Authors: Blush
"Fascinating scenario," Rob said, making no attempt to hide the hostility in his voice, or to join the crowd as they turned to look at him. "A valuable painting was stolen today, and you just told everyone how it was done. But you forgot the punchline,
Jack.
You forgot to tell them who did it. "
"I didn't forget, Mr. Emory—"
Rob cut him off, determined to have his say. "You also forgot to tell them that you've done time, didn't you, Jack?"
He turned to Lake and the others. "This man, Jack Culhane is an ex-con. He did hard time for nearly killing a man. And as for his so-called security business, it's nothing but a front. His clients are unsavory characters looking for ways to protect the art they've acquired illegally. He consorts with thieves and smugglers and probably is one himself. "
For a moment Rob's fevered breathing was the only sound in the room. Even Gus was too alarmed to speak. She wasn't as shocked by Rob's revelations as by the way he'd revealed them. Didn't he realize that cornering Jack could be dangerous? If Jack retaliated he could destroy everything she was trying to do.
"Rob, what are you doing?" Gus asked softly.
"I told you I was going to have him investigated, " he countered. "Thank God I did. "
He'd told her that at lunch, Gus realized. But no one could amass that much information that fast, which meant he must have had the investigator on the case for some time, probably ever since the "honeymoon" trip to Mexico.
Without warning Jack broke from the bar and walked toward the large arched window at the far end of the room.
"Stop him!" Rob shouted. "Someone call the police!"
But no one could seem to move. Massive walnut bookshelves lined the wall on either side of the window, reaching about halfway to a ceiling that was thirty feet high. They also lined a portion of the inside wall. As Jack reached the window, he began to search the molding as if he were looking for a way to open it.
"Don't be stupid, man, " Lake called out. "You'll never get out that way. "
Jack glanced back over his shoulder. "Don't be so sure, " he said. His hand stopped on the corner piece, and as he maneuvered it ever so slightly, a section of the bookshelves lining the inside wall rolled open, revealing a passageway large enough for a man to enter.
No one spoke, not even Rob as Jack disappeared into the passageway. Everyone seemed too shocked to respond. The windowpanes sparkled and danced with light, as if the chandeliers were moving. An antique clock on the fireplace mantel counted out seconds, ticking weakly in the silence. By the time Gus and the others had begun to recover, Jack had reappeared, a framed painting in his hands.
"Jesus Christ, " Rob breathed. "It
was
him. I knew it!"
Jack propped the portrait on the windowsill where everyone could see it. The young girl in Goddard's magnificent oil seemed to be blushing furiously in the warm glow of the room's light.
Webb Calderon spoke first. "Is this your idea of a joke, Culhane? What does it mean?"
Jack left the painting where it was and walked toward them. "I did it to prove a point, " he said. "I told Lake his system was vulnerable, but whoever sold it to him had convinced him it was impregnable. This seemed to be the only way to get my message across. "
"An odd way to pick up new business, " Lake said, his voice strangely quiet.
"Believe me, I don't need new business, " Jack assured him. "I subcontract out the actual installation, but I design and test the systems myself. Earlier today I checked out Bruce Houston's new system. Of course, everyone knows the president of Houston Tires is an art thief and a smuggler. " He flashed a black look at Rob.
Rob colored hotly, clearly embarrassed. "That painting could be a replacement, " he said, pointing at the oil. "What if it's a forgery? And even if it isn't, he stole it right out from under your nose, Lake. He was trying to make you look like a fool. "
By now Gus was furious. "Speaking of fools, " she told Rob, her voice hushed as she glared at him.
Lake didn't seem to be pleased with Rob's assessment of the situation, either. "I don't think we know each other well enough for you to be calling me by my first name, Mr. Emory, " he said coldly.
Rob went quiet at that, much to Gus's relief. And if she'd been frightened that Lake might decide to take some kind of action against Jack, she needn't have worried. He was studying her husband in an entirely different way. There was something new in his expression, something secret and speculative. As Gus glanced from one man to the other, she wondered what was going on.
The veiled look on Calderon's face tipped her that he might be a part of it, too, and suddenly the little bits of information she'd been receiving all evening began to form a vaguely coherent whole. That's what Jack Culhane wants with me, she realized. He wants them, my stepbrother and Calderon. Whatever he's after has something to do with them, and I'm the conduit.
She glanced around the room, noting Lily's narrowed, furtive fascination, and Ward McHenry, who'd been uncharacteristically quiet and removed through it all. Now he was watching with a dark interest that told her even he might have an agenda.
Fear struck Gus then, real fear, and for the first time. Her mouth went dry and her heart unsteady. The questions forming in her mind brought with them a premonition that was all the more terrifying because it had been generated by her own psyche. Was she the only one who didn't know what was going on? Was there some conspiracy of silence here between these people and the mysterious man she married? Or did they each have their own ax to grind? Confusion overwhelmed her, coupled with a sense of helplessness. No fortune-teller could have frightened her the way she had frightened herself, and yet she still had no real sense of the threat itself. She didn't know what was wrong, she just knew something was, terribly.
Someone had been in his room. Jack knew it the moment he opened the door. He'd used the oldest trick in the book, a piece of thread in the doorjamb. For his purposes it was just as effective and far less trouble than a laser beam. If anyone had entered in his absence the thread would be gone, and it was. He went immediately to the computer, which he'd stashed in an intake air vent on the wall behind the bed.
He'd programmed it to record the time and date when the lid was opened, and now as he tapped out the combination and the green quartz screen materialized, he saw that the system had not been breached. The entry log indicated it hadn't been opened since he used it last. That could eliminate Gus, he reasoned, though searching his room seemed almost innocuous, considering everything else she'd done. His intuition was telling him one of the other Featherstones or their guests was even more curious.
A professional would have checked the doorjamb, which meant that whoever'd come in had probably been at the party tonight. Rob Emory had admitted to having him investigated, but Jack's money was on Lake. His erratic behavior had caught Jack's attention. He'd gone into a rage when the painting was stolen, then been strangely subdued when Jack returned it.
Jack wished now that there'd been time to inspect the painting when he had it. Something about it hadn't looked quite right. He wasn't sure what the inconsistency was, perhaps an air bubble in the canvas, but there hadn't been time to investigate. He would, first chance he got.
Moments later he'd changed into his jeans and stretched out on the bed, knowing he wouldn't sleep. He was still charged with adrenaline, and the residual sparks were flying. His mind was alive, thinking about the day's events, the woman who
was
an event. There were many things he could do tonight, including input the new data he'd picked up today into the security matrix of the Featherstone estate. He'd scoped out the house's system, using a tiny, portable, high-gain antenna to collect the data and the software he developed to analyze it. His next step was to flush out an art thief. The Van Gogh that had disappeared five years ago had never been recovered. Jack had reason to believe it was hidden somewhere here in this house, and when he found it, he would be that much closer to the criminal mastermind who'd destroyed his family.
He closed his hands, feeling their restless need for action. Yes, there was plenty he could do, but only one thing that would calm him.
The formless block of satinwood he held was going to be her. Jack knew it by the feel of the wood in his hand. It was warm in his palm, vibrant and alive beneath his clasped fingers. It wasn't the only time he'd felt as if something were waiting to be born with the virgin cut of his knife. But he was surprised at this impulse, surprised that the first human figure he'd ever carved would be her, Gus.
He sat on the braided rug in his room, resting his shoulders against the side of the bed, the block of golden wood cradled in one hand, his knife in the other. The bedroom wasn't made for a man his size. It was roughly as wide as a hospital corridor and about as inspiring. The rest of the house smelled of lemon oil and fresh-cut flowers and was sumptuously decorated with antiques, fine crystal, and damask fabrics, but this room was as spare and spartan as a monk's cell. The gleaming brass bed sported a quilted Granny Goose coverlet and had a cedar chest at the foot.
He shifted, trying to arrange himself comfortably. There'd been nowhere in the room to sit to do his carving. The rocker had been too small, the window seat too cramped, so he'd wound up here, on the floor, and discovered that it felt good, like a kid hiding out from the world, wanting to be alone with some silly, priceless thing he'd found.
The knife flashed in his hand—weapon of destruction or creation depending on who wielded it. For him it had been both.
He'd never had any kind of training in wood carving. It had been a natural pastime in prison, a harmless way to fill the hours of tedium. Weapons hadn't been allowed so he'd used whatever he could find or fashion, mostly shivs and sharpened rocks. At first the guards had confiscated the crude carvings, and he'd been disciplined. Eventually they'd come to ignore him, and he'd filled his cell with renderings of more and more intricacy. Tiny cottages and castles, they'd been mysterious talismans, but he'd never understood what they meant to him or why they held such power. Sometimes he thought they reminded him of the only time in his life that wasn't tainted with unbearable pain—his childhood. Other times he wondered if they represented the future he'd been denied.
His only other preoccupation in prison had been planning for the time when he would confront the killers of his child. After tonight that time seemed close enough to reach out and touch. The trap had been baited and set. All he had to do now was wait, wait and stay laser-focused.
He worked the smooth wood with his thumb, imagining the contours of her body in his mind, feeling them in his flesh. She had the kind of body men dreamed about conquering, satin skin and sleek, firm curves. Remembering her golden softness now made him tight, hard. Remembering her moist, pink sweetness as he fucked her—made him ache. Christ, he should never have touched her.
In five years nothing else had taken his mind off his one objective, to find the people who destroyed his family and make them pay. Nothing but her, this woman hidden in the wood. Odd that he was so close to what he'd sought all this time, and all he could think about was her.
He didn't know what to make of her. It didn't surprise him that she'd tried to kill him. He would have done the same under the circumstances. What surprised him was the way she'd taken his side tonight, against her fiancé, against her family. What surprised him was that she'd tried to lure him to his death and then come to his rescue all in the same day. She'd done that twice. How the hell was he supposed to resist a woman who couldn't decide whether she wanted him dead or alive?
Sex with her would be like stealing fire from the gods. Irrestible. Suicidal. She was as much a narcotic as the booze he craved. Only unlike booze, he couldn't have her without pain. His body wouldn't let him. He had held back too long, and now when he wanted desperately to feel the deep, soul-shaking pleasure of release, he was no longer capable. Maybe that was a good thing, he told himself. Maybe it would keep him from getting so emotionally entangled that he couldn't do what he had to do. For all he knew she might even have been involved in what happened five years ago.
I hope you didn't have any part of it, Gus,
he thought.
I
hope to God you didn't, because if you did, I'll have to take you down with the rest of them.
He ran the knife blade gently over the wood, stroking it to determine the place to begin. Some energy would slow his hand and guide his blade. She, the woman in the wood, would tell him how to bring her to life. It was a violent and beautiful thing he was going to do, carving a woman's body, the very origin of life, from so basic an element of nature as an amorphous block of wood. As he took the first cut, the virgin cut, he thought he heard her sigh.
Chapter 18
"Oh, yes, yes, yessssssssssssssss—"
The hissed word climbed the scale from sexual ecstasy to physical agony as Jack fought to heave two hundred and fifty pounds of barbell into the ozone. His jaw locked with the savage effort, and the tendons in his neck choked off any further sound. The sweat trickling from his brow turned to fire when it hit his eyes, forcing him to squeeze them shut. He'd been pushing it to the limit for the last two hours, and he was on the brink of muscle failure. Something was going to burst before he got through this repetition!
His hands were fused to the bar, but the wild trembling in his wrists burned down his arms and shook in his throat. This was the last set of three, and he was flat on his back, attempting to benchpress the weight for the tenth time. Fucking A! He'd done it in prison every day.
Laughter shook through him, weakening his concentration. He'd made a
rhyme.
Pain had wrung poetry from his tortured soul, and he was just demented enough to find that funny. Stupidly, asininely funny. His stomach muscles jerked with mirth. His arms wobbled and his knees knocked against the padded bench as he strained to lower the crushing weight to his chest. He was losing it and he had no one to spot for him! Two hundred and fifty pounds of steel could smash bricks into dust.