I desperately wanted to ask what he meant, but my intuition warned me not to. He was on thin ice, and I had the impression that if he cracked, I’d go down with him. I’d made my own sacrifices for the Adriano family. I guessed I wasn’t the only one.
“You love the boy,” I said. A statement of fact, not a question.
“Yes.”
“Bodyguards shouldn’t become attached to their clients. It’s deadly for both of you.”
“Agreed, but I didn’t plan it. I thought my heart had been closed, but he got through, you know? I would lay down my life for that child. It’s not just my job. It’s my duty.” He turned away and stared out the window for at least a whole block. “If any of the Adrianos are ever going to live up to their public image as philanthropists, I’ll see to it that it’s that little boy. I won’t let them turn him into another Adriano clone.”
I smiled to myself. Nice sentiments. But what could one man do? I wondered as I pressed the accelerator a little harder. I strained for a glimpse in the mirror of the gray BMW. For a moment I thought I’d spotted it, but then I lost it.
“Why me?” I asked. “Why my car? Why last night?”
He didn’t speak for several minutes. I thought he’d not heard me. Just as I started to rephrase my question, he cleared his throat.
“Last night, after I took Benny out to play hide-and-seek, I brought him to his mother for the evening. Most of the time, she doesn’t want to be bothered with him. Benny cramps her style. Last night was one of those nights. Caleb offered to play with the boy instead. That in itself was unusual. He’s had nothing to do with Benny until this new girlfriend caught his attention.” He raised an eyebrow. “Scarlet Rubashka.”
“You don’t like Scarlet.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I don’t like or dislike her. She gets on my nerves, though, always asking questions about where and when I was born.”
I laughed. “Delving into your personality via your astrological chart, was she? Yes, I’ve seen Scarlet in action.”
Eric curled his upper lip. “She said I was a Scorpio rising, whatever the hell that means. And that that explained everything. She never said what it explained, but I didn’t care for it.”
I shrugged. I liked Scarlet. She was vibrant and playful and intense with a hell of a sense of fashion. And too good for Caleb. There was something familiar about her that reminded me a little of Lilah, enough that I’d tried to take her under my wing, tried to warn her to be careful of Caleb. Instead she’d given me a cool shoulder. She seemed friendly to everyone but me. But then, I’d told her some rather unbelievable details about her suitor. My own sexual preferences aren’t exactly vanilla, but Caleb’s habits could be deadly. Obviously he was keeping his kinkier side hidden from Scarlet. That could mean only one thing: he really wanted to impress her.
“So Caleb’s found a potential wife. Is that it?” He wanted to get rid of Benny and replace him with an heir of his own?
“Possibly. But his affection for her does seem genuine. It’s Simon who doesn’t like her. Not a conversation passes between father and son that doesn’t include an argument over his focus on Scarlet Rubashka.”
“Last night,” I said, “I saw you leave with Benny to play a game. Later I saw Benny’s handprint on Caleb’s shirt.”
“Caleb had me dismissed for the evening.”
Hmm. Eric didn’t seem easily dismissed. He was hard to set aside in my mind, even under the current circumstances.
“Can Caleb do that? Dismiss you?”
“He can’t, no. But Pauline does have the authority to dismiss me for the evening so she can spend time with her son. Josh gave her that authority in his absence. But only because she’s the boy’s mother. While you were at the palazzo, all attention was on you and on the artifact you’d brought back. No one was watching Caleb. He took advantage of that. He played a game with his nephew, all right. I found the boy up on the scaffolding boards of the tower ruins. Not even within the walls of the tower. Just balanced up there with his blanket.”
“On top of the tower? My God, that’s dangerous! He could have fallen.” Then it struck me, even before Eric could confirm it.
“More than dangerous. It’s intentional. Benny’s not allowed to play anywhere near there.”
I remembered the four ruined towers of the old castle that formed the foundation of the palazzo. In places, the stone had crumbled, so the Adrianos were having it refurbished in an attempt to buck it up to last another century or two, but the recent earthquakes had played havoc with the repairs. The towers were always in the distance, high above the other buildings in the compound. Caleb had taken me up onto one of the towers for a private dinner one night, when he’d been courting me. The view was stunning, with the Bay of Naples visible in one direction and Mount Vesuvius in another.
A fall from there would be deadly.
I glanced again in the backseat at the boy, then checked the mirror again for gray BMWs and found none. “How could anyone do that to a child? Especially…his own uncle?”
“It would have been deemed an accident. They would have said the boy had been playing hide-and-seek and fallen. Even his own mother would have believed it. But not me. Benny’s terrified of heights.”
“Then how did Caleb get him up there if he’s that scared?”
“He drugged him with cough syrup. With Pauline’s permission, of course, to give him a single dose to help a nonexistent case of the sniffles.” Eric’s upper lip curled in disgust. “Pauline doesn’t spend enough time with him to know if he’s sick or not.”
So that’s why Benny had slept through last night’s escape and the storm. I glanced in the rearview mirror again at Benny and then beyond to the street behind me.
“What’s wrong?” Eric asked.
I kept my eyes on the road ahead, made a quick right turn, sped up and then another right. The road behind me was clear.
I shook my head. “Nothing. I thought for a minute there that we were being followed.”
“We weren’t. I was watching, too.”
I smiled. Glad to know somebody had my back. That was a different feeling. I was used to doing it on my own.
“What are you smiling about?”
I shook my head. I didn’t smile much anymore. Not genuinely. Most of the time I went through life with a poker face, even when my knee wasn’t killing me.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”
Again a movement in my rearview mirror caught my attention. A gray BMW. Three men. “Yours?”
Eric discreetly checked out the side mirror. “No. Yours?”
“Not unless Interpol just sent a whole entourage to pick me up. Which, I supposed, given my reputation, was entirely possible.”
“You want me to drive?”
Jeez. What was with all these men? They thought they were the only ones who could drive? First Myrddin and now Eric. Give Benny half a chance and he’d want to take over next!
“I think I can handle it,” I said drily.
I watched for the next street to the right and spun the steering wheel, barely clearing the corner of an old stone church that was probably three hundred years old. I fishtailed to the left, down an alley, and then threw the gears in Reverse, backing into a second alley. We waited a few seconds and the gray BMW passed. The men hadn’t seen us.
“Made it!” I grinned and reached playfully to squeeze Eric’s knee. “We made it.”
Eric gingerly lifted my hand from his leg and squashed it back onto the steering wheel. “Please don’t do that.”
“If you’re going to get persnickety about my driving—”
“No. Don’t use sex as a weapon with me.”
I stared. “Use sex as…What?” Had I heard him right? He was a great-looking guy. Sexy and determined, if not a little too reserved. My attraction to him was natural. “I didn’t touch you because I had a hidden agenda!”
“No?” He raised a single eyebrow. “All I know is that you’ve l
eft a trail of men all over Europe and the States, each one of them a victim of your, er, feminine wiles. To my knowledge, it’s all flirtation to get what you want, whatever artifact you’re after.” He squared his jaw and peered out the window at the garbage in the deserted alley. “And, after all, you were Caleb’s whore. A woman with so much potential, and you sank so low.”
My jaw dropped. “Is…is that what you think I am?”
He turned back to me, his gaze burning condemnation into my flesh. “Weren’t you?”
I shook my head and tried to speak, but nothing came out at first. “No! No. I…” Squeezing my eyes shut, I took a deep breath and found myself telling him the whole story, all about how Caleb had courted me and then nearly killed me for kicks. I don’t know what compelled me. I’d never told anyone else but Scarlet, and only then because I’d thought I could save her the same humiliation and danger. But I told him everything. Every detail. I didn’t open my eyes until I’d finished. I couldn’t look at him.
“Aubrey.”
I scowled at the steering wheel and then above it at the entrance to the alley. I couldn’t face him.
“Aubrey.” He turned my chin toward him with a single index finger. His face had softened, and for a second I almost thought he might kiss me. “I’m sorry.”
He held his finger against my skin as we stared at each other. He meant it. Damn. He meant it. Scorpio rising, Scarlet had called him. I didn’t know much about astrology, but I knew that an ascendant in Scorpio was special. All that emotion just under the surface, always hidden but utterly intense passion.
He blinked and looked toward the alley entrance. “Shit!” He went stiff.
I followed his gaze. The gray BMW blocked my view.
Chapter 10
I’m good at finding ways out, I told myself. I couldn’t go forward. We were blocked. I had to find an alternative.
I gritted my teeth and threw the gearshift into Reverse. Hands hard on the wheel, I turned to look behind me and plowed backward through the alley and its garbage, then spun out into the street behind me, across traffic and into another alley. My earlier luck didn’t hold out, and I scraped a wall as I backed out onto another street and spun into a courtyard full of flowers and small statues. We waited, Eric and I exchanging nervous glances. No gray BMW. In another silent minute, I maneuvered out the courtyard and back to the main road out of the city. No one followed. I looked in the mirror for the next few kilometers, but still no gray BMW.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked, finally expelling a breath. “You and Benny tour the countryside for an extra day and then go home to Daddy?”
“Something like that. I’ll spend the next day chasing you and finally report in from a pay phone to give Josh my status.”
“And me? What happens to me? How will you justify your existence when I don’t return with you? Benny may be too young to explain, but you’ll be expected to.” I looked at him hard. “I’m not going back with you, right? Now that you’re here with Benny, there’s no reason for me to go back.”
“No, you’re not going back with me. You’re to meet your friend Catrina in Paris. If she’s not there, then go directly to her farmhouse in Lys. Take the tiles and manuscript to her for safekeeping. Meanwhile, you’re going to make a daring last-minute escape befitting one of Dr. Moon’s famous getaways.” His lips twisted in slight amusement. “Me? I will heroically save the child from your dastardly clutches and return him to his father. Consider it a win-win situation.”
Wait a minute. “How did you know about Catrina?”
Before he could answer, a single raindrop splashed on the windshield in front of me. We were well out into the countryside, and on both sides of the road patches of sunflowers bowed their heads under a sudden light breeze. Then just as quickly they dipped low, their heads touching the ground and stems bouncing upright again and again as a heavier wind swept through the fields around us.
Clouds zipped in front of us, across the sky above the road ahead. The single raindrop became two, then three, then a deluge.
I checked the rearview mirror. Benny yanked off his headphones and stared, horrified, out the passenger window. He began to whimper.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” I called back to him, fumbling as quickly as I could for the windshield wipers. I flipped them on high, but even then the wipers couldn’t keep pace with the rain. “Put your headphones back on,” I told him. “Close your eyes and listen to your story.”
His reflection obeyed and he leaned back in his seat with his arms folded and his eyes squeezed shut.
The wipers slapped back and forth with little effect. I braked gently, then again, until I slowed to a crawl. Eric turned in his seat to check on Benny, whose eyes were still tightly closed.
“Answer me,” I shouted over the pounding rain. “How did you know about Catrina?”
I could no longer see anything in front of me except for gray. I maneuvered toward the roadside, but Eric grabbed the steering wheel and swung us back onto the road.
“You can’t stop,” he said. “Do not stop. No matter what.”
I wiped at the foggy windshield with my left hand and gripped the wheel with my right. “We have to stop. It’s not safe to keep going.”
“Do not stop!” Eric roared. “Keep going!”
“No.” I swerved toward the roadside again, but he seized the steering wheel and angled the automobile back onto the road.
“If you can’t drive in heavy rain, I will.”
“I can drive just fine. This is ridiculous! I will not put that child in the backseat at risk when I can’t even see the hood of my own automobile.”
“If you do not continue to drive, you put us all at risk, including yourself. Including me. Including that boy.” He leaned back in his seat. “Keep moving. See if you can get ahead of the storm.”
“Get ahead of—There’s no way! It’s all around us.”
“Exactly. It’s all around us.”
I veered sharply to avoid another car that had pulled onto the roadside in front of me, but I didn’t see its blinking hazard lights in time. I heard the crunch of metal. My front bumper plowed the length of the automobile, denting in both doors and fenders.
“Do not stop!” Eric yelled as the other driver honked furiously back at me. “Keep driving!”
“But I just—”
“Keep driving!”
In the backseat, Benny started to cry. “Want my mother.”
“Do not stop!” The veins in Eric’s forehead bulged. I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Not anger. Terror. The Adrianos’ most important bodyguard was scared. When Benny whimpered again, Eric lowered his voice. “No matter what happens, you must keep driving. If we have a chance to get out from under this storm, we have to try. It may already be too late. They’ll have to try for a visual of the car to follow you. They can’t track you in the storm. Not until it stops.”
So there was another tracker on the Mercedes? I motioned to the pounding water on my windshield. I could hardly see the metal rim of the hood at the base of the windshield wipers. Our entire universe had shrunk to no more than a finger’s length outside the car. The road ahead was straight, but I wasn’t sure I could navigate by the feel of the ground under the tires.
“How can anyone be expected to drive in this kind of storm?” I asked.
“That’s what they’re counting on.”
“They who?”
“Simon. Caleb. If Simon catches us, I can salvage myself. I’m adept at cover stories. With Caleb, I don’t know. I’d have to take the boy and run, hope to get to Josh before Caleb gets to Benny. But if they catch you?” He shook his head. “If they catch you, Aubrey de Lune, they will kill you.”
I swallowed. Yes. That much I knew already.
“When it comes to torture, Simon is very efficient. Trust me, Aubrey. I’ve seen it.” Eric caught my gaze for a split second but long enough. “Simon will use whatever emotional attachments you have—to anyone—to find out whatever
it is you know.”
“I don’t know anything.”
He took a deep breath. “Then that’s unfortunate. Because rather than torture you directly, he’ll make you watch while he dismembers the people you care about.”
“I told you—I don’t know anything. All the artifacts I’ve acquired for the Adrianos, I’ve given to them.” I considered the contents of the trunk. “Until now. I never held anything back. I was always honest in my dealings.” An honorable thief. My last sliver of integrity.
“He’s not so much interested in your artifacts as your ancestors. The women you descended from. The women they told you about on your eighteenth birthday. The history of the tiles. In your family branch, that was the tradition.”
“How would you know anything about my family?” Or that I was Aubrey de Lune? As for my family, I’d lost them long ago, but the wound was still fresh. “How would you know anything about me?”
“Because I’ve researched you thoroughly.”
“Oh.”
“In your family, on the eldest daughter’s eighteenth birthday, the daughter is told the story of the tiles and given the oral history of your family tree. That’s how your mother learned about the tiles. And her mother before her, and her mother’s mother.”
White-knuckled, I clutched the steering wheel. I leaned forward, flattening the accelerator as much as I dared. “I don’t know any stories,” I told him. Why couldn’t he understand? Was that what Myrddin had meant? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My mother died before I was eighteen. My grandmother died when I was a little girl. My father vanished when I was barely old enough to remember his face. I never heard any stories about the tiles. I saw them a couple of times, but that’s all. The only stories I ever heard—ever—was how I was descended from Joan of Arc, but that was just a bedtime story my grandmother told me.”
Eric stared at me, then started laughing. “All this time! All this time he kept you alive so you could lead him to the other women like you, the other descendants. And you knew nothing.” He shook his head and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. “Incredible! They lured you back to Europe, set you up, turned you into a criminal, made you useful to them, paid you a fortune with each completed assignment, and all with the hope that you would flit around Europe and eventually contact others of your kind. Didn’t you ever wonder why so many of your acquaintances disappeared into thin air?”
Lorna Tedder Page 13
