Lynn Michaels

by The Dreaming Pool

  “Maybe you should give her some more time,” she suggested. “She’s probably more worried than angry.”

  “So am I.” Doc leaned forward and eyed Eslin soberly. “I want you out of this one, Eslin.”

  “You got me into it,” she reminded him.

  “I know that, but I want you out of it for your own safety.”

  “Oh, Doc, really.” Eslin rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

  “Don’t make faces at me. No one’s asked me to work up a psychological profile on Byrne, but I don’t need one to know that he’s a very dangerous, unbalanced young man.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Eslin told him irritably. “I’m not twelve years old, and I am taking the case. I told Ethan I would and I won’t renege.”

  “Then I think you should see this,” he said, leaning back in her chair and withdrawing a folded sheet of white paper from the inside pocket of his lab coat. “It came in Ethan’s morning mail. This is a copy we made in my office.”

  Puzzled, Eslin rose from the couch and walked to the desk.

  As he unfolded it and handed it to her, he got up from her chair and motioned her toward it.

  “I think you’d better sit down before you read it.” Eslin did, and was glad. There was no salutation, just half a page of large black script that sent an icy shiver up her back as she read it:

  By now you know who I really am and that I took your prized Ganymede away with me. The burning of your barn was a warning to cease all efforts to find him. If you don’t, I will know. If you do, you will receive further instructions from me within forty-eight hours.

  There was no signature, either, but the letter didn’t need one. An image of two black, ebony-hard eyes swam in Eslin’s mind as she laid the copy on the blotter. Doc sat on the corner of her desk, and she could feel him watching her.

  “My God,” she gasped, rubbing at the gooseflesh on her arms. “He’s only a hop, skip, and a jump away from a strait-jacket. Does Ethan want me off the case?”

  “He’s calling off the detectives so it’ll look like he’s complying with Byrne’s demands, but he’d like you to keep working on the case—although he’s leaving the final decision up to you.”

  Eslin looked down at the letter again, felt her skin crawl, and the palpable aura of worry and concern radiating from Doc. He wanted her to say no, she wanted to say no, but the thought of Ganymede in Marco Byrne’s clutches turned her stomach.

  “Has Gage seen this?”

  “Not yet. Ethan wanted to get him home first.”

  Still rubbing her arms, Eslin smiled weakly up at Doc.

  “This scares the bejesus out of me, but I can’t back out,” she told him. “You know I can’t. Doc, you know that my clairvoyance can’t be turned on and off like a light switch, I’ll keep thinking about Ganymede whether I’m on the case or not, and since I’m all Gage and Ethan have right now, I just can’t abandon them.”

  “Just this once I was hoping you could,” Doc answered, his smile as weak as hers as he stood up. “Although I really didn’t think you would. Do you want to call Ethan or shall I?”

  “You call. Maybe Rachel will answer.”

  “Fat chance.” Doc smirked. “Be careful.”

  “I always am.”

  “You know where I am if you need me.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  He left the copy of Marco Byrne’s letter on her desk and walked out of her office. When the door closed behind him, Eslin went to the window and looked out at the courtyard built in the center of the Harwood quadrangle.

  Shaggy, winter-drab evergreens ringed two round reflecting pools that gazed like glassy black eyes at the flat winter sky. As Eslin gazed down at the courtyard, a snatch of wind rippled the surface of the twin pools and she shivered. In the back of her mind a voice stirred, a bleak, wrenchingly sad murmur that sounded uncannily like the fountain in the atrium at Roundtree.

  Chapter 11

  Beyond the high-backed, burnt-orange chair Gage had drawn close to the fireplace, the sun-room lay in gloomy, shadowed twilight. The bourbon glass in his left hand was empty and so was the crystal decanter he’d carried in from the study. He was just drunk enough to imagine that the darkness closing in on him was symbolic of his and Ethan’s angry shouts, Blaine Aldridge’s desperate pleading, and his mother’s tears.

  All he’d been able to do lately was make her cry. He used to make her laugh, but he couldn’t remember how to do it anymore. Maybe he was drunker than he thought. Maybe the fire would go out soon and the night would swallow him whole.

  He leaned his head against the tufted back of the chair. His stomach burned; so did his right shoulder and his eyes. He closed them, but the image of the fire wouldn’t go away. It leapt and crackled inside his head.

  “Didn’t the doctors tell you not to drink while you’re taking medication?”

  It was his mother’s voice. A second later a lamp clicked on, and even though his eyes were closed, Gage winced at the glare.

  “I’m not taking pain pills,” he told her tiredly.

  “Oh, I see. You prefer to drink yourself into oblivion. Didn’t you learn anything watching your father die?”

  When he opened his eyes he saw her sitting on the hearth glaring at him. Her hair was mussed and her eyes still red.

  “Let’s leave him out of this, shall we?”

  “How can we?” Rachel retorted.

  “Why can’t we? He’s dead.”

  “Gage, what’s the matter with you? You carried on as if Blaine was the one who’d doused the barn with kerosene—”

  “Oh, yes,” Gage interjected bitterly, “Saint Blaine of Aldridge. Paint him red and call him a martyr.”

  He’d meant to be sarcastic, not venomous. Rachel looked at him sharply.

  “I don’t know you anymore,” she said, her voice low and tight. “Since Ganymede disappeared—”

  “You never knew me,” he cut her off. “Never.”

  He knew he was being cruel, but couldn’t seem to stop himself. Rachel rose beside his chair and looked down at him, tears welling in the corners of her eyes.

  “If I thought you had any idea what you were saying,” she said shakily, “I’d slap you.”

  For another moment or two she stood looking down at him, then fled the sun-room. Her footsteps echoed across the atrium and up the stairs.

  Oh, God. He hadn’t meant to rage at Blaine or Ethan or to make his mother cry.

  The fear had made him do it, the cold, sick fear that had clutched his gut as he’d stepped out of Ethan’s Lincoln and into the house. It welled up in him now as he thought about it, a thick, nauseating wave of horror. Bile rose in his throat and he turned his head to one side, trembling and listening to the blood pound in his ears.

  There were round-the-clock security guards on the stables now and outside the house, but the guards weren’t enough. Burning the barn was only the beginning. Something else was going to happen. He knew it.

  One of them was in danger. He didn’t know which one, what was going to happen, or when—that’s what terrified him.

  Let it be me. Oh, Christ, let it be me. He covered his burning eyes with his hand and nearly choked on a sob. Not my mother, please not my mother. Or Ethan. His throat swelled and ached. Dear God, not my brother. Oh, Jesus, not Ethan, he begged, and began to cry.

  Chapter 12

  A little after seven o’clock Tuesday evening Eslin finally left the Harwood. Once she’d started the engine and turned on the defroster of her silver-blue Toyota, she leaned back against the headrest and gave the windows a moment to clear. As she yawned, and realized that she hadn’t heard from Doc all day, a shadow swept out of nowhere. Flipping on the dome light, she whirled around, wide eyed, to look at the backseat. Her umbrella was the only thing there.

  Just because you aren’t paranoid, her little voice whispered to her, it doesn’t mean there’s no one out to get you.

  A hackle-raising claw of uneasiness clutched at her insides as she straightene
d behind the wheel, her eyes flicking from the side mirror to the rearview mirror and back again. There was no one there, of course, but then Eslin didn’t want, or need, to see him. She felt him—finally—just beyond the reach of her senses. And that was enough.

  Frowning, she switched on the headlights. Fine time to develop a case of tunnel vision, she thought irritably, as she backed the Toyota out of its space and guided it toward the exit. How long had he been out there watching?

  Probably since Saturday night when the image of the shiny, ebony-hard eyes had engulfed her on the gallery at Roundtree. Good going, Eslin, she cursed herself, her right hand tightening around the steering wheel as she turned the Toyota out of the parking lot onto the street. Some creep out there’s playing “I spy” and you’re so busy playing love-struck teenager over Gage Roundtree that you can’t even recognize the danger signals when they smack you between the eyes.

  She didn’t know who it was, but she knew who it wasn’t. It wasn’t Marco Byrne—she’d know him. Whoever was watching her was someone Byrne had hired, of that she had no doubt; and more than likely he’d been doing more than watching. Quite possibly he’d been dousing barns with kerosene and striking matches, only she’d been too busy indulging her romantic fantasies—

  Oh, forget that, she thought and sighed disgustedly. The important thing now, the only thing, was to find the watcher. And maybe Marco Byrne too.

  It wasn’t really raining, just misting heavily, and she flicked the windshield wipers on intermittently. The headlights of oncoming cars bled across the wet streets, making her tired eyes feel gritty. If she thought about it long enough, she could probably give herself a headache. Instead, as she drove home, she reviewed the last seventy-two hours. She’d made an effort to keep her eyes open for anything or anyone unusual, but she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary at home or at work. Nonetheless, she felt a claustrophobic certainty that the shadow was drawing closer.

  Of all the things Eslin was, frightened wasn’t one of them. She’d been followed before, not for the same reason, but followed nonetheless. She thought fleetingly of the Santa Barbara police detective she’d surprised by walking up to his car one day in the Safeway parking lot. She’d smiled at him and he’d sheepishly tried to shrink down in his seat as she’d leaned through the open window to assure him that the minute she got a lead on the missing person they were looking for she’d call him. Policemen were suspicious people. Those who couldn’t accept clairvoyance tried to prove her a fraud or an accomplice in the case. She’d never figured out which of those things that police detective had thought she was, but he’d never followed her again.

  As she turned the Toyota around the corner onto her block, Eslin slowed down and studied her little white stucco house. It stood gray and serene in the cloudy darkness, the closest streetlamp casting a pool of pale light across the driveway as she turned into it and eased the Toyota into the carport attached to the house. She switched off the lights, the wipers, the engine, and pushed her door open. She never locked the car when she parked it in the port, but she hesitated on the step outside the kitchen door, then went back to the Toyota and did so. Silly, she thought, as she unlocked the kitchen door.

  For one horrible second as her fingers fumbled for the wall switch, the shadow wrapped around her, feeling as thick and heavy as a shroud, then lifted and vanished as the hanging Tiffany lamp illuminated the dinette. See, Eslin told herself, as she shut and locked the door behind her and took off her coat, there’s nothing there. She walked around the dinette table, flipped on the light over the sink, and walked into the semi-dark living room. The hair on the back of her neck rose, and she quickly turned on all three table lamps.

  Tired, I’m just tired, she kept telling herself as she went from room to room switching on every light in the house. Very slowly, the shadow that had flickered just beyond the edge of her consciousness faded in the hundred-watt glow of the lamps.

  After she filled the tea kettle and set it on the stove to boil, she wondered if she should tell someone that she was being watched. But whom should she tell?

  Ethan was the logical choice, but when she lifted the telephone receiver, it was Doc’s number her fingers dialed. She expected his houseman Perkins to answer, but was surprised and relieved when Doc answered the phone.

  “I tried to call you a while ago,” he said.

  “I just got home,” Eslin told him.

  “We only pay you for forty hours a week. Are we giving you too much work?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle. Have you spoken to Rachel yet?”

  “No. She won’t return my calls.” He paused. “I did send her flowers yesterday. I know she got them, I checked with the florist.”

  Poor Doc.

  “What did you send her?”

  “Two dozen roses. Overkill, maybe, but she told me once that Edward never sent her flowers.”

  That didn’t surprise Eslin. Gage hardly seemed the type who’d shower a woman with bouquets either.

  “So is there something I can do for you?” Doc asked.

  He sounded hopeful, and for a moment or two Eslin considered telling him about the person who was watching her.

  “Not a thing,” she replied lightly. “I didn’t see you today so I just called to say hi.”

  “I had a lot on my mind,” he said slowly, “as I’m sure you do.” He paused again, and Eslin could almost hear him wondering if he dared ask her: Anything on Ganymede?

  Tell him, her little voice urged. Her lips parted to do just that, but the memory of Doc’s dragging her away from Roundtree, and his firm warning to drop the case the day before, “I want you out of this one, Eslin,” stopped her.

  “No, nothing yet,” she lied. “I’ve been too tired. Let me know if you hear from Rachel, won’t you?”

  “You’ll be the first,” he assured her. “Get some sleep.”

  “I’ll try,” she replied with a wry smile. “Good night, Doc.”

  “Good night, Eslin.”

  Sighing, she hung up the receiver and reached for her wallet. She took out the card Ethan had given her. What if Gage answers, she wondered, her heart beginning to pound and her fingers slipping nervously on the push buttons as she punched the seven digits printed on the card. She needn’t have worried; a soft female voice, probably Josefina’s, said good evening in lightly accented English. Breathing a sigh of relief, Eslin gave her name and asked for Ethan.

  While she waited, the kettle came to a boil, shrieking and spitting water over the spout. Eslin made a pot of tea, let it steep, and had just poured herself a cup when Ethan came on the line.

  “Sorry, Eslin.” He sounded harried. “I thought I’d never get rid of Kroenke. Very persistent fellow—’course, I suppose that makes him a good detective.”

  “Did he have a lead for you?” she asked hopefully.

  “No. He was trying to talk me out of pulling him off the case. I explained it would only be temporary, and that you’d be on it in the meantime. That finally seemed to satisfy him.”

  “That’s good, I suppose. Did you follow through on hiring security guards for the Stables?”

  “Yes, round the clock. They’re keeping an eye on the house too.”

  “Oh, good.” She sighed, relieved.

  “I don’t suppose you have a lead for me?”

  “Nothing that you don’t already know. He’s watching—I mean, someone’s watching. I just wanted to make sure you’d taken precautions. Not that I doubted—”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, Eslin,” Ethan interrupted. “Maybe you should come out here. That If-you-don’t-I-will-know business in Byrne’s letter was probably a bluff or a scare tactic, but better safe than sorry.”

  The shadow flickered through Eslin’s mind again, and though it made her feel uneasy, it didn’t frighten her. The idea of seeing Gage, of being so close to him—now, that frightened her.

  “It’s very thoughtful of you, Ethan,” she said, “but I’m perfectly safe here. Ma
rco Byrne doesn’t know anything about me.”

  “You’re probably right, but I just want you to know you’re welcome here. By the way, I haven’t told Gage about the letter yet. He still looks like death walking, so I decided to hold off on it till tomorrow.”

  “I think that’s best. I’ll call you as soon as I have something. Good night, Ethan.”

  “Thanks for calling, Eslin, and thanks for sticking with us. Good night.”

  Eslin hung up the receiver and carried her tea with her to the stove. While she drank it, she fried two slices of bacon and scrambled an egg. Drowsiness stole over her while she ate, but she didn’t really notice it until she got up to carry her dishes to the sink. She felt it then, a weakness in her knees, and stifled a yawn as she twisted the stopper into the drain and turned on the hot-tap full blast.

  She yawned twice more, eye-watering, jaw-stretching yawns, while the sink filled. Her arms felt as if they belonged to someone else and her brain felt slow and fuzzy. Squirting soap into the water with one hand and shutting off the faucet with the other, Eslin left the dishes to soak and refilled her mug. She had to blink to keep her eyes open as she carried it to her bedroom, where she began to undress.

  Pajamas required too much effort, so she slid into bed in her underwear and snuggled under the comforter with the Byrne dossier and Ganymede’s baby book. Some of her fatigue subsided then, and she opened the manila folder. Three times she read through it, then turned her attention to Byrne and Ganymede. The stallion had one eye rolled toward the camera, but Byrne looked straight into the lens. His eyes were still shiny and ebony-hard, but Eslin felt no tug, subliminal or otherwise, at her mind. She traced her right index finger along the smooth curve of Ganymede’s back, watched the lamplight glisten on the glossy finish of the paper.

  Under the light pressure of her finger the photograph slid to one side revealing the typed, statistics-packed police report. Though she’d already read it three times, Eslin read it again. This time her eye caught on Marco’s mother’s name—Magdalena. No maiden name. Just Magdalena Byrne. Why did that sound familiar? Not the name necessarily, but something about the rhythm….