Raising one hand to her head, Jo closed her eyes as the headache she'd been suffering suddenly increased tenfold. Forcing herself to breathe deeply and not think at all, she waited for the intense pain to ease a bit. It had just reduced to being bearable when she heard the front door of the house open again.
Jo stiffened where she stood as what sounded like a small army stomped into the house. She heard the library door open then and Mortimer asked, "Well?"
"All clear. He definitely got away," someone answered.
"Right. I want two men on the gate in future. We stop all vehicles between the gates and do a thorough search, inside, outside, under, and on top before the vehicles are allowed past the second gate from now on. I don't want this happening again. Understood?"
There were several murmured agreements and then Mortimer sighed. "Nicholas is locked up, but I couldn't reach Lucian. I left a message, but he and Leigh have been traveling a lot since she lost the baby and it could be a couple hours before he gets back to us. So, in the meantime, I want you…"
Jo couldn't hear the rest of what he said. His voice had grown fainter, as if he'd turned back into the library, and the sound of shuffling feet as several people moved out of the entry completely muffled the rest of his words. The men had followed him into the library, she supposed, and peered cautiously down over the railing when the sound of a door closing was followed by complete silence.
Sure enough, the entry was now empty.
Jo stared at the closed library door for several moments, and then began tiptoeing down the stairs. She didn't know what the hell was happening, but suspected the only way she was going to find out was to talk to the man who was locked up. Any other time she would have gone straight down and confronted Mortimer and Sam, but that bit about Decker wiping her memories as well as the strange flashes of memory that had come to her moments ago had combined to make her wary of doing so. And Mortimer had said that as long as she didn't see this man, the memories would stay wiped.
If they really had messed with her mind, Jo wasn't giving them the chance to do so again. She would rather go down and talk to this Nicholas fellow who had risked himself to save her, get those memories back, and keep them. They were hers, dammit, and no one was taking them from her.
CHAPTER 3
Jo managed to make it out of the house without being spotted. She paused just outside the sliding glass doors to the dining room to peer over the dark yard. She was pretty sure everyone was in the house right now, but considering the events of the evening, it certainly couldn't hurt to be cautious.
Aware that the longer she took, the better the chances were of getting caught, Jo gave up her position by the door and broke into a run, sprinting straight for the back building. She was actually pretty impressed with her speed as she flew across the grass. She'd never been much for athletic pursuits, prefer ring things like rock climbing and diving for physical activity, but her feet were pedaling so fast they seemed to barely touch the ground.
A little sigh of relief slipped from Jo's lips when she reached the door to the building and found it unlocked. She eased it silently open and then slid inside with one nervous glance back at the empty yard. Once she had the door safely closed behind her, Jo paused to get her bearings. She was standing in a small lit hall with glass windows running along either side of her. The windows on her right revealed a large, well-lit garage with several vehicles inside. Every single one of them was an SUV.
It didn't look like much of a car collection to her. The SUVs all appeared to be brand-spanking-new. She was getting the distinct impression that Sam hadn't been completely honest with her about things.
Deciding that was something she was definitely going to have to take up with her sister later, Jo slid her gaze to the windows on her left and found herself looking into a dark office. There was a desk, filing cabinets, chairs… Her eyes paused on a large, boxy-looking shape and she squinted a little, trying to make out what it was. When that didn't help, Jo moved slowly to the open office door. She reached inside and felt along the wall on the left and then the one on the right, relieved when she found the light switch. The moment she flipped it, light exploded overhead. It left her blinking briefly, but then she was able to see that the large boxy shape was a medical refrigerator with a glass front revealing row after row of bagged blood.
Jo gawked at the sight, bewilderment rolling through her as she tried to sort out what that could be about. Was Mortimer a closet hemophiliac or something? The question slid through her mind as she took a quick glance over the rest of the office and then flipped the light off again. There was a small window in the room, and she didn't want to alert anyone at the house to her presence by having lights shining in windows where there shouldn't be lights.