Sylvie Kurtz - Under Lock And Key

Patrick Swayze kissed Demi Moore, and she arched back in ecstasy at his touch. After wondering all night and all day what she was going to do with her unwanted guest, Melissa had her answer. The only question left in her mind was whether she would have the courage to follow through on her brash decision.

“MR. BLACKWELL?”

A woman’s voice pierced through layers of drowsiness, and Tyler winced as he propped himself up to answer.

“What…? What time is it?” he asked, his voice hoarse with sleep. “Who are you?”

“I’m sorry to wake you up, but I need to talk to you. I’m Deanna Ziegler, a good friend of Melissa’s.” She looked at her watch and added, “It’s about two in the morning.”

“Two a.m.!” Tyler sat up. He was wide awake now and annoyed. “What the hell are you doing here at this time?”

“Visiting. For Melissa it’s only midafternoon—she keeps quite different hours from most people. I want to know what your intentions are.”

“Intentions?” His eyes adjusted to the night and he stared unbelievingly at the small woman peering at him through the bars of his cell. She sounded like a father facing his daughter’s suitor. By the moon’s soft light, spilling from the high window, he guessed she was about forty. Her hair, gleaming white and her smooth Germanic features drawn tight with worry betrayed her age more than the well-proportioned figure clad in fuchsia exercise pants and flower-print T-shirt.

“I’ll arrange for Grace to let you go in the morning. I suggest you leave the second you get the opportunity,” Deanna said.

Tyler guessed that “Papa” had judged him to be an unsuitable prospect. Who was Grace? The woman who brought him his meals?

“I can’t.” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then leaned his elbows on his thighs and cradled his head in his hands. The angel of his hallucinations with her heavenly voice and jewel-green eyes had revisited him in dreams a man like him had no right to have. The angel was so far removed from the tabloid witch that he had to reconcile the two and find which one was real. Maybe he was doomed to repeat his mistakes, he thought, as the need for answers once again reasserted itself. How did he expect to find a new path if he followed the same old road?

“What do you mean you can’t?” Anger rose and turned the woman’s soft features surprisingly hard. “Melissa’s been through hell and can’t take any more of the kind of pain you bring.”

“I’m not here to hurt her.”

The knuckles of the hands gripping the bars whitened. She shook her head. “She doesn’t need the kind of notoriety your work brings. It’ll change the quiet atmosphere she’s used to and needs to survive. You’re an investigative reporter, and I’m telling you there’s nothing here to investigate or report.”

“I’m not going to hurt her,” he repeated flatly. Family feuds had a way of burning anyone foolish enough to cross the battlefield. Freddy had to know that or he would have come to the rescue himself.

“Maybe you really don’t mean to, but you have to understand, Melissa isn’t like the people you’re used to interviewing.”

“I don’t imagine she is.” How could she be after spending her life alone in a place like this?

“Put yourself in her place. You’re eight years old and you’re disfigured in the same accident that kills your mother. Imagine growing up without love, with scars that today even the best plastic surgeon can’t make disappear because they’re too old and set. Imagine being kept in a room all alone—just because your family thinks you’re too ugly for anyone to see. Imagine what that does to the psyche of a child, and then tell me that your words won’t hurt her.” She jerked at the bars. “Go back to your editor and tell him you can’t do this story.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You have nothing to lose, Mr. Blackwell. You’ll get other chances. The last reporter who did a story on her nearly killed her with his words. She’s had enough pain to last her a dozen lifetimes. Leave her alone. Go,” Deanna pleaded.

Deanna’s fierceness spoke of loyalty and love. Freddy wanted Tyler’s reason for being here to remain a secret until he could corroborate it, but he’d also said that to get to Melissa he had to go through Deanna. Nothing short of the truth would work here. “Freddy Gold sent me.”

She snapped back as if the bars were suddenly electrified. “Why would Freddy Gold send a reporter? He knows how she feels about them.”

“To do an article on Eclipse.”

“Freddy doesn’t send reporters. I send him Melissa’s copy over the Internet.”

Freddy, Tyler thought, had probably never gotten around to asking his secretary to call Deanna about the article on her stallion. Were Rena and the baby okay? “He thinks she’s in danger.”

“From what?”

Tyler sighed. Freddy’s hunches had garnered him untold scoops, but sometimes they were a pain in the butt to explain. But if he was to stay, he had to convince Melissa’s guardian that his presence was needed here. “He received a warning that someone wants her harmed.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. That’s why he sent me here. He knows Melissa won’t talk to him, won’t even pick up the phone when he calls. He knows she won’t accept his help except through a business transaction. That’s why he thought she’d go for an article about her horse now that show season is under way. His secretary was supposed to call.”

“She didn’t.”

The thing about Freddy’s hunches was that they were usually right. And if Freddy thought danger lurked around Melissa’s castle, then there was probably something to it. Sometimes the intuition proved nothing more than a leaky faucet. Sometimes it was the shot that killed the woman you loved. But it was always worth checking out.

“I promised Freddy I’d keep her safe. That’s all.” That was everything. And it was too much. Especially when she’d managed to haunt his dreams in less than a day. He rubbed at the pain pounding in his forehead. “The story is just a cover. I won’t write one word about her. Call Freddy—he’ll verify my claim.”

“She’s as safe as she can be behind these walls. The last thing she needs is an intruder—a reporter—with a hidden agenda.” Deanna made an exasperated sound. “The best thing you can do for her is leave. I’ll look out for her. I’ve been keeping her safe for a long time.”

“Then maybe a fresh set of eyes is warranted.”

Deanna’s face hardened. “I come from a powerful family. I can make sure you never work again.”

“The name Ziegler doesn’t ring a bell.”

A drop from the leaky faucet pinged onto the brick floor. A gust of wind moaned through the half-opened window. The concert of crickets outside suddenly stilled.

“Try Randall, as in James Richmond Randall.”

“Randall Industries?”

“The very one.”

The hair on the back of his neck bristled. Last year a trail of creative accounting, colored profits and corruption had led to Randall Industries before it ran cold.

Old instincts he thought had died with Lindsey revived. Danger had a scent, a taste, a feel of its own, and it slithered through him in a sticky cold that threatened to turn to black. He got up from the cot, shrugged off the unwanted feelings creeping down his spine and shuffled to the gate. He held the bars right above Deanna’s hands and looked straight into her pale blue eyes, gleaming in the moonlight.

“Even J.R. Randall can’t take something away from nothing. But you, how will you feel if the warning Freddy got is true and something happens to Melissa?”

Deanna swallowed hard. “She’s safe here.”

Money makes people do unspeakable things.

Did Freddy know Deanna was linked to Randall Industries? Was that why he’d sent him here? What chance did Melissa have against someone who thought nothing of murder to keep an illusion afloat?

“She’s in danger, Ms. Ziegler, but not from me.”

“I will not let you harm her.”

“Then help me keep her safe.”

Tyler’s worst hangover paled in comparison to the freight train barreling through his head. He tried to hold very still, but somehow the bruises on his body felt as if they were being pressed in turn for doneness.

Grace returned several times during the day. First with a bottle of extra-strength ibuprofen, his laundered clothes, soap and a set of towels, then with lunch, and finally in midafternoon with the remnants of his personal effects from his Jeep—minus his Swiss Army knife, razor, cell phone and Palm Pilot.

She inquired more than once if he wanted the doctor to look at his head again. He refused, knowing instinctively that once he left the witch’s castle, she wouldn’t allow his return. The faster he got to the bottom of the situation here, the sooner he could go. He didn’t like the way his promise to Freddy was drawing him back into a past he was trying to forget.

He closed his eyes. The image of Lindsey’s blue eyes widening with shock, of blood blooming on the bodice of her white dress, exploded on the black screen of his lids. He moved too fast as he sought to escape the bloody vision. Pain rattled through him as he came to a sitting position. Wiping a hand over his face, he forced himself to concentrate on his current situation.

What if Melissa wasn’t the innocent lamb Freddy thought her to be? What if she was involved in a partnership with Randall Industries?

Then this time, he wouldn’t miss the mark.

He was willing to bet that, for all Melissa Carnes’s witch reputation, his skills were honed to a sharper edge—even with the wasted year to dull them. When he knew ahead of time he had to be patient, he found it easier to quell hasty actions and keep focused on the goal. And his goal was to wipe the slate clean between him and Freddy, to start fresh on a new page.

He rolled his shoulder, dragged his hands through his hair and massaged the back of his neck. A chilling feeling crept into his being, burrowed under his skin, and made evil seem to lurk in every shadowy crack in the stone wall, in the suffocating heat that settled and thickened the must, in the dankness that seemed to coat his skin like slime.

And if he wasn’t careful, he thought, it just might swallow him whole—just as it had after Lindsey’s death. The whiskey demon whispered to him and Tyler felt the pull of it from head to gut. Think of something else. Think of what you’re supposed to accomplish here. Think of the story.

As evening darkness infused his already dim cell, the jangling of keys announced an arrival—but not Grace. Not Deanna. The footsteps were too light, too airy. Melissa Carnes. Patience was paying off.

“About time,” Tyler mumbled.

He knew she was there, could feel her watching him from the shadows. He hated the fact his pulse kicked up a notch at her arrival. Leaning back on the unyielding hardness of the stone wall, he waited. The one who spoke first was always at a disadvantage.

“Does the dark frighten you, Mr. Blackwell?”

The melody in her voice took him by surprise. Given her reputation, her possible connection with Randall Industries, he’d almost expected a cackle. “Not particularly. What about the light that scares you?”

Her throaty laugh echoed in his cell. “You haven’t done your homework, then.”

“I know about your burns, if that’s what you mean.”

“And here I thought you were going to bring up witchcraft,” she said. “Photophobia.”

“Pardon?”

“One of my eyes was damaged by the heat of the fire and remains sensitive to light. Doctors have cautioned me to stay out of the sun because my skin has lost its ability to defend itself.” He could hear the defensiveness in her voice. “And most people would rather I cloak myself in shadow so that they’re not subjected to the sight of my ugly face.”