The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5

by Nora Roberts

  Then she knocked, waved through the glass. When he only stood there, frowning at her, she opened the door. The pup lay on the floor, feet in the air as if he’d been electrocuted.

  “Hi!” She had to pitch to just under scream level to beat out the music. “I was on my way to the village and thought . . .”

  She trailed off as he pulled out earplugs.

  “Oh, well, no wonder it’s so loud. Listen—”

  She broke off again when he pulled a remote from a pocket of the tool belt, shut down the music. The silence roared like a tsunami—and woke the puppy.

  He yawned, stretched, then spotted her. Insane joy leaped into his eyes as he sprang up, did a kind of bouncing dance, then charged her. Fiona crouched, held out a hand, palm facing dog so he bumped into it first.

  “Hi, yes, hi, good to see you, too.” She rubbed his head, his belly. She pointed a finger at the ground. “Sit!” His butt vibrated a moment, then plopped down. “Aren’t you smart, aren’t you good?” She grabbed him when he spotted Newman, sitting patiently outside. “Can he go out? I’ve got Newman, and he’ll watch out for him.”

  Simon simply shrugged.

  “Okay. Go play.” She laughed when Jaws took a flying leap out the door and belly-flopped into the grass. When she glanced back, Simon remained by the table saw, watching her.

  “I’ve interrupted you.”

  “Yeah.”

  Blunt, she thought. Well, she didn’t mind blunt. “I’m heading into the village and thought I’d see if you needed anything. Sort of a payback for playing sounding board.”

  “I’m good.”

  “Okay, then. We both know the do-you-need-anything’s just an excuse, but we can leave it at that. I’ll—Oh my God, that’s beautiful!”

  She headed straight for the cabinet across the shop, skirting benches and tools.

  “Don’t touch it!” Simon snapped, and stopped her in her tracks. “It’s tacky,” he added, in an easier tone. “Varnish.”

  Obediently, she linked her hands behind her back. It was the varnish she smelled, she realized, and sawdust, and freshly sawed wood. The combination merged into a fascinating aroma. “Those are the doors? The carving’s just exquisite, and the tones of the wood. Delicious, really.” As delicious as the scent that soaked the air. “I want it. I probably can’t afford it, but I want it anyway. How much?”

  “It doesn’t suit you or your place. It is elegant, and a little ornate. You’re not.”

  “I can be elegant and ornate.”

  He shook his head, then walked over to an old, squat refrigerator, took out two Cokes. He tossed her one, which she caught one-handed.

  “No, you can’t. You want something either simpler, cleaner or going the other direction into fanciful. A little tension with the primarily Mission and Craftsman style you lean toward.”

  “Is that where I lean?”

  “I’ve been in your house,” he reminded her.

  She yearned to run a finger over the deep carving—elongated hearts—on the raised panel of the door. “This could be tension.”

  “No.”

  Sincerely baffled, she turned to him. “You actually won’t sell it to me because I’m not elegant?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How do you sell anything?”

  “On commission or direct sale. By designing what works with the client.” He eyed her while he took a deep drink. “Rough night.”

  Now she jammed her hands in her pockets. “Thanks for noticing. Well, since I’m interrupting and I’m not suitable to buy your stupid cabinet, I’ll leave you alone with your monster saw.”

  “I’m taking a break.”

  She drank, studying him as he studied her. “You know, given my line of work, really crappy manners such as yours don’t bother me.”

  “If you’re thinking of training me like my dog, you should know I’m intractable.”

  She only smiled.

  “So, if the need-anything-in-town was an excuse, are you hitting on me?”

  She smiled again, wandered. She saw a lot of clamps and chisels, a skinnier saw and a stationary drill thingee that looked as scary as the monster saw.

  She saw tools she had no names for and empty coffee cans full of nails and screws and other strange things.

  What she didn’t see was any semblance of organization.

  “Hitting on you? Not yet. And given your behavioral flaws, I’m reconsidering.”

  “Fair enough, and to be fair back, you’re not really my type.”

  She stopped examining a wonderful wide-armed rocker she coveted to send him a cool stare. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, it’s so. Mostly I lean toward the arty, feminine type. Curvy’s a bonus.”

  “Like Sylvia.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Or Nina Abbott.” She couldn’t help the smug smile when annoyance flicked briefly in his eyes.

  “Or” was all he said.

  “Thank God we got that cleared up before I gave my squishy, susceptible heart into your hands.”

  “Lucky break. But . . . it’s good to mix things up now and then. Try new things.”

  “Great. I’ll let you know when I want to be mixed and tried. Meanwhile, I’ll take my inelegant, art-starved, unfeminine, flat-chested self out of your way.”

  “You’re not flat-chested.”

  The laugh escaped before she knew it was there. “God, you’re a weird sucker. I’m going while I still have enough crumbs of ego left to sweep into a pile.”

  She went to the door, called his dog. When the puppy raced to her, she petted and praised. Then she nudged his butt farther into the room, closed the door with him inside. She flicked one glance at Simon through the glass before striding to her truck, Newman faithfully at her side.

  He watched her through the window, the long, athletic stride, the easy grace. She’d looked lost when she came into the shop. Hesitant, uncertain. Tired.

  Not anymore, he thought as she hopped into her truck. Now she was brisk, distracted and maybe a little pissed.

  Better. Maybe he was one weird sucker, but he’d worry less about her now.

  Satisfied, he replaced his earplugs, his goggles, turned on the music. And got back to work.

  EYES BRIGHT, SYLVIA leaned on the counter of her pretty little shop while Fiona debated earrings. “He did not say that.”

  “He absolutely said that.” Fiona held long pearl drops to one ear, funky, colored glass balls to the other. “I’m not elegant enough for his overrated cabinet. I can be elegant.” She turned. “See? Pearls.”

  “Very pretty. But the fused glass ones are really you.”

  “Yeah, but I could wear the pearls, if I wanted.” After setting them back in the display, Fiona wandered over to a tall raku vase.

  There was always something new to see in Sylvia’s place. A painting, a scarf, a table, a treasure trove of jewelry. She stopped by a bench with high, curved sides and skimmed her fingers over the wood.

  “This is beautiful.”

  “It’s one of Simon’s.”

  She resisted giving it a flick with her formerly admiring fingers. “Figures. Then he said I wasn’t his type. As if I’d asked. You are.”

  “I am?”

  “He even used you as an example. Arty and female and built.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure, go ahead and look smug.”

  Deliberately, obviously, Sylvia fluffed at her hair. “It’s hard not to.”

  “Well, feel free to follow up,” Fiona added with a dismissive wave.

  “It might be interesting, but I think I’ll just stay smug. I’m sure he didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “Oh yes he did.”

  “Tell you what. I’m closing in ten minutes. We’ll go have dinner and trash him. Better, men in general.”

  “That sounds like fun, but I need to get back. I really just came in to bitch. Jesus, Syl, it’s been a crappy couple of days.”

  Sylvia skirted the counter to
give Fiona a bolstering hug. “Why don’t I come over and fix you some pasta while you take a nice long bath?”

  “Honestly, I think I’m going to open a can of soup, then go to bed. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “I worry about you, Fee.” She gave Fiona’s tail of hair a little tug. “Why don’t you come stay with me until they catch this maniac?”

  “You know I’m fine. Me and the boys. Besides, the maniac’s not interested in me.”

  “But—” She broke off when the door opened.

  “Hi, Sylvia. Hi, Fiona.”

  “Jackie, how are you?” Sylvia smiled at the pretty blonde who ran a local B&B.

  “I’m just fine. I meant to get in earlier. I know you close in a few minutes.”

  “Don’t worry about that. How’s Harry?”

  “Tucked up in bed with a cold—which is one of the reasons I ran out. I swear you’d think he had the plague instead of the sniffles. He’s driving me crazy. I’ve been doing a little early spring cleaning between waiting on him hand and foot and listening to him moan. I decided I need to spruce the place up a little, do some redecorating. Mind if I look around, get some ideas?”

  “You go right ahead.”

  “I’d better get going. Nice to see you, Jackie.”

  “You, too. Oh, Fiona, my boy and his wife just got a puppy. Practice, they say, before they start working on making me a grandmother.” She rolled her eyes.

  “That’s nice. What kind did they get?”

  “I don’t know. They went to a shelter.” She smiled then. “Brad said they’d save a life, then start thinking about starting one.”

  “That’s really nice.”

  “They named her Sheba—as in Queen of. He said if I ran into you I should tell you they’re going to sign up for your puppy classes.”

  “I’ll look forward to it. I’d better go.”

  “I’ll come by tomorrow, give you a hand with your classes,” Sylvia told her. “Oreo could use a little refresher course.”

  “I’ll see you then. Bye, Jackie.”

  As she walked out she heard Jackie exclaim over the bench, “Oh, Sylvia, this is a wonderful piece.”

  “Isn’t it? It’s by the new artist I told you about. Simon Doyle.”

  Fiona grumbled all the way to the truck.

  IN HIS CELL in Washington State Penitentiary, George Allen Perry read his Bible. While his crimes had earned him a maximum-security cage for the rest of his life, he was considered a model prisoner.

  He joined no gangs, made no complaints. He did the work assigned to him, ate the food served him. He kept himself clean, spoke respectfully to guards. He exercised regularly. He did not smoke or swear or use drugs, and spent most of the endless days reading. Every Sunday he attended services.

  Visitors came rarely. He had no wife, no child, no staunch friends outside, or inside, the walls.

  His father had long ago deserted him, and his mother, who the psychiatrists agreed was the root of his pathology, feared him.

  His sister wrote him once a month, and made the long trek from Emmett, Idaho, once a year, considering it her Christian duty.

  She’d given him the Bible.

  The first year had been a misery that he’d borne with downcast eyes and a quiet manner that had disguised a raging fear. In the second year he’d lost fear in depression, and by the third he’d accepted that he would never be free.

  He would never again be free to choose what to eat, and when to eat it, to rise or repose at his own whim. He would never again walk through a forest or glade or drive a car along a dark road with a secret in the trunk.

  He would never again feel the power and the peace of a kill.

  But there were other freedoms, and he earned them carefully. Meticulously. He expressed regret for his crimes to his lawyer, to the psychiatrist.

  He’d wept, and considered the tears humiliation well spent.

  He told his sister he’d been born again. He was allowed private consultation with a minister.

  By his fourth year, he was assigned to the prison library, where he worked with quiet efficiency and expressed gratitude for the access to books.

  And began his search for a student.

  He applied for and was granted permission to take courses, both by visiting instructors and by video feed. It gave him an opportunity to interact with and study his fellow inmates in a new setting.

  He found most too crude, too brutal, too lacking in intellect. Or simply too old, too young, too deeply entrenched in the system. He continued to further his education—he found it interesting—and he held to the thinning hope that fate would offer him the spiritual freedom he sought.

  In his fifth year in Walla Walla, fate smiled on him. Not in the guise of a fellow inmate, but an instructor.

  He knew instantly, just as he’d known the woman he would kill the moment he saw her.

  This was his gift.

  He began slowly, assessing, evaluating, testing. Patient, always, as he outlined and refined the methods by which he would create his proxy, the one who would walk outside the walls for him, hunt for him and kill for him.

  Who would, in time, in good time, correct his single mistake. One that haunted him every night in the dark cage where silence and comfort were strangers.

  Who would, in time, kill Fiona Bristow.

  That time, Perry thought as he read Revelation, was nearly here.

  He glanced up as the guard came to the cell. “Got a visitor.”

  Perry blinked, carefully marking his place before setting aside the worn Bible. “My sister? I didn’t expect her for another six weeks.”

  “Not your sister. FBI.”

  “Oh, my goodness.” A big man with thinning hair and prison pallor, Perry stood meekly as the door clanged and slid open.

  Two guards flanked him, and he knew others would search his cell while he was gone. No matter, none at all. They’d find nothing but his books, some religious tracts, the dry, God-fearing letters from his sister.

  He kept his head down, repressed the smile that strained to spread over his face. The FBI would tell him what he already knew. His student had passed the next test.

  Yes, Perry thought, there were many kinds of freedom. And at the thought of gaming with the FBI again, he took wing and soared.

  SIX

  Grateful for the bright, brisk morning and work that demanded her full attention, Fiona studied her advanced special-skills students. Today was a very big day for dogs and handlers. They’d attempt their first blind search.

  “Okay, the victim’s in place.” She thought of Sylvia, three-quarters of a mile away, sitting cozily under a forked-trunk cedar with a book, a thermos of herbal tea and her radio. “I want you to work as a unit. We’re going to use the sector system. You can see I’ve set up the base.” She gestured to a table she’d placed under a pole tarp and the equipment on it. “For today, I’ll handle base and stand as operational leader, but by next week I want you to elect your officers.”

  She gestured to the whiteboard under the tarp. “Okay. The local authorities have notified the operations officer—me, in this case—and asked for assistance in the search and rescue of an adult female hiker who’s been lost approximately twenty-four hours. You see on the board temperatures last night dropped to forty-three degrees. She has only a day pack, and little experience. The victim is Sylvia Bristow.”

  That brought out some grins as the class knew Sylvia as Fiona’s sometime assistant. “She’s age-deleted for my own well-being, Caucasian, brown hair, brown eyes, five feet, five inches, and about a hundred and thirty pounds. When last seen she was wearing a red jacket, jeans, a blue baseball-style cap. Now, what do you need to know before being given your sectors?”

  She answered with details from the scenario she’d devised. The subject was in good health, had a cell phone but often neglected to charge it, had been expected to hike two to four hours, was not local and had only recently taken up hiking.

  She
called the unit to the map and the log she’d already begun. Once she’d assigned sectors, she ordered everyone to load on their packs.

  “I have items worn recently by the subject. Take a bag, give your dogs the scent. Remember to use the subject’s name. Refresh the scent whenever you think your dog may be confused, or if he or she becomes distracted or disinterested. Remember the boundaries of your sector. Use your compass, check in by radio. Trust your dogs. Good luck.”

  She felt their excitement, and the nerves, as well as a sense of competition. Eventually, if they made it as a unit, the competition would shift into cooperation and trust.

  “When you get back, all dogs who didn’t find our victim need a short find, to keep up morale. Remember, it’s not just your dogs being tested. You’re honing your skills, too.”

  She watched them spread out, separate, and nodded in approval at the way each gave his or her dog the scent, the command.

  Her own dogs whined as the others scented the air, began to roam.

  “We’ll play later,” she promised them. “These guys need to do it on their own.”

  She sat, noted the time, wrote it in the assignment log.

  They were a good group, she thought, and should make a solid unit. She’d started with eight, but over the past ten weeks three had dropped out. Not a bad percentage, she mused, and what was left was tight, was dedicated. If they pushed through the next five weeks, they’d be a good asset to the program.

  She picked up her radio, checked the frequency, then contacted Sylvia. “They’re off and running. Over.”

  “Well, I hope they don’t find me too soon. I’m enjoying my book. Over.”

  “Don’t forget. Sprained ankle, dehydration, mild shock. Over.”

  “Got it. But until then, I’m going to eat my apple and read. See you when they haul me back. Over and out.”

  To keep her own dogs occupied, and give them some consolation for not being able to play the find game with the others, Fiona ran them through their paces on the agility training equipment.

  It may have looked comical to an outsider—cheerful Labs climbing up and down the ladder of a child’s sliding board, or taking that slide on command. But the skill taught and reinforced a search dog’s ability to cope with difficult footing. The fact that they enjoyed it, as well as balancing on the teeter-totter, negotiating along narrow planks, maneuvering through the open drums she’d formed into tunnels, added a bonus.