She was about to betray him, as well. She was going to steal from him...steal what she knew to be his most precious possession. How could she let herself make matters worse by...
If that man were to come to care for her, her guilt would be compounded.
It was bad enough, wasn’t it...that she’d let herself begin to care for him?
The phone was ringing. It woke him from a fitful sleep, filled with dreams of having hot, frantic, insane sex with Brigit. And he was coated in sweat and panting like a goddam addict in need of a fix. Trembling. Gooseflesh crawling over his arms and thighs.
Jesus!
He snatched up the phone and growled hello in a voice that sounded totally unlike his own. Barbaric and raw. Like his yearning for her.
“Adam? It’s Mac. You all right?”
He cleared his throat but his voice wasn’t a hell of a lot more civilized when it emerged. “Fine.”
“Sounds like you’ve been wrestling a bear. Well, I have a shit load of information on your lady friend. Interesting stuff, too. You want to meet me?”
Adam sat up straighter. Information. On Brigit. Yes, that was what he needed. Maybe he could figure out what she wanted from him, besides to drive him out of his mind. “Just tell me. What did you find out?”
“On the phone?”
“Yes on the freaking phone! Talk, already!”
“Okay, okay. Jesus, you wake up cranky, Reid.”
Adam rolled to his feet, fumbling in the night-stand for a pad and pen in case he wanted to make a note. He heard Mac shuffling papers, then the man cleared his throat.
“I got most of this before last night, Adam, but I couldn’t very well blurt it out right there in front of her.”
“Go on.”
“Before I start, there’s something else.”
“What?” Adam’s patience was down to its ragged edges.
“I did not drop that wallet last night.”
Adam frowned. “What the hell are you trying to say, Mac?”
There was a thoughtful pause. And then, “Nothing. Never mind. Listen, here’s the rundown on your girlfriend. There was only one child by the name of Brigit who was at St. Mary’s at the time of the big fire. Brigit Doe, they called her. Last name unknown. Mother unknown. No birth certificate was ever on file for her. None that was found, anyway.”
“What, she just appeared at the shelter one day with no past, no story?” Adam was beginning to think his friend was doing shoddy work. Then again, who could blame him? He was working gratis, after all. And then he gave himself a mental kick for doubting Mac’s integrity. Man, what was happening to make him think this way?
“Oh, she had a story all right,” Mac said, unaware, apparently, of his friend’s treasonous thoughts. “But there’s no verification to speak of. Whatever records existed were destroyed in the fire. All I have is word of mouth. The reminiscences of an old nun in a nursing home.”
“Tell me what you have, Mac. I don’t give a damn if you heard it from a talking jackass.”
Mac sniggered, then stopped himself when he seemingly realized Adam was not making an attempt at levity. “Ahem...All right. Here it is. One morning the parish priest, a Father Anthony Giovanni, walked into the church to find two babies at the altar. Twins, maybe, but not identical. The other one was blond. Anyway, there was a note, but that gave them nothing. Just said to take care of the girls, and was signed John. The only other clues were a pair of identical, handmade storybooks. One was tucked in beside each kid, and each book had a name on the inside cover. The names were Brigit and Bridin.”
The last vestiges of doubt were rapidly disintegrating. Funny, how they felt the same way the ground would feel if it were crumbling beneath his feet. “You’re shitting me?”
“No, I’m not. The old nun said there were pendants inside the books as well, though she couldn’t remember exactly what they looked like.”
Adam knew what they looked like. At least, he knew what one of them looked like. A pewter fairy twined around a quartz point. The one Brigit never took off.
“This retired nun says she knew both Sister Mary Agnes and Brigit, and that she got the story straight from Sister Mary Agnes,” Mac continued. “Anyway, the twins were taken to the children’s shelter attached to the church. The nun—Sister Ruth—says Bridin was adopted right away. Brigit was sickly, though, so no one wanted her. She lived with the sisters until the night of the fire.”
Adam tensed. “And after that?”
“Never seen again. Someone said she’d gone back into the flames after Sister Mary Agnes. The old nun died in the blaze, but no sign of the girl’s remains were found. Two eyewitnesses reported seeing an older man rushing into the burning building. From the descriptions, the local cops i.d.’d him as a transient who went by the name of Razor-Face Malone.”
“Malone?” R. F. Malone. My God, not her husband. But an old bum who’d saved her life once? Is it possible?
Raze wouldn’t like you bad-mouthing me. Zaslow’s words rang in Adam’s ears. What the hell did it mean? Had this Raze turned against her? Was he working with Zaslow? Did he have something to hold over her head?
“I told you it was interesting,” Mac went on.
“Was it arson, Mac?”
“Nope. Faulty wiring. No question about that. Besides, old Razor-Face wasn’t a firebug. Just a little delusional. According to police records, the few times he was picked up for vagrancy he’d done some talking about fairy princesses and some enchanted forest. Rush, he called it.”
“Jesus H. Christ.” Adam mouthed the words, but no sound emerged. Icy chills raced up and down the back of his neck, and he rubbed it with one palm to chase the feeling away.
“That’s it for now, pal. But you know, you’re onto something here. Until now no one knew the woman going by the name of Brigit Malone was the same kid who disappeared in that fire. The question is, why?”
“Why,” Adam repeated stupidly.
“I still have feelers out on this, Adam. Looking for anyone who knew Razor-Face Malone. And I’m still pulling in tidbits about Brigit Malone, the businesswoman. Trying to see what came between the night of the fire, and the day she turned up in town. Nothing earth shattering so far. I’m trying to track down the missing twin sister, too. You want me to keep on this, right?”
“What?”
“I said, should I keep digging? Or do you have enough?”
Adam gave his head a shake. He could no longer feel his lips, and there was a loud buzzing sound in his head that seemed to be drowning out Mac’s voice. “Yeah,” he managed. “Yeah, keep digging.”
“Are you sure you’re all right, Adam? You sound...”
“I’m fine. Listen, check out a guy named Zaslow, too.” He didn’t wait for an answer, just hung up the phone, vaguely aware that the pad and pen he’d been holding had fallen from his suddenly numb fingers. “I’m fine. Unless you count the fact that I’m ninety-nine percent sure I’m living with a real live fairy, that is. Other than that...I’m fine.”
She hadn’t slept well. Couldn’t. There was still a faint trace of wood smoke in the air, clinging...like a specter from the past trying to haunt her dreams. Before dawn, she rose. She needed good, clean, dawn-fresh air. Earth under her feet.
She dressed quickly, pulling on an ancient pair of faded, frayed cutoffs and an oversized t-shirt that had been tie-dyed and trimmed in beaded fringe. She wondered for a moment why she’d brought these things. She hadn’t worn them in years. Hadn’t intended ever to wear them again. They clashed with her role as a normal, respectable businesswoman. They would give her away as a phony.
But she didn’t really feel as if it mattered anymore. If anyone had ever bought the act, it was a miracle. She couldn’t play the part anymore. Hell, for a while, she’d even fooled herself.
But she knew what she was. She was strange. A misfit wherever she went. She’d been more at ease living in that condemned, rat-infested heap of bricks with Raze and the other homeless peop
le, than she’d ever been moving among “civilized” types. She was wild and wanton, constantly at war with desires so hot they burned her at night. She’d dreamed of Adam last night. Dreamed of him as she’d never dreamed of him before. All night, images of the wild sex she wanted to have with him had drifted through her mind, in vivid, electrifying detail.
She might as well stop fighting the wild one inside. Because the wanton was a part of her she could no longer deny. And this morning, she felt more like that wild child than ever. She finally admitted that she’d be more content to feel her bare feet sinking into soft brown earth or lush grasses, than she could ever be in high-heeled shoes, clicking over shiny parquet. She was filled with nervous energy. She wanted to run like an untamed thing. A mustang filly, kicking her heels up behind her as she raced until her lungs burned. She wanted to dance and jump and spin and cartwheel.
She just wasn’t normal. And it was high time she stopped trying to pretend she was.
She slipped out the back way, not bothering with shoes, leaving her glasses behind and her hair flying free. She took her time. The sunrise would be incredible. She could smell it in the air. Already, out over the lake, the midnight-blue sky was paling, and there was a narrow ridge of pink lining the mountains where they made love to the sky.
Oh, and the water! Look at the water!
There was a path, a jagged path fraught with loose stones, bordered by boulders and so steep it seemed impossible to travel by. She would try it later, she decided. But for now, the cliffs were her destination. That beautiful outcropping of rock where she and Adam had sat together in the rain. She’d watch the sunrise from there.
As soon as she sat down on the cool stone, she felt stronger. Not a bit happier about what she had to do, and certainly no clearer about her own lost identity. But physically better. The morning breeze and the waves crashing below seemed to rinse away the exhaustion of a sleepless night, taking it with them back out into the depths to leave it there. And the sun’s upper lip was fiery orange as it kissed the sky...
As it rose, she remembered the way Adam had kissed her. Gently, then deeper. Parting her lips with such care and tenderness, working his way inside...just the way the sun slowly worked its way into the sky. And finally, taking, possessing, filling her. Transforming her into something...something she didn’t know or recognize. Or freeing that part of herself she’d been fighting for so long. Fully formed now, it seemed. The wanton. The wildness raged in her now, and she wondered how she’d ever cage it again.
God, why couldn’t she be like other women? Cool and sleek and in control?
The sun beamed its full force down, warmth and light washing over her...through her. The headache burned away. She was strong again. But no more knowledgeable than she’d been before. “Who am I,” she whispered, and choked away her tears to voice the question again, louder. “Who am I, dammit? Where do I belong? What cruel god created me, and why, for heaven’s sake? What the hell am I doing here?”
Each question was louder than the one before, and the final one was shouted as she shook her fists at the sky. Fury and rage and confusion all exploding from her in the form of questions she already knew had no answers. Questions that had plagued her even at St. Mary’s. And then she had to be rid of it. All of it. She stood up, filled to brimming with nervous energy and anger, and sick to death of worry and remorse. She didn’t want to think about it anymore.
For the first time in years, Brigit only wanted to feel alive. She wanted to feel wild and free, and filled with reckless abandon the way she used to feel before she’d decided to become responsible and respectable. She wanted to do something utterly thrilling.
She looked down at the waves rolling to shore below, and slowly, she smiled. “Yes,” she whispered. Then she turned around, and walked several yards. When she faced the lake again, she drew a breath, and the wild one inside her grinned. She ran right up to the edge, stretched her arms up over her head, bent a little at the knees...and then she dove.
God, it was wonderful! Just like flying. She pointed her body like an arrow, and watched the stone walls speeding past her in a blurred gray rush. The air whistled past her ears, whipping her hair up behind her, whooshing over her body. Then she punctured the lake. Stabbed into it, torpedoed down deep. And she arched her back, and pushed with her arms, and shot up toward the surface. Her head broke through, and she flung her hair backward, tipping her chin to the sky and inhaling the fresh morning air until her lungs were filled to bursting.
It felt good to be wild again. She’d stifled herself for too long. She’d lived calmly and quietly and become staid and complacent. No more, dammit! The turmoil inside her needed release, and a little wildness was exactly the way she ought to vent it.
And since she still had a lot of venting to do, she began swimming away from shore, burning all the energy that had been pent up inside her for so long.
She swam faster, harder, and her heart pumped and her muscles burned. But it felt good. It felt good to take her anger out this way. She had every right to be angry with the way things had turned out.
Growling with effort, she paddled onward. Raze had been taken from her, was being used to force her to lie and steal one more time. And she slashed her hands through the water as if Zaslow’s evil face were there on the surface. She took out her fury toward him on the lake.
When she was too tired to swim another stroke, she slowed, and floated on her back, rising and falling with the swells of the blue water. And she knew the source of her anger as well as she knew her own reflection in the mirror,
She cared deeply for Adam Reid. And she was being forced, against her will, to betray him.
“I don’t want to do this,” she whispered, and the waves gained strength until she couldn’t float anymore. So she rolled over, still breathless, panting, and just treaded water. “I don’t want to betray Adam.”
A wave slapped her face, sloshing water into her mouth, and she realized that her anger and her energy were spent. Only remorse for what lay ahead of her remained. Tears fell to blend with the waters of Cayuga. “I...just...don’t...want to.”
But you know you have to.
Another wave slapped her. She swallowed more water, and turned to look back toward the shore. And then her heart skidded to a halt in her chest, because she’d swum so far the shore was a hazy outline in the distance. , She blinked in shock. “Oh, God, what have I done?”
Closing her eyes, she called on that wild one inside, knowing instinctively she was the stronger one. The braver one. “Have to try,” she told herself, and she began swimming shoreward.
Ten strokes...twenty. Why didn’t the shore look any closer? Forty...fifty. She paused to catch her breath. The water’s caress was chilling her overheated flesh, and her lungs were beginning to ache. A sob tore at her breastbone, but she battled it into submission, and launched herself shoreward once more. But she knew her progress was minuscule at best. Before she’d made it halfway, she was too exhausted even to keep her head above water. Damn, she’d been an idiot. A fool. She’d let the caged one take control, and it was going to cost her. Her longing gaze swept the shoreline once more. “It’s too far...”
Try!
Slap! She spit water out of her mouth, and nodded tiredly. She had to keep trying. She was a lot of things, but not a quitter. Not a coward. She began paddling again. But her muscles screamed in protest, and burned with every movement. Another wave splashed her, pushing her under. She fought to the surface, choking and spitting, and then another swept her under. Her arms ached and her legs cramped when she broke surface yet again, straining onward. A few more strokes...and that was all. She tried, but it was simply impossible to go any farther. Impossible. And she’d given it her best shot.
Numbly, she lifted her arms again, tried to kick her feet, but the merciless water pulled her into its cool embrace, and closed over her head.
He’d almost reached her when she went down for the last time. Dammit! It was all but impossibl
e to keep an eye on her with the morning breeze rippling the surface, and those swells out there where she was. He’d been looking for her, intent on telling her what he knew and asking her what the hell was really going on.
But she hadn’t been in the house, and when he’d looked outside, he’d heard her. Her anguished cries to a deaf god had blasted the anger from Adam’s mind. Where do I belong? What the hell am I doing here? Pain arcing through the dawn sky so clearly it hurt to hear it.
And the questions...he didn’t want to analyze them now. He told himself that it was normal for a person who’d never known her parents to feel an identity crisis now and then. He didn’t believe that was the case, here, but he told himself he did, and focused on getting to where she was. Talking to her.
Taking her pain away...
No. Not that. Just...just...
He followed the sound of her voice...catching sight of her just as she dove from the cliffs like an eagle swooping down on its prey.
“Jesus Christ. . . Brigit!”
He ran to the ledge as well. Crying out in anguish when he saw her body pierce the lake, holding his breath while she was hidden from view by the sapphire waters, and then nearly collapsing in relief when she surfaced again.
Like a mermaid when her head emerged. Like a pagan goddess as she tipped her head skyward, eyes closed as if to receive the kiss of the sun.
And then she began swimming. Adam shook his head in disbelief. Then realized he shouldn’t. He’d sensed from the beginning that the staid, reserved Brigit was only a mask she wore. That the real woman within was a hellion. Well, he’d been right. Though even then, he’d underestimated her.
He caught sight of her again, diving under the waves. She surfaced some yards out, and dove again. And again. And again, each time swimming farther from the shore.
Fairytale Page 15
