by M. J. Rose
He finally caught up to her inside the playground at the Eightieth Street entrance. She was bent over next to the sculpture of the three bronze bears, trying to catch her breath, and when he called her name this time, she looked up and he saw the tears streaking her face. Behind her, a half a dozen kids climbed on a jungle gym. Shrieking and laughing, they challenged one another to go higher.
“I’m sorry. I just got scared,” she said when he reached her side.
“I know.”
“Can we take a walk?” Her voice sounded young and vulnerable.
He nodded, and they took the path that led past the playground toward a wide expanse of green lawn where dogs were chasing one another while their owners looked on. At the fork, she didn’t hesitate but took a left, and for a few seconds they were in darkness as they passed under a bridge. On the other side, she got her bearings, made a move to go right, then changed her mind and turned left.
The route she had chosen was the one he was familiar with, too.
“There’s so much I don’t understand. Why is this remembering happening now? Why not last year. Or two years ago?”
“I think you responded to what we call a trigger—an event that jump-started your memory.”
“What kind of event?”
“You told me the first time you experienced a flashback you were reading…Do you remember what you were reading?”
“About the excavation of the Vestal Virgins’ tomb in Rome in the paper.” She stopped and turned to him, stunned. “Reading about the tomb was my trigger. And the second time it happened I was at the Met, and those curators were discussing the robbery and the murder of the professor in the same tomb…. Josh, is it the same tomb that Neely discovered?”
“I don’t know that for sure, but I don’t think so.”
“What did they find?”
“They found the Memory Stones.”
“The same stones that I remember?”
“I’m not sure.”
As they walked under shadows cast from heavily leafed oaks and linden trees, Josh told her the story in greater detail than the newspapers had reported it.
“Is that why you agreed to see me that first day?” she asked when he was done. “Because you wanted to use me to help the other archeologist…what’s her name?”
“Professor Chase. And no, that’s not why. It couldn’t have been, you didn’t tell me about the stones until today.”
“But it’s why you agreed to meet me today and hypnotize me.”
“Rachel, listen, someone’s life is in danger and it’s imperative that I find the stones that Blackie took.”
“I don’t know where those stones are.”
“When you were under you told me about the painting Blackie had bought Esme. Do you remember that?”
She considered this. “Yes. Of course, the painting…” She was seeing it in her mind. “The young Bacchus.” And then her face dissolved into a mask of horror. Something was terribly wrong. Something she couldn’t process.
“What is it?” He hoped his guess was right.
“That’s the painting that Harrison is brokering. The painting that he bought at the auction. The same painting that Blackie gave Esme. The one my uncle wanted so much and was so angry I didn’t get at the auction.”
They’d reached an overgrown part of the park called the Ramble, where it was easy to forget that you were in Manhattan in the twenty-first century. Instead of skyscrapers there were boulders as tall as the trees, and instead of traffic there was only birdsong and the sound of rushing water.
“Help me, Josh. This is all much too much to process. It’s coming at me too fast….”
“I will, but we don’t have a lot of time.”
“Is it possible the stones are still with the painting?”
“If no one knew about them but Esme and Blackie, and they both perished on the ship, then yes,” Josh said.
“Do you think Harrison knows about the stones?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about my uncle? He’s purchased several paintings from the Blackwell’s estate. Actually, every painting that the estate has put on the market. Josh—” Her eyes were wild, and she was overwhelmed with the flood of information.
“What if I help you and they find out? If my uncle finds out? Or if Harrison finds out? This could be just the thing that sets him off. If I go with the reincarnation theory, that we keep coming back until we get it right, then what if he’s not ready to do it right? Why shouldn’t I walk away from him now? Never see him again? Protect myself?”
“Maybe you should.”
“Can I, though? Can I just walk away from him, never see him again? Will I avoid whatever this is leading up to? What happens to me if I just walk away from Harrison and my uncle and from you?”
“I’m not psychic. I’ve been searching for answers just like you have. I can only tell you the theory.”
“It’s better than nothing. Explain it to me.”
“If you buy into reincarnation, then you buy into fate. So if you try to run away, like Oedipus did, you might escape from what you perceive as the danger only to come face-to-face with the real danger at the end of the journey.”
She looked down as she stepped over a large felled tree trunk covered with lichen. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I’m not stupid enough to walk right into a potential minefield.”
“I can’t blame you. My problems aren’t yours to solve.”
They walked on in silence for another few hundred yards. She was leading them west now, toward an exit. The path looped around and then sloped down. At the bottom, Josh realized he knew this spot. They were right under the bridle path. He hung back a few steps; he didn’t want to be the one to choose which way to go, not now. She’d chosen the route. He had assumed the path she’d taken had been somewhat arbitrary, that she’d certainly been too upset to plan a course. But on some level, some part of her must have known where she was taking them, because there were no coincidences and they had arrived at the Riftstone arch.
“Do you believe in fate?” she asked.
Standing in its shadow, he looked at the bridge. “I don’t know what I believe.”
She followed his glance and stared at the rough-hewn stone structure. Almost as if she was in a trance, she walked up to it and put her hand out, touching the rock with her fingertips.
“Josh, do you have lurches, too?” she asked as she turned around to face him again.
“For the past year and a half.”
“What was your trigger?”
“I was in an accident.”
“Were you hurt?”
“Yes, I was almost killed.”
“Where do your flashbacks take you?”
“To Rome. Ancient Rome.”
She stared at him quizzically. “But that’s not the only place, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
She was still staring at him as if she was trying to see through him. “The humming…” she said. Then frowned. Shut her eyes, opened them. “Esme had a brother. Did I tell you that?” Swaying slightly as if she were dizzy, she reached out for one of the supporting boulders that held up the arch. “I think they played here. She was worried about him when she was in Rome. She thought he might be sick because he’d stopped writing—did I tell you that when I was under hypnosis? Did I tell you about my brother?”
“No. Do you know his name?” He waited, not aware that he was holding his breath.
“Percy.”
Her voice sounded extremely loud, and it seemed to Josh that the word “Percy” echoed, bouncing off of the stones. The scent of jasmine and sandalwood blew down over him, and he braced himself. This was no time for a lurch, but now that he sensed it coming, he ached for it. An addict craving his drug. The air undulated around him, and shivers of excitement shot up and down his arms and legs and wrapped around his torso. He wasn’t moving, and yet he had that same feeling, as if he was being sucked down into a vortex where the atmosphere was
heavier and thicker. He turned around and saw his sister, Esme, standing high up on the highest rock, laughing and shouting to him to come and look at what she’d found. “A man’s gold pocket watch. Someone must have lost it. Look how it shines.”
No. He wasn’t Percy. He was Josh.
“Do you remember it here?” Josh asked, unaware he was even speaking out loud.
“Is this where we found the gold watch?”
“Yes.”
Rachel’s eyes were wide with wonder.
“Do you believe that you were my brother?”
“I think so.”
“It would be nice, wouldn’t it, to think you were. That I found you again.”
He nodded.
“What happened to him? To Percy, do you know?”
“He was poisoned by his uncle.”
“Uncle…” She hesitated, thinking, remembering. “Uncle Davenport,” Rachel said, slightly in awe of what she was realizing. But she was calmer. He could see it in her face, sense it.
“Josh, I don’t want to put my life on the line for some legend that may or may not be true and that has nothing to do with me. Except I have this crazy feeling that I’m supposed to be doing this. I’m not making sense again, am I? What if I’ve gotten involved with…What if Harrison…Christ, if this reincarnation stuff is true and if he and I did this dance before, then we know what’s going to happen next. He’s going to kill me.”
“Or you’re with him so he can make the past up to you.”
“Which is it?”
Josh felt another twinge of responsibility for her. Was it because of the sibling bond someone named Percy and someone named Esme had shared?
“You have to help me. I don’t know what to do,” she cried.
“I can’t do that.”
“You have to.”
What if she was right? What if she did need him to tell her? If that was part of this. The two of them finding each other. Not just him finding Sabina. But Percy finding Esme. He’d failed to protect her in the past but maybe he’d be able to protect her in the present.
“You love Harrison, don’t you?”
“Does that matter?”
“Yeah, it does. Nothing happens by mistake. If we go by the theories, and if you love him, you need to give him a chance to do the right thing this time.”
“Walk right into this fucking fire? Who will save me this time if everything goes wrong again?”
There are no rules of engagement, Josh thought. No list of suggestions for how to deal with past-life experiences and present-life situations. Those who believe in reincarnation do not suggest that scenarios will ever repeat themselves exactly. But they could. We are products of our instincts. We can be dragged away from something that is dangerous only to turn around and return to it the minute we’re free to. Maybe she needed to live this out. Maybe, Josh thought, he was full of shit and should encourage her to get away from all of them, even him, as fast as she could.
“I’ll be there with you. I’ll make sure nothing happens.”
Rachel looked at him with a sudden trusting smile and he felt, deeply felt, what those two people named Esme and Percy—who had lost their father and lived under the same roof with a vicious man named Davenport and a mother who didn’t have the strength to stand up to him—what that brother and sister had meant to each other so very long ago.
“Even if I wanted to do this, to help you find the stones, to see if they’re actually still there after all this time, I’m not a magician. I can’t steal the painting out from under him.”
Josh considered Malachai, who was a magician. All his tricks were done in plain sight. “No, of course you can’t. I’d never ask you to steal the painting—I don’t need the painting—I just need five minutes alone with it. It wouldn’t take longer than that to take the frame apart, would it?”
Chapter 63
Josh and Rachel went to a coffee shop to plan what to do next. It was two o’clock in the afternoon on Thursday, and in less than twenty-four hours, Gabriella would need to have a lot of answers for the man who was holding her child captive.
After they’d fleshed out the next steps, Rachel used her cell phone to call Harrison and put the scheme into motion, and Josh went out into the street to call Gabriella.
Answering on the first ring with a stressed hello, she sounded both relieved and disappointed at the sound of his voice. Briefly, he explained what had happened and what he was planning to do.
“You can’t do that, Josh. I can’t bear being responsible for you, too.”
As much as he believed her, he knew part of her didn’t mean it. It was what she should say, but no one mattered to her the way Quinn did, and nothing would ever matter to her again if anything happened to Quinn.
“I’ll drive right up to New Haven as soon as I’m finished in the city—and Gabriella…”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry for leaving you alone this long.”
“It’s okay. I’ve been online with Rollins most of the day, working on the translations. Be careful, Josh—” Her voice broke on his name.
He winced, and even after he’d clicked his phone shut, he was still hearing her, seeing her in his mind: the way her light brown, almost-gold eyes flashed, and how she pulled her wild, honey-colored hair off her face whenever she thought hard about something.
Should he have told her about the possibility there was a second set of stones? Had it been cruel to have raised her spirits if, in fact, they didn’t exist?
When he returned to Rachel, she was still on the phone. He couldn’t help but hear her strained conversation.
“I don’t understand. Either he’s made an offer on the painting or he hasn’t.” Pause. “Well, then, let my client see it—the worst that will happen is that you’ll have a second offer to use as pressure.” Pause. “Good, we’ll be there in less than an hour.” She smiled, but the smile was twisted with disillusionment.
* * *
The doorman of the apartment building on Park Avenue and Seventy-Ninth Street asked Josh for his name so he could be announced.
“Barton Lipper.”
They had planned carefully. Barton Lipper was a client of Rachel’s who lived in Maryland. A recluse, he ordered pieces of jewelry from her every four or five months. An Internet search brought up stories about the man’s billions, but no photographs.
The sunglasses Josh wore, despite the setting sun, hid his eyes, and he was grateful for their opaqueness. A man can see when you are lying—especially if the man was himself a liar. He didn’t know for sure that’s what Harrison was. That he sold paintings that often had questionable provenance did not, in itself, brand him as a criminal. Sotheby’s and Christie’s had, over the years, sold paintings of questionable provenance, too. And in this case, the School of Caravaggio painting had never been stolen. The estate of Titus Blackwell had inherited it and it passed from generation to generation until six weeks before, when it had appeared on the market for the first time.
The question was, had it ever been taken apart?
The elevator man, who also wore white gloves, looked straight ahead while Josh watched the numbers light up on the board. It seemed as if the ride was taking too damn long. Finally, the bronzed doors opened.
“It’s Penthouse A, on your right, sir.”
Inside, Terry, a young woman, greeted Josh, who introduced himself as Barton Lipper. Escorting him to the salon, she told him that Rachel Palmer wasn’t there yet, but that Harrison would be with him in just a moment.
The room had a double-height ceiling and no windows. Three of the walls showcased oil paintings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The fourth was empty except for a carpeted platform that sat like a small stage, waiting for the performance to start.
Terry asked Josh if he’d like anything to drink. He asked for water and she left to fetch it. A few moments passed. Josh didn’t get up to inspect the paintings around him. He didn’t need the distraction; he wanted to concentrat
e on what he was there to accomplish.
A few minutes after Terry returned with the water, Harrison came in. He was tall and imposing, physically a good match to Rachel’s stunning looks.
“Mr. Lipper. It’s a pleasure,” he said, and offered his hand.
The handshake was quick.
“Rachel called a few minutes ago. Her taxi is stuck in rush-hour traffic. Though, every hour in New York is now rush hour. In the meantime, would you like to wait for her or look at the painting?”
“I’d like to see the painting. I’m on a tight schedule.”
Harrison disappeared, returning a moment later with a framed canvas he held gingerly with its back facing out so that Josh couldn’t yet see the painting. Harrison placed it on top of the uppermost step of the carpeted platform, stood in front of it, shielding it as he adjusted it, and then stepped back.
Rachel was right. This was not a masterpiece. It was a feat. A luminous, absorbing re-creation of reality, so intensely alive and powerful that within seconds of looking at it you forgot it was a flat surface covered with a mix of oil and pigment. This was a world unto itself. That it had been created by a brush and paint, that it was not a living, breathing man somehow frozen in that moment, seemed impossible.
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It makes everything else—” Josh searched for something to say “—just a painting.”
Harrison nodded.
Josh rose and walked toward it. He’d planned on using these initial moments to look at and familiarize himself with the frame. He’d spent a half hour earlier taking apart four of the paintings on Rachel’s walls. At best, if everything went right, he was only going to have a few minutes alone with this one, and he needed to be quick. But he couldn’t focus on anything but the sensuous eyes, the voluptuous mouth and the invitation implicit in the Bacchus’s gaze.
“Mr. Shoals?” Terry was at the door.
“Yes?”
“Rachel is downstairs. She’s tripped on the sidewalk getting out of the cab. She’d appreciate it if you would come down.”
“Oh, no, this is my fault. She’s here because of me—let me go,” Josh offered, trying for sincere concern.
