by M. J. Rose
Quinn is all right. We don’t want to hurt her, but we will if you call the police and report her disappearance. As soon as you translate the Memory Stones and can tell us how to use them, your child will be returned to you unharmed. Leave your cell phone on.
Right now this is just a nightmare. Don’t let it become reality.
“When did you get this?”
“I just got home. Just now. It was in the mailbox.”
“Did you call the police?”
She shook her head. “I won’t. I can’t risk her life. Didn’t you read it?”
“You need to—”
Gabriella interrupted, her voice low, like the growl of a feral cat. “I can’t. I’ll do whatever these people want. She’s my heart. Don’t you understand?” Veins in her neck were standing out, showing the strain in every word. “These…these must be the same people who killed Rudolfo. I can’t take a chance. They’re killers, Josh.”
She was shaking violently so Josh reached out, pulled her close and held her, feeling every one of her tremors along his whole body. She continued talking, almost as if she didn’t know she was in his embrace.
“I’ll find someone to translate the markings. I know everyone in the field. I’ll find out what they say. I’ll figure it out now. Tonight. Then by tomorrow I’ll have Quinn back, won’t I?”
She was becoming frantic, and Josh was worried that she might become hysterical.
“We need to call the police,” he said.
She pulled back suddenly, her face set in anger. “No! If you aren’t going to help me do this my way, then get out. I need to save my baby. Don’t you understand?” She was screaming.
The longer they waited to call the police, the colder the kidnapper’s trail would become. “Gabriella, listen to me, you said this yourself, they are killers, and—”
Ignoring him, she kept talking, too quickly, too loudly. “I can’t. All I can do is what they tell me to do. I can’t do anything else. If you don’t want to help me, then just get out. Get out!”
“I do want to help you,” Josh said softly, trying to soothe her, but she wasn’t listening to him. “Of course I want to help you,” he repeated. This time she heard him. She took a breath. He’d broken through.
“How did you know what happened? Who told you?” she suddenly asked.
“No one. I don’t know. I had this crazy feeling…it doesn’t matter. C’mon, sit down, let me get you some water. Let’s talk about what to do.”
He led her to the couch where she did as he asked and sat down, and then popped up immediately, running toward the stairs. “I need to see if she has her bear….” She took the steps two at a time. “Her father gave me the bear when I was pregnant. She knows it’s from him and she never goes anywhere without her bear. She never does….”
Josh followed her into the baby’s room while she frantically searched in the bed, under the blankets and in the toy chest. He knew why she was looking for it. If Quinn took the bear, then she was alive when she left the house.
“It’s not here,” she said, managing a heartbreaking smile through her tears.
Chapter 52
New York City—Tuesday, 5:50 p.m.
Alex cut a branch off the miniature ficus tree. The bonsai had been another passion that her uncle and aunt had shared. Now the care and feeding of the dozen ancient trees scattered through the duplex was left to him alone and he treated it with the sacredness of a visit to his wife’s grave.
Rachel stood in the doorway to the living room, not wanting to interrupt her uncle, but he’d said he’d wanted to leave at six. She watched him minister to the one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old tree that stood only eighteen inches high and, as she did so often when she was with him, wished there was some way she could help ease his grief over losing his wife.
Putting down the pruning scissors, Alex stepped back and inspected the tree’s silhouette and, satisfied, set to picking up the clippings and tiny leaves he’d just cut off.
“Uncle Alex?” she called out softly.
He turned. The sadness etched on his face only lasted a few seconds before he pulled the curtain on his emotions and his expression returned to the equanimity he usually exhibited. Her aunt had once told her that Alex was so successful in business because he was a master of deception. “He can hide everything he’s thinking so no one knows what he’s doing. Even me. And I must say it’s very disconcerting.”
“Is it time to go?” he asked. “I’m very much looking forward to this.”
Fifteen minutes later, as they walked around the Albert Rand gallery, Rachel was glad she’d agreed to come. It would have been a shame to miss this private showing of master drawings that included a Tintoretto, a Raphael and the prize: a Michelangelo sketch.
Even the sophisticated upper echelons of the art world who often paid little attention to what hung on the walls at an opening were swooning over these rare finds that had come from an estate and were being seen by the public for the first time in more than a hundred years.
She stood in front of the Michelangelo, studying the rough drawing of a hunched-over naked man, his back to the artist in a pose that seemed a premonition of one of the slave sculptures.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Harrison said, coming up behind her, putting his arm around her waist and pulling her into him. She hadn’t known he was going to be there, and now shivering with erotic tension, she leaned back against him, feeling that conflicting excitement and fear that he produced in her.
“Treasures like this, which have been hidden away for so long, have a special aura surrounding them. It’s almost as if they are animated, they know that finally they are being seen and they shine—like you do. What a pleasant surprise to see you here, Rachel.”
She turned around and smiled at him. “I didn’t know you’d be here, either.”
“Did you come by yourself?”
“No, I’m with my uncle.”
She wasn’t sure but she thought that Harrison’s eyes narrowed slightly at her uncle’s name. That didn’t really surprise her. Despite the pleasantries they’d shown each other the first time she saw them together at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that first night, both men, in private, had made it clear to her how much they disliked and distrusted the other. It was yet one more complication that troubled her.
Harrison looked at the drawing again, not aware of her consternation. His sensitivity and devotion to art was one of the reasons she found him attractive.
“Think about it, before tonight, for more than a hundred years this drawing was a secret that almost no one knew existed.”
Rachel felt the first stirring of friction as the humming began and the terra cotta of the artist’s crayon spiked into oranges and yellows and reds and crimson curls that fanned out into an arc of colors that pulled her into its current. The noises in the room faded away. She felt as if she were getting smaller and smaller, almost disappearing. Nothing here was translating into there, except for one feeling, the pressure of his arm around her waist.
Chapter 53
Rome, Italy—1884
Standing in the garden, looking out over the city, leaning against him, feeling his arm encircling her waist, Esme was relieved that his depression of the past two weeks was lifting. Blackie, who had been so attentive and wonderful to her since she’d first met him months ago in New York at one of her uncle’s soirees, had changed so much recently, becoming temperamental and distant. She’d been planning on ending the affair if his moods continued. His exuberance now was more of a relief than the breeze that was cooling off the intense Roman heat.
She was glad Aunt Iris, her chaperone, had retired early for the night—as usual—so she could be alone with her lover. Her lover. She still thrilled at the idea.
Not many of the women in New York society whom her mother preferred her to spend time with would dare to be with a man this way. But the group she preferred, whom she studied painting and drawing with, flaunted being avant garde, consider
ing it de rigueur to break the rules and defy convention if you were a true artist.
“And to think, before today, for more than a thousand years this treasure was a secret that almost no one knew existed.”
Blackie, a mature and very successful railroad magnate and twenty years her senior, was acting like a child, laughing and kissing her and asking her if it wasn’t the most wonderful news she’d ever heard.
For the past few weeks he had been complaining bitterly that he’d been fooled, that in fact, all of the members of the club had been and that Wallace Neely must be robbing everyone blind.
How different a man becomes when he’s accomplished what he’s set out to do.
“Tell me what he’s found,” she said after they’d left the terrace and sat down inside to cups of the bitter but wonderful Italian espresso that she’d become addicted to.
“The tomb is very small, which doesn’t suggest it was the burial place of someone important. And yet, it holds one of the most important treasures that have been found in the last century.”
“Did you actually see it?” she asked.
“No, but Neely is bringing it here tonight. He didn’t want to—he has his protocols—but I told him we weren’t having a celebration dinner without the objects that we are celebrating.”
“Have you telegrammed the members of the club to let them know?”
“That can wait, at least until I’ve see seen the objects. Touched them,” he said, looking down into his hands as if he was already grasping it. “They say this treasure holds the secret to past-life regressions.”
She didn’t understand his or any of the club members’ preoccupation with the study of transmigration of souls. All of them had such extraordinary, successful present lives, why did it matter to them who they were before? If there was a “before.” Wasn’t it enough that they had everything they wanted and were the most influential men in New York? In America, some said.
Even her brother, Percy, had been obsessed with this excavation in Rome, but unlike the others, it was because he feared the imbroglio that would erupt if the archeologist found what he was looking for—what they all wanted him to find. She had received disturbing letters from him that summer. With a shaky pen he filled page after page with his suspicions regarding their uncle, now also their stepfather, and concern over her own well-being. He was often ill, he’d written, with sudden and violent stomach problems that the doctor couldn’t diagnose. The letters had arrived regularly until three weeks ago when they suddenly stopped. Maybe, she’d hoped, he was traveling. Maybe on his way to see her in Rome, to convalesce here.
“Aren’t you curious to find out who you were in the past?” Blackie asked.
“Jesus was resurrected. Mother says that’s all I need to know about the dead coming back to life.”
“But you are a little curious, aren’t you?”
“Maybe a little.”
He laughed and pulled her to him and, in the late afternoon sunlight filtering through the drapes, kissed her full on the mouth. The pressure of thinking he’d been wrong about the dig must have been preying on him, she thought. It had been too long since he’d made love to her.
His lips traced a line from her mouth down her neck while he harshly pulled down the bodice of her lavender dress, exposing her breasts. She shivered. He licked the skin around her nipple, and when the breeze blew in through the windows it felt cool where it was wet. Cupping both her breasts, he held them as if they were precious jewels. “You are so lovely,” he whispered, then leaned in and kissed her mouth.
Blackie was married and had three children and claimed that until he’d met Esme, he had never taken indiscriminate lovers just to prove his prowess. He had a moral code that he’d adhered to, unlike so many other men of his class and position.
She’d laughed at that and had called him an ethical criminal.
And this was when she was happiest with him, when he fought and lost against his principles. She loved to watch him become powerless in her thrall. Men really had so little control, although they thought just the opposite.
“You make me into a heathen,” he told her, his words thick with passion. “A pagan,” he shouted. He pointed to the windows. “Out there are ancient Roman temples where the true pagans once worshipped,” he whispered, “but I worship you.”
* * *
The archeologist arrived at the villa in an understandably upbeat mood. A small man with sunburned, weather-beaten skin and tousled brown hair, he wore an ill-fitting suit that was badly in need of an ironing and shoes that needed to be shined. Dressing and grooming himself took too much time away from his beloved vocation. Wallace Neely, Esme knew from the previous times they’d met, couldn’t carry on a conversation unless it had to do with ancient Egypt or Rome and the work he did on digs. That night it didn’t matter; no one wanted to discuss other things. Blackie put on quite a show, bowing to him and plying him with the wonderful wine and rich food the villa’s staff had laid out. He entertained Neely the way he made love to her, holding back on the climax until he couldn’t bear it any longer.
And then when Neely was relaxed and Blackie couldn’t wait, he asked Esme if she’d excuse them. Before she could protest, he took Neely into the library.
Watching him close the double doors behind him, she stomped her foot in frustration. He didn’t think he could stop her from seeing this so-called treasure, did he? Not after she’d suffered through listening to him worry about it for all these months.
Aunt Iris would scold her for going outside bare-armed, but Iris wasn’t going to know. She was already upstairs, retired for the night.
From the terrace, looking through a slit in the library curtains, she watched as Blackie lit a second candelabra and brought it over to the desk. The flames illuminated the archeologist in chiaroscuro as he bent over and opened an old leather sack, unfolding it, corner by corner. Then, just as he exposed its contents, Blackie stepped forward to get a closer look, blocking the cache from her view.
“This filth is what we’ve been waiting for?” Blackie asked derisively.
He reached for the discovery, then his goblet, and poured his wine over whatever he was holding, right there in the library, not caring he was ruining the desk’s fine leather top.
“No, no, you can’t. That’s not protocol.” Neely reached out to grab Blackie’s arm but Blackie shoved him away with a violence she’d never witnessed before. Now she could see what he was looking at: a fistful of gems, wet with wine and glistening in the light, shining like pieces of broken stained glass.
Neely, having regained his balance and some of his dignity, stepped up to the desk. “I insist, Mr. Blackwell.” He put his hand out. “You’ve compromised our find. Please give those back to me.”
Ignoring the small man, Blackie continued to stare down at the emeralds, sapphires and the single ruby. Each stone was almost as big as a walnut—they must be worth a fortune—precious gems that large!
“Mr. Blackwell, let me have the stones back. I insist.”
Straightening up, smiling as if nothing untoward had happened, Blackie returned the stones to Neely.
Hurrying, Esme rushed back inside in case they came looking for her in the parlor where she was expected to be. And where she was, but just barely, when the two men returned. Blackie with a calm expression on his face, Neely with his lips set in a hard line.
“Before you leave, let me make a final toast to you and your find with a glass of port, Wallace. It’s a night to celebrate, not to be churlish.” He turned to her. “Dear, may we have some of that fine Madeira?”
Fetching the wine, she thought of her brother for a moment. Port was his drink of choice. How she wished he was here, so she could tell him what she’d just seen, how Blackie was acting, get her brother’s advice.
For the next hour, as the professor discussed pagan religious beliefs, burial practices, Christianity in the fourth century, the tomb he’d found, the methods he’d be using to date the treasures
and translate the markings the wine wash had revealed on their surface, he drank, and Blackie kept the port flowing—continually refilling Neely’s empty glass while only topping off his own.
Blackie seemed to hang on to Neely’s every word, even when those words became slurred. By the time the archeologist had talked himself out it was well past midnight and the man was quite inebriated.
“Let me help you up, old chap. I fear it’s time for you to go home,” Blackie finally suggested.
Staggering to his feet, tightly clutching his parcel, Neely tried to straighten out his jacket but only managed to twist it worse. He looked ludicrous as he stumbled to the door.
“Will he get himself back to his rooms all right?” she whispered to Blackie. “Shouldn’t you take him back with you to your villa? It’s so late and dangerous on the roads, I really—”
Blackie gave her a severe, silencing stare; his light blue-gray eyes looked icy cold. Never before had he been so dismissive of her. Between the curt look and his brutish behavior to Neely in the library, she didn’t quite recognize him. Tonight, for the first time, she’d seen a part of his soul she didn’t like very much. For all his declarations of love, she’d glimpsed, in that fraction of a minute, how unimportant and expendable she was. Worse than that—how unimportant and expendable everyone was to him. The moment broke open so wide and so deep, so quickly, a wave of nausea came over her, and she was sure she was going to get sick right there. How could she have been this wrong about him? How could she love someone who didn’t deserve it? No, she must have misinterpreted the look he’d given her.
As Blackie helped the professor out, she went upstairs to her bedroom, where she sat down at her desk, picked up a pen, dipped it in the inkwell and started a letter to her brother. She’d tell him everything that had just happened, he’d explain it to her. But she didn’t feel well. Putting the letter aside for later, she walked out onto the balcony, hoping the breeze would restore her.
