Midnight Jewels

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Mercy heard the relentless chopping sound of the rotor blades within minutes after she parked her car amid the trees as Isobel had stipulated. She got out slowly and watched as Isobel set the helicopter down in the middle of the meadow with absolutely no regard for the wildflowers.

  Croft would not have approved.

  Clutching Valley, Mercy moved toward the idling helicopter. Isobel sat inside, signaling imperiously for Mercy to hurry. The cabin door on the passenger side was open. The blades created a wild, violent wash of air that caught at Mercy’s hair as she ducked instinctively and climbed into the cockpit.

  “You have the book?” Isobel said loudly, eyeing the packing in Mercy’s arm.

  Mercy nodded and reached for the seat belt. Her stomach twisted abruptly as Isobel lifted the helicopter back into the air. The meadow fell away beneath Mercy’s feet and the peaks of the mountains stood out like teeth against the sunset. It would be so easy for those teeth to snag the small craft and drag it down from the sky.

  The trick was to focus on something else, Mercy thought. She tried to remember what Croft had said about meditation. You had to clear your mind, concentrate on a centered, focused image…

  “Is Croft all right?” Mercy asked, wrenching her mind away from images of shattered aircraft.

  “You will soon see for yourself.” Isobel’s classical profile was not marred in the least by her reflective sunglasses. They just served to give her an added touch of exotic mystery. Her hair was in a chignon and somehow the khaki jumpsuit she wore seemed to be the height of fashion.

  “You’ll never get away with this, you know,” Mercy called above the noise of the rotor. “I know that probably sounds trite under the circumstances, but it’s true.”

  “Get away with what? The book is ours. We are merely retrieving it.”

  “You tried to kill us!”

  “Nonsense. You both got drunk and went for a joyride down the mountain at midnight. You’re lucky you both survived.”

  “Tell me something, Isobel. Do you like doing this kind of thing for a living?”

  “You tell me something, Miss Pennington. Have you ever been so dirt poor that you had to sell your body to a man for the night in order to have enough to eat?”

  “No, and I don’t believe you’ve ever been that poor either. There are always alternatives.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a sheltered, naive little creature. Well, I have been that poor and I am very determined never to be that poor again I am determined that no man will ever use me again. I am the one who will use them. One of these days I will be controlling people like Erasmus Gladstone and his kind. I will do whatever I must to achieve my goals.”

  Mercy heard the conviction in her voice and decided there was nothing more to be said. She sat back in her seat and concentrated on keeping her stomach under control. In the end she had to close her eyes against the images of deep ravines and clawing peaks. Once more she sought for the calm circle of light within herself.

  The trip wasn’t quite as bad as she had anticipated, but the faint relief she felt on that score was wiped out by her fear of what awaited her at the other end of the trip.

  When she opened her eyes twenty minutes later, Mercy saw that Isobel was making her descent into the compound of Gladstone’s estate. The sun had set and the last of the twilight was rapidly turning into darkness.

  “Inside,” Isobel ordered as she shut down the helicopter. “Erasmus is waiting for you.”

  “Geez, if I’d known that I would have hurried.” Mercy slowly unbuckled the belt. She half expected Isobel to snatch Valley from her grasp, but the other woman made no move to do so. Instead she walked beside Mercy toward the main entrance of the house. The dogs barked from inside their wire pen.

  The door opened as the two women approached. Gladstone stood on the threshold, looking very much as he had the day he had welcomed Mercy and Croft to his luxurious mountain fortress. The difference this time was that he held a gun in his right hand.

  “Come in, my dear, I am relieved to see you again. You have given us a great deal of trouble.”

  Mercy wrinkled her nose and glanced at Isobel, who was silently escorting her toward the door. “Do you really like taking orders from this bozo? You could do better than him, you know I don’t think Gladstone is the world’s most reliable employer.”

  “If you are wise, you will watch your tongue,” Isobel advised coolly. “You are nothing but a nuisance in this affair. Now that we have the book, there is not much reason to keep a nuisance around.”

  Mercy wondered when she should mention that the microfilm was no longer inside the spine of Valley. She decided to wait until she saw Croft. Perhaps he would have an idea of how best to play their last ace.

  Gladstone saw the book in Mercy’s grasp and nodded approvingly at Isobel. “I see you have made up for some of your recent incompetence, Isobel. We now have the book and soon we will have this entire affair under wraps. Here,” he handed the gun to Isobel. “You can take care of this. You know how much I dislike weapons. They are your responsibility. Give me the book.”

  Isobel inclined her head in acknowledgement as she accepted the gun. She held the weapon with the case of long familiarity as she motioned Mercy inside the house.

  Mercy held her breath as she saw Erasmus give Valley a cursory glance. He didn’t seem concerned with what he saw. Probably because he didn’t think she had the brains to have uncovered his secret, Mercy decided grimly.

  “You certainly are handy to have around the place, Isobel,” Mercy remarked as she stepped into the marble hall.

  Gladstone chuckled. “Most useful, except when she makes a mistake as she did last night. Isobel is my bodyguard and my personal servant, Mercy. My safety is her responsibility. She is also in charge of making sure I get what I want. She knows that if she fails in either capacity she will no longer be of any use to me. You made her quite nervous last night, my dear, when you managed to pull your lover out of the swimming pool.”

  Mercy stopped and turned to stare at Isobel. “What about Dallas and Lance? Just a couple of extra servants?”

  “Dallas and Lance reported to me,” Isobel answered. “I made certain when I hired them that they could do no lasting damage to Erasmus in the event they screwed up and got picked up by the police. Their records are against them, you see. And we knew things about them that were not on their prison records, things that would have sent them back to jail for life.”

  “So you kept them under control with blackmail?”

  Gladstone smiled. “I also paid them very well. They were reasonably content, I think, until recently.”

  “You sent them to get Valley that night at the motel, didn’t you?” Mercy asked.

  “When we learned you had brought someone with you Isobel became worried,” Gladstone explained genially. “Falconer’s presence raised several disturbing questions. She decided to find out what she could about your little surprise by sending Dallas and Lance to the motel to have a look through his room. She also decided that we might as well pick up Valley in the process just to make certain some elaborate switch hadn’t been executed. If matters were falling apart unexpectedly, we would at least have our hands on the book.”

  “But you didn’t get hold of it.”

  “Unfortunately we were forced to go back to the original plan, which meant letting both of you into the estate.” Gladstone said. “We felt the situation was controllable and we had to get the book. You didn’t particularly concern us, of course. We were almost certain you were exactly what you appeared to be, an innocent little bookseller who had lucked into an important find and who wanted nothing more than to make a legitimate deal. We invited you to deliver Valley in person because we wanted to make absolutely certain you didn’t know the true secrets of the book. We thought we could tell that by having you under our roo
f for a few days. Genuine naivete and stupidity are not hard to diagnose. But Mr. Falconer was something else. We could learn nothing about him in the short span of time we had available, and that struck us as dangerous.”

  Mercy swallowed. She must not let her imagination drive her crazy, she told herself. She must stay calm and controlled. “How did you know I’d put Valley in the motel safe that night’“

  “The night clerk mentioned it when Dallas asked a few questions and offered him a small bribe. The clerk was also obliging enough to tell Dallas where the combination was kept. We chose that motel for you precisely because we knew the clerk had a drinking problem and would be manageable.” Isobel regarded Mercy with a gimlet gaze. “Dallas and Lance were instructed to make the robbery look like the work of a thief who was interested in getting everything he could, so they hit a few of the guest rooms as well as the safe. Dallas decided to try your room when they found the safe empty. But you apparently woke up at an inopportune moment.”

  Gladstone smiled charmingly “It’s unfortunate for both you and Mr. Falconer that you awoke when you did that night. If Dallas and Lance had been successful in retrieving Valley, we might have canceled our invitation to you both and sent you away when you arrived at the first gate. As it is…” He let the sentence trail off into a small, regretful shrug.

  Mercy stared at him. “I don’t believe you. You would still have wondered who Croft was and why he was with me.

  Isobel smiled. “She’s not as stupid or as naive as she looks, Erasmus.” She turned to Mercy. “You’re quite right. Mr. Falconer was an unknown factor in the equation and we could not afford to ignore him. We would probably have had to arrange an accident for him sooner or later, just to be on the safe side. You might have been luckier.”

  “I doubt it,” Mercy said dryly. Isobel merely smiled. “Are you going to take me to Croft?”

  “He will soon be joining you.”

  Mercy allowed herself to be nudged toward the staircase that led down to the garden room. “Where is he?”

  Mercy halted at the glass doors, turning to pin Isobel with a savage glance. “He isn’t here? You said you’d captured him!”

  “We will capture him, Mercy, using you as bait.”

  Mercy felt ill. Croft was going to be furious. For some reason that was her chief concern at the moment. She pushed it aside and made one last effort. “Why do you need to draw him into a trap? You’ve got your precious book.”

  Gladstone nodded. “True, but I am a careful man, Mercy. I do not like to leave any loose ends. And I’m much afraid your Mr. Falconer constitutes a very dangerous loose end. Much more tidy to get rid of him before he can do any more damage.”

  Mercy was nearly blinded by her own fury. She had been so stupid. Now she had put Croft in danger as well as herself. She reached for the glass door and yanked it open, wanting Isobel to think she was going to make a dash for the cover of the gardens.

  Isobel reacted instinctively, stepping toward Mercy in an attempt to grab her. But instead of dashing futilely out into the gardens, Mercy whirled around and startled Isobel by hurling herself toward the other woman.

  “Damn you!” Isobel raised her gun hand in a desperate effort to ward off the whirlwind, but Mercy managed to collide with her and knock her to the ground.

  There was a brief, savage scramble on the steps. Mercy concentrated her attention on getting hold of the gun. She tried everything she remembered from her short course in self-defense, but in the end it was all useless.

  Erasmus Gladstone simply stepped forward and slammed the copy of Valley against the side of Mercy’s head.

  Mercy didn’t sink into unconsciousness, but she saw stars for several seconds.

  By the time she had recovered from the dazed sensation she was being pushed into Gladstone’s rare book vault.

  The heavy door closed immediately with a final sounding thud.

  Α terrible silence and an even more terrible darkness descended instantly.

  Chapter 19

  C roft stood in the shelter of a stand of aspen and watched the helicopter set down inside the Gladstone compound. The last of the twilight was going quickly, but the lights installed around the high walls gave a clear view of what was happening. A bleak anger tightened his gut as he watched Mercy get slowly out of the craft and start toward the front door.

  As soon as he had heard the ominous sound of the helicopter returning to the estate, Croft had been prepared for the fact that something had gone very wrong. Now he knew just how wrong. Mercy was Gladstone’s prisoner.

  From his vantage point on the hillside Croft watched as Gladstone appeared in the doorway. A moment later Isobel, Mercy and Gladstone disappeared inside the house.

  “Shit.” Croft stared at the empty compound.

  It didn’t take much of an exercise in logic to figure out that Gladstone planned to use Mercy as bait. Croft decided he could assume Mercy had been told that Croft, himself, was already a captive.

  And she had come dashing recklessly to his side, even though it had meant flying in the small copter and facing Gladstone’s gun. Croft shook his head, thinking about how much Mercy must love him. She would do just about anything for him, apparently.

  Except obey orders. She really did have a thing about doing what he told her to do. When this was all over, he was going to make love to her until she was limp, and then he would read her the riot act on the subject of staying put when he told her to stay put.

  Whereupon, Croft decided, she would probably tell him she was not a dog, that she didn’t like someone else telling her what was good for her, and that anyone who had as much trouble dealing with authority as Croft did had no right to give her lectures on following orders.

  When that argument was done, he would give up trying to reform her and just take her to bed again.

  But first he had to get her out of Gladstone’s compound and that wasn’t going to be easy. Getting in was no problem. He had already figured out how he was going to do that. Getting at Gladstone might be more complicated, but Croft was confident he could handle it. Isobel was a factor, but she could be dealt with if she got in the way.

  The problem, Croft realized, was to get Mercy out of there before he went back for Gladstone. Mercy was the number one priority. As long as he was in Gladstone’s hands, Croft was also held in check. Apparently Gladstone had figured that out for himself.

  Croft continued to stand silently in the trees for a while, thinking. He was distantly aware of the chill in the night air, of the breeze that was making the aspen leaves shiver and of the sounds of the night around him. He let himself meld with his environment, accepting it and being accepted by it. Then he started to think as Gladstone would think.

  It was possible Mercy would be locked in an upstairs bedroom. It was also possible she was being held downstairs at gunpoint. But as things stood now, Gladstone and Isobel didn’t quite know what to make of Croft. He was a mystery to them, an unknown factor. They wouldn’t know when or where to expect him. As far as they knew he might be keeping to the original agreement, in which case they wouldn’t see him until dawn.

  But they would have to be prepared for the possibility that Croft might try something unexpected, in which case Gladstone and Isobel would want their hands free. They wouldn’t want to have to worry about Mercy. She was merely a nuisance to them at this point. People like Gladstone and Isobel frequently made the mistake of not taking people like Mercy seriously. They didn’t look beneath the surface. They would keep her alive until they had Croft, but they wouldn’t want to be bothered with her until they had achieved their main goal. They would want her out of sight and out of the way.

  The vault was the most secure room in the household, a natural and logical choice as a jail cell. It would be much more secure than an upstairs bedroom and much less taxing on the captors than holding a gun on Mercy for several hours. An
d instinct told Croft the vault was more than it appeared to be at first glance, just like Gladstone/Graves, himself.

  Gladstone, Croft decided finally, would probably have stuffed Mercy into the vault and locked the door. Mercy wouldn’t have a chance of figuring out how to open the trap from the inside.

  Croft turned the logic over in his mind one more time and decided it was sound. The vault was the first place to go looking for his sweet, reckless Mercy. If she wasn’t there he would go through the house until he found her.

  He continued to stand among the aspens for a long while, letting dark settle in around him until it dominated everything. The lights blazing on the compound walls were the only bright spot in the enveloping shadows, and as far as Croft was concerned, their glow would prove to be only a futile attempt to hold back the night.

  He could see twin spots of darkness moving about in the compound now. The Dobermans had been released. The dogs were the least of Croft’s worries. He understood them and they responded accordingly.

  The easiest way into the compound was over the wall at the back of the house. He would have to avoid the electronic security cameras, but that would be no problem. The discreet monitors were set up to see human beings, not ghosts, he told himself wryly.

  The next step was to get to the helicopter and the one remaining vehicle that stood inside the walls. A few minutes with the machines was all he needed. After that he would enter the house.

  He took a deep breath of the clear, cold air, letting the energy of it sift through his senses. The darkness was a friend and companion. He was a shadow among shadows. He followed paths that could not be seen by others; moved with a silence that could not be detected by others. All this was natural to him. He was a part of it.

  The night was his.

  Inside the vault Mercy fought a silent battle within her mind. She had thought at first she would be able to handle the confined sensation, especially after she managed to find the interior light switch. After the utter darkness, the illumination was a blessed relief.