Jude Deveraux (33 page)

Eden's  
head   was   clearing   more  
with   each second, but she didn't want Jared to know that, so she
struggled when she tried to sit up.

'Tell
me about this,' he said.

'I
found it when I was clearing up the attic, but Mrs. Farrington knew it was
there. No one in the family knew who had written it or when. Mrs. Farrington
said her father told her he thought it was put there when the house was built.'
She looked at Jared. 'No one in the family thought anything about it. There's
also a phrase written in Latin on a windowpane in one of the dormers. It says —
'

'One
mystery at a time. What do you think this one means?'

Eden
didn't have to read it, as she knew it by heart. 'I don't know. Ask Brad. He's
the one who figured it out.' Her mind was on her daughter and how she was going
to slip away, alone, to deliver a worthless necklace to a kidnapper. And how
was she going to sneak away from Jared to try to find Melissa?

'I need
to sleep,' she said in the most pathetic voice she could muster. She did need
to sleep. She needed all the strength she could muster to face tonight.

'I wish
you'd let me go with you,' Brad said under his breath. 'In a situation like
this — '

'It's
not a situation, it's my daughter,' Eden said. 'She's been captive for nearly
twenty-four hours now, and I need to get her out. If somebody wants that
worthless old necklace, he can have it.'

'You
aren't going to tell this person that it's worthless, are you? He probably
needs to think that he's going to get the money to bail himself out of whatever
problem he has in his life.'

'No, of
course not,' Eden said slowly, looking at his profile in the dark car. 'Brad,
you sound as though you know something.'

'Of
course not,' he said quickly as he swung the car onto the dirt road and turned
off the headlights. The dashboard clock said 11:32. It hadn't been easy to get
Eden out of the house without McBride knowing, but they'd done it. When Eden
had gone into a crying fit and McBride had given her a couple of pills to calm
her, Brad thought Eden's plan was off. But her fit had been faked to create a
distraction. Eden had spit out the pills, and when Jared thought she was
asleep, she'd sneaked down the tiny, secret stairs to the kitchen and out the
back door. The front of the house had been full of FBI agents, all of them waiting
for a phone to ring, but the back had been clear.

As
planned, Brad was waiting for her on the other side of the bridge.

Earlier
in the day, after he'd returned from being with Katlyn, he'd been filled with
remorse. He shouldn't have done that to Eden, he thought. But after he'd seen
her in the mud with McBride, and after he'd seen the gifts of the little truck
and gardening tools that he was sure McBride had bought for her, Brad had felt
defeated. His pride and his ego had been cut in half. He knew he was considered
the 'prize catch' in Arundel, but when he'd at last found a woman he thought he
might be able to share his life with, he was losing her. He needed something —
someone — to make him feel like a man again.

But
Katlyn hadn't made him feel good. Instead, she'd made him feel more alone than
he had before he'd met Eden.

It was
only by chance that Katlyn had told him about the book Eden had written, and
only by chance that Brad had seen the riddle for what it was. An ego trip of a
bad painter, is what he thought at first. Who else in the Farrington family
would write about 'legends of me'? Once Brad realized who had written the
riddle, all he'd thought about was the last line, but in the car on the way
back to Arundel, he'd figured out the rest of the lines.

By the
time he reached Arundel, Brad had changed his mind about Tyrrell Farrington. If
the young man had openly returned to Farrington Manor with a stack of
Impressionist paintings,  his  domineering  father would
  have burned them. Brad had an idea that Tyrrell had had the
foresight to see that the paintings would someday be worth something. But how
did he insure that they would stay in the family and survive generations of
tastelessness? If his father didn't destroy them, maybe the next generation would.
How to save them?

Brad
thought that Tyrrell knew his family well. He certainly understood their
vanity. They'd never destroy pictures of what was theirs. So Tyrrell had
reluctantly returned to the family, but he'd devoted the rest of his life to
covering the wonderful Impressionist paintings with bad watercolors of his
family and their possessions. And he had been right: the family vanity had
saved them. After all these years, the paintings were still intact and waiting
for someone to solve the riddle he'd left behind, and to discover the paintings
under the watercolors.

*   *   *

Five by
five and three by three.
Quite simply, the size of the paintings.
Worth
more than gold and married to thee.
Tyrrell had guessed that the paintings
would someday be worth more than gold. He'd covered several of them with
portraits of Farrington spouses.
Ten times ten and legends of me.
He
left over a hundred paintings and knew — hoped — that the discovery of them
would make a legend of him.
Look not where thou canst find me.
The
easiest one: the real art had been painted over.

Brad
had wanted to tell Eden all that he'd figured out the second he saw her, but
the kidnapping of her daughter had taken precedence over everything else. And
worse was when Brad saw the way McBride looked at Eden. Her only thoughts were
about her daughter, but McBride couldn't take his eyes off her.

They've
been lovers, Brad thought, and wanted to hang himself from the nearest tree for
getting jealous and running off to the comfort of a woman he'd never really
liked. His only hope of winning Eden was that figuring out the riddle would
pull her back to his side.

When
Brad first arrived at her house, he'd had to undergo a humiliating search by
the FBI. McBride stood in the doorway, smirking, and enjoying Brad's
discomfort. And McBride had enjoyed telling Brad that Eden was asleep and would
be for hours. 'She's been awake all night,' he said, not meeting Brad's eyes.

Two
minutes later, Brad was in a room with two FBI agents and telling them what
he'd figured out about the riddle. As a result, they were flying in a couple of
men who were art preservationists and would know how to extract the paintings
in a way less violent than with the blast of a shower.

At
four, Eden came downstairs. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she was
inordinately quiet. She ate the food that was placed in front of her, but said
nothing. She only nodded when she saw Brad, but she said nothing to him.

But
later, when she passed him, she slipped a note into his hand, then she went up
the stairs, her feet heavy and her body bent. Brad excused himself to go to the
restroom to read the note. She wrote that she'd been contacted by Melissa's
kidnapper, and she asked Brad to meet her at the far side of the bridge at
eleven P.M. At the bottom, she'd drawn a map and written 'deliver necklace
here.' Brad knew he should turn the note over to McBride, but at the same time,
he saw it as a second chance with Eden. She trusted him, and he wasn't going to
betray her trust. Before, when her daughter had arrived and Eden had needed
him, when he should have stayed and fought for her, he'd abandoned her. He
never wanted her to know how completely he'd abandoned her.

He tore
the note into tiny pieces, then flushed it. He wasn't going to let Eden down a
second time. He went home, emptied his gun cabinet, borrowed a couple of
handguns from his cousin, then spent an hour hiding all of them inside his
uncle's Jeep. He wanted fourwheel drive if he was going to be on a dirt road.
He used his CDs of the North Carolina survey maps to bring up the area on his
computer, then studied the old roads surrounding the abandoned house. He went
to visit his great-uncle in the nursing home, and asked him a thousand
questions about the house at the end of the dirt road. His uncle knew
everything about everyone around Arundel and had a photographic memory. By the
time Brad left, he knew the history of the house back four generations. Best of
all, he had the phone number of a man who'd grown up in the house and knew the
layout of it well. After Brad talked to him, he was almost ready. He had just
one more call to make.

'Remi?'
he said when his son-in-law answered. 'I have something I want you to help me
do. But I warn you that it could be dangerous.'

'Anything,'
Remi said.

'I'm
serious about the danger of this.'

'Mr.
Granville, I'm from Louisiana. We invented danger.'

Brad
rolled his eyes skyward. 'Spare me,' he said. 'If you think you can do this,
then get over here right away.'

'Yes,
sir.'

Brad put
down the phone and stood looking about him for a while. Inadvertently, in his
hours of research about the abandoned house, he'd come across the name of
someone. The name had come up twice, and as much as Brad hated the idea, he
thought he knew who was behind the kidnapping. All for a worthless necklace, he
thought. And the irony was that the man had been alone inside Farrington Manor
many times. He could have stolen the paintings at any time. Instead, he was
risking everything for some colored glass.

Brad
shook his head to clear it, slipped a tiny handgun into his pocket, then looked
at his watch. It was after eight. Not much time left before he was to meet
Eden. He picked up his Bible, opened it at random, and began to read.

'Please
don't try to stop me,' Eden said to Brad. 'It's something I have to do.' Beside
her, in his car, she was clutching the paper bag containing the necklace so
tightly that her nails had cut through the top of it. 'If he wants this thing,
he can have it. All I want is my daughter.'

Brad
looked at the dashboard clock. It was now fourteen minutes to midnight. 'I
think I should go in your place,' he said. 'I brought a black sweatshirt. If I
pull up the hood, I — '

'No one
would mistake you for me,' she said, looking at the bag in her hand. 'You'll
stay here and wait for me? I don't know what will happen after I leave the
necklace. Do you think he'll . . . ?' She couldn't finish her sentence.

Brad
put his hand on hers. 'I think that once he gets the necklace he'll leave town
immediately. I think he probably has a car waiting close by, and he probably
has his plane tickets and his suitcases with him. I think he's already made
arrangements to sell the necklace. Once he has the money in his hands, I think
he plans to go to some country that has no extradition laws where he plans to
spend the rest of his worthless life in a hut on a beach painting pictures that
he thinks will make him the next Gauguin. I think he believes that his
paintings will be so good that the world will forgive him for what he did to
get the money to bankroll him.'

Eden
was looking at Brad with her mouth open. 'What do you know?' she managed to
gasp out.

'Enough
to have an idea of what I'm dealing with. I don't think either you or your
daughter are in much physical danger. I think he just wants the necklace.'

'And
after he gets it, will he release her?'

'We'll
find her,' Brad said. 'You can count on that.' He squeezed her hand again.
'I've already alerted some people I know in New York. He won't be able to
escape.'

'Who is
it?' she asked.

'Later,'
Brad said, looking again at the clock. 'You'd better go. Oh, and Eden, if
something should happen, I put a few weapons in this car. Under the seats, and
in the glove box.' He handed her a car key. 'Just in case.' As he closed his
hands around hers, he said, 'But I want you to know that I'll always be close
by you.'

'What
if he hears you?' she said, panic in her voice. 'He said I was to come alone.
He said — '

'Trust
me,' Brad said. 'Trust me to know what I'm doing as much as you'd trust
McBride.' To Brad's disgust, these words made Eden calm down immediately. He
nodded toward the door, and she put her hand on the handle. He wanted to kiss
her, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Later, he thought, they'd sort out
what was between them personally.

Eden
took the big flashlight that Brad had given her and walked down the dirt road
toward where she knew the old house awaited. She doubted  
that   her   daughter  would  
be   inside. Would her kidnapper get the necklace, then take it to an
appraiser before he released Melissa? If he did that, he'd find out that the
necklace was worth nothing. Then what would happen to her daughter?

There
was no gravel on the old road and weeds had grown up in the center of it, but
she could see that they'd recently been bent by a car running over them. With
each step she took, her heart pounded harder and faster.

When
the dark outline of the house came into view, she was sweating and shaking.
What if — ? she kept asking herself. What if he didn't keep his end of the
bargain? But then, she hadn't kept her end of the deal, had she? She hadn't
come alone; Brad was with her. At that thought she wanted to run back to the
car and tell Brad he had to leave, but she didn't.

When
she got close enough to see the house more clearly in the moonlight, she
gasped. It was completely enveloped in blooming wisteria. She knew that most
people in eastern North Carolina considered wisteria a noxious weed, but she
couldn't see it that way. To her, it was one of the most beautiful plants on
earth. She loved the way the trunks twisted about one another, loved the
narrow, pointed leaves, and loved the drooping cluster of flowers that hung off
it in the spring.

To the
locals, wisteria 'escaped.' According to them, if you planted one stick of it,
'soon' it would engulf everything in its path. The soon was about twenty years,
and to Eden's gardener's mind, all it took was a bit of pruning each year to
control it.

Where
wisteria was most likely to 'escape' was in old, abandoned houses like this
one. Many years ago, someone had planted a wisteria bush and had probably kept
it pruned. When the house was abandoned, the other plants, the magnolias and
the snowball bushes, had been devoured by wild vegetation that was stronger
than the modern, hybridized plants. But not the wisteria. Given the right
climate, wisteria could cover the earth. Not even forests could overcome
wisteria. The vine would grow right up the tree, keeping all sunlight from it,
and eventually kill the tree.

In the
moonlight, to Eden's eyes, the wisteria-draped house was ethereally beautiful.
The old house was still strong enough to hold the heavy vines upright, and the
flowers cascaded down it. It was a Hansel and Gretel cottage for gardeners, she
thought.

The
beauty of the old house made her calm down somewhat. She tentatively stepped
onto the rotting porch, testing the boards before putting her whole weight on
them. The boards creaked, and she paused, listening. She thought she heard
something to her right, but it was probably only an animal. The door to the
house was open and she walked inside, shining her light around the room. She
saw nothing but a falling-down old house, a common sight in North Carolina. The
wallpaper and the fireplace surround made her think the house was from the
1840s, maybe later.

A
scurrying in the back made her jump. She put her hand to her throat, then
turned out the light. 'Melissa?' she whispered, but there was no answer. She stood
still for a moment, listening, but heard nothing. But her instinct told her
that she was being watched. With the light turned off, the house was
pitch-black. The wisteria outside kept any moonlight from coming in; she
couldn't see her hand.

'I'm
leaving the bag now,' she said too loudly. If anyone was there, he'd hear her.
'I just want my daughter back. You can have the necklace. I won't even report
that it's missing. Please,' she said. 'I just want my daughter.'

There
was no response, and she heard nothing — which made her sure that there was
another human nearby. If she'd been the first person to enter the house,
animals would have been scurrying everywhere. But someone else had disturbed
them first, and now they were hiding and waiting for all the humans to leave.

'The
necklace is here,' she said, then started backing toward the door. She didn't
want to turn the light back on. What if she saw who it was? That might make him
refuse to release Melissa.

She
backed into the wall, then had to feel her way to the door. When her hands
touched the door, she backed through it. Only when she was outside in the cool
air did she turn back around and start walking again. In her panic, she hit the
step too hard and her ankle twisted under her. She went down, hitting the
ground in front of the steps hard. An old board hit her in the side, making her
gasp.

But the
fall didn't frighten her as much as what she saw. Under the porch were two
pinpoints of light: eyes. An animal? A person?

Fumbling,
Eden tried to stand upright, but her hand caught on something, and she flailed
about as she tried to get away. She didn't want to see who it was under the
porch. To see, to know, would endanger Melissa.

When
Eden finally managed to stand, she started running back toward the car. After
the dark of the inside of the house, the moonlight was almost bright, so she
didn't turn on the flashlight. When she saw the car, she breathed a sigh of
relief — until she saw that Brad wasn't in it. Her first impulse was to call
for him, but she couldn't do that. Her second thought was of anger for his not
staying put, and anger at herself for asking him to help her. But she couldn't
have done it by herself, she thought. She couldn't have secretly driven a car
out from under the noses of McBride and the whole FBI force, could she?

She
leaned against Brad's car. Now what? she wondered. Did she wait here for Brad
like a good little girl, or did she go back into the dark woods surrounding the
house and try to find . . . find what?

My
daughter, she thought. Try to find my daughter.

Slowly,
she moved away from the car and slipped into the woods that were closing in on
the house. There had to be outbuildings still standing. Maybe — She didn't have
any plans or concrete thoughts about what she was doing, but maybe she could
see something or find out something.

As a
gardener, she knew something about the way plants grew. From the way the
wisteria was draping over the house, it grew from the side. Most people planted
wisteria by a door, where it could drape over a porch roof. If that was the
case, then there was a door on the east side of the building — and there would
be a thick trunk to the vine. Eden could hide there and, in secret, see who
came out of the building. She could even follow him, or if he got in a car, she
could get a license number.

Hurrying,
in case she missed him, Eden made her way around to the side of the building,
then slipped through the darkness toward where she thought the trunk to the
huge vine might be. It was easy to find, and she thought that if she clung to
it and stayed very still, she would look like part of the gnarled, twisted
trunk. If he aimed a light directly on her, she'd never fool him, but she
doubted that he'd do that. If she had any luck at all, he'd walk right past
her.

In the
distance she heard a car start, heard it crunch on the rocky surface of the
drive. Had Brad returned and driven away? Without her? No, she had an idea that
he was the type of man who'd never leave a 'lady' to fend for herself.

So who
was in the car? she wondered. Who was driving away? After a few moments, the
sound of the car faded, and all was again silent, but, still, there were no
sounds from inside the house. The animals didn't start making their noises;
they knew that a human was there.

Eden
stayed very still, willing her heart to slow down and stop making so much
noise. After what seemed like an hour, she heard a sound from inside the house.
Within seconds she heard footsteps. Someone was walking inside the house.

She
waited, staying utterly still. She heard the noise of the paper of the bag
she'd put the necklace in. Was he opening it? Or did he trust her? She saw no
light, so maybe he was just feeling it rather than looking at it. She held her
breath when the footsteps came toward her. Yes, he was going to use the side
door. He was coming toward her!

When he
got to the door, she saw the silhouette of a tall man. In his hand was the bag,
but she couldn't see his face. She watched in silence as he walked within two
feet of her and headed toward the back of the house.

When he
was about fifty feet away, she moved from her hiding place and started to
follow him. She stepped on a twig, and the man started to turn around. Eden
drew in her breath. He was going to see her!

Before
the man could turn his head, a hand clasped over her mouth and she was pulled
back into a thicket of pyracantha — the barbed wire of the plant world. At
least twenty thorns sank into her flesh, but she couldn't move to get away from
them for fear of making noise.

The hand
was still over her mouth, the thorns were sticking into her, and she was jammed
up to a body that she'd come to know well. Through the bushes  she 
could  see  the  silhouette of the man with the bag in his hand.
He was looking back toward them and listening, but he saw nothing, heard
nothing.

There
were tears in Eden's eyes from the pain of the thorns. When the man with the
bag turned away and started walking again, she shook her head to get McBride's
hand off her mouth. Frowning, she looked at him. She wanted to bawl him out for
lying, sneaking, and tricking her, but he had on his FBI face, with no hint
that there was anything personal between them. Besides, she was glad to see
him. If he hadn't shown up, she would have been seen by the man.

Jared
was dressed all in black, and his face had been darkened, so she could hardly
see him in the shadow of the bush. Silently, he motioned for her to move back
into the open, and she readily obeyed. Once she was free of the bushes, she
started twisting about to remove the thorns from her skin.

Stepping
ahead of her, Jared looked toward where the man had gone. She could see
nothing. Turning back to her, he motioned for her to go back toward Brad's car.
It was only when he turned that she saw that he had night-vision goggles on his
head, and that there was a large pistol in his hand. Around his waist was a
belt that held more weapons.

Eden
obeyed him. Silently, she turned toward the driveway and headed toward the car
Brad had borrowed. But the second she was out of sight of Jared, she turned
back. For one thing, she didn't think it was safe for her to be near a car, and
for another, Jared's presence made her believe that Melissa was somewhere
nearby.