Her gaze darted to the handle of the door.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said, anticipating her course of action. “There is no place to run and no one to help you. If you cooperate, you won’t come to any harm.”
Grace closed her eyes. She’d left behind in New York the only person who could have helped her. She sought desperately not to give in to panic and hysteria. It was essential to stay calm and think clearly. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even.
He snickered and toyed with the gun. “Why, the money, of course. If I couldn’t have her, I’ll have the money.” And then he looked vacant again, his eyes glinting and narrowing as if in another place, another time. How had she not recognized his shattered, diseased mind?
When the vehicle skidded to a stop, Hollister roughly hauled Grace out of the vehicle. The alley was littered with garbage, deserted except for a few red-eyed vermin among the rusted metal cans. Grace saw a worn wooden door stenciled with the words The Peacock Club in faded black lettering.
In spite of the pistol wedged under her ribs, she whirled around, shoving Leo to knock him off balance. She raced down the alley.
Hollister caught up in two steps, slamming her against the brick wall with a powerful, backhanded slap that brought her to her knees. He pulled her up with a tight grip around her neck, banging her head against the wall, and hissed into her face, “You stupid little bitch. Try that again and I’ll slit your throat!”
Then the bruising grasp loosened and became a soft caress as he stroked his knuckles across her stinging cheek. Grace shuddered, turning her face away just as he leaned toward her and kissed her with cold, wet lips. His voice became a lover’s whisper. “Don’t fight me, Angela. Please. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m going to treat you like a queen.” He pulled a roll of adhesive tape from his pocket and ripped off a piece to put over Grace’s mouth.
Pulling keys from his vest pocket, Leo hauled Grace to her feet. One arm encircling her under her breasts, he opened the back door, pulled her into the building, then shoved her up the steep steps to the second floor.
Grace could hear mixed sounds of what seemed to be a speakeasy as she stumbled up the stairs with her abductor. The driver of the car followed them, muttering foul curses in a guttural accent as Hollister yanked Grace back a few steps from the top. “Check the hallway first,” Leo ordered as he pulled Grace tight against his chest.
As the man squeezed past her, Grace recognized him as the courier from the service she employed for her appraisal business. They would never let her live, she realized in horror. Whatever Leo wanted from her he would take, and since she could recognize both of them, they would kill her.
But she didn’t have any money to speak of, at least not enough money to be murdered for. None of it made sense. The best she could do was bide her time and wait for an opportunity to escape. She took a deep breath to steady herself and fought the overwhelming despair that threatened her concentration. She needed all her faculties to watch for any opportunity to escape.
Doors lined the dank second floor hallway. A woman’s shrill laughter sounded from behind one of the doors followed by a man’s muffled groan. Leo dragged Grace past the closed doors toward a second set of stairs and directed her to ascend, his gun still at her back.
On the third floor, Hollister shoved Grace into a room unfurnished except for a desk and chair. A grimy window allowed diminished light to filter in and had a view of a brick building across the alley, its fire escape, like the one directly outside the window, rusty with age.
He thrust Grace into the chair and told the driver to make sure they hadn’t been followed. The man scowled but obeyed the directive, closing the door behind him. His heavy footsteps sounded down the hall.
Sitting on the edge of the desk, Hollister rested the gun on his knee. He wrinkled his brow and stared hard at Grace, blinking as if trying to recall something.
“I killed him, you know,” he said finally, dispassionately.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Grace moaned into the tape and lowered her head to her chest. When she raised her head, she met Leo’s eyes steadily over the trembling of her body.
Hollister removed the tape from her mouth and turned the gun on her. In spite of the gun aimed at her face, she exploded, her voice choked with fury. “My father never hurt anyone, ever! He trusted you! He considered you his friend!”
“Friend?” Hollister roared, the rabid anger hanging in the air. “What did he know of friendship? He stole her from me! He took everything from me. But now I will take it all back. I took his life, his business, and now I will take his daughter in place of the wife who should have been mine. You will join him in his watery grave, my dear. And I will live in luxury with the money you so conveniently secured for me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Leo smiled and turned her toward a door he opened to reveal a small hallway. He motioned with the gun for Grace to go ahead of him. “It won’t do any good to scream. I keep this whole floor empty, and those on the second floor are too busy with their own pleasures to worry about a little rough play from another couple.”
He shoved her into the hallway between the rooms and lifted a cheaply drawn oil painting from the wall to reveal the small door of a wall safe. After a furtive glance over his shoulder, Hollister quickly dialed the combination and yanked the door open. He retrieved a zippered leather bank envelope and closed the safe.
Once back in the room, he poured part of the contents of the pouch onto the desk. Brilliant stones of green and white and blue glistened in the light that streaked across the scarred desk. Hollister raked his fingers through them.
Exquisite emeralds, diamonds, black pearls, sapphires—and the one stone that gave all the others away. A magnificent cabochon-cut ruby of almost fifty carats.
No, not fifty. She knew for sure—the ruby weighed fifty-two carats. Part of the Betrothal Gem Collection.
“Where did you get these?” Grace gasped, her pulse pounding in her ears with a controlled rage, and then fear as the realization of what Leo had methodically accomplished over the last two years.
Hollister laughed. A snicker at first, then a full, hawking laugh. He gathered up the stones, pausing to hold the brilliant ruby to the sunlight, creating a flickering rainbow on the opposite wall. He zippered the bag and put it into the deep pocket of his coat.
“It’s quite simple, you see. I always had a window of two or three days to have Quigley take a picture of your sketches and ready paste copies of the real gems while you made your reports. Our mutual bourgeois friend, the courier, would then pick up the package from you and bring it to me. Within a few hours, I would replace the gems with excellent quality paste stones, fabricated according to your detailed sketches, and send the package on its way again. You are such a creature of habit, my dear. You made everything so easy.”
“How did you ever expect to get away with this?” she asked incredulously. Knowing for sure he would kill her, knowing now she had little chance of surviving, she fought back the panic.
Hollister’s mouth tightened, and his smile faded as he strode into the hallway searching for his accomplice. “I figured I had a couple of years before anyone would figure out what I had done. After all, they had certified documentation of the value of the pieces from the most respected source in the business, and only a sale of the piece would invite another appraisal. Even in that event they would come looking for you, not me. I could then slip off to some very comfortable corner of the planet and live out my years in exceptional luxury, which I was planning to do in a few months anyway.”
He took her chin and jerked it up to engage her eyes. “But you had to ruin everything. You and your friend, de Warre, with your meddling. Now you must die, my dear. Not that I’ll regret it in the least. I only regret it will be too soon to enjoy you like I should have been able to enjoy your mother’s talents.”
“Murderer!” Grace cried. And then everything
went black as she collapsed to the floor from the vicious slap Hollister dealt her.
****
At seven-thirty in the morning, Jared shifted uneasily in his seat and gazed unseeingly out the small window. Thank goodness Will’s friend, Ed Hubbard, had been persuaded to fly his B‑1 aircraft to Chicago. Hubbard and his partner, Bill Boeing, owed Will a favor. The B‑1 was to be the first commercial aircraft in the country, and the duo needed financing from Will’s bank and connections to get the project off the ground.
Jared had been one of the largest investors, so Ed flew the airplane personally. They had taken off as soon as possible but were still a half hour away from Chicago.
Jared’s inquiries revealed Grace’s train had arrived in Chicago very late in the evening. In spite of the hour, he’d telephoned, but there had been no answer. He hoped she was staying at Zia Bruna’s house. Unfortunately, the old woman didn’t have a telephone.
His next call had been to Sallie, who agreed to go to Zia’s house early in the morning to seek Grace out and keep her safe until Jared could get there.
He’d checked his watch a half dozen times in the last hour. Maybe she didn’t want him involved. After all, she’d left without saying goodbye, other than a short note left on his desk thanking him for his concern and hospitality. It was a stiff and formal correspondence. He didn’t deserve more.
Jared didn’t know what he would say to her when they met again. He hadn’t changed his mind about a future with her. Hell, there was no future with her. Men like him...
He looked over at Donagon snoring lightly. His friend had offered to come along, pointing out that Sallie had a wife and family and shouldn’t be put in a dangerous situation. Jared agreed, thinking of Will and how close he had come to getting killed just by being near Grace.
“We’ll find the lass, boyo, if we have to go all over hell and halfway to Georgia. But then you’ll have to earn yer spurs, you will. God willin’, she might give you the time of day, if yer lucky,” Donagon had said. But he didn’t understand what Jared already knew—that he couldn’t be with Grace without hurting her.
So what was the point of this mad dash to find her?
In the last few hours, he’d finally admitted that he felt more than just a responsibility for her safety. She had never asked for his protection and had fought against it at every opportunity. And now she’d taken her fate into her own hands just as she’d always done. That future didn’t include him, obviously, so why was he pursuing her in this wild, single-minded manner?
He gazed out the window at the white-cloud expanse below the plane and took a few deep breaths. Any man would be drawn to her. Adam had only to glance in her direction and he’d come running, hadn’t he? Jared’s hand formed a fist.
He was empty, dissatisfied with his lot, and although he tried to reason why, he’d found no answer for it, though the feeling grew stronger with each passing day.
He closed his eyes and in the darkness found her image. I don’t know how to do this. Show me. The words tumbled back from his memory.
I want her, he thought. I know how to do that. I know how to seduce her until she trembles in my arms. But I don’t know how to love her. I’ll fail her just as I failed to protect her. I’ll fail if I try to love her.
He sent a silent plea to some vague deity. I don’t know how to do this. Show me.
****
The brisk wind whistled across the grass strip of Chicago’s Municipal Airport as Jared and Donagon descended the stairway from the B‑1. He lowered his head into the biting wind, his eyes stinging as he searched the area for Sallie.
When he spotted his friend standing alone, his hope vanished. He shouted over the aircraft’s screaming engines, “Where is she, Sallie?”
“I don’t know, Jare. I went to the house, and the old woman said she left for work early, before seven o’clock. I went to the shop. Closed and locked up, so I came here. I’m at a loss. Any ideas where she could have gone?”
Jared raked a hand through his hair, knowing time was running out. As determined as her enemy had been, he would try again. He had to locate Grace now. “It’s a long shot, but I don’t know what else to do. How far would you say the Peacock Club is from here, Sallie?”
“The way I drive? About ten minutes.”
The three men sprinted across the grassy field toward Sallie’s Model-T.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Grace surfaced from the blackness slowly. Voices drifted in and out of her consciousness. Her ears rang as she tried to keep at bay the nausea swirling in her stomach. The courier was arguing with Leo over his cut and the most effective way to dispose of her body. “Get a sack from the storeroom downstairs,” Leo snapped.
She needed to keep Leo talking, to buy some time until he let his guard down, if only for a moment. His partner would return in a few minutes. Her hands were still tied and she hadn’t succeeded in twisting her way out of the rope yet, but at least she could move them now. Just a few more moments and she could get to the gun in her pocket.
“You tried to kill me at the Dussalt party in New York.” It wasn’t a question.
Hollister jerked his head toward her, his lips curled in an evil snarl. Anger flashed in his eyes. He took a silencer out of his pocket and slowly began to screw it onto the barrel of the gun. “Yes. Too bad I’m not a very good shot. It was the perfect location for your demise, dear. The cops would never have figured it out, but here in my own back yard I’ll have to be extremely careful. Of course, by the end of the day, it won’t matter. I’ll be out of the country.” He tightened the barrel and turned the gun back to her.
She realized she had only seconds before he would pull the trigger.
Grace had only vague memories of her mother’s calm, soothing voice, but she tried to retrieve a semblance of it as she met Leo’s eyes in a seductive dance and murmured, “Leo, caro, it’s stifling in here. Could you see to my comfort and raise that window, per favore?” Every muscle in her body tensed as she waited to see if he would follow the directive.
Hollister narrowed his eyes, then pinched them tight together. He shook his head as if to clear it. His expression softened. Grace watched the dualities of his psychotic personality fight.
Moments stretched by as Grace held her breath. Then Leo walked to the window and threw it open. The invasive street noise entered the room along with the foul odor of the alley.
The discord seemed to jar him back to the present. He turned to face her, disoriented, and looked down at the gun in his hand.
“Veni qui, caro. It’s been so long since we’ve talked.” Grace flashed him a dazzling smile. “I’ve missed you, Leo.”
Hollister scowled, then smiled, the turmoil in his muddled brain registering on his face, his eyes taking on an even wilder, maniacal excitement.
Suddenly the courier came back into the room. Hollister whirled, his back to the window. Two steps behind the blue shirt was a broad figure in a white shirt and suspenders. Donagon!
“What the...” Hollister began, turning the gun on Donagon, who yanked the courier back just as a shot exploded, catching the blue shirt in the chest. The man slammed backward into Donagon, his dead weight toppling both men to the hallway floor. Donagon’s head snapped against the floorboards and a moan escaped his lips.
In the next moment, from the corner of her eye Grace caught sight of a figure on the fire escape. She drew in her breath sharply and stood up to divert Leo’s attention from the window, but Hollister had already noticed the shadow falling across the wall in front of him.
Jared dove through the window just before Hollister could pull the trigger for the second time. The tackle caught Hollister at the waist, and he fell forward, the gun flying out of his hands and skittering across the planked floor. Both men scrambled for it. Jared reached the gun first, but Hollister now had Grace secured against his chest and held a boot knife to her throat.
Hollister chuckled. “Put the gun down, de Warre.”
Chapter Thi
rty-Six
Jared’s heart thudded wildly in his chest. Hollister would never get away from him now, but he could easily kill Grace before he could be stopped. When a red bubble of blood rose on her neck at the tip of the knife and trickled down, Jared held up a hand.
“Sure, anything you say. No need to have a problem here.” Jared lowered the gun to the desk, glancing at the still bodies of Donagon and the courier in the blood-splattered hallway. Sallie would soon return with the police, but he needed more time.
Hollister snarled, “Now step away. Be quick about it!”
Jared did as he was told, glancing at Grace and recognizing that her eyes blazed with fury, not fear. She struggled covertly with the rope around her wrists. He tried to distract Hollister. “You killed Quigley, too,” he said.
Leo’s face lit with a twisted amusement. “One less person to split with, and now,” he said, glancing into the hallway at the fallen courier, “it’s all mine.”
“E la mia, too, darling,” Grace cooed. “Don’t forget your promise to make me happy forever.”
Jared stared at her, bewildered until he saw the drastic change in Hollister’s features as he ran his knuckles down Grace’s cheek in a soft caress.
“Yes, Angela, love,” he breathed into her ear. Hollister pulled Grace tightly against his chest, the knife still at her throat, and picked up the gun from the desk with his other hand.
Jared could see Grace had managed to free her right hand. She slid it into the pocket of her thick sweater.
Hollister’s fist tightened around the gun, and he aimed it squarely at Jared’s chest. Grace sucked in her breath. “Why must he die, caro?”
Jared realized what Grace was trying to do, and he prepared to hurl himself at Leo. Maybe with luck he could make it.
Rags to Rubies Page 20
