it didn’t matter because she wasn’t going to live through this.

Just as she was ready to die of hypothermia, the wall beneath her hand took an abrupt left turn. The cave opened and she walked along the base of the cliff, where the waves had undercut the granite. With a sigh of relief, she realized she was hidden from searchers above. Slowly, slowly, the ground beneath her feet sloped up out of the ocean.

Clouds covered the full moon, muting its pure light, but she could see enough to know she was on a path, a narrow path that wound and turned ever upward, taking her to the top. Still the wind blasted her, and she shuddered in frozen agony as the sand and water squished in her shoes.

She was afraid. So afraid. Afraid her numb feet would slip and she’d drop onto the rocks and into the waves below. Afraid that somewhere above, the mob waited. . . .

Carrick waited. . . .

Trent waited. . . .

But although light glowed from the still not visible house, she saw no trace of any human figure on the top of the cliff.

Did they think she was still inside Balfour House?

Probably. They probably didn’t believe she would do what she’d done to escape. By God,
she
didn’t believe she’d done what she’d done to escape.

She reached the top of the cliff and crouched there, assessing her location. The house was far to the left and down. She’d managed to come out near the spot where Mrs. Manly had first told her about the fortune and charged her to distribute it on her death.

With gritty hands, Hannah wiped tears off her cheeks. Yeah, like that was going to ever happen.

Through the increasing howl of the wind, she could hear sirens shrieking. At the house, emergency vehicles and police cars, blue and red lights flashing, lined up at the front door. A throng of people milled out on the lawn and trampled the flower beds. With a savage smile, Hannah realized that Mrs. Manly had got her wish—her party had become the most talked-about event of the year.

Standing, she cut across the rise and looked over the other side—and realized she’d found the promised land.

Cars. A hundred cars were parked on the flat below. Limos. Mercedes. BMWs. A couple of luxury SUVs.

Somewhere, somehow, surely one of them had the keys still in the ignition.

She stumbled down the slope, shivering in the cold, telling herself if she just hurried, she’d warm up, and knowing that was crap, with the temperature dropping and the wind chill at freezing or below.

Still she walked. She couldn’t give up now, not when she could see lines and lines of cars, unguarded by anything but their isolation in a field on the rocky edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Unguarded because . . . because the drivers and the valets had raced to the house to be part of the excitement?

Yes. Probably.

Undoubtedly.

She reached the first car and looked inside. Keys glinted in the seat.

Her heart leaped at this first turn of good luck.

But that car was blocked. She couldn’t get it out. She had to find a car on the outer edge. Encouraged, she stumbled forward, occasionally glancing inside a vehicle, and always seeing keys. Keys in the seats, keys in the ignitions. With the security on the estate, no one was supposed to steal these cars.

She got to the outer ring of cars and stood, undecided.

What should she steal? A limo would be too obvious, but this Mercedes SL 600 Roadster seemed out of her class. . . . The door opened under her hand, and a heady, new-car, expensive-leather smell filled her head. Drawn by the warmth in the car, she slipped into the driver’s seat and looked around for the keys.

They weren’t visible.

But a fur coat was.

A fur coat tossed carelessly across the passenger seat.

Hannah grabbed it and pulled it around her shoulders. The cool silk lining quickly warmed around her body. She wriggled her arms into the sleeves. She pulled the luxurious fur under her rear and around her thighs.

She shut the door and untied her shoes. She threw them into the back, wiggled her frozen toes and thought about how remorseful she should feel, ruining some woman’s mink with her wet, salty body.

A laugh sputtered out of her.

The coat was the least of it. She was about to steal a car.

This
car, if she could just figure out where the keys were hidden. She checked the glove compartment and the console, scanned the back. She sat, discouraged and desperate, and stuck her frozen hands into the coat’s pockets.

And there were the keys. She pulled them out and stared at them. Stared at them and realized this was a keyless ignition. They were here, and she could have started the car at any time.

So she did.

She pulled out of the line of cars, holding her breath, fearing a shout of discovery. But the engine was expensive and quiet. No one realized the car was leaving, and if they did, they thought the owner, or the owner’s chauffeur, or a valet was driving.

With the lights off, she painstakingly steered around the ruins of the old carriage house and down the narrow winding road. . . .

Eventually, the car warmed up and she turned on the heater. Eventually, the tiny road met the main highway, and she turned north, away from Balfour House. Eventually, she drove west. And eventually, she intended to leave Maine altogether.

She hoped never to return.

Although . . . She smiled a smile that looked more like a snarl. She would never, as long as she lived, forget the sound Carrick made when she slammed him with the lamp and knocked the breath out of him. It was the best thing that had happened that day.

She refused to think of Trent.

He was best forgotten.

TWENTY-ONE

Gabriel walked into B’wiched in New York City and headed right for the table where, almost a year ago, Carrick had first shown him Hannah’s photo. Gabriel didn’t sit there because he had any sentimental attachment to Hannah. Quite the opposite. He sat there because he preferred to sit with his back against the wall. That way, no one could sneak up behind him and blindside him.

Once was enough.

The waitress hustled over. “I’m Asta.” She was new, young, with hair dyed black-hole black, and she was looking him over.

He didn’t care. He’d been burned. He wasn’t about to step back into that fire. “I want iced tea—black, not sweet, not flavored. Please.” He added the
please
because when he’d lived with the Prescotts, he’d learned good manners, although lately, even the starkest civility had seemed too much trouble.

“Right away.” Asta leaned over to put a menu on the table, giving him a clear shot right down the front of her black blouse to a pair of smooth, perky boobs. “If you need anything else, anything at all . . .”

“There’ll be two of us for lunch.” He took another menu, and waved her away.

That was what civility got him. A waitress who wanted to chat when Gabriel wanted to get this business with Carrick over with at last.

Carrick stepped through the door. It was the first time Gabriel had seen him since that god-awful night last year. Carrick hadn’t changed; his appearance was as polished as ever . . . although perhaps he was a little thinner. Certainly, a haunted expression had etched a few lines around his mouth.

But then, his mother had been killed last year in circumstances that had sent Gabriel into a fury of anguish and pain. Gabriel had spent four months tracking Hannah Grey through twelve states. In Becket, Massachusetts, he’d located the fat head who, based on his belief that anyone who wore a fur coat and drove a Mercedes couldn’t lie, had reissued her a money card for her account, even though she had no ID. In Philadelphia, Gabriel had located that very fur coat on a homeless woman. In Chicago, he’d located the stripped remnants of the Mercedes. Then, in Minneapolis, he’d lost Hannah’s scent. All trace of her had disappeared.

He hadn’t given up. He would never give up. He would find her and bring her to justice for what she’d done to Mrs. Manly, to Carrick . . . and to him.

Because for a few brief, glorious moments, he’d forgotten she was a suspect, and trusted her. Loved her. Loved the illusion of who she was. She’d made him a failure, she’d made him a fool, and she’d broken his heart.

No, not his heart—his dreams.

He would never forgive her.

Now he sat in this chair, in this restaurant, again, to say what he could no longer put off.

“Hello, Gabriel.” Carrick offered his hand, and in a somber voice, said, “I’m glad you called. I hope this means you’ve finally gotten over what happened last autumn. No one could have suspected the depths of Hannah Grey’s infamy, and no one blames you for—”

Gabriel couldn’t stand the sympathy and the earnestness anymore. He came to his feet. “Carrick, I’m your half brother, one of your father’s bastards.”

Carrick’s hand jerked back against his side. For a split second, his face was blank with shock and an ugly dismay. Then a smile split his face. “By God, you played me!”

“I did.” Gabriel sat. Better to give Carrick the dominant position here. It cost Gabriel nothing, and it would put Carrick at ease.

“So it wasn’t an accident that you showed up when I needed someone to find my brothers.” Carrick looked as if he had control of himself, but his voice shook a little.

Gabriel spread his hands in deprecating dismissal. “At first I had nothing more than suspicion, so when the case against your mother hit and you needed help—”

“You moved into position. Very clever.” Carrick pulled up a chair, and his eyes gleamed with honest admiration. “I never saw that one coming.”

Gabriel leaned back, relieved.

He had to admit, he’d been worried. No man liked being set up, no matter how good the reason. But maybe it was the blood connection, maybe it was Carrick’s “Life is a game” attitude, but the guy seemed to honestly admire Gabriel’s deception.

The waitress popped up again. “Hi, I’m Asta, and I’m here to wait on
you
. What can I get for you two gentlemen?”