Moonstone Shadows

by Patricia Rice

  Walker sniffed the bottle, shoved it in his pocket, and took off down the alley at a brisk pace—smart man.

  Once the law was out of sight, the driver turned on the ignition. Aaron opened the van door, grabbed the burly driver’s shirt by the collar, and yanked him out. He flung the hired thug to the rocky ground, reached in, grabbed the keys, and pocketed them.

  The driver wasn’t spry, but he was on his feet in fury, swinging at Aaron before he could shut the door.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Aaron muttered, catching the wild swing and countering with a blow to the driver’s gut.

  With an oomph, the driver went down again. That was the problem with big men—they got soft. And underestimated less bulky people.

  “Who hired you?” Aaron demanded.

  “I’m waiting for a pick up is all,” the driver complained, scrambling backward in the dust.

  “A pick up that requires rope. . .” Aaron flung the bundle at the thug’s head. “And chloroform?”

  “Ain’t mine,” the driver protested, dodging the rope. “I was just told to wait here and pick up a delivery.”

  “And you thought you’d just run over a woman on the way down?” Not wanting to hurt his fingers punching the goon again, Aaron stabbed him with his stick when the driver tried to scramble up again. Pity the staff had only a blunt end. He supposed he was breaking enough laws already without stabbing anyone.

  “I got rights!” the driver screamed, scooting backward.

  “Not with me, you don’t. I can throw you down that cliff over there and no one would bother looking for your remains.” Aaron followed him down the alley, stick raised. “Give me your phone.”

  The driver flung the useless cell at him and tried to get up. Aaron pushed him in the chest again with his staff while he retrieved it. He used his psychometry to test for images, then shoved it in his pocket. The phone case wasn’t providing any clue of what went on in the driver’s empty head.

  “You can tell me who hired you or you can sit here and rot until I figure it out myself. Your choice. Don’t say I never offered.” Aaron prayed Walker would find Hannah quickly. He didn’t understand exactly what was happening, but he could connect dots better than most, and chloroform rated way high on his danger meter.

  “I’m just a hired driver,” the man cried, holding his bruised ribs. “I don’t know anything.”

  “You could have killed that woman!” Aaron unpackaged the discarded rope. Setting his staff against the wall, he began wrapping the cord into a noose.

  “I didn’t hit anyone!” Eyeing the noose, the driver backed up to the newly restored shop wall and tried to push himself to a standing position.

  Losing patience, Aaron cracked his fist against a blubbery jaw and let the jerkwad hit the ground. He trussed him like a chicken and rifled his pockets.

  Examining a crumpled photo from the driver’s shirt pocket, Aaron’s pulse escalated to terror mode. He threw all caution to the wind, leaving the goon lying there as he ran for his own vehicle.

  The man carrying rope and a chloroform had a photo of Hannah as she walked through the lodge lobby.

  He tried texting Hannah—no answer. He tried texting Walker, same. They weren’t safely in the lodge.

  Where were they?

  He flew around the shop, castigating himself all the way. Why hadn’t he listened to Hannah? She’d warned him what she was about to do, and he’d blown her off, why? He’d called her a suicidal teenager. . .when she was only doing what she thought best for herself and him. He was an asshole. If those were the last words they’d ever say to each other—no wonder they’d spent lifetimes apart. He needed to find Hannah and. . .

  To his astonishment, Cass waited outside his vehicle.

  And a stream of Lucys were walking up the hill to the lodge, staffs raised and. . . sparking?

  Oh hell and damnation. Heart pounding out of his chest, he flung open the door for Cass and nearly tossed her in. He didn’t even have to ask the direction. He climbed in, turned on the ignition, and roared in the direction of the lodge.

  “What’s happening?” he demanded, swerving past Tullah and Brenda.

  “Hannah’s light has gone out,” was all Cass would say.

  Aaron screamed inside his head all the way up the hill.

  Thirty-two

  Hannah woke up with a pounding headache, cuddling the jewel casket. Oddly, the casket felt content. Had the knot in her head exploded?

  “I think you made my job easier,” a male voice said from above her.

  She was lying on a floor. Neat lines of suits hung above her. As weird as Hillvale might be, she didn’t think the clothes were talking.

  It hurt to turn her head, but she managed to look in the direction of the open closet door.

  Fred Roper stood there, gun in hand—unless she was suffering delusions.

  “I apologize for intruding,” she said shakily, still uncertain of how she’d ended up on the floor. “Kurt said it would be okay to look in here.” She remembered having some iffy excuse in case she was interrupted.

  Roper didn’t appear to be buying it. “And that’s why your fingerprints are all over the weapon that killed Carmel. You’re not quite right in the head, are you? You might get off on an insanity plea. Most of you women ought to be locked in institutions, if we still had them. Shame that. Get up. I’ve called the sheriff, not the local yokel.”

  Her head hurt enough to make her mental, but those statements sounded like someone testing a story rather than stating facts. Clinging to the box, she pushed partially upright. “Sorry. You’re not making much sense and the room is spinning. What happened?”

  “You broke into my house, planning on framing me by putting the murder weapon in my closet. Your friends aren’t the only ones who can plant cameras.”

  Huh. She made a bad intruder. Cameras had not once occurred to her. Nasty idea, planting cameras in what was essentially a hotel suite. Now she had to wonder if Roper had taken up Carmel’s blackmail business. She studied the box in her hands. Was he saying the casket was the murder weapon?

  Aaron hadn’t noticed anything on it, but she supposed she had no evidence otherwise. How would the murderer have had time to return it to the safe?

  The whole scene had an incongruous aspect to it, with a respectable middle-aged man in an expensive business suit and tie pointing a small handgun in her direction while she cradled a medieval box. Roper’s receding hairline revealed a line of sweat. He must have turned off the air conditioner before he left for work.

  But the real incongruity was the chanting voice on the rooftop.

  Now she understood the beads of sweat. The Lucys terrified Roper. And that was most definitely Val chanting on the roof. And maybe Mariah further away? Hannah glanced at her walking stick. The crystal was gleaming. She had no idea what that meant, but it reassured her just a little.

  She tucked the box under her arm and grasped the stick to push herself up. Her brain was working a little better. Could she pry the lamassu stones out of her pocket and fling them? “Was that your van driver who tried to run me over earlier?”

  She didn’t think she had the strength or stability to stand up and swing the stick at a gun. Running wasn’t much of an option.

  Roper shrugged. “Some of those guys get bored. He may have thought it easier than tossing you off a pier. You were supposed to be down there, not up here.”

  “No one will believe you, you know,” she said, probably unconvincingly since she was leaning on her walking stick as if she were an old lady. He must have hit her hard—as he had Carmel? She was lucky to have a thick head then.

  “Of course they’ll believe me. You’re a mentally unstable stranger. I’m a respected member of the business community. I have witnesses who will testify to anything I tell them. The sheriff has believed me before. No reason he won’t now. Besides, your fingerprints are all over the murder weapon, along with bits of Carmel’s demented brain, I suspect.”

  Hannah
gagged. Not the box then. Walker and Keegan had gone over every physical inch. “Why on earth would I kill a woman I didn’t know?”

  Was that more voices chanting? They needed to do a little more than sing, if so. Roper looked less confident than he sounded. His trigger finger might go off if she blinked too hard. Could the metal casket deflect a bullet?

  “Who knows what crazy people will do? Maybe the two of you got in a catfight.” He shrugged and edged backward, glancing expectantly over his shoulder as if anticipating backup. “Maybe you just meant to knock her down and get her out of the way.”

  Had the van turned around and that was the backup he was waiting on? Hannah shivered and frantically tried to think.

  “She was the only reason you still had a job,” she said, searching for the real version of this story as she leaned woozily on her stick. “Without Carmel, Kurt will almost certainly fire you.”

  “He has no reason not to give me a clean reference. That’s all I need. Carmel and her blackmailing partner aren’t around to muddy the water.”

  “Was Francois blackmailing you too? Is that why you killed him?”

  “Francois was a pig. He was going after powerful men who wanted him stopped. All I had to do was tell him there were more gems by the old well, drop a few pills in his beer, and suggest we go dig them up. He’s not much of a loss to the world.”

  “And now you have to get rid of me. And next you’ll have to get rid of all the Lucys. It’s not a good pattern,” she warned.

  He shrugged. “They’ll take my word that you’re crazy and killed yourself. No one will believe that I wasn’t in my office that night, just as I said. A clever woman would have taken my warnings and kept her mouth shut, but you’re not real clever, are you? You had to tell the slant-eyed cop, and he and his buddies are asking too many questions.” Keeping the gun aimed at her, he used his other hand to check his cell phone.

  Warnings? The damage to Aaron’s shop—where she was supposed to be sleeping? The thug in the truck. . . If only she had a brain. What few cells she had left concentrated on the immediate problem.

  “I’ve been told that it takes the sheriff half an hour or more to drive up here. And I’m about to throw up all over your shiny shoes. You might want to let me out of the closet.” Hannah was fairly certain she was pale as death. Her normal color wasn’t much rosier. He ought to believe her.

  Roper grimaced and looked uncertain.

  The bedroom door crashed open as if hit by a bulldozer or a battering ram, at the very least. Hannah nearly staggered in surprise. Roper swung around to confront the intruder, gun upraised.

  Aaron!—looking like the Hulk with his normally complacent features suffused with rage. He’d shed his blazer and rolled up his shirtsleeves, revealing forearms roped with muscle and tendons.

  He came at Roper with his staff upraised.

  Wood did not beat bullets. Hannah screamed at the top of her lungs and flung the metal box at Roper’s back. She hit him squarely between the shoulder blades. Instead of falling, he turned and fired into the closet.

  Hannah slammed back into the wall of suits.

  Swinging his stick like a cricket bat, Aaron screamed “Hannahhhhhhh!” as she crumpled. Roper’s head slammed against the wall.

  The lodge manager slumped and slid down. His smoking gun fell from his hand. Pulse reaching heart attack stage, Aaron kicked the weapon to one side and dived into the closet after Hannah.

  She was still clinging to the damned jewel box. That had to mean something. Cursing with more profusion than a stranded sailor, he lifted her from the stack of suits she’d brought crashing to the floor and hauled her out of the closet.

  Cass stepped out of the doorway to allow him into the front room. He passed Walker slipping back to check on Roper.

  Gently laying his silent burden on the broad couch, Aaron frantically looked for blood. Hannah didn’t open her eyes. “Dammit, woman, you’re a frigging librarian, not a superhero! What the hell did you think you were doing? I told you there’s no such thing as magic. Give me that damned box.” He wrapped his hands around the box she held.

  And tripped backward to another time and place.

  “You came,” she breathed in that soft melodic voice that rippled under his skin as no battle cry could do.

  She hushed a small yapping dog with a snap of her fingers. It lay down in the dust and waited.

  “I said I would,” he reminded her. “Had I died, I still would have found my way to you.” He gazed into wide eyes of molten amber, shielded by the headdress of her order. “You didn’t wait.”

  “My place is here,” she said sadly. “My gift is to heal. Yours is to protect the lands. I have no wealth or power to help you in a material way. She does. You must marry her. You know you must.”

  “I cannot marry where my heart does not belong,” he protested. “I have gone all the way to the Holy Land for these stones that you said will heal the wounds of war and illness.”

  Her gaze fell on the open casket. Her eyes widened even more, and her pale hand covered her heart. “The moonstone?” she asked in disbelief. “It exists?”

  “Along with its guardians. That’s as it should be, isn’t it? The healer surrounded by her protectors? Let me take you home, where you belong.” He’d meant it to sound like an order, but it came out as an impassioned plea.

  The sadness in her eyes was so devastating that he almost fell to his knees and wept.

  “And that is the same here—I am protected by the power of the Lord, as you are not. Go home, Geoffrey. Go home and save your lands from those who would steal them. And with your aid, I will heal the folk who live upon them. Know I love you more than life itself, more than I should any mortal man, but my vow has been given to the church.”

  He kneeled and laid the box at her feet, his heart breaking into ten thousand brittle pieces.

  Someone removed the box. Aaron jerked back to the moment as hands shoved him aside. “Move over and let Brenda see her.”

  That wasn’t said in Latin.

  He blinked, trying to orient himself. Cass was no nun, although she might wield the power of her order. There was no yappy dog. The casket sat on a polished wooden floor, not dirt. The woman he loved lay on a leather couch, wearing one of her khaki librarian uniforms, not a wimple and gown.

  The woman he loved. . .

  Stirred and blinked her big. . . amber. . . eyes. He hadn’t realized that golden brown was called amber. He should have, but Hannah’s eyes were the color of the trees in autumn, with golden sunlight hitting them. Amber was tree sap—not the same thing. His mind was reeling, trying to straighten out the juxtaposition of the past and present. No wonder her Aunt Jia wandered around inside her head.

  “A lifetime of that would make us crazy,” he said aloud.

  A slow smile formed on rose lips. Long brown lashes flickered beneath her messy bangs. He knew her hair was a natural blond, but her dark lashes didn’t need mascara.

  “I’d kind of like a dog like that,” she whispered. “Roper called me crazy. Maybe I am. I’m no healer.”

  “You’re no nun either,” he said, keeping his voice neutral as Brenda bent over her patient, checking pulse and heartbeat.

  She’d been there with him. She’d seen and heard what he had. Goosebumps ran up his arms, and the hackles raised on his neck. He wished someone would tell him what in holy hell that meant.

  “But you’re my knight, riding to the rescue.” She wrinkled up her recently-freckled nose. “He had a horse didn’t he? I don’t remember.”

  “Knights always had destriers. I only have a van, but it’s a utility vehicle just as a destrier is. I didn’t deliver the rocks this time though. You did.” He was definitely losing it. He wasn’t even sure he made sense to himself.

  She glanced around, then grabbed her head as if it hurt. “Ow. Where’s the box? He said I was holding the murder weapon.”

  That jarred him back to reality. Aaron glanced down at the casket she’d
been holding, then around at the activity in the cabin. In the back room, Walker had handcuffed the unconscious Roper and left him propped against the wall while he stepped out the back to radio in a report to the county. Mariah was blocking the front door to keep out curiosity seekers. The other Lucys were still chanting outside. Brenda had finished performing her hoodoo over Hannah. Saying she could find no injury, she headed back to check on Roper.

  Before Aaron could even feel relief, Cass opened the casket. Inside rested a large grayish rock with tantalizing glimpses of shimmering, translucent white. She picked it up using a handkerchief she produced from her skirt pocket. From that same pocket, she produced a stone lamassu, one without crystal or the guardian rocks.

  “Put Roper’s fingerprints on it,” she commanded, holding the statuette out to Aaron.

  And even though he knew it was a criminal act, Aaron got up and defiantly crossed into the bedroom to press Roper’s fingers to the stone. Sometimes, the greater good was more important than minor details like which weapon had actually killed. In her own way, Cass was telling him that he’d done the right thing by going to jail for concealing the painting, even though he still had no proof that the Eversham had been dangerous in anything more than his mind.

  Brenda returned with him to the front room. Holding the moonstone in a bundle of gauze, she used a sterile stick from her bag to transfer bits of matter from the real weapon to the newly fingerprinted statuette.

  Aaron would prefer not to touch a rock that had shattered a woman’s skull. But the police chief was an honest Null and only allowed them leeway because Lucys offered information he couldn’t find on his own. The fake murder weapon would pass Walker’s inspection better if Aaron could offer him the real story of Carmel’s death.

  Gritting his teeth, he held out his palm for the moonstone. Roper’s hate and anger came through clearly, as if the stone wished to reject them. Aaron winced at the negativity seeping into him.