Jude Deveraux (34 page)

'Eden!'
She heard an urgent whisper that she knew was Brad's.

Putting
out her hands, she went forward. He caught her hand in his and pulled her down
to the ground beside him.

'Where
have you been?' he asked, worry in his voice.

'I went
back to the car and you weren't here, so I — '

'I
think I know where Melissa might be.'

'Take
me there,' she said. 'Now.'

'Remi
is here, so don't get frightened if you see someone.'

'Remi?
The son-in-law you don't trust?' She looked at him. 'Was he hiding under the
porch of the house?'

'Yeah,'
Brad said, and she could see his smile in the darkness. 'Clever, aren't you?'

She
started to say that she'd discovered him by clumsiness, not clever deduction,
but didn't. Brad took her hand and turned to his left, away from the house, and
away from the car.

'Icehouse,'
he said over his shoulder, but then said no more. They unclasped hands, but she
could follow him easily. He walked slowly, always waiting for her to catch up.
They used no light, and they were as silent as possible.

An
icehouse, Eden thought, and knew that it was a good choice for a hiding place.
Icehouses were nearly always underground, so no lights would show on the
outside. And no screams could be heard, Eden involuntarily thought, then
shivered.

As she
watched Brad moving through the woods, she thought maybe she should tell him
that McBride was there, and that the woods were probably full of FBI agents,
but Eden said nothing. She was at the point where she wasn't sure of anything
or anyone.

It took
nearly twenty minutes to find the old icehouse, and Eden knew that Brad had to
have done a lot of research to know where it was. Or had he played there as a
child?

There
was an artificially created hill, and on the north side was a heavy oak door.
Brad ran his hands down it, feeling for the lock. There was none.

When
Brad reached to pull the door open, Eden grabbed his arm, her expression
telling him to be careful. Smiling at her, he patted her hand, then he pulled a
pistol out of the holster at his side. He hadn't been wearing a gun earlier. He
motioned for Eden to go into the trees to safety, but she shook her head. She'd
stand outside, but she wasn't leaving.

Brad
pulled the door open, and when it made no sound on its hinges, Eden knew that
they had been oiled recently. The inside was darker than the house had been.
She heard insects scuttling across the floor, but no other sound.

'Melissa?'
Eden said into the darkness, and in the next second, she heard whimpering. Her
daughter!

Stumbling
over her feet, Eden ran toward the sound. She could see nothing, but her hands
felt warmth. Frantically, she reached out and touched  
her   daughter's   big,   hard  
belly.    In seconds,  she found Melissa's face  and
pulled down the gag from her mouth.

'Oh,
Mommy!' Melissa cried. 'I knew you'd come. It's been horrible, Mommy. It's been
— '

'I
know, sweetheart,' Eden said as she felt down Melissa's arms. Her daughter was
in a chair, her hands taped together behind her. Brad turned on his flashlight,
and the little room flooded with pale light. Eden went to her knees behind her
daughter and tried to tear the duct tape off. When her fingers couldn't do it,
she used her teeth.

'Here,'
Brad asked from above her, and handed her a knife.

'Mommy,
Mommy,' was about all Melissa could say.

'I'm
sorry,' Eden said, sawing at the tape to free her daughter. 'He wanted the necklace,
so he took you. It was all my fault.' She got the tape off her daughter's
wrists, then moved to the front of her to release her ankles.

Brad
helped Eden stand up, as her knees were shaking.

'Could
you help me up?' Melissa said to Brad.

He had
to put his arms under hers to lift her, as her legs and arms had lost their
circulation. 'I think we should get out of here.'

'Too
late for that,' said a man from the doorway. He was a heavy-set man, with thick
eyebrows, and Eden had never in her life seen a man with so little life in his
eyes. There was no emotion there, no feelings.

'Who
are you?' Eden whispered.

'Somebody 
that   don't   want  no  trouble,'  the man
said, looking Eden up and down, then looking at Melissa. When Brad moved his
foot, the man turned quickly and shot him in the leg. The sound inside the
earth-encased room was deafening.

With a
scream, Melissa collapsed back onto the chair. Eden ran to Brad as he fell to
the floor.

'He's all
right,' the man in the doorway said. 'I just wounded him. You.' He pointed his
gun at Eden. 'I want you to come with me.'

'You
have the necklace,' she said.

'Yeah,
I got it,' he said, pulling it out of his jacket pocket. 'I didn't plan on
that. That skinny guy held on to it so tight I had to pry it out of his hands.'

Eden
looked at the man, trying to understand what was going on. If he didn't want
the necklace, what did he want? And if
he
hadn't taken the necklace, who
was he?

'You
gonna get up or am I gonna have to shoot the kid?' He pointed his gun at
Melissa.

'You
want the paintings, don't you?' Eden said softly as she walked toward him.

'Yeah,
sure. What else would I want?'

She glanced
down at Brad on the floor. The bullet had grazed his thigh. He was bleeding and
in pain, but she knew that he'd be all right. She walked slowly, so the man in
the doorway could see that she wasn't going to cause any problems.

'My
house is full of FBI agents,' she said calmly. 'It will be difficult to get the
paintings out of the house.'

'Your
house used to be full of agents,' the man said, 'but I got rid of a lot of
them, including the ones around here.'

Eden
tried to keep from gasping out loud. Was Jared one of the agents he'd rid
himself of? She couldn't keep the blood from draining from her face.

'Yeah,
missy,' the man said, an ugly half grin on his face. 'I got rid of your
boyfriend too.' He glanced at Brad on the floor, who was wrapping the sleeves
of his windbreaker around the wound in his leg. 'One of 'em, anyway. So which
one are you plannin' to stay with?' he asked Eden, smirking like a dirty little
schoolboy. He waved his gun at Brad. 'He know what you and McBride did in that
shed?' He looked at Brad. 'And she know what you did with your fancy dame? You
three are why I never wanted to settle down and have a family. Ever'body in bed
with ever'body else.'

'If
you're insinuating that my mother — ' Melissa began, trying to heave herself up
out of the chair.

'No!'
Eden shouted when the man pointed his gun at Melissa. Eden leaped to put her
own body between the path of the bullet and her daughter.

'Ain't
that sweet?' the man said. 'But I ain't never killed no pregnant woman and I
don't plan to. Now you,' he said, motioning to Eden, 'you come with me. I got a
couple of men waitin' to load up the paintin's, then we'll get out of your
way.'

'Mother,'
Melissa said from behind her. 'Please — '

'I'll
be all right, won't
I?'
she
said to the man.

'You
behave yourself and you'll be fine.' He stepped back in the doorway to let Eden
pass him, then glanced back at the two people in the icehouse before he shut
the door, leaving them in the dark.

Eden
walked through the night, trying not to trip on anything. She had an idea that
if she fell, the man would shoot her. In fact, she couldn't see why he hadn't
just stolen the paintings in the first place.

Far
ahead of them, behind the house, she saw the outline of a car. His? Or did it
belong to the FBI? She glanced back at the man, and he motioned for her to go
toward the car. She took another step, then tripped over something and fell to
the ground. She braced herself, expecting death.

The man
behind her pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and flicked it on. Eden had to
work to keep from screaming. Lying on the ground, his nose inches from hers,
was a man whose dead eyes were staring into hers. She put her hand in her mouth
and bit her knuckles to keep from screaming.

'He a
friend of yours?' the man asked, humor in his voice.

'I — '
Eden began, trying hard to keep herself together. The man behind her shone his
light on the dead body.

'I
asked if you know him,' the man said, this time with no humor in his voice.

'He's —
' She went to her knees to try to get up. She thought that perhaps she had been
hurt when she fell down the  steps in front of the house, and she knew
that there were thorns in her body from when Jared — She blinked to keep from
remembering him. He couldn't be dead, could he?

'He
worked for Brad,' she said when she was standing. When the man looked puzzled,
she said, 'Brad is the man you shot in the leg.'

'Oh,
him. I'm too nice. Anybody else would have killed him.'

Eden
gave him a weak smile that seemed to please him. He motioned for her to step
over the body and go to the waiting car. Eden put her head up and tried not to
think about what she was doing as she stepped over the legs of Drake Haughton,
the young man who was Brad's architect for Queen Anne. She remembered what Brad
had said in the car about the man who was demanding the necklace wanting to go
somewhere to paint. Had Drake been a frustrated artist? Had he been the one to
paint the watercolors that Tess Brewster had sent to the frame shop?

'I tell
you,' the man behind her said, 'I don't know what the world's comin' to. With
just plain, ordinary people kidnappin' and robbin' their friends, what's left
for us professionals to do?'

'You're
a professional criminal?' Eden asked, sounding as though she was asking him if
he was a plumber.

'Yeah.
Been one for years now. Most of my life, really.'

'Do you
enjoy your work?'

'Was
that one of them veiled things?'

At
first Eden didn't know what he meant. 'A veiled insult? No. I was just curious.
How did you find out about the paintings?'

'Applegate.
Or whatever he called hisself. Did you know he was a spy? I might have to kill
a few people now and then, but I'd never betray my country. But he did.'

'Was
the U.S. his country?'

'I
don't know. Hey! Whose side are you on?'

'My
daughter's,' Eden said quickly. 'Did you kill Mr. Applegate?'

'Yeah.
But he didn't do nothin' for my country. He played the ponies and owed my boss
a lot. He sold some info and paid some debts, but he'd just rack 'em up again.
When my boss got sick of him, I went to see him. He said he knew where millions
of dollars in paintin's were.'

'I
see,' Eden said, looking ahead toward the car. She was walking very slowly, but
the man didn't seem to mind. She had an idea that he thought it was a nice night
for a stroll. 'How did he find out about the paintings?'

'He
said he figured out a riddle. That's what he told my boss. Applegate said he
was good at solving riddles and he figured out the one in some book. You read
that book?'

'I
think perhaps I wrote it,' Eden said softly.

'Not
the smartest thing you ever done, was it?'

'No, it
wasn't.' She didn't add that she'd had no idea the riddle had anything to do
with millions of dollars' worth of paintings. 'He told you where the paintings
were, but you killed him anyway.'

'That's
what I was told to do,' the man said, shrugging. 'But I made him eat the paper
he wrote down your name on. I thought that would get rid of it. Who knew they'd
find it inside him? It's amazin' what they can do nowadays.'

Eden
was beginning to understand. A man with an addiction to gambling had for years
paid off his debts by selling government secrets. But when the debts
overwhelmed him, he'd been ordered killed. He'd tried to save his life by
telling what he'd figured out about a riddle in a book that had yet to be
published. But it hadn't worked. He'd been made to eat what he'd written down,
then was killed.

'I
guess your boss was interested in the riddle,' Eden said, walking even more
slowly, trying to give Melissa and Brad time to get away.

'Yeah,'
the man said. 'Real interested. But by the time we got here, the FBI was
already here — and some man was stayin' in your old house and paintin' ever'
night. It was Grand Central Station in here. I had to get rid of the agent, and
I had to ask that man what he wanted.' 'Drake.'

'Yeah,
the necklace guy. When I found out that he was crazy and didn't know nothin' I
let him go.'

'Crazy?'
Eden asked. The car was close now. 'Yeah. Said he was plannin' to be a great
painter. I thought his stuff was good, but not great. I used to watch him paint
while I was waitin' for you to show up. The FBI took a long time to get you
here.'