Haunting Rachel (24 page)

Rachel found herself crossing the room to her dresser without thought, but when she stood before the closed leather jewelry box, she went still. Absurd. It was, of course, absurd to think she’d find anything inside. She’d had the box open only yesterday, after all. There was nothing unexpected in there, certainly nothing Tom could have left for her. Not ten years ago.

Not even yesterday.

Drawing a breath, she reached out and opened the box. There was nothing new in the top tray. Her familiar jewelry, nothing more, the everyday things she often wore. She lifted that tray out and set it aside. In the second compartment was also her jewelry, pieces less often worn. A few gold chains, some simple earrings, and—

A delicate gold identification bracelet that had not— surely had not—been there the day before.

Rachel lifted it out slowly. Her name was etched in script on the front. On the back, also in flowing letters, was another inscription.

A birthday present. Except that her birthday had fallen three months after Tom’s plane had disappeared. And this was a gift she had never received.

Until now.

Ghosts.

She turned quickly, the bracelet clutched in her hand, and stared around the room. It looked just the same as always. Pretty and neat—and empty of anyone except her.

“Tom?” she whispered.

She listened, her senses straining, but there was nothing to hear.

Of course there was nothing to hear.

Rachel returned the bracelet to the jewelry box and replaced the top tray, telling herself that this, too, could be explained. Tom could have brought stationery from outside the house, the similarity to what she owned now mere coincidence. She had been so in shock and numbed by grief after Tom’s death that she could have missed a gift already left for her to find. Could have overlooked it in the bottom tray. Of course she could have.

But for ten years?

Maybe she really was losing her mind.

For the rest of the day, Rachel pretended that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. She went back to going through the furniture that Darby and her men had brought up from the basement, and it was nearly four that afternoon
when Fiona summoned her to the study, where Graham waited for her.

“Rachel, are you all right? Why the hell didn’t you call me?”

For just a moment, she wondered how on earth he had found out, but then she realized what he must be referring to. Leaving the study door open behind her, she came into the room and perched on the arm of a chair near her father’s desk. “I’m sorry, Graham. I was so shaken up, I just didn’t think about it. How did you hear?”

He thrust a folded newspaper toward her. “This.”

It was a brief article on an inside page and below the fold. A couple was injured slightly when a car came up onto the sidewalk and nearly struck them. The driver fled the scene of the crime. Her name and Adam’s, but virtually nothing else.

Rachel shook her head and handed the paper back to him. “Well, at least they didn’t make a big deal about it.”

“Is that a bandage on your hand?”

“It’s just a sprained wrist, Graham. I’m fine. A bit sore today, but I’ll recover. Thanks to Adam.”

Graham took a couple of steps away and turned to face her, leaning back against her father’s desk. “It’s always thanks to him, isn’t it, Rachel?”

“I would have been killed if he hadn’t been there.”

“Yeah? Maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all if he hadn’t been there.”

“You’re still convinced he’s the one who’s trying to hurt me? Just your suspicions, Graham? Or something more?”

He drew a breath. “Rachel, there’s something fishy about this.”

“I know you think so.”

“All this started when he came to Richmond. And he’s
always
there,
Johnny on the spot, ready to be your hero. These
accidents
always just miss you.”

“Would you rather they didn’t?” she snapped, her own doubts and worries suddenly raw on the surface.

“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it. Rachel … a man comes to you. He’s ready—he says—to repay a huge loan your father gave him—he says. He looks amazingly like the fiancé you lost ten years ago. And he keeps playing hero and saving you from death, in the best melodramatic tradition.”

“Thanks a lot,” she said dryly.

“You know what I mean. It’s a con, Rachel. He’s after your money.”

“Graham, for God’s sake, you found the information yourself. He has a company doing well out in California.”

“That doesn’t mean it couldn’t do better with more money to spread around.”

She shook her head. “You’re wrong.”

“I don’t think so, Rachel.”

She didn’t know why she didn’t tell him about the notebooks and journal they’d found. Maybe because she wanted to keep her father’s secret. Or maybe because she didn’t want to defend Adam to Graham.

“I trust Adam,” she said instead, the declaration slow and firm and hiding her doubts.

“Do you? Then ask him why he’s been out of the country more often than in during the last five years. Ask him if he can run that company of his by remote control, because he sure as hell hasn’t spent much time there.”

“You’re still checking his background? Graham—”

“I won’t apologize for it, Rachel. Your father would turn in his grave if I didn’t do my best to look out for you. And I’m telling you, there’s something strange about a man
who takes regular trips to places they warn the tourists to stay away from.”

“I believe he has placed himself in dangerous situations since his release from prison….”

She crossed her arms and stared at him. “Graham, I know you have my best interests at heart. And I appreciate your concern, I really do. But I am almost thirty years old, and I can manage my own life. Whatever is between Adam and me is between
us.
Stay out of it, please.”

His mouth hardened. “I see.”

“I wish I believed you did.”

“Oh, no, I see well enough. I see more than you do. Tell him to dye his hair black, Rachel, and then see how you feel about him.”

“I am not mistaking my feelings because he looks like Tom.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No. Maybe I did at first, but not anymore. Tom’s dead.”
Even if he is still giving me presents …
“And Adam is alive. And I know the difference.”

“Rachel—”

She drew a deep breath to steady her voice. “If that’s all you came to say, Graham, then I wish you’d go. I am really sorry you and I don’t agree about Adam, but you have to realize that nothing you could say would change my feelings for him.”

Slowly, Graham said, “Yes. I see that.”

Without another word, he turned and left the room.

Rachel was dimly aware of the angry sounds of his powerful Corvette roaring away from the house, but she didn’t really listen. Graham’s anger barely touched her.

“Nothing you could say would change my feelings for him,” she whispered in realization.

How ironic, she thought dimly, that on the day she
had discovered a lost gift from Tom she had also discovered she was beginning to love another man. A man she still wasn’t sure she trusted.

“It doesn’t tell us much that’s new,” Nicholas said.

“I know.” Adam shrugged. “But at least now we see that Walsh did owe Duncan five million. And that Duncan wasn’t easy in his mind about the loan. That jibes with what he told me.”

“And no word yet from that P.I.?”

“No. I checked, and he’s still out of town. He doesn’t have regular office help, and his landlady doesn’t care where he is because he paid for the month before he left.”

“So we have no way of knowing if he did any looking into Jordan Walsh’s dealings.”

“Not as far as I can see. I, uh, checked the office. His filing system is something of a mystery, but I couldn’t find anything on Duncan or Walsh. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. I didn’t have a lot of time.”

“Did you find out if he had a security system before you picked his lock?”

“I took a chance.”

Nicholas shook his head and leaned back in his desk chair. “I just know I’m going to be bailing your ass out of jail before this is over.”

“Think positive. Are you any closer with Walsh?”

“Maybe. Finessing that guy is a lot like dancing with a tiger. One wrong step and the music stops for good.”

“Rachel is going to ask me questions about him. I’m supposed to be finding out the answers from you.”

“Tell her only as much as you have to—but keep it vague. Because we don’t know why Walsh would come after her, and we don’t know for sure that the loan Duncan
made him has anything to do with it. The ultimate answer may still lie among Duncan’s private papers.”

Adam sighed. “Well, there may be more information, but I think it’s doubtful. What else would he have?”

“A copy of the P.I.’s report, if he made one?”

“That’s a big if.”

“Granted. But possible.”

Adam nodded. “I’ll go back to Rachel’s tomorrow.”

“Yeah, well, get some sleep tonight, will you? No offense, friend, but you’re looking a little ragged around the edges. You won’t be any good to Rachel if you don’t shut it down for a few hours.”

“I will.”

If the dreams will let me.

“She has more lives than a cat.”

“It’s that watchdog of hers. Get him out of the way, and—”

“Never mind Delafield. I’m getting sick of this bullshit.”

“She’s going through her father’s papers. Do you really want to take the chance that she won’t find something?”

“I’m telling you, he didn’t know.”

“And I’m telling you, he might have. Duncan Grant was no fool. If he knew, he would have left information or evidence behind. The risk of her finding and understanding it is too great.”

“I’ve taken bigger chances.”

“Well, I’m not willing to take this one. I’ve worked too long and too hard to see this thing fall apart now because of Rachel Grant. And I’m telling you to take care of the problem.”

•   •   •

Rachel was back inside the house with all the hallways and doors, and she didn’t like it.

She wished she could find a safe place and just wait, but an overpowering urge she didn’t understand kept her moving. The hallways were illuminated only by sconces on the walls, and as she walked deeper into the house, the sconces became wrought iron and held candles, and they were fastened to walls of rough stone.

It was getting cold, cold and damp.

Dimly, Rachel could hear sounds, sounds she didn’t want to listen to. Something was hurt. Something was hurt, and it groaned and whimpered its pain. As badly as Rachel wanted to escape the sounds, they grew louder as she approached a door at the end of the hallway.

It was a cold metal door, massive in size. A heavy padlock secured it. And there was a small access opening in the door, fastened only by a sliding bolt.

The sounds came from inside.

Groans. Whimpers. And something else, something terrible.

Rachel wanted to turn around and leave. She wanted to run.

She wanted badly to run.

Completely against her will, she saw her trembling hand stretch slowly out toward the small access door. She could hear her own breathing, rapid and frightened, and beyond that the sounds from inside the cell.

“No,” she whispered, “I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know.”

“Open the door, Rachel.” Tom’s voice.

“No.”

“Open it and look inside.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You have to.”

“No.”

“You have to know where he’s been, Rachel. You have to understand.”

“Please…”

“Open the door.”

She saw her fingers hesitate, then grasp the bolt and slowly draw it back until she could open the access door.

“Don’t make me.” “Open the door.”

Almost sobbing, she opened the access door.

And cried out.

They had hung him from a heavy beam across the ceiling, his wrists lashed together and stretched above his head, bearing his entire weight. His back was to the door, and he was stripped to the waist. Two men stood on either side of him, and one of them held a whip.

That was the other sound Rachel had heard.

As she stared in horror, the man with the whip used the entire strength of his arm to bring the whip across the back of his victim. A back already crisscrossed with bloody welts.

A muffled groan.

Rachel beat her hands on the door, crying out, “No! Stop! Stop hurting him!”

One of the two men turned his face toward the door, but his face was a featureless mask, and his laugh was hollow.

The man with the whip turned a matching mask toward her, then reached over and slowly turned his victim until he was facing the door.

“No!” Rachel screamed.

The Adam mask the tortured man wore was horribly crushed and bloody, almost unrecognizable. Scarlet dripped
from underneath the mask, painting ghastly tracks down his throat and over his bruised chest

“No! Adam!”

One of the torturers laughed and reached out to his victim, his fingers curling into the eyeholes and the mouth hole of the mask as he jerked it away from the face beneath.

“Look! Look what we’ve done to him!”

But Rachel couldn’t look. She covered her face with her hands and screamed and screamed….

The screams were only whimpers, but Rachel’s throat ached as though she had been crying out in agony for hours.

She turned on the lamp on her nightstand and sat huddled against the headboard of her bed, shivering. It took a long time for her heartbeat to slow to its normal cadence, and even longer for the shivering to stop.

It was two o’clock in the morning.

The thought of going back to sleep was too awful to contemplate.

Rachel got up and took a long, hot shower. It eased the lingering stiffness in her body and warmed her up so that when she got out, she felt almost human.