He came to me as if it were a call from his soul, to show me how loved I really was. I knew he would show up for me however I needed him, because life without the other wasn’t a life either one of us ever wanted to live again.
Like magic, the sheer force of our togetherness shut out the world and all of its threats for me. It made my existence safe and meaningful, gave me the experience of the only love I ever wanted. His.
I wrapped every part of myself around him as he thrust into me, slow and powerful, the sweet smell of his sweat surrounded me, the honeyed taste of his skin on my lips. Every sensation I felt in this moment was Blake as he caged me protectively in his arms. I moaned when I felt him deep in my belly and angled my hips to meet his intensity until my body vibrated and clenched with spasms. I heard Blake’s deep, guttural groan, and we fell hard into total surrender with one another.
We lay lost in each other, his delicious weight comforted me. His heartbeat strong enough for me to feel it in my own body. When it pulled my own heart into its cadence, I yielded to its strength.
The healing I’d sought, I’d found. The assurance I’d wanted, he’d given. And the sense of direction I’d craved alighted on my awareness like a feather.
“You always bring me back to the best part of me.”
He turned his head to the side to meet my glance, our warm breaths mingling between us.
His luscious mouth curled into a smile that made my heart jump our partnered rhythm.
“Because I know you, my love. No matter the lifetime, I know you.”
Chapter 22
Grace and I spoke directly and she assured us we’d be safe while we were in Savannah. I didn’t know how she could promise that, but I knew better than to underestimate her. She also insisted that Alexa come with us.
William ordered agents to escort us to the private airport, agreeing it was good for us to get out of town for a while. He also decided to cut Blake loose a while on the Gardner art. Since Blake had told William that Otto had the art stored in New York, William had kept near round-the-clock surveillance on Otto’s movements. Otto hadn’t yet led them anywhere useful.
I fought the urge to have my own conversation with William about next steps. I’d promised Blake we would talk with Grace before we made a final decision as to what to do—engage the FBI or run. I think we were both convinced that Grace would take our respective side.
Blake’s chartered jet climbed toward the clouds on its way south to Savannah, and I stared out the tiny window. When we reached our cruising altitude I exhaled fully. The physical distance from Otto gave me an undeniable shift from the dread that typically hounded me. Too, there was an increase in the sense of peace that always accompanied home. Blake must have known this would be the case.
One of Blake’s broad shoulders leaned in to my field of vision.
“You’re glowing,” Blake whispered into my ear. He laid a kiss on my temple, left his lips there just long enough to make me smile, inside and out.
“If y’all are going to do this for the entire trip, I’m going to have to move,” Alexa said from across the wood top table. We both turned in her direction.
Lex’s presentation was more plain than usual today, and it was a welcomed relief. Her beauty was usually the focal point in any room, like an extra presence that demanded too much attention.
“Fine.” Lexie picked up Cocoa. She huffed and moved to the second seating group, as far behind us as the confined environment allowed. She wasn’t used to playing second fiddle.
“I thought she was seeing someone,” Blake said when Alexa stormed off.
“She is,” I said, puzzled at her behavior. Usually she was the incurable romantic. I watched Alexa re-situate herself with audible indignance. “Oh, by the way, it’s rather a lot to have all of the female members of my family under one roof at the same time.”
“I’m used to it,” he said.
“Not like this you aren’t. I mean, I know Carolena is extraordinarily gifted, and I don’t know about Anya, but Isabella and Grace—well, they don’t hold much back. If they’re seeing it, they’re saying it. And they see way too much.”
“I haven’t had a private thought since I was born.” Blake emptied merlot from a bottle into two glasses. Welcomed, velvety nuances of raspberries, plums, and apples wafted into the air.
“Right, me either.” We clinked our glasses in a toast then took a healthy sip. “I guess what I’m saying, is… That I can’t be responsible for my family. Or what they might say. Or do. I adore them. But there is a reason why I moved to the opposite end of the eastern seaboard. And of course there will be a jab or two in my direction about how I never use my gifts enough. Or well enough.” I felt my eyes widen.
Blake smiled, his blue eyes keen and sparkling, which made me relax.
“I can handle myself,” he said soothingly.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Not that there’s any real way to warn you,” I muttered and took a full-on gulp. The wine began to work me into a calm, despite the new and constant threats from Otto.
“One thing’s for certain, though. Every woman in that house will have an opinion about my situation. A strong one. Which means we’ll have a plan in place before we leave. Sort of like making a diamond from carbon in forty-eight hours flat. I hope Grace is right in that she can keep Otto from seeing where we are.”
Blake sighed heavily and didn’t tell me that I was overreacting. He knew all the reasons why I wasn’t.
“Other than the pilot, the FAA and your family, no one knows where we’re headed. So, probably not. I’ve learned not to underestimate Otto. I think all we can say is that I hope Grace is right.”
“Right. Okay. Not that it matters anyway. The man seems to be able to get to me when he wants to.” The memory of him breaking into my private sanctuary was too fresh and my right eyelid twitched.
“Not from here on out,” Blake said. “Oh! I have something for you. Almost forgot.”
“For me?” I asked and held my eyelid stable with my fingertips.
Blake lifted his computer bag and searched through the contents. “Why do you call Grace and Isabella by their first names, but not your father and grandfather?”
“Grace left for a while when Lexie and I were kids. She took some world tour, never said good-bye. She was gone for a few years.” I stared at my hands and clicked my thumb and fingernails against one another. “Then after our father and grandfather left, Isabella became distant for a while. A long while. I guess that created a rift between mother and daughters, and grandmother and granddaughters. We started using their given names after that. It stuck.”
“Here it is.” Blake reached into the front pocket of his jeans and took out a small clear bag with a photo of my painting in it. He held it in front of me at eye level and shook it such that the small, multi-colored, irregular shapes at the bottom jumped around.
“What are these?” I took the bag and examined the thinly-sliced shapes.
“Chips.”
“Chips?”
“I knew you didn’t yet want to part with your painting,” Blake said.
“My painting… Ohhhh.” I clasped the bag to my chest.
“Those are a few pieces that came off with time. I saved them. You should be able to read those, right?”
I leaned in and kissed Blake. Then hugged and kissed him again.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Hey, Lex,” I said when I arrived next to her seat. Cocoa stood and wagged her tail long enough to get a few scratches. Then she curled up again to continue her nap.
Lex brushed her ash-blond hair away from her face, gazed out the window, and grimaced. Her green eyes were watery. I put a glass of wine in front of her and took a seat.
“Thanks.” She sucked down a large swallow, then wiped the side of her mouth with her thumb.
“What’s going on?”
She took my hand in hers and squeezed it. “I’m ruined.”
“What do you mea
n you’re ruined?” I asked.
“My career. My reputation in the art community. My show at the gallery. Everything I’ve worked for. I need to talk with the both of you,” she said. “Together. And I’m really sorry.”
We walked back to the front seating group. Blake and I sat together at the table and waited pensively for her to speak. She only stared at her hands. The jet engines provided enough background noise to cover her silence, but I couldn’t stand it any longer.
Not wanting her to suffer alone with whatever this burden was, I wrapped my hand around the emerald ring Alexa wore on her left hand and I searched for the source of her suffering. Immediately the naked, blond boy from her apartment came into view. I watched him look over his shoulder surreptitiously at Alexa, who was curled up and asleep on the couch. Only her ring watched the action from its ever-awake position on her finger. He took something from his briefcase and placed it on top of the armoire in the corner and connected a wire to a small box on the floor and out of sight. Well, out of most people’s sight. Not mine.
“What did he do? What did he put on the armoire?” I asked.
“Who’s he?” Blake asked as his glance ping-ponged between Alexa and me.
Alexa and I stared at one another in silent communication. Just as when we were little, I would often get the entire story out of her psychically so she wouldn’t have to say it out loud.
“I knew something was wrong with that situation from the moment I stepped off the elevator,” I said.
“What elevator?” Blake looked to me. “You’re going to have to back this up for me.”
“What was on the armoire?” I asked.
Alexa took her hand away and ran it across her forehead. “You know, Isabella is right. I can be incredibly self-obsessed sometimes.”
“What was on the armoire, Lex?” I asked.
Alexa sighed hard, reached into her orange hobo bag, and took out a tiny camera with a long, black wire attached, and placed it in the middle of the table.
Blake and I stared at it as if she’d just placed a snake in front of us.
“I know it’s a camera, but I’m not sure how it works.”
“It’s a motion-activated video camera.” Blake turned the device over in his hand. “It turns on automatically when motion is detected in the room and records everything in its wide angle view. Including the audio. This long wire would have been connected to some kind of Internet connection, so that the images and the audio could be received at a distance.”
“Like this?” Alexa held a small, black portable wifi box.
“That would be it. Where did you find it?” Blake asked.
“That’s what was on top of the armoire, if I’m seeing it right. My question is when. When did you find this?” I asked.
“It was on top of the armoire,” Alexa said with a cautious eye toward Blake. “And I’m not exactly sure how long it’s been in place. I found it yesterday. The cleaning lady knocked it over when she was dusting the top of the cabinet—I guess Todd didn’t think anyone would be up there to find the camera.”
“That would have been a decent guess for most homes.” Blake examined the black box.
“Except I have a German cleaning lady and she’s relentless about perfection,” Alexa said.
“Ah. To our good fortune. Who’s Todd?”
“This guy I was seeing. I thought he was someone who cared about me. I’m not what he cared about. Do you think he’s just some perv who’s selling our evenings together on the Internet?”
“What about the cleaning lady? Could she have had something to do with it?” Blake asked.
“I don’t think so. I was in my studio when she came running in with it. The wire was dangling from the camera, and she was screaming about how people were spying on me. She comes every week, dusts everything in and out of sight, so I know it was placed there since she came last. And the only person in my apartment this past week besides Addie, was…Todd. He’s the brother of the gallery owner who’s doing my show.”
Blake made no response other than to rub the fresh stubble on his chin. “Mind if I keep these? I have someone who might be able to download the images that were captured. At least maybe then we’ll know when the camera was placed and what they caught.”
Alexa shrugged. “Oh. Well, I wish you wouldn’t.” She drank more wine in several gulps. “I’m…so gullible.”
“No you’re not, Lex.” I burned with fury at Todd. He’d seen her one weak spot and exploited it in the worst way possible. “Have you tried contacting him?”
Lexie’s eyes welled up. “He hasn’t returned my calls.”
For the first time in a long while, my social-overachieving sister seemed very alone and vulnerable.
“What about his sister, Piper, who owns the gallery? Do you trust her enough to reach out to her about this? Maybe she could run an intervention?”
Lex made a face and inspected a tiny piece of thread that stood up from her sleeve. “I called her with a few questions about my show. She hasn’t returned my call. Which isn’t like her. She was really excited to have my work at her gallery.”
“Would whoever is on the other end of this video feed have seen her housekeeper disconnect the equipment? I mean, do they know that this thing is disconnected?” I asked Blake.
“At the very least he would know that the equipment’s not transmitting anymore,” Blake said.
“So, he knows the jig is up,” I said.
“Most likely,” Blake said. “Whatever he had planned for the footage, he’s probably already doing it.”
Chapter 23
Our limo drove silently between the two lines of live oaks that braided their branches in a protective arch. The wide dirt road wound beneath the spanish moss that swayed like tinsel in the breeze and gave the impression that the hundred-year-old trees were bewitched. Visitors to the Montgomery home—not that there were that many these days—often felt that the trees might lower their bend and sweep unwanted guests away at the command of their caretaker.
“Nonsense,” my grandmother always said to the rumors. But the gleam in her eye made people think differently.
Born and raised in the coveted heart of Savannah’s elite, Grace Campbell Montgomery was the daughter of one of the city’s more notorious mayors, Sanderson Campbell, III and as such she was a debutante at sixteen, educated in the city’s finest private schools, and dated the state’s wealthiest boys.
She was also the daughter of Adelise Baudin, a woman of unexplainable mystical talent and French beauty, whose psychic gifts flowed in Grace’s veins and were passed freely to her children and grandchildren.
Home appeared as it always had, like a cloudless vision from a dream with white columns and two wraparound porches, one on each of the first and second levels. Overgrown magnolias and water oaks grew wild around the pre-Civil War property that outlined the ocean, a forest of pine trees and dogwoods flanked the wide yard of soft, green grass.
“We used to have Easter egg hunts on the front lawn,” I said to Blake. “Everyone in town would dress in their Sunday finest and bring their children. It was a popular gathering for the town.”
“Daddy always hid a few eggs just for us on the Southeastern side, right under those bushes,” Alexa said and pointed to a wide, leggy hedge beneath the porch railing.
“In the shade of that maple over there Grace would have a table of deviled eggs, sliced ham, and…” I stopped to look past Blake at Alexa.
“Hot biscuits,” we said together in slow reverie.
“Those things are a buttered slice of heaven,” I said and my childhood Southern accent peeked through.
“I swear to God, Stan Parker ate twice his weight of those biscuits every year. Ruby had to make an extra batch just to cover his appetite,” Alexa said, and we laughed.
Blake nudged me and pointed out the window at the Civil War soldier who leaned against the wide trunk of an oak tree and sipped from his canteen.
“Wouldn’t be home wi
thout a few of those,” I said when we drove past him.
Grace descended the brick steps that stood rock solid between two wide, deep green palms in Grecian urns, and both Alexa and I sat up a little straighter.
Her ankle-length, navy dress with subtle pattern and sparkle flowed down her thin frame with a long, double strand of pearls in what resembled early 1900s elegance. Her bright silver hair was secured at the nape of her neck and illuminated fiery blue eyes that missed nothing. She waited at the edge of the circular drive while our limo approached, the gravel crunching beneath its tires.
Though the windows were tinted and she couldn’t see us physically, I felt the impact of her reading each of us, one by one.
“Whoa,” Blake said. He sat up straight.
“She is a force,” I said. I watched Blake while my Grandmother’s energy honed in on him. He was not unprepared for the force of it, but still visibly impressed.
When we exited the car Grace took my hand, but spoke to Blake first.
“I see you have finally shown up,” she said, not referring to his arrival in Savannah. “Blake, is it now? Addie was worth the wait, I hope.”
“She was,” Blake said confidently. He kissed the back of Grace’s hand.
Grace was also visibly impressed.
Like the good son of a gifted psychic, Blake stood in front of Grace with his defenses down, allowed her to read whatever she wanted about him. He knew she’d see his secrets, if not now, soon enough. Hiding was futile and not worth the effort.
Grace kissed Lexie and me on the cheeks, eyed our faces closely, then kissed us both again. “Fret not, girls. The battle may be won, but the war is far from over. Spin around right quick and let me snap a picture of the three of you.”
We gathered together and smiled, not entirely certain who the picture was for.
“Ruby has a late lunch ready for you on the veranda.” Grace gestured toward the open front door.
Our heels clomped on the ancient confederate blue boards that were the front porch, and I felt a cool, shielding sensation that poured over and around me. I did an about-face to the direction we’d just come from and saw the reason why—a gel-like, concave wall with static running through it.
Somewhere in Time Page 11
