Fortune (43 page)

C
laire couldn't shake the sense of foreboding that pressed in on her, the feeling that Skye needed her, and that something terrible was about to happen. Those feelings had dogged her every moment since she had arrived in Chicago. She had slept little. She had eaten even less. She was exhausted and jumpy, on the verge of falling apart.

She had spent the past days buried here at the hotel, surrounded by police evidence, leaving only when desperate for fresh air or at the police's request. She had picked through the evidence with excruciating care; she had visited Becky Williams's home and neighborhood, she had visited the home of the slumber party and had talked with the girl's parents and friends.

So far, she had come up with nothing.

She shouldn't have come here; she shouldn't have agreed to try to work on this case. Claire realized that now. She wasn't even certain whether her sense of foreboding pertained to future events or were simply remnants of the past, come back to torment her.

Claire brought the heels of her hands to her eyes, working to clear her head, to focus. She hated this. She hated when she picked up nothing. Because of the parents, the friends of the family, the police. They were all counting on her, all hoping against hope for a lead, an answer—even if that answer meant facing the most awful truth.

She dropped her hands. That morning, the police had delivered the newspapers she had requested: back issues of every paper within the metro area, from a week before the abduction until now. She went to the first stack of
Tribunes,
checked the dates—she always started back and moved forward, and had asked they be delivered that way—took the first three papers and went to the desk, sat down and began flipping slowly through.

The minutes ticked past. The pages crackled as she turned them. The first paper revealed nothing. She moved on to the second. Then the third.

Claire went slowly, scanning every page. She never knew what was going to trigger a vision. Once it had been a coupon for Puppy Chow. The child had wandered off to “help a nice man” search for his missing puppy. With her help, that child had been found, and found alive.

That case had taught her something about herself, about her ability—not to take anything for granted, not to think she understood how her sight worked, or what made it work. She had been sick with a cold, she had been tired and anxious to go home. She had almost skipped the annoying mountain of coupon circulars. She hadn't, thank God. But she had always wondered what would have happened if she had skipped them. She had always wondered if that child would have been lost.

Claire turned another page, skimming her gaze over the society news, the advice columns, the engagement announcements. A photo caught her eye. She stared at it, at the picture of a smiling couple, the blood beginning to thrum in her head.

She lowered her gaze to the caption.

Griffen Monarch and Skye Dearborn.

A sound of horror, of realization, slipped past her lips. Now, she knew the source of her foreboding. Now she understood her feeling of urgency, of impending disaster.

Skye was here. In Chicago.

She was engaged to marry her brother.

Claire leaped to her feet, so suddenly her chair fell backward, crashing into the wall. Every moment counted. She felt that as surely, as clearly, as she had ever felt anything. She raced to the desk and retrieved the Chicago-area phone book.

Nearly hysterical, she flipped through, ripping the delicate pages as she went. She found the D's. Shaking, she ran her index finger down each column of names, crying out in frustration. She closed the book.

No Skye Dearborn.

She had to find her daughter; she had to warn her. Claire looked around the room, searching frantically for something, a way, an answer. Her gaze landed on the phone books Detective Baker had brought this morning. She looked at them, then back at the one before her.

It was a year old.

Claire scrambled across to the stack, rifling through it, finding the one for metro Chicago. She opened it and went to the D's.

Dearborn, Skye.

She sank to her knees, tears of joy filling her eyes, spilling over. Her baby, her Skye. She was alive; she had found her. At long last she would see her daughter again.

Claire went to the phone, clutching the book to her chest. Heart beating so wildly she could hardly breathe, she dialed the number. It rang once, then twice. The wait was agony. Claire squeezed her eyes shut, praying Skye was home, praying she answered the phone. After all these years, she didn't think she could wait another second.

A recorder picked up. Claire almost cried out her disappointment. She left a garbled, half-hysterical message, her words tripping over each other, her breath coming in shallow gasps. As she was begging her daughter to call her, the machine cut her off.

Claire dropped the receiver back into the cradle and began to pace, wringing her hands. What now? She couldn't just sit here and wait, doing nothing. What if Skye and Griffen were getting married today, this moment? Or tonight or even tomorrow?

She had to stop this. She had to find a way.

Gooseflesh crawled up her arms, and she rubbed them. She couldn't wait, she couldn't take the chance that—

Chance.

She stopped, frozen. The last time she had seen Skye, she had been with Chance. She swung her gaze to the phone book, still open to Skye's number. It was a long shot but maybe they had come to Chicago together.

She raced to the book. And found a listing for Chance McCord. She called and got his recorder. Much as she had with Skye, she left him a message, telling him where she was and that she had to see him as soon as possible.

She didn't know what to do now, but wait.

Claire went back to the newspaper and gazed at the black-and-white photo, her eyes flooding with fresh tears. She had found her daughter. Her precious daughter. It felt as if she had found a piece of herself; she felt whole for the first time in fourteen years.

A tear landed on the photo, and Claire wiped it carefully away, drinking in her daughter's image. She had grown into a beautiful woman, just as Claire had known she would. She could recall, with perfect clarity, the first time she had held her baby daughter in her arms, could recall how small and utterly sweet she had been. She could recall her first smile, her first day of school, the way they had laughed together.

Tears choked Claire. She wished she had been with her to see her grow. To help her. Just to love her. They had missed so much.

Heart aching, Claire lightly touched the photo. Now they would get a second chance. Finally, they would be together again.

If Skye would let her. If she could understand and forgive her.

She should have told Skye the truth, should have told her about the Monarchs and Griffen. And she should have kept them together, no matter what.

Claire shifted her gaze to the blurb beside the photo, realizing that she hadn't even thought to read it before this. As she skimmed the words, as they penetrated, the breath left her body. Her hand went to the gem-filled talisman around her neck. Her world seemed to shift on its axis, and she sank to the floor.

Skye worked for Monarch's. She was a designer.

Just as Adam and Pierce had always wanted. Just as they had always planned. How had this happened? Claire wondered. She had taken her daughter away; now here Skye was, twenty-two years later, completely entangled with the very people Claire had tried to free her from.

Something terrible was about to happen.

Skye needed her.

Claire stood and went to the phone. She called Monarch's and, voice shaking, asked for Skye Dearborn.

“May I ask who's calling?”

“No, it's…personal. But it's an emergency. I must speak with her.”

“I'm sorry,” the woman said. “She's in a conference. Perhaps if I could tell her the nature of the emergency?”

Claire heard another voice, a man's voice, in the background. She began to shake. Her voice rose. “I need to talk to her! It's an emergency! Tell her it's her mother.”

“Skye's mother?” The woman paused. “I tell you what, give me your number, and I'll see she gets the message immediately.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much! I'm at the Knickerbocker Hotel, suite two-twelve.” Claire recited the phone number, then thanked the woman again.

“You're welcome, Mrs. Dearborn, I'll see Skye gets—”

“Griffen Monarch here. Can I help you?”

Claire couldn't speak. Fear took her breath, her voice, her ability to think. Hearing his name spoken out loud, the sound of his voice, sent her hurtling back twenty years. Adam was above her, eyes bulging as he tried to choke the life out of her. Skye was screaming. Screaming—

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

Claire slammed down the phone, a strange rushing sound in her ears. Her heart raced; she began to sweat. A darkness settling over her, a feeling of impending disaster.

Her legs began to shake. She brought her hands to her talisman, dropping to her knees. Her vision blurred, then cleared. Her head filled with an image, one she recognized from many times before, of a dark white forest. This time she saw two figures, one fleeing, the other tracking. A game of cat and mouse, one the hunter, the other hunted. She heard a cry for help and strange, high laughter.

She doubled over, the images slamming into her. She saw an icy lake, glittering in the moonlight, saw a body struggling, then being pulled down into its cold, dark depths.

The vision shifted, then changed. Music. Jazz. Old buildings laced in curling ironwork. She saw a girl. And a young man. They were holding hands. And laughing.

It shifted yet again. She saw hands clawing desperately, saw a figure fall, rag doll–like to the floor. Claire couldn't breathe. Her eyes popped open. She was afraid. For herself. For Skye.

But not for Becky Williams. Wherever she was, she was laughing.

Skye needed her, Claire knew. She needed Claire's talisman; she needed the gems. It wasn't over yet, but it soon would be.

She had left her hotel and suite number with Monarch's receptionist. Griffen would come for her.

Fatalism settled over her, a sense that every event of the past twenty-six years, since the day in the nursery when she'd had the icy vision for the first time, had been leading to this moment.

Something terrible was going to happen. She didn't know if she could stop it.

She might never see her daughter again, after all.

Claire went to the desk, sat down and dialed Detective Baker at headquarters. When he answered, she described her vision, and what she thought it meant, in detail. That done, she took out some hotel stationery and began to write.

Skye had to know everything. She should have known long ago. Claire wished she could look into her daughter's eyes while she told her, she wished she could hold her.

But that might not be possible. She had to do this now, before it was too late.

Claire poured her heart out, telling her daughter everything—about the day in the nursery that had started it all, about Griffen's obsession and the abuse she had witnessed, about Adam and Pierce's threat to take Skye away, and about her vision and lifting the gems. She told her about Susan being killed and about her own desperate search for Skye afterward. She shared with her daughter the events that had brought her back to Chicago, of how she had spent the last fourteen years of her life, and how many parents and children she had helped, and that she had never given up hope that she would someday find and be reunited with her own daughter.

But above all, Claire let her daughter know how much she loved her. She had never stopped. She never would, she promised. Not even in death.

As she wrote, time slipped away; her sense of approaching doom growing with each passing minute.

Claire folded the letter and took the gem-filled talisman from around her neck. Emptying a box of police evidence, she tucked the letter and gems inside, retrieved Skye's address from the phone book, then wrote it on the top of the box.

Heart hammering, she glanced at her watch, picked up the box and headed down to the concierge to have it hand-delivered to Skye.

A
s she had known he would, Griffen came for her. Claire opened the door and acknowledged that she had not been wrong about him. He was the same as he had been twenty years ago only smarter, more powerful. More corrupt. When she looked into his eyes, she saw a monster. She saw a man who had no soul.

As she stared into his dead eyes, her mind tumbled back to that day in the nursery, shortly after Skye had been born.
“I'm going to marry baby Skye when I grow up,”
he had said.

He was making good on his promise.

The monstrous dark bird of her nightmares hadn't been Pierce, after all. It had been Griffen.

A squeak of terror slipped past her lips. “You can't do this.”

He smiled. “I don't like it when people tell me I can't. You should know that, Mama Madeline.”

She took a step backward, hand to her throat, going instinctively for her talisman. The gems were gone, she remembered. On their way to Skye.

Thank God she had done that. Thank God.

“We always recognized each other, didn't we, Madeline?” He followed her into the room, closing the door behind him. “No one else has ever really seen me. Did you know that?”

She took another step backward, frightened, struggling for words.

“I've always wondered, what's it like?” he asked. “Having the sight?”

When she didn't reply, he arched his eyebrows in question. “You're so quiet.” He laughed. “I know. Confronting one's past can be so difficult. Poor Skye, she hasn't been able to do it yet. Though she has these annoying little flashes of the past. And those ridiculous headaches of hers. They only succeed in upsetting her.”

He shook his head, pleased. “Repressed memory, that must have been quite convenient for you. And I have to thank you, Madeline, it's been most convenient for me, also.”

“You're completely mad,” she whispered, seeing the phone from the corner of her eye, inching for it. “Insane.”

“Ugly words. And quite untrue. The great ones are often misunderstood.”

“She's your sister!”

“She's my destiny. You tried to take her away, from me, from Monarch's. But you failed. Because it was meant to be this way.”

“Listen to reason, Griffen. You'll want children. Heirs to carry on the Monarch name. A brother and sister, the gene pool—” her voice rose, the thought of it making her sick “—they won't be right, Griffen. What will Monarch's do then?”

His expression remained passive, save for the small smile that curved his lips. Claire tried another tack. “Skye will find out, someday, somehow. Her memory might even come back. What will she think then? She'll hate you. She'll leave you and Monarch's forever. Griffen, listen to me!”

He clucked his tongue. “You're being silly and melodramatic now, Maddie. Skye and I are soul mates, we're each other's destiny. None of those things will be a problem. You're just wanting everything your way. As you always did.”

“I won't allow this.”

He laughed again; the sound chilled her to her core. “And how will you prevent it?”

She turned and lunged for the phone. She had it in her hand, her finger on the O, when he snatched it from her. With a cry, she watched as with a swift tug, he ripped it from the wall.

He shook his head and set the instrument carefully on the sofa. “That wasn't nice.”

“I won't allow you to do this,” she said again. “I won't keep silent. I'll kill you if I have to.”

“No,” he murmured apologetically. “You see, I'll have to kill you before you stop me.”

She darted for the door. He caught her easily, dragging her back. She twisted and scratched. With a grunt of pain, he released his grip and she scrambled away.

She got to her feet, stumbling for the door. She reached it; her hand closed over the knob, she opened her mouth to scream for help.

He caught her from behind, his arms going around her like a vise, one at her throat, the other at her middle, knocking the wind out of her.

He lifted her off the ground, surprising her with his strength. Claire struggled, kicking, clawing at the arm at her throat. Griffen lifted her higher. Stars danced at the edges of her vision.

Skye…baby, I'm here. I love you.

Claire squeezed her eyes shut, praying, trying to reach her daughter, trying to speak to her with her mind. Wanting to let her know…wanting to tell her…

The mantel clock chimed 4:00 p.m. Claire's eyes popped back open.

With a grunt of exertion, Griffen snapped her neck.