Secret Star

  Once more he stood in Grace’s living room. Once more he stared up at her portrait and imagined her dead. But this time, he wasn’t thinking like a cop.

  He turned as Mick Marshall stepped beside him. “We won’t find anything here to link him. In twelve hours, the diamonds will be turned over to the museum. He’s going to use her to see that doesn’t happen. I’m going to stop him.”

  Mick looked up at the portrait. “What do you need?”

  “No. No cops.”

  “Lieutenant…Seth, if you’re right, and he’s got her, you’re not going to get her out alone. You need to put together a team. You need a hostage negotiator.”

  “There’s no time. We both know that.” His eyes weren’t flat and cool now, weren’t cop’s eyes. They were full of storms and passions. “He’ll kill her.”

  His heart was coated with a sheet of ice, but it beat with fiery heat inside the casing. “She’s smart. She’ll play whatever game she needs to in order to stay alive, but if she makes the wrong move he’ll kill her. I don’t need a psychiatric profile to see into his head. He’s a sociopath with a god complex and an obsession. He wants those diamonds and what he believes they represent. Right now he wants Grace, but if she doesn’t serve his purpose, she’ll end up like the others. That’s not going to happen, Mick.”

  He reached into his pocket, took out his badge and held it out. This time he wouldn’t go by the book, couldn’t afford to play by the rules. “You take this for me, hang on to it. I may want it back.”

  “You’re going to need help,” Mick insisted. “You’re going to need men.”

  “No cops,” Seth repeated, and pushed his badge into Mick’s reluctant hand. “Not this time.”

  “You can’t go in solo. It’s suicide, professional and literal.”

  Seth cast one last glance at the portrait. “I won’t be alone.”

  She wouldn’t tremble, Grace promised herself. She wouldn’t show him how frightened she was. Instead, she brushed her hair from her shoulder with a careless hand.

  “Do you always have your dinner companions abducted from their homes and drugged, Ambassador?”

  “You must forgive the clumsiness.” Considerately he drew out a chair for her. “It was necessary to be quick. I trust you’re suffering no ill effects.”

  “Other than great annoyance, no.” She sat, skimmed her gaze over the dish of marinated mushrooms a silent servant placed before her. They reminded her, painfully, of the noise-filled cookout at Cade’s. “And a loss of appetite.”

  “Oh, you must at least sample the food.” He sat at the head of the table, picked up his fork. It was gold and heavy and had once slipped between the lips of an emperor. “I’ve gone to considerable trouble to have your favorites prepared.” His smile remained genial, but his eyes went cold. “Eat, Grace. I detest waste.”

  “Since you’ve gone to such lengths.” She forced down a bite, ordered her hand not to shake, her stomach not to revolt.

  “I hope your room is comfortable. I had to have it prepared for you rather quickly. You’ll find appropriate clothing in the armoire and bureau. You’ve only to ask if there’s something else you wish.”

  “I prefer windows without bars, and doors without locks.”

  “Temporary precautions, I promise you. Once you’re at home here…” His hand covered hers, the grip tightening cruelly when she attempted to pull away. “…and I do very much want you to be at home here, such measures won’t be necessary.”

  She didn’t wince as the bones in her hands ground together. When she stopped the resistance, his fingers relaxed, stroked once, then slid away.

  “And just how long do you intend to keep me here?”

  He smiled, picked up her wineglass, held it out to her. “Eternity. You and I, Grace, are destined to share eternity.”

  Under the table, her aching hand shook and went clammy. “That’s quite some time.” She started to set her wine down, untouched, then caught the hard glint in his eye and sipped. “I’m flattered, but confused.”

  “It’s pointless to pretend you don’t understand. You held the Star in your hand. You survived death, and you came to me. I’ve seen your face in my dreams.”

  “Yes.” She could feel her blood drain slowly, as if leeched out of her veins. Looking into his eyes she remembered the nightmares—the shadow in the woods. Watching. “I’ve seen you in mine.”

  “You’ll bring me the Stars, Grace, and the power. I understand why I failed now. Every step was simply another on the path that brought us here. Together we’ll possess the Stars. And I will possess you. Don’t worry,” he said when she flinched. “You’ll come to me a willing bride. But my patience has limits. Beauty is my weakness,” he continued, and skimmed a fingertip down her bare arm, toyed idly with the thick silver bracelet she wore. “And perfection my greatest delight. You, my dear, have both. Understand, you’ll have no choice should my patience run out. My household staff is…well trained.”

  Fear was a bright, icy flash, but her voice was steady with disgust. “And would turn a deaf ear and blind eye to rape?”

  “I don’t enjoy that word during dinner.” He gave a sulky little shrug and signaled for the next course. “A woman of your appetites will grow hungry soon enough. And one of your intelligence will undoubtedly see the wisdom of an amiable partnership.”

  “It’s not sex you want, Gregor.” She couldn’t bear to look down at the tender pink salmon on her plate. “It’s subjugation. I’m so poor at subjugation.”

  “You misunderstand me.” He forked up fish and ate with enjoyment. “I intend to make you a goddess, and subject to no one. And I will have everything. No mortal man will come between us.” He smiled again. “Certainly not Lieutenant Buchanan. The man is becoming a nuisance. He’s probing into my affairs, where he has no business probing. I’ve seen him…”

  DeVane’s voice trailed off to a whisper, and there was a hint of fear in it. “In the night. In my dreams. He comes back. He always comes back. No matter how often I kill him.” Then his eyes cleared, and he sipped wine the color of melted gold. “Now he’s stirring up old business and looking for new.”

  She could feel the alarming beat of her pulse in her throat, at her wrists, in her temples. “He’ll be looking for me, very soon now.”

  “Possibly. I’ll deal with him, when and if the time comes. That could have been tonight, had he not left you so abruptly. Oh, I have considered just what will be done about the lieutenant. But I prefer to wait until I have the Stars. It’s possible…” Thoughtfully DeVane picked up his napkin, dabbed at his lips. “I may spare him once I have what belongs to me. If you wish it. I can be magnanimous…under the right circumstances.”

  Her heart was in her throat now, filling it, blocking it. “If I do what you want, you’ll leave him alone?”

  “It’s possible. We’ll discuss it. But I’m afraid I developed an immediate dislike for the man. And I am still annoyed with you, dear Grace, for rejecting my own invitation for such an ordinary man.”

  She didn’t hesitate, couldn’t afford to, while her mind whirled with fear for Seth. She made her lips curve silkily. “Gregor, surely you forgive me for that. I was so…crushed when you didn’t press your case. A woman, after all, enjoys a more determined pursuit.”

  “I don’t pursue. I take.”

  “Obviously.” She pouted. “It was horrid of you to have manhandled me that way, and frightened me half to death. I may not forgive you for it.”

  “Be careful how deep you play the game.” His voice was low with warning and, she thought, with interest. “I’m not green.”

  “No.” She skimmed a hand over his cheek before she rose. “But maturity has so many advantages.”

  Her legs were watery, but she roamed the cavernous room, her gaze traveling quickly toward windows, exits. Escape. “You have such a beautiful home. So many treasures.” She angled her head, hoped the challenge she issued was worth the risk. “I do love…things. But I warn you, Gr
egor, I won’t be any man’s pretty toy.”

  She walked to him slowly, skimming a fingertip down her throat, between her breasts, while the silk she wore whispered around her. “And when I’m backed into a corner…I scratch.”

  Seductively she laid a hand on the table, leaned toward him. “You want me?” she breathed it, purred it, watching his eyes darken, sliding her fingers toward the knife beside his plate. “To touch me? To have me?” Her fingers closed over the handle, gripped hard.

  “Not in a hundred lifetimes,” she said as she struck.

  She was fast, and she was desperate. But he’d shifted to draw her to him, and the knife struck his shoulder instead of his heart. As he cried out in shock and rage, she whirled. Grabbing one of the heavy chairs, she smashed the long window and sent glass raining out. But when she leaped forward, strong arms grabbed her from behind.

  She fought viciously, her breath panting out. The fragile silk she wore ripped. Then she froze when the knife she had used was pressed against her throat. She didn’t bother to struggle against the arms that held her as DeVane leaned his face close to hers. His eyes were mad with fury.

  “I could kill you for that. But it would be too little and too quick. I would have made you my equal. I would have shared that with you. Now I’ll just take what I choose from you. Until I tire of you.”

  “You’ll never get the Stars,” she said steadily. “And you’ll never get Seth.”

  “I’ll have exactly what I choose. And you’ll help me.”

  She started to shake her head, flinched as the blade nicked. “I’ll do nothing to help you.”

  “But you will. If you don’t do exactly as I tell you, I will pick up the phone. With one single word from me, Bailey James and M. J. O’Leary will die tonight. It will only take a word.”

  He saw the wild fear come into her eyes, the helpless terror that hadn’t been there for her own life. “I have men waiting for that word. If I give it, there will be a terrible and tragic explosion in the night at Cade Parris’s home. Another at a small neighborhood pub, just before closing. And as one last twist, a third explosion will destroy the home, and the single occupant, of a certain Lieutenant Buchanan’s residence. Their fate is in your hands, Grace. And the choice is yours.”

  She wanted to call his bluff, but, staring into his eyes, she understood that he wouldn’t hesitate to do as he threatened. No, he longed to do it. Their lives meant nothing to him. And everything to her.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Bailey was fighting against panic when the phone rang. She stared at it as if it were a snake that had rattled into life. With a silent prayer, she lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Bailey.”

  “Grace.” Her fingers went white-knuckled as she whirled. Seth shook his head, held up a hand in caution. “Are you all right?”

  “For the moment. Listen very carefully, Bailey, my life depends on it. Do you understand?”

  “No. Yes.” Stall, she knew she’d been ordered to stall. “Grace, I’m so frightened for you. What happened? Where are you?”

  “I can’t go into that now. You have to be calm, Bailey. You have to be strong. You were always the calm one. Like when we took that art history exam in college and I was so intimated by Professor Greenbalm, and you were so cool. You have to be cool now, Bailey, and you have to follow my instructions.”

  “I will. I’ll try.” She looked helplessly at Seth as he signaled her to stretch it out. “Just tell me if you’re hurt.”

  “Not yet. But he will hurt me. He’ll kill me, Bailey, if you don’t do what he wants. Get him what he wants. I know I’m asking a great deal. He wants the stones. You have to go get them. You can’t take Cade. You can’t call…the police.”

  String it out, Bailey reminded herself. Keep Grace talking. “You don’t want me to call Seth?”

  “No. He isn’t important. He’s just another cop. You know he doesn’t matter. You’re to wait until 1:30 exactly, then you’re to leave the house. Go to Salvini, Bailey. You’ve got to go to Salvini. Leave M.J. out of it, just like we used to. Understand?”

  Bailey nodded, kept her eyes on Seth’s. “Yes, I understand.”

  “Once you get to Salvini, put the stones in a briefcase. Wait there. You’ll get a call with the next set of instructions. You’ll be all right. You know how you used to like to sneak out of the dorm at night and go out driving alone after curfew? Just think of it that way. Exactly that way, Bailey, and you’ll be fine. If you don’t, he’ll take everything away from me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Grace—”

  “I love you,” she managed before the phone went dead.

  “Nothing,” Cade said tightly as he stared down at the tracing equipment. “He’s got it jammed. The signal’s all over the board. It wouldn’t home in.”

  “She wants me to go to Salvini,” Bailey said quietly.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Cade said, interrupting her, but Bailey laid a hand on his arm, looked toward M.J.

  “No, she meant that part. You understood?”

  “Yeah.” M.J. pressed her fingers to her eyes, tried to think past the terror. “She was pumping in as much as she could. Bailey and Grace never left me out of anything, so she wanted me along. She wants us out of here, but she was stringing him about the stones. Bailey never jumped curfew.”

  “She was giving you signals,” Jack said. “Trying to punch in what she could manage.”

  “She knew we’d understand. He must have told her something would happen to us if she didn’t cooperate.” Bailey reached out for M.J.’s hand. “She wanted us to contact Seth. That’s why she said you didn’t matter—because we know you do.”

  Seth dragged a hand through his hair—a rare wasted motion. He had no choice but to trust their instincts. No choice but to trust Grace’s sense of survival. “All right. She wants me to know what’s happening, and wants you out of the house.”

  “Yes. She wants us out of the house, thinks we’ll be safer at Salvini.”

  “You’ll be safer at the precinct,” Seth told her. “And that’s where both of you are going.”

  “No.” Bailey’s voice remained calm. “She wants us at Salvini. She made a point of it.”

  Seth studied her, and gauged his options. He could have them taken into protective custody. That was the logical step. Or he could let the game play out. That was a risk. But it was the risk that fit.

  “Salvini, then. But Detective Marshall will arrange for guards. You’ll stay put until you hear differently.”

  M.J. bristled. “You expect us to just sit around and wait while Grace is in trouble?”

  “That’s exactly what you’re going to do,” Seth said coolly. “She’s risking her life to see that you’re safe. I’m not going to disappoint her.”

  “He’s right, M.J.” Jack lifted a brow as she snarled at him. “Go ahead and fume. But you’re outnumbered here. You and Bailey follow instructions.”

  Seth noted with some surprise that M.J. closed her mouth, gave one brisk nod in assent. “What was the business about the art history exam, Bailey?”

  Bailey sucked in air. “Professor Greenbalm’s first name was Gregory.”

  “Gregory.” Gregor. “Close enough.” Seth looked at the two men he needed. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Chapter 12

  Grace doubted very much that she would live through the night. There were so many things she hadn’t done. She had never shown Bailey and M.J. Paris, as they had always planned. She would never see the willow she’d planted on her country hillside grow tall and bend gracefully over her tiny pond. She had never had a child.

  The unfairness clawed at her, along with the fear. She was only twenty-six years old, and she was going to die.

  She’d seen her sentence in DeVane’s eyes. And she knew he intended to kill those she loved, as well. He wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than erasing all the lives that had touched what his obsessed mind consider
ed his.

  All she could hang on to now was the hope that Bailey had understood her.

  “I’m going to show you what you could have had.” His arm bandaged, a fresh tuxedo covering the damage, DeVane led her through a concealed panel, and down a well-lit set of stone stairs that were polished like ebony. He’d taken a painkiller. His eyes were glassy with it, and vicious.

  They were the eyes that had stared out of the woods in her nightmares. And as he walked down the curve of those glossy black stairs, she felt the tug of some deep memory.

  By torchlight then, she thought hazily. Down and down, with the torches flickering and the Stars glittering in their home of gold, on a white stone. And death waiting.

  The harsh breathing of the man beside her. DeVane’s? Someone else’s? It was a hot, secret sound that chilled the skin. A room, she thought, struggling to grip the slippery chain of memories. A secret room of white and gold. And she had been locked in it for eternity.

  She stopped at the last curve, not so much in fear as in shock. Not here, she thought frantically, but somewhere else. Not her, but part of her. Not him, but someone like him.

  DeVane’s fingers dug into her arm, but she barely felt the pain. Seth—the man with Seth’s eyes, dressed as a warrior, coated with dust and the dents of battle. He’d come for her, and for the Stars.

  And died for it.

  “No.” The stairway spun, and she gripped the cool wall for balance. “Not again. Not this time.”

  “There’s little choice.” DeVane jerked her forward, pulled her down the remaining steps. He stopped at a thick door, gestured impatiently for his guard to step back. Holding Grace’s arm in a bruising grip, he drew out a heavy key, fit it in an old lock that for reasons Grace couldn’t fathom made her think of Alice’s rabbit hole.

  “I want you to see what could have been yours. What I would have shared with you.”

  At his rough shove, she stumbled inside and stood blinking in shock.

  No, not the rabbit hole, she realized, her dazzled eyes wide and stunned. Ali Baba’s cave. Gold gleamed in mountains, jewels winked in rivers. Paintings she recognized as works of the masters crowded together on the walls. Statues and sculpture, some as small as the Fabergé eggs perched on gold stands, others soaring to the ceiling, were jammed inside.

  Furs and sweeps of silk, ropes of pearls, carvings and crowns, were jammed into every available space. Mozart played brilliantly on hidden speakers.

  It was, she realized, not a fairy-tale cave at all. It was merely a spoiled boy’s elaborate and greedy clubhouse. Here he could hide his possessions from the world, keep them all to himself and chortle over them, she imagined.

  And how many of these toys had he stolen? she wondered. How many had he killed for?

  She wouldn’t die here, she promised herself. And neither would Seth. If this was indeed history overlapping, she wouldn’t allow it to repeat itself. She would fight with whatever weapons she had.

  “You have quite a collection, Gregor, but your presentation could use some work.” The first weapon was mild disdain, laced with amusement. “Even the precious loses impact when crammed together in such a disorganized manner.”

  “It’s mine. All of it. A lifetime’s work. Here.” Like that spoiled boy, he snatched up a goblet of gold, thrust it out to her for admiration. “Queen Guinevere sipped from this before she cuckolded Arthur. He should have cut out her heart for that.”

  Grace turned the cup in her hand and felt nothing. It was empty not only of wine, she mused, but of magic.

  “And here.” He grabbed a pair of ornate diamond earrings, thrust them into Grace’s face. “Another queen—Marie Antoinette—wore these while her country plotted her death. You might have worn them.”

  “While you plotted mine.” With deliberate scorn, she dismissed the offering and turned away. “No, thank you.”

  “I have an arrow the goddess Diana hunted with. The girdle worn by Juno.”

  Her heart thrummed like a harp, but she only chuckled. “Do you really believe that?”

  “They’re mine.” Furious with her reaction, he pushed his way through his collection, laid a hand over the cold marble slab he’d had built. “I’ll have the Stars soon. They will be the apex of my collection. I’ll set them here, with my own hands. And I’ll have everything.”

  “They won’t help you. They won’t change you.” She didn’t know where the words came from, or the knowledge behind them, but she saw his eyes flicker in surprise. “Your fate’s already sealed. They’ll never be yours. It’s not meant, not this time. They’re for the light, and for the good. You’ll never see them here in the dark.”

  His stomach jittered. There was power in her words, in her eyes, when she should have been cowed and frightened. It unnerved him. “By sunrise I’ll have them here. I’ll show them to you.” His breath was short and shallow as he approached her. “And I’ll have you. I’ll keep you as long as I wish. Do with you what I wish.”

  The hand against her cheek was cold, made her think wildly of a snake, but she didn’t cringe away. “You’ll never have the Stars, and you’ll never have me. Even if you hold us, you’ll never have us. That was true before, but it’s only more true now. And that will eat away at you, day after day, until there’s