Bong! Bong! Bong!
His brain was nearly crushed with the thunderous peal of bells clamoring so loudly the stairs shook.
“Resa,” he called weakly. “Resa…” And then he slipped under the veil of darkness.
Parker? Lucas Parker had shown up? Of all the rotten, dumb luck!
I was furious! Seething as I slid down the bell ropes, I tried to think clearly. She was supposed to have followed me up into the tower. I was sure she’d spot me and be intrigued enough to climb the stairs, then fall to her death, just as poor Ian had fallen.
It would have been such a fitting, ironic end. Perfect in every detail.
But Lucas had spoiled it all.
I couldn’t think about that now. I dropped the.22 pistol, letting it fall to the floor below. My only consolation was that I was free to end this all another time, as long as I escaped. Which wouldn’t be too difficult in the ensuing chaos. Already there was a near-riot going on, people screaming and running, panic sizzling like an electric current through the hallowed walls of the winery.
The gloves frayed as I zipped downward, the friction from the old ropes heating my palms and fingers, just as it had when I’d been a child and first discovered I could slide quickly from the top of the belfry to the floor.
As soon as my feet hit the ancient stones, I took off down three flights of stairs to the lowest level of winery, the cellar that had once been my playground. Alone, very much alone. I knew these old caverns and tunnels better than anyone and, of course, I still had the keys, squired away from when I was a kid. The locks hadn’t changed. Silvio, my skinflint cousin, was too damned cheap.
But there was pandemonium above. Scurrying footsteps. Shouts. Horrified screams.
Don’t think about them. Or her. Just keep running!
I moved by instinct, but my brain was pounding. Why the hell had that son of a bitch shown up? He’d been divorced from Resa, airbrushed out of family portraits. And what the hell had happened to her? Just two minutes ago I saw her enter the library.
I’d planned everything so perfectly, spent the last five years in that place, plotting the perfect moment for my revenge, and then Lucas Parker had to show up?
I’d caught a glimpse of him earlier and couldn’t believe it, the former cop stalking the perimeter of the monastery walls.
My feet moved soundlessly through the dimly lit corridors, my breathing regulated from years of running. I clutched an aura of calm, despite my fury that my plans had been ruined.
Down a long, shadowed corridor illuminated by a single string of lights, past barrels stacked high, around the far corner and up an old flight of stairs to a door I’d already unlocked, I raced. The door opened to the old infirmary where sick monks had once been treated. Now the small rooms were filled with supplies for the winery.
The muted sounds of chaos within the winery walls mixed with the scream of sirens from outside. Someone had called the police. That part I’d planned. I tore off my wig, dress and padded bra, kicked off the stupid-ass shoes, cleaned my face with some of those sanitized wipes, peeled off the eyelashes and pulled the stuffing out of my cheeks.
Then I opened the bag I’d left here earlier, grabbed my jeans and shirt, and yanked them on along with a pair of beat-up running shoes and a dark jacket. The kayak was waiting on a bank beneath a eucalyptus tree and the nearby river flowed rapidly away from the winery to a small town where I could catch a train into the city. I planned to take my “Resa” clothes and dump them into the bay. I would fling them from atop the Golden Gate. With a little luck, I’d escape once again.
And disappear.
For a while…
Three days later, Parker woke up mad as hell in a hospital bed. A stern nurse told him he’d been out for three days. An IV dripped some kind of painkillers into his arm, but it wasn’t working. On a scale of one to ten-with the nurse’s stupid chart of little happy and frowny faces indicating pain level-he was at eight, maybe nine, where the red face was frowning but no longer shouting expletives.
But he didn’t give a damn.
The surgery had been a success, the bullet removed, his intestine repaired, his dislocated shoulder snapped back into place, his ribs only bruised. The concussion had been slight.
He’d been lucky, the doctor had said.
Lucky, my ass!
He closed his eyes for a second, trying to figure out how to get out of here. Pronto. In his experience, hospitals were dangerous places, full of the sick and dying.
“Lucas.”
Her voice came to him in a dream. Soft and breathy, but this time, no sound of laughter or lightness.
Disbelieving, he opened an eye and saw her in the doorway. She looked frail and frightened, unlike the woman who’d turned his life upside down. There were dark smudges beneath her eyes and her lips trembled slightly. He blinked, thinking she might be a vision, a figment of his imagination, even a hallucination from the drugs, but no, she was there.
He tried a smile and failed, but she saw he was awake.
“How…how do you feel?”
“Worse than I look.”
From her guarded response he suspected he looked pretty damned bad. His mouth tasted foul and as he shifted on the hospital bed his entire body screamed in pain. He winced, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“They’re going to arrest me,” she said, and swallowed hard. Fear gripped her, casting dark rings around her brown eyes. “The police have been following me, but…but I was able to lose them and sneak in here.”
“How?” he asked, before he thought twice. Resa was nothing if not quick. And clever.
She ignored the question. “The police, they think I tried to kill you. They’ve been putting together a case. A few people claim that they saw me in the belfry right before the shots were fired.”
He tried to lift his head but the ache sucked his strength. Hadn’t he seen her there, in the bell tower?
“And there’s more. They think I killed Aunt Lorna that night, too, but…but I think they’re having more trouble proving that.”
“Aunt Lorna?” he repeated. “Alberto’s wife?”
The cobwebs in his mind stretched thin, fading.
“They…they found her in her house. I heard on the news that she fell…off her scooter and down the stairs. But the police think she might have been pushed. Oh, God, Lucas, I didn’t do it. You have to believe me.” Resa’s face was drained of color and a small tic had developed at her temple.
“Slow down. Start over.”
“I don’t have an alibi. I was home alone about the time Aunt Lorna died. I was getting ready for the party. I knew you’d be there and I was…I was excited. Anyway, I went to the party, hung out for while, then I saw you. Do you remember our conversation in the library?”
“I remember.” That much was clear.
“You went up, I went down to the wine cellar, thinking you’d follow, then I heard gunshots and ran up the stairs but you were already…already…” She looked at him and shook her head.
“Jesus.”
She stepped forward, touched his hand and all the warmth and passion that they’d once shared came back to him. It clouded his mind like a drug. No…he couldn’t go there now.
He reminded himself of the many times Resa had deceived him, the way she’d masked the truth to protect her family, to cover up the transgressions committed behind those sacred walls.
Gritting his teeth, he drew his hand away.
“You have to help me, Lucas,” she said, pleading. “I can’t be put away for a murder I didn’t commit.”
And there it was between them.
The lie.
The one they both knew existed.
From the hallway came the sounds of the hospitaclass="underline" whispers, softly rattling carts and gurneys, the ding of a bell announcing that an elevator car was about to arrive.