Beyond the Highland Myst(6)

Adrienne breathed deeply of the spring air that breezed gently in the window behind her, then flinched and spun abruptly. She eyed the fluttering drapes warily. Hadn't she closed that window? She was sure of it. She'd closed all of them, just before closing the French doors. Adrienne edged cautiously to the window, shut it quickly, and locked it.

It was nerves, nothing more. No face peered in the window at her, no dogs barked, no alarms sounded. What was the use of taking so many precautions if she couldn't relax? There couldn't possibly be anyone out there.

Adrienne forced herself to turn away from the window. As she padded across the room her foot encountered a small object and sent it skidding across the faded Oushak rug, where it clunked to a rest against the wall.

Adrienne glanced at it and flinched. It was a piece from Eberhard's chess set, the one she'd swiped from his house in New Orleans the night she'd fled. She'd forgotten all about it after she'd moved in. She'd tossed it in a box—one of those piled in the corner that she'd never gotten around to unpacking. Perhaps Moonie had dragged the pieces out, she mused, there were several of them scattered across the rug.

She retrieved the piece she'd kicked and rolled it gingerly between her fingers. Waves of emotion flooded her; a sea of shame and anger and humiliation, capped with a relentless fear that she still wasn't safe.

A draft of air kissed the back of her neck and she stiffened, clutching the chess piece so tightly that the crown of the black queen dug cruelly into her palm. Logic insisted that the windows behind her were shut—she knew they were, still—instinct told her otherwise.

The rational Adrienne knew there was no one in her library but herself and a lightly snoring kitten. The irrational Adrienne teetered on the brink of terror.

Laughing nervously, she berated herself for being so jumpy, then cursed Eberhard for making her this way. She would not succumb to paranoia.

Dropping to her knees without sparing a backward glance, Adrienne scooped the scattered chess pieces into a pile. She didn't really like to touch them. A woman couldn't spend her childhood in New Orleans—much of it at the feet of a Creole storyteller who'd lived behind the orphanage—without becoming a bit superstitious. The set was ancient, an original Viking set; an old legend claimed it was cursed, and Adrienne's life had been cursed enough. The only reason she'd pilfered the set was in case she needed quick cash. Carved of walrus ivory and ebony, it would command an exorbitant price from a collector. Besides, hadn't she earned it, after all he'd put her through?

Adrienne muttered a colorful invective about beautiful men. It wasn't morally acceptable that someone as evil as Eberhard had been so nice to look at. Poetic justice demanded otherwise—shouldn't people's faces reflect their hearts? If

Eberhard had been as ugly on the outside as she'd belatedly discovered he was on the inside, she never would have ended up at the wrong end of a gun. Of course, Adrienne had learned the hard way that any end of a gun was the wrong end.

Eberhard Darrow Garrett was a beautiful, womanizing, deceitful man—and he'd ruined her life. Clutching the black queen tightly she made herself a firm promise. "I will never go out with a beautiful man again, so long as I live and breathe. I hate beautiful men. Hate them!"

* * * * *

Outside the French doors at 93 Coattail Lane, a man who lacked substance, a creature manmade devices could neither detect nor contain, heard her words and smiled. His choice was made with swift certainty—Adrienne de Simone was definitely the woman he'd been searching for.




* * *





CHAPTER 3




adrienne had no idea how she ended up on the man's lap. none.

One moment she was perfectly sane—perhaps a bit neurotic, but firmly convinced of her sanity nonetheless—and the next moment the ground disappeared beneath her feet and she was sucked down one of Alice's rabbit holes.

Her first thought was that she must be dreaming: a vivid, horrifying subconscious foray into a barbaric nightmare.

But that didn't make any sense; only moments before, she'd been petting Moonshadow or doing… something… what? She couldn't have just fallen asleep without even knowing it!

Maybe she'd stumbled and struck her head, and this hallucination was the dreamy result of a concussion.

Or maybe not, she worried as she looked around the cavernous smoky room filled with oddly dressed people speaking a mutilated version of the English tongue.

You've done it now, Adrienne, she mused soberly. You've finally slipped over the edge, heels still kicking. Adrienne struggled to focus her eyes, which felt strangely heavy. The man who clutched her was revolting. He was a belching beast with thick arms and a fat belly, and he smelled.

Only moments ago she'd been in her library, hadn't she?