Sylvie Kurtz - Pull Of The Moon

“May I ask you a personal question?” Rita asked Valerie, changing subjects.

“Sure.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ll be thirty next May.” By then she’d planned on being in New York, working as a producer for a major network in the news division—at least according to the life plan she’d drawn up when she was eighteen. Come to think of it, she’d only checked one item off that long list. “That probably sounds as if I don’t have much experience—”

“Oh, no, dear, I don’t doubt your qualifications. How tall are you?”

Wow, where was this coming from? And what did it have to do with her ability to shoot an interview? “Five-four. ” With three-inch heels. “My mother’s short. That’s where I get it. The shortness, I mean.” Oh, good, now she was babbling. Definitely time to get solid food in her.

Rita’s face crumpled. Her body curled into itself and spasmed in time to a coughing fit. The red agenda she clutched in her lap fell to the ground, spilling its contents. A photograph fluttered and landed upside down at Valerie’s feet.

“Rita?” Moving with speed and athletic grace, Nick knelt at his employer’s side, a glass of water in hand. “Here.”

Rita sipped the water Nick offered her, but the coughing only worsened. Nick gently stood her up.

Not knowing what to do to help Rita, Valerie picked up the agenda and put the pages back in place.

“Stay here,” Nick ordered, glaring at her, then escorted Rita out of the library.

Valerie picked up the photograph, turned it over and gasped. The hairstyle was wrong, and the smile was too stiff, but otherwise, the picture could be hers. “What in the world?”

Why did Rita have her picture? And why didn’t she remember posing for it? What kind of twilight zone had she walked into?

After ten minutes of waiting for Nick’s return, questions running laps in her mind as she studied the photograph from Rita’s agenda, the coffee Valerie had had on the car ride up was putting pressure on her bladder. The tinkling of water in the brass tranquility fountain on an accent table didn’t help.

A middle-aged woman entered the library, looking more like a shadow than a person with her black dress, gray hair and pale skin. Did no one in this house believe in the health benefits of a touch of sun? She carried a silver tray of tea and shortbread cookies—no toast, Valerie noted—and studied the unwelcome guest with decided wariness.

The woman clucked, her dark-brown eyes troubled. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft, but unfriendly. “Ms. Meadows will be down shortly.”

“She was coughing.” Valerie stuck the photograph behind her back. “Mr. Galloway took her up to her room.”

“Oh, no.” The woman’s silver braid snaked over her shoulder as she slapped the tray onto the coffee table and hurried away, her feet making no noise on the rose-adorned carpet.

“Is there a bathroom nearby?” Valerie called after her.

The woman waved a hand vaguely to her right. “Around the corner.” The woman stopped her flight. Her small hand clutched the door frame as if her nails were fangs. Closet vampire? “It’d be best if you left now.”

“I want to be sure Ms. Meadows is okay.”

“No good will come of you digging up bones.”

“We’re taping the segments at Ms. Meadows’s request.” Valerie was starting to feel like a broken record.

“Your act,” the woman warned, shaking her head. “It won’t wash. Nick’ll see right through it.” She turned and vanished into the dark hall.

“Good to know I’m so wanted.” What was going on here? Had Higgins set her up for failure so he would have a good reason to promote Bailey over her? Something wasn’t right. Not just with the room, but with the whole house.

She glanced around the library with its floor-to-ceiling stacks, its comfy chairs and cozy fireplace. Nothing about the elegant decor triggered her unwarranted fear, but she couldn’t help the chill crawling up her spine.

Maybe she should leave and come back in the morning when everybody had calmed down and she’d had some food.

First, though, she had to find a bathroom.

Valerie slipped the photograph into her portfolio. She wanted to study it further, see if she could remember when it was taken. She stepped into the hall. At least this time the walls didn’t ripple. The first door she tried opened into a laundry room that smelled like summer rain. The next door opened into a dark room that looked like a closet, but smelled of rose potpourri and water. Valerie fumbled for a switch and found one in the hallway. Ah, finally, a bathroom.

She relieved herself and admired the painted mural that made it seem as if she were in some enchanted garden—a watercolor background of mossy-green with pink roses, golden grasses and birds. A single blue butterfly hovered on one side of the mirror as if it were going to drink a sip of water from the sink while she washed her hands. She’d always liked butterflies, especially blue ones. As she reached to touch the gossamer wings, the lights went out, leaving her swallowed by darkness.

She sucked in a breath and wrapped her hands around the cold marble of the sink to anchor herself in the pitch-black space. Blinking madly, she tried to orient herself. A power failure? It happened a lot in old houses, didn’t it?

Tamping back her irrational fear of small, dark places, she forced her frozen fingers to let go of the sink. She turned with small baby steps to keep her balance, then groped blindly for the door.

Out of the darkness, a slice of light materialized and crept into the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. She frowned. The power was still on in the rest of the house?

A board creaked outside. She froze. “Hello?” Is anybody out there?”

She stared at the paring of light, but no shadow rippled across its path.

“Just an old house settling into its bones,” she told herself, but the shaky sound of her voice didn’t reassure her. Open the door and get out of here.

Her trembling fingers bumped against the hard wood of the door. With her heart pounding an SOS against her ribs, she patted the smooth oak until she found the knob. Her damp palms slipped on the glass knob. It wouldn’t budge.

She tried again, pulling and twisting. A kind of desperate madness swept over her. “Hey! Turn on the lights! Open the door!”

She panted as she tried to control the sense of impending doom sweeping over her. The burn of tears stung her eyes and, hanging on to the knob as a child would, the craziest need to call “Mama” bubbled on her trembling lips.

Not that her mother was the kind who’d fussed over emotional outbursts. You don’t need a night-light, Valerie. You’re a big girl, and big girls don’t cry.

Valerie blinked madly, survival instinct kicking back in. She banged on the door with the flat of her hand. “This isn’t funny!”

Nicolas Galloway. He’d done this. Did he really think locking her in the bathroom was going to send her crying home? It would take a lot more than that to make her go crawling back to the station empty-handed.

Her grip tightened on the doorknob, and she pushed, turned and tugged with all her might. When she got out of there, she was going to strangle him. “Open the door!”

Teeth bared, Valerie jammed her shoulder into the bathroom door and grunted. She’d barely connected with the wood when the door burst open, and she tumbled into Nick’s arms.

His hands held her forearms in a vise-tight grip to keep her from colliding with his chest. Even through the wool blend of her blazer sleeves, the vibrating heat of his anger burned her.

“What on earth are you doing?” he asked.

“The door was stuck.” She spied the wooden doorstop in his hand. This little thing was what had caused her full-blown panic attack? She snatched the offending piece of wood from his hand and held it up. “It’s going to take a lot more than locking me in the bathroom to discourage me.”

Even if his cheap bathroom trick had worked at scaring her—momentarily—it wasn’t going to make her disappear.

Guarded tension stretched his features taut. He pushed her away, breaking the heated hum of contact where his hard fingers had dug into her forearms. “Trust me, Val, if I choose to intimidate you, you’ll know.”

“Valerie.” She rubbed her arms against the sudden need to bury herself deeper into his embrace and breathe in the alluring scent of citrus and sandalwood of his aftershave. How crazy was that? One little scare, and like a two-year-old, she was ready to seek solace in the first pair of arms that turned up.

“So if you didn’t lock me in the bathroom, who did?” The woman with the braid? These people’s overprotective-ness of Rita Meadows made Valerie’s mother’s watchful smothering seem like neglect in comparison. “How many people work here?”

“That’s none of your concern. Val.”

“Valerie,” she insisted, narrowing her eyes at him. Had someone bribed the staff in the past? Was that where his wariness was coming from? “And it does concern me when someone locks me in the bathroom. What if you hadn’t come by?”

“You made enough racket. Someone would’ve heard you eventually.”

“That’s not the point—”

“I’ll handle the matter.”

She stuffed the doorstop in the kerchief pocket of his suit and gave it a pat. “Fine. See that it doesn’t happen again.” She didn’t really have a choice other than to let him “handle the matter.” She wasn’t here to investigate the staff’s juvenile intimidation tactics. She was here to conduct interviews. “How is Ms. Meadows?”

His eyes softened for a second. “Just a cold. She’ll be fine.”

But something in his expression told her he was more worried than a simple cold would warrant. “I’ll come back tomorrow, then. When she’s feeling better.”

“That would be best.”

Valerie buttoned her blazer, adding an extra buffer between them. “The photograph? From the agenda? Why does Ms. Meadows have it?”

A muscle in his jaw jumped. “It’s an age progression. She has one done every year on Valentina’s birthday.”

Valerie’s heart went out to Rita. Had she had the photo done as a way to watch her baby grow? No, Valerie decided. So she’d know what Valentina would look like if she saw her on the street somewhere. Maybe airing the segment would provide Rita with the resolution she needed.

“It, uh, looks like me.” The resemblance was uncanny and the memory of that likeness sent a shiver prickling over her scalp. Had Rita thought that Valerie was her daughter? Was that why she’d asked the personal questions? Although what height had to do with anything was a puzzle.

Nick’s gaze hardened and bored into her with a warning that seemed to aim straight at her heart. His voice rode a flat line that reverberated with threat. “But it isn’t you, Val. Something you’d best remember. Valentina is dead. I have proof. There won’t be a fat payday. Not if I can help it.”

Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “Is that why you’re being such a jerk? You think I think I’m Valentina? That’s ridiculous.”

“What’ll it take to make you disappear?”

“What?”

He whipped out a checkbook from the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket. “How much?”

One hand covered her heart. “You can’t be serious. You think I want money?”

He stepped closer until his breath was a warm flutter against her lips. “That’s all they want in the end.”