Chapter Seventeen

 

The pounding on the front door came just as Adam reread her letter for the fourth time, while racking his brain to figure out where she’d gone. How he could reach her in time to protect her when he didn’t even know where she’d gone. The interruption irritated the hell out of him.

“Dammit, Adam, open up!”

The voice was not one to be ignored. Mac wasn’t the type to yell and pound on a door at this hour unless something was very wrong. Adam clasped the letter in his hand, went to the door, and yanked it open.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong.” Mac shoved Adam aside and came in, heading straight for the study. “You’re going to knock me right on my ass for this, buddy, but do us both a favor and save it for later, okay?”

Adam shook his head in confusion. “Look I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t have time to find out. And since I need to borrow your car, I’m not likely to knock you on your ass just now.”

“Good, because I tapped your phones.”

“You...”

“Tapped your phones. Illegal as hell. I could lose my license.”

Adam blinked. “Why?”

Mac’s face twisted into a grimace. “Because you’re my friend and I was worried about you. Afraid you were about to walk into another scam perpetrated by another woman. Jesus, Adam, I was with you last time, remember? I didn’t want to watch you go through all that again.” He tilted his head, surveying Adam’s face. “Or am I already too late? Is she gone, Adam?”

“Yeah, and I have no idea where.”

Mac sighed in disgust, stomped straight through into the study, and reached for the painting. With a quickness that made Adam cringe, he jerked the painting off the wall, flipped it around, and scanned the back. “Did you do what I told you? With the marking pen?”

Adam nodded, moving forward quickly and restlessly, wishing he knew what to do to help Brigit. “Yeah. But there’s no sense looking for it. She switched them, Mac. Took the original with her, and I don’t even give a damn. It’s her I want, not the freaking painting.”

Mac’s head came up sharply. “You knew she’d switched them?” At Adam’s nod, he rushed on. “And you just let her go? Just like that? What’s got into you, Adam, you lost your mind or what?”

But even as he spoke, Mac was scanning that canvas again, yanking a flashlight the size of a pen from his shirt pocket, flashing its purplish glow over the back in search of the ink.

“I didn’t just let her go! She told me she had two more days, and I was planning to be there with her when she delivered the damned painting to this Zaslow jerk. But she left early, took my keys so I couldn’t follow. She’s meeting the bastard alone and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it.”

“Yeah, well you ought to know, Adam, that I just eavesdropped on a phone call from Zaslow. The jerk didn’t ask her to pull this scam. He didn’t give her any goddamn choice. Sounds as if he’s holding the old man, just to be sure she complies.”

“I know all that. She came clean, Mac, told me everything.”

“He’s a sadistic bastard,” Mac went on. “Told Brigit that old Raze was sick, started listing symptoms and sounded like he was enjoying it. I thought I heard a moan in the background, but—”

“Jesus Christ. No wonder she took off in such a hurry.”

“Ah, hell, Adam,” Mac’s words held a new urgency, and Adam looked up fast. Mac stood, staring at the lower right-hand corner of the painting, and shaking his head. “She didn’t do it, pal. She didn’t switch them. This is the original.”

“What?” Adam lunged forward. A rush of adrenaline flooded his veins, and it propelled him, pushing him.

He looked over Mac’s shoulder to see the word, scrawled in Adam’s own hand, illuminated by the ultraviolet glow. Rush.

“Brigit...” Adam breathed, almost limp now with relief. She hadn’t betrayed him. Even with all the pressure on her to do it, and even when he’d told her he didn’t care about the damned painting, that he’d willingly hand it over to Zaslow himself, she’d been unable to go through with it.

“This Zaslow is no slouch. He’s an expert. She might have pulled it over on him if she’d waited a few days, let the paint dry. But man, he’s gonna see through this so fast he won’t have to look twice.” Mac frowned hard. “And we both know this bastard has killed before.”

Adam blinked, shock seeping through his bones, and the need for action making every nerve ending in his body twitch and jump. “Tell me you know where she’s meeting him, Mac.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mac said, with a hard nod. “You bet your ass I know. An hour from here. Binghamton. At the double-A ball field there. We can call the cops and have them—”

“No cops.” Adam headed for the front door at a run. “You leave your keys in the car?”

“Yeah, but Adam, we have to notify—”

“No cops, Mac.” He stopped with his hand on the knob, his palm itching and shaking to send a glance back over his shoulder. “They’d connect her with the other forgeries...the ones in the past. She’d end up in prison.”

“If she’s guilty—”

“She was a kid, Mac. You said yourself, she couldn’t have been much more than a teenager when those other heists went down.”

Mac’s lips thinned, but he nodded. “Okay. All right. It’s your call. But I’m coming with you. You can’t take on a thug like Zaslow alone.”

Adam shook his head. “No way, pal. This is my fight.” Adam started through the door.

“Jesus, Reid, aren’t you even going to put a shirt on first?”

Adam didn’t answer. He jumped into his friend’s car and twisted the key.

***

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t betray Adam that way, not when she knew how often he’d been hurt in the past. It didn’t matter that he’d told her he didn’t care. She cared. She’d tried to make herself switch the paintings. She’d gone so far as to take the original off the wall. But she’d never removed it from its frame. Adam had done too much for her. He’d taught her how to love. And there was no room in that love for betrayal. She ended up hanging the original back on the wall, and leaving the house with the copy.

She’d brought the forgery, its paint still tacky, to the meeting place. It rested in the back seat of her car as she paced the ground in front of the vehicle. The moon was waning, but bright. A lopsided half circle of goodness and light, spilling down on the grassy diamond. The place was abandoned tonight. The season recently over, the bleachers empty. The grass needed mowing, she thought, and the chalk lines had faded. She looked through the link fence that stretched around this end of the field, to the deserted dugouts. And she thought about Raze, and how much he loved to come here and watch the Binghamton Mets. How he’d order a hot dog with extra relish and a Cherry Coke every time, like some kind of ritual. How he knew every player by name, and could predict which ones were destined to get called up to the major leagues.

She loved that old man. She’d never loved anyone as much as she loved Raze. Until now.

Zaslow’s van rolled in, and Brigit went stiff. The vehicle pulled up beside hers, the headlights went out, and the motor died.

Zaslow’s door opened and he stepped out, came around to stand near its nose. She remained where she was, standing nervously at the front of her own car. Both vehicles were aimed at the fence and the field. As if they were sitting there awaiting the first pitch.

“Well? Where is it?”

She lifted her chin, felt the wind whipping tendrils of hair around her face. “I want to see Raze first.”

Zaslow tilted his head, shrugged. “Fair enough. Let’s just get on with this, Brigit. My client was in touch right after I talked to you, and he’s running out of patience.”

Zaslow stepped between her car and his, to open the van’s passenger door. Brigit moved to stand beside him, and when the interior light came on, she saw Raze, slouched in the seat. His careworn face was relaxed, head tilted to one side. He slumped there, so still she jerked in shock at first, thinking he was dead. But then she saw his chest rise and fall, slightly, but enough, and she drew a steadying breath. She’d take care of Raze. Right now, nothing mattered but that.

She started forward, but Zaslow stepped right in front of her, blocking her path. “Not so fast, Brigit.” He closed the van door. “The painting.”

She glanced past him, through the window of the van at his back. In the pale moonlight, she could see a set of keys dangling from the switch. Hope surged in her chest.

“It’s in the back seat,” she said, inclining her head toward her car, three feet behind her. “Go ahead, take a look.”

She stayed where she was as Zaslow moved past her to bend to the car and open the back door. She saw him lean in, reach out, and she lunged around the van’s nose, reaching for the driver’s door, just as she heard him yell, “Bitch!”

A gunshot rang out even as she was about to wrench the door open. Brigit ducked instinctively, covering her head with her hands, pressing her face to the cool metallic door.

“You lying, cheating little witch! Did you really think you could—could...” His voice trailed into silence.

Why? What...Brigit straightened just a little, and leaned forward to peek around the front of the van. But Zaslow wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was staring through the chain-link fence at the baseball diamond. Blinking in confusion, she followed his gaze, only to see a dark, menacing form standing out on the field, right between home plate and the pitcher’s mound. Where had he come from? How had he managed to walk out there without either of them noticing? But there he was, standing still as stone, so completely enshrouded in shadow that only his outline was visible. But even without seeing him, Brigit knew he stared straight at Zaslow.

She couldn’t make out a single detail about the man. It seemed he wore a black coat, with a caped back that swayed in the wind. The collar was turned up, and his face was completely hidden in the shadow of a black felt hat.

“Enough, Zaslow,” the form said, only Brigit got the creepy sensation that no part of him moved to issue the command. Not even his lips.

Danger washed over her like a cold breeze. She could smell it, taste it in the air, and her heart chilled in her chest.

“Mr. Darque,” Zaslow said, and his voice had gone from shaking with rage, to quivering in fear. “What are you doing here this early? I’m not supposed to meet you for another hour.”

“You told me my painting would be here, Zaslow. I came to collect it. Though it doesn’t matter now.”

“I—I d-don’t under—”

“I paid you to steal the painting. Not to have it copied.”

“Oh, that. Don’t worry about that, Mr. Darque. It’s the best way to do these things,” Zaslow blustered, but his voice was far from steady. “I thought—”

“I did not employ you to think, Zaslow. Nor to make copies. That painting should never have been seen, especially by that one.” When he said that last part, he turned toward where Brigit crouched beside the van, afraid to stand up and show herself. “Your thinking has ruined my plans, Zaslow.”

He cocked his head toward Brigit’s car, where Zaslow still stood near an opened rear door. The dark man lifted one hand and pointed a finger. A bolt of blue fire shot from it, blasting through the chain link as if it were butter. The bolt hit Zaslow dead center of his barrel chest. He howled in undisguised agony, his body hurtling backward through the air. He landed on the blacktop of the parking lot, rolling over and over before coming to a dead stop. And then he lay still. A thin spiral of smoke rose from his chest.

The scream she’d intended to emit died of fright and never emerged. She swallowed the air she’d sucked in, and looked back toward the dark form in the field. And she saw the blackened hole in the chain link, where that bolt had blasted through.

She had to get away from here. She had to get Raze away from this thing. She straightened from her hunched position on the ground, gripping the van door, ready to tug it open and jump behind the wheel, her eyes never leaving that deadly being.

He looked right at her and she got an awful feeling of impending doom. The hand pointed in her direction. Her heart slammed against her ribs, and she dove away from the van even as the blue fire raced toward her. She hit the ground, somersaulted, tried to breathe. God, what if he missed her and hit Raze? The fire—or whatever it was—had burned into the ground near her head, hitting like a bolt of lightning, and leaving bare, charred earth and wisps of smoke. As she whipped her gaze back to that evil, perhaps inhuman form, its hand took aim again. She scrambled to her feet and ran for cover, heading away from the van, toward the hulking bleachers, thinking she could hide behind or under them. And blasts rocked the ground with their impact, practically at her heels all the way.

“Brigit!”

Shocked, she twisted her head at the sound of Raze’s voice, but her ankle turned, and she went down hard. Pain shot from the injured ankle up into her leg. Panting, she looked back to see Raze, levering himself out of the van on the driver’s side.

“The pendant,” he rasped.

His feet hit the ground, and he gripped the door for support, only to fall to his knees all the same. God, what had Zaslow done to him to make him this weak?

“Use the pendant!”

Raze sagged forward, and then he was still.

Automatically, Brigit reached up to clasp the pewter fairy, but she found nothing there, and belatedly remembered leaving it on Adam’s pillow. An act of love. No less.

“If she were wearing her pendant, old man, I wouldn’t be foolish enough to take aim at her.”

That deep, calm voice floated through the night, and chills raced up Brigit’s spine. She looked up, saw that thing lifting his hand toward her again, and knew he had her this time. If she twitched, that fiery spear would run her through. And if she didn’t, it would do so anyway. And there was nowhere to go.

* * *

Adam saw it. He didn’t believe it, but he saw it. Some black enshrouded wizard or something, hurling lightning bolts at Brigit as she ran for her life. And he didn’t know why, or what this was all about. He only knew he had to protect her, if it meant his life.

Adam ran over the blacktopped parking lot to the grass at the edge of the diamond. He poured all his strength into running toward the scene unfolding there. He saw Brigit struggle to her feet, and turn to face her attacker. He saw her stand a little straighter as she realized she was trapped. Nowhere to run. He ran faster, harder, his lungs burning. And then, just as that thing lifted its deadly hand toward her again, Adam launched himself. He growled with physical effort as he pushed off with his feet. And his body arrowed into the space between Brigit and the dark thing. Like a diver, only there would be no water to cushion the landing, he thought vaguely. And maybe it wouldn’t matter anyway, because by the time he landed, he didn’t think he’d be feeling much of anything. He saw the fire leave the dark man’s fingertips as he sailed through the air. And he had a second to wonder at it, just before the blue lightning hit him in the chest, hot and hard and sizzling. Like a shotgun. Like a sledge hammer. He felt his ribs crack under the impact, felt his body driven backward. Its voltage had his nerves screaming aloud, and the burn! God the burn was like a brand in the center of his chest. He hit the ground so hard he couldn’t draw a breath. But he saw what happened. He saw that blue fire double over itself, as if ricocheting off his chest, and he saw it shoot back to its source.

Adam’s eyes followed. The blue bolt smashed into the man on the mound, and he vanished. Just like that. Gone.

And Adam felt himself slipping away, too. But he knew Brigit was okay, just by the way she whispered his name as she fell to the ground beside him. The way she stroked his face, kissed him. And he didn’t regret what he’d done for a second.

God, that burning. Grating his teeth, he lifted one hand and grasped his sternum. His palm closed on something that seared it. He gripped the item anyway, tearing it from his chest and letting it fall into the grass at his side. Blackness descended on him. And he found his only regret in leaving this world, was that he was leaving her. He loved her, and he’d never even told her so.

Brigit stared, blinking in disbelief. The shape burned into the center of Adam’s chest was a familiar one. She searched the grass and found it. Her pewter fairy. He’d been wearing it. He’d found it there on his pillow, and he’d put it around his own neck.

Tears threatened, and she swallowed hard. She reached out to retrieve her pendant from the grass, only to draw away fast when it burned her fingertips. Frowning, she looked closer. The once-clear quartz point held lovingly in the pewter fairy’s embrace was blackened now, charred as if something had burned it. And she realized that somehow, the bolt of fire had hit the crystal. She’d seen it rebound back to annihilate its owner. Had her pendant somehow been responsible? But how? Was that why Raze had been yelling at her to use...

Raze!

She twisted her head to see him lying on the ground beside the van. So still. And again, she leaned over Adam, shaking him gently. Torn in two.

Tires skidded on pavement, and a door slammed. Footfalls pounded toward her, and she heard a man swearing out loud. Then he was kneeling beside her, and she frowned in confusion.

She knew him. The man Adam had hired to check up on her, the private investigator. Mac Cordair. It didn’t matter why he was here. “Help him,” she whispered. “Please, help him.”

His fingers pressed to Adam’s neck, and then his head lowered to Adam’s chest. His lips thin, he faced her. “There’s a phone in my car, Brigit. No, not the one I came in. That’s...borrowed. The one Adam was driving. Find it, and call an ambulance. Hurry.”

She staggered to her feet, saw him bending over Adam’s body, positioning his hands over Adam’s chest again. And she spun, and raced away to make the call.

 

***

Bridin rested in the hospital bed, waiting, and listening with scarcely veiled amusement to the hospital nurse’s puzzled tone.

“Her pulse was barely there when she arrived, doctor. Weak, and thready. Heartbeat erratic. Respirations slow and shallow. Body temp way down. I don’t understand it.”

“Odd. Her vitals are normal now.”

Yes, but don’t think about sending me back, because I can re-create those symptoms if I have to.

“We’ll run some tests, keep her overnight for observation, see what the blood work turns up.”

“Yes, doctor.”

Lovely, the way they talk about me as if I’m not even in the room. Do they think I’m deaf as well as insane?

“Nurse, is this patient considered dangerous? Prone to violence?”

“Not according to what her private nurse told us.”

“A suicide risk, then?”

“No, doctor.”

“Hmm. Then why the apes outside the room? They worried she’ll try to run off?”

They referred, of course, to the sentries outside her hospital room. Two of Darque’s oversized hulks. She considered them prison guards. They’d followed the ambulance, at Darque’s orders, no doubt.

“I asked,” the feminine voice replied. “Her nurse says she doesn’t have a history of running away.”

“Let’s send them on their way, then. They’re making the staff nervous and scaring the hell out of the patients. You’d think we had Charles Manson in here the way they’re watching her.”

Bridin heard the smile in the nurse’s voice as she replied, “Yes, Doctor. I’ll do that right away. No doubt they’ll argue the point, but I’m sure security can handle them. And then I’m taking that nurse of hers a cup of coffee. Poor woman is worried sick.”

“You just be sure she stays in the waiting room. I don’t want anyone bothering this young lady until we get to the bottom of these symptoms.”

Perfect. And not a moment too soon, either. Brigit is here!

 

***

Brigit paced the emergency room, and she couldn’t stop crying. Mac stood in a corner, looking a little shell-shocked and staring into a cup of coffee he hadn’t yet tasted. Brigit had been all but hysterical by the time he’d had a chance to question her about what had happened. And she didn’t suppose her story about a man in black hurling lightning bolts at them had made much sense to Mac as he’d driven her to the hospital, behind the ambulance with its flashing lights and screaming siren.

It still made no sense to her.

She only knew what she’d seen. And what she’d seen had been Adam, throwing himself in front of her, saving her life.

She had held herself together until they’d bundled him and Raze into an ambulance. Another had arrived a few seconds later. They’d taken Zaslow away in a black vinyl bag.

Despite his confusion, Mac had convinced Brigit to tell the police she’d arrived after the fact. That she’d seen nothing, and had no idea what had happened.

They were busy right now at the field, with a team of electricians, trying to find the source of the high-voltage charge that had killed one man and put another in the hospital. When they found nothing, they’d probably attribute it to summer lightning, blasting down from a clear sky.

Brigit jumped to attention when the doctor emerged from Adam’s room. She nodded in Brigit’s direction and Brigit hurried forward.

“Is he...”

“Alive, but still unconscious,” the woman said softly, and she placed a gentle hand on Brigit’s shoulder. “He took a powerful jolt, Miss...”

“Malone. Brigit.”

“Brigit,” she repeated. “His heart rate is normal now, steady, and he’s breathing on his own, but he might be out for quite some time.”

“But is he going to be all right? When he wakes up, will he—”

The hand on her shoulder tightened. “If he wakes up, Brigit. I have to be honest with you. Right now, we can’t even be certain he will. He could slip into coma. And if he does come around, there could be brain damage.”

“My God,” she whispered. “My God.”

“Then again, he might be just fine. There’s no way to be sure of the extent of the damage, right now. We’ll know more in a day or so. I’m sorry the news isn’t better.”

Brigit tried to keep her knees steady. Tried not to sink to the floor. It was an effort she wasn’t certain she’d be able to sustain very long.

“As for the man who was brought in with him, Mr. uh...” She flipped a chart open, scanned it. “That’s right. Malone, same as you. He’s sleeping off the effects of a pretty potent tranquilizer. Other than that, he’s just fine.”

Brigit’s head came up. “He’s not sick?”

“No. Just sleepy.”

So Zaslow had been lying to her about that. Torturing her. And probably enjoying it. He’d deserved that blue bolt to the chest. Her knees gave, caught again. She swayed just a little, and steadied herself.

She hadn’t realized Mac stood just behind her until she felt his arm settle around her shoulders.

“I want to see Adam,” Brigit managed to whisper.

The doctor—Dr. Evans, she recalled belatedly—nodded. “You can go in, sit with him for a few minutes.”

She turned to glance up at Mac.

“Go on,” he urged. “He’d want you there. I’ll see him later.”

Dr. Evans stepped aside, held the door open for her, and Brigit, drawing a deep breath, walked through.

Adam lay still on the bed, eyes closed, but he didn’t look ill or weak. He looked wonderful, only sleeping.

She moved slowly toward him, blinking back her tears, and she sat right on the edge of the mattress, her hand running over his face, tracing his cheekbones, and the line of his jaw. She bent lower, retracing that path with her lips. “Adam...I’m so sorry. God, I never meant for this to happen. I never wanted you to be hurt.”

Her fingers sifted his hair. Stroked it. “I love you, Adam. I never said it out loud, but you knew, didn’t you? You know it’s true, even now.

I love you. I want you to come back to me, so I can tell you. I want to be able to look into your eyes when I say it. Okay?”

Her tears dampened the skin of his face. She brushed her lips over his, and tasted them. “Please, Adam,” she whispered. “Please...”

The soft, steady beeping sound jumped and quickened. The pace of the sounds picked up, and a second later, Dr. Evans was leaning over her, gently tugging her away. “Come on, Brigit. That’s enough for now. We have to be extremely careful with him right now.”

She sniffed, knuckling her eyes dry. “Yes. Okay, whatever’s best for Adam.”

And she let the other woman lead her back into the hall, into the waiting room. She sank into a chair, feeling apart from herself. As if all of this were happening to someone else, and she was no more than a bystander, looking on.

But it wasn’t happening to someone else. It was happening to Adam. If he died...God, if he died, how could she possibly live with herself? All of this was her fault. She should have found another way. Some other way to end it all.

One thing was certain. Right or wrong, it was over now. Zaslow was gone. Raze was going to be all right. She hadn’t gone through with her plan to betray Adam.

The only question was, would he survive? And if he did, would he ever want to look at her again?