Just Believe (3 page)

"Unusual. What's he like?"

"Don't know. Haven't met him. Lucas
says he's really busy and not very sociable. He's a professor at
the University. Celtic Lit."

"All right, Erin. I'll find him, but
you'd better be ready to accept the truth, whatever it
is."

A fleeting shadow of fear crossed
Erin's eyes, and a long moment passed before she answered. "I
will."

Annabelle sat by Erin's side even after
her sister drifted back to sleep, and spent the remaining hours
until daybreak trying to doze in the chair or watching--for what
she didn't know-out the large window. After their mother came to
take Annabelle's place at Erin's bedside, Annabelle left the
hospital on her mission.

Naturally, she checked Lucas's
apartment first.

As she raised her hand to knock, the
door flew open. She jumped back a step, expecting someone to come
out.

An empty moment stretched into two.
Still no one appeared at the door.

"Hello!" She peered inside the open
doorway. "Anyone home?"

Annabelle waited a moment, listening
for an answer. Her eyes focused on a hallway, one she guessed led
to the bedroom. About to enter the apartment, she stepped across
the threshold, but froze at the sound of a crash, followed by
shattering glass.

"Who's there? Lucas?" Her conscience
rang an alarm at entering a person's home without an invitation.
But Lucas Riley was practically family.

Was it Lucas smashing up his
home?

Her breath caught in her throat as she
took in the state of the apartment. Sofa cushions lay on the floor
and the desk in the corner had been swept clean, down to the
desktop computer that sat precariously on the edge. A squat
bookcase standing beside the desk was empty. Books and magazines
had been strewn all over.

Somebody had been looking for
something. Or maybe Lucas was just a terrible
housekeeper?

Her gaze fell on the far door, her ears
anxious for more signs of the intruder who was tearing up the
place. She crossed the tiny foyer in small, tentative steps and
stopped at the corner of the kitchen pass-through.

An angry sound, like the shaking of a
crystal chandelier in an earthquake crystallized in the silence. It
was a twinkling, agitated sound, one she'd have said was a curse if
there had been words.

"Who's there? Come out here before I
call the cops!" Annabelle knew how stupid it was for a perfect
stranger to be threatening to call the police to an apartment she
herself had practically broken into. But before she could make
herself leave, another, completely different twinkling sound rang
from the bedroom.

"All right, I'm dialing," she bluffed.
Annabelle was drawn to the commotion in the bedroom. Comforted that
the sound didn't remind her of the rustling of sheets, she was
certain someone was searching Lucas Riley's bedroom. She also knew
in another situation, she'd be out the door and really calling the
cops, but this time, she hesitated, oddly bereft of
fear.

She took step after step down the
hallway, toward the intruder. She wanted to see the person. It was
so important to see who this was.

The twinkle chimed again--this time
with the sound of command.

"That's so odd," she whispered. There
were no words, but the meaning underlying the twinkling sounds was
clear.

She hadn't stopped moving down the
hallway, and now approached the door to the bedroom. It looked
pretty much as she'd have guessed a single man's bedroom would
look, not that she had much experience in that area.

Okay, no experience, but she set that
problem aside for now and gazed around the room.

A plain double bed--no headboard--sat
against the wall, small tables on both sides, surfaces swept clean.
The broken lamp on the floor explained the crash she'd heard
earlier now. The bed had an appearance of permanent mess, as though
it hadn't been made up in weeks. A medium-sized dresser faced the
bed on the opposite wall, its drawers hanging open, empty. It
wasn't hard to figure out what had happened to the contents.
Clothes littered the floor.

She scanned the room for another exit,
but saw no way the intruder could have escaped. The utter stupidity
of her actions, coming into the bedroom alone, struck her in a
flash.

Whoever had done this was still in the
room.

Annabelle swallowed a large lump of
apprehension. Her gaze settled on the closet, a small one with
folding doors. She'd lived in enough apartments to know how small
the closets could be. Whoever was in there couldn't be very
big.

And somewhere in the back of her mind,
surfacing just now, was the reporter's instinct that whoever it was
had something to do with Lucas.

Well, duh. She shook her head in
self-derision. This is really stupid, Annabelle. Get out of
here.

She turned to go -- fully intending to
hotfoot it out before she became an FBI statistic -- when a sound
stopped her in her tracks, a twinkling sound that made her want to
smile.

A laugh escaped her. "Come on now,
who's in there? I'm not scared, so you might as well come out." Not
quite believing herself, Annabelle approached the closet and pulled
on the doorknob, folding one-half of the door back.

A furious jingle rang through the air
and the clothes hanging in the closet rippled like the wake of the
Titanic. Then three sparks flew out of the closet right by
Annabelle's head.

She squeaked, her first real charge of
fright raising her voice to soprano territory. She slapped at her
hair, sure sparks from a fire were about to set her
ablaze.

But there was no fire. About to push
aside the clothes and see what was going on in the closet,
Annabelle stopped, hand in the air, and turned slowly toward the
door leading to the rest of the apartment.

Two, perfect, twinkling, shimmering
spots of light flew out the door.

Just like Tinkerbell.

She stood staring.

Annabelle shook her head to clear it.
Tinkerbell! For heaven's sake, get a grip!

She should have gotten some sleep last
night. Surely that was all this was. She was tired and the sparks
of light were only the result of fatigue.

She had a job to do. She applied
herself to picking up the clothes and laying them across the bed,
looking for a clue to Lucas's whereabouts, a matchbook from a bar,
a take-out menu, or ticket stubs from a porno house,
anything.

Finding nothing, she went out into the
small kitchen.

The sink overflowed with unwashed
dishes. After dismissing this poor housekeeping as only more
substantiation for the bachelor-slob myth, Annabelle looked again.
Then she tried to raise the top dish, using only one fingertip in
an effort to avoid the mess. Five dishes stuck one to another as
though super-glued.

Ugh. Annabelle let the pile down again
gingerly. Lucas Riley must be the world's worst
housekeeper.

Still, something didn't fit the rest of
the scene. Other than the mess in the bedroom and living room--an
obvious ransacking job--the apartment was clean, no pizza boxes
littering the coffee table or discarded newspapers or girlie
magazines carpeting the floor. Someone kept this place up. And if
he had a housekeeper, why hadn't she done the dishes? Something
didn't add up until Annabelle followed the evidence before her eyes
to the obvious conclusion.

He hadn't been here for a few
days.

This struck her as the most likely
explanation. And it made Erin's story of his disappearance more
troubling.

And those flying points of light? They
weren't UFOs. Were they?

Annabelle dropped down in the big
recliner facing the entertainment center, letting everything settle
down in her head.

There aren't any UFOs, Annabelle. You
make those stories up, remember? Still, something had flown out of
the closet, close enough to her head that she could still hear
the...how could she describe it?

Twinkle? No. It was a
tinkle.

It was time to check herself into the
hospital where she and Erin could spin yarns all day long. Only now
she believed there was something to the situation besides
self-delusion.

I am not nuts. Once didn't convince
her, so she repeated it, a sanity mantra.

There was nothing more to find here.
Not even a clue about where Lucas Riley spent his free time. With a
deep breath, Annabelle started to get up, when the phone
rang.

After three rings, the recorded message
came on asking the caller to leave his name. No wonder Erin didn't
want to admit what a snake he was. Lucas spoke in a rumbling bass
tinged with the faintest hint of an accent; so faint she couldn't
quite place it. It was about the sexiest thing she'd ever
heard.

At least that was her opinion before
she heard the caller's voice.

"Lucas? You'd better be pickin' up that
phone, boyo. Come on, now, pick up!"

Deeper, richer, the accent a bit
stronger, perhaps because of irritation? As seconds ticked by, the
caller waited. Annabelle caught her breath, waiting with him,
hoping he'd speak again.

"All right, you want to play that game,
do you? Fine. Lucas, this is your brother, Gaelen. I'm in my
office. I just got a call to a convocation, and you're invited,
too, lad, if you can fit business into your busy social calendar. I
have no idea what it's about, only Eochy said it was urgent. So get
your rear up there."

Gaelen hung up, leaving Annabelle to
shake off a feeling of loss. It was ridiculous. She didn't even
know the man. Just because he sounded sexy and handsome didn't mean
he was.

Still, such a voice couldn't be wasted
on an unassuming man. It had to be just one piece of a total
package. And quite a package it must be.

Oh,stop it! She leaned back in the
recliner and drummed her fingers on the worn arms. Concentrate on
the other Riley brother.

Of course, to find Lucas Riley she
could use his brother. The added bonus brightened the whole
scenario.

Peeking through the pile of bills and
papers on the coffee table by the telephone, Annabelle searched for
an address book or a telephone book. There was a university
catalog. Erin said Gaelen Riley was a professor of Celtic Lit at
the university, so he had to be listed. Annabelle thumbed through,
quickly locating Riley among the language department members. His
credentials were very impressive: B.A. in Linguistics from Rutgers,
master's degree from Johns Hopkins, Ph.D. from Harvard, now a full
professor at UNC.

"Pretty toney background. Wonder if
he's old money?"

His office number was listed there, so
she dialed.

"Dr. Riley's office."

"Is Dr. Riley in?"

"No, I'm sorry he isn't. May I ask
who's calling?"

Who? All her years in tabloid
journalism hadn't been for nothing.

"My name is Erin Tinker. I'm a..."
Annabelle paused so the full effect of the word would hit Riley's
secretary, "Friend of his brother, Lucas."

"Oh, Erin! I didn't recognize your
voice. It's Susie."

Uh-oh. What now?

"Oh, Susie. Sure. I didn't recognize
you either." Annabelle decided to use the misunderstanding to her
benefit. "Susie, I don't have a lot of time. Is Gaelen there? I
need to talk to him about Lucas."

"Is something wrong?" Susie was a good
friend if the concern in her voice was sincere. Annabelle felt
guilty using her like this.

"I'm not sure. I haven't seen him for a
couple of days. We had a little fight." Why not juice up the story
a little? "I just wanted to make sure he was all right."

"Gee, I'm sorry. I haven't seen him
since, I guess it was Monday."

Could it be a coincidence Lucas hadn't
been seen by a close friend since Monday, the same day of Erin's
ill-fated date with him?

"Erin?" Again Annabelle noted the
concern in Susie's voice. A needle-sharp prick of envy pierced her
heart. She didn't have a close friend who'd care what happened to
her. The only person she'd told about her trip to North Carolina
had been her editor.

"Erin?" Susie asked again. "Are you
okay? What's happened?"

Annabelle shook off her self-pity.
"It's nothing, Susie. Can you tell me where Gaelen is?"

"You just missed him. He got a call a
few minutes ago and dashed out. He said he'd be back as soon as he
could, but he didn't say where he was going. Didn't sound like he'd
be gone long, though."

The mysterious convocation he'd
mentioned in his message? Where was it? What was it?

"You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. Don't worry.
Thanks."

As Annabelle hung up the phone on
Susie's next question, she hoped she hadn't ruined her sister's
friendship with her deception.

More important, though, she'd hit a
dead end.