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“I can see you’ve thought it through, then. Are you sure you don’t want me to call the security guards in to watch over you?”
Her no was emphatic. “If I don’t know them on sight, then—”
“—you don’t want them around.” His smile looked a little sad that that was one phobia she’d yet to overcome, but she had plenty of reasons to justify her fear of strangers. “Make sure all the doors and windows are locked while you’re working—even the doors into the public area of the museum. Double-check everything.”
She jingled the ring of keys hooked onto her backpack. “I will.”
The front door opened behind her, the wind whooshed in and Charlotte instinctively ducked closer to her father. Just as quickly, she eased the death grip on his jacket and smiled at the retirement-aged chauffeur closing the door. Richard Eames collapsed his umbrella and brushed the moisture off the sleeves of his uniform. “The car is ready, Miss Charlotte. Just a few steps from here to the driveway.”
Her father nudged Charlotte toward the man who’d been with the family for more than twenty-five years. “Richard, you take good care of her.”
“Yes, sir.” Richard took the backpack off her shoulder to carry it for her, then opened the door and umbrella.
For a moment, Charlotte’s toes danced inside her high-topped tennis shoes, urging her to run outside the way she once did as a child. It had been years since she’d felt the rain on her face. She lifted her gaze to the dramatic shades of flint and shale in the clouds overhead and breathed in deeply, tempting her senses with the ozone-scented air.
But her father’s cell rang again, shutting down the urge.
She clung to Richard’s arm while her father took out his phone and sighed. He held up his hand, asking her to wait while he answered. “Yes, Kyle. Uh-huh. Your assistant didn’t inform you of the conflict? I see. Of course, the meeting with the accountants is more important. No. I’ll handle your mother. You’ll report this evening? Good man.”
“Is everything okay?” Charlotte asked as he put away the phone.
“Richard.” Instead of giving an answer that might worry her, Jackson turned his attention to the chauffeur. “Clarice Darnell and her assistant Jeffrey Beecher are coming to the house this afternoon to go over the estate layout and setup requirements for Laura’s spring garden party and some other events for the company. Kyle was going to handle the meeting, but I’ll be taking it now. Be sure to return Charlotte to the private entrance at the back of the house. That way she can go straight to her rooms and avoid our guests.”
“I will.”
While Richard and her father discussed her trip to and from the museum, Charlotte dropped her gaze from the sky and scanned the grounds outside the white colonial mansion. The trees she’d climbed as a child had been cut down to allow a clear view from the house to the wrought iron fence and gate near the road. She searched the intricate maze of flowers and landscaping her stepmother had put in for any sign of people or movement.
“I saw on the news this morning that some of the creeks south of downtown are closed due to the flooding. Do you have alternate routes planned?”
Richard nodded. “I’ve been driving in Kansas City going on fifty years now, sir—I think I know my way around. I’ll find a dry street to get Miss Charlotte to the museum.”
“Good man.” Jackson turned to his daughter. “You have your list of numbers to call if you sense any kind of threat or discomfort?”
“Programmed into my phone and burned into my memory.”
Jackson reached down and wrestled the dog for a second before scooting him toward Charlotte. “Keep Max with you at all times, understand?”
“Always do.”
“And Richard, I’ll double your wage today if you stay with her.”
The older gentleman grinned and held out his arm. “I don’t charge extra for keeping an eye on our girl, Mr. Mayweather.”
Jackson reached out and brushed his fingers against her cheek, as though reluctant to let her out of his sight. It was up to Charlotte to summon a smile and face her fears for both of them. “Bye, Dad.”
She set her shoulders, linked her arm through Richard’s and took that first step out the door.
The second step wasn’t much easier. Nor the third.
With a nervous click of her tongue, she called for Max. The dog bolted ahead and jumped inside the backseat of the BMW as soon as Richard opened the door. She paused, clinging to the roof of the car, fighting the urge to dive in after the dog. “Is he still watching?”
She didn’t need to say her father’s name. Richard knew what this brave show was costing her. “He’s standing on the porch.”
A drop of cool water splashed across her knuckles, momentarily snapping her thoughts from her father and her fears. Almost of their own volition, her fingertips inched toward the drops of rain pooling on the Beamer’s roof. How she missed being outside in the—
“Miss Charlotte?” Richard prompted, as the rapid patter on top of the umbrella indicated the real deluge was about to hit.
The impulse to reach out vanished and the paranoia returned. Curling her fingers into her palm, Charlotte climbed in and slid to the middle of the leather seat. Richard set her backpack beside her and closed the door, saluting a promise to her father before shaking off the umbrella and slipping behind the wheel.
Charlotte pushed the manual lock as soon as he was in, even though the automatic locks engaged when he shifted the car into gear. Hugging Max to her side, she turned her nose into his neck. The moisture that clung to his wiry coat was as close as she’d come to feeling the rain on her cheek once more.
Richard found her gaze in the rearview mirror. He smiled like the caring Dutch uncle he was. “Breathe, Miss Charlotte. I know you’re leaving the estate for your father’s sake, but try to enjoy your day out. The car is secure, my gun is in the glove compartment and I’m driving straight from here to the museum. I’ll walk in with you to make sure everything is secure, and I’ll wait outside the door until you’re ready to come home. I promise you, it’s perfectly safe to leave the house today.”
Perfectly safe. Since that fateful night in high school, perfectly safe had become a foreign concept to her.
The three men who’d abducted her were now in prison, would be for the rest of their lives. But not one of them, not Landon, not the kidnappers, had paid the way she had. Disfigurement. Phobias. Self-imposed isolation.
That night, and the long days that followed, had ended any hope of living a normal life.
Stay in the moment.
This wasn’t high school. This wasn’t a date. She was older, smarter. She had Max and Richard with her. She’d be all right.
“I’m okay,” she insisted, tunneling her fingers into Max’s fur. “Drive away so that Dad will get out of the rain.”
Richard nodded and pulled away. “Why don’t you get out some of those photos and shipping manifests from the museum to distract you while I’m driving?” he suggested. “You’ll get lost in your work soon enough.”
Giving Max one more pet, inhaling one more steadying breath, she nodded and reached for her bag. “Good idea, Richard. Thanks. As always, you’re a calm voice of reason in my life.”
But she crunched the papers in a white-knuckled grip as they drove away from the one place where she knew she was safe.
EVEN INSIDE THE PRISTINE atmosphere of the museum’s warehouse offices, enough humidity from the rain-soaked air outside had worked its way into Charlotte’s hair, taking it from naturally curly to out of control.
She pushed the expanding kinks off her forehead as she straightened from the worktable where she was documenting the artisan’s crest burned into the iron hilt of the sword she’d been cleaning. Her back ached, her empty stomach grumbled and Max sat in the workroom doorway staring at her—all certain signs that she’d lost track of the time.
If she’d been at home, more certain of the coded locks protecting her, she might have been grateful that she’d so fully engaged her brain with the task of cataloguing artifacts that she’d actually gone for several hours without her obsessive insecurities dogging every thought. But she wasn’t at home. And as she adjusted her glasses at her temple to check her watch, she nearly flew into a panic.
“Why didn’t you say something?” She slammed the book she’d been using, startling Max to his feet.
She’d told her father they’d be home by nine, that it was okay for him to go out to dinner with Laura. It was a rare treat for him to enjoy a night out with his wife. The museum was deserted, locked up tight. Charlotte had been in heaven to have the place and all its treasures to herself, so yes, Dad, enjoy your evening out.
She slid the sword back into its crate. “It’s eight-thirty.”
Half an hour past the time Richard was supposed to pick her up. True, he’d been parked in the staff parking lot behind the warehouse all day long, working his puzzles, watching the sports channel on his mini satellite TV, napping. And he’d promptly come to the door each time she’d called him. To walk Max. To bring her lunch. Just to check in and assure herself he was there. If she didn’t call him, he knocked on the door. Every hour on the hour.
They hadn’t spoken since 7:00 p.m.
Richard was never late.
In a flurry of scattered activity, Charlotte shut down her computer, plucked her raincoat off the back of a chair and shoved her arm into one sleeve. In a miracle of klutzy coordination, she grabbed her bag, pulled out her phone, tutted to the dog and raced him to the steel door that marked the museum’s rear exit.
And stopped.
A nervous breath skittered from her lungs. She couldn’t go out there. There was no way to know if it was safe. Evil hid in the shadows at night. Men with fists and needles and greed in their hearts lurked in the dark. They’d lie in wait until it was late and she was alone, and then they’d hurt her. And hurt her. And …
Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut. Stay in the moment. Stay in the freaking moment!
“Richard!” She opened her eyes and shouted at the brick walls, even as she pulled out her phone and punched in his number. She tried to focus on getting the other sleeve of her blouse into her coat instead of counting how many times the cell phone rang.
Richard knew how changes in her routine upset her.
That was the third ring. Maybe he’d fallen asleep.
She shifted anxiously on her feet. Four rings.
Charlotte tugged the belt of her coat around her waist and held on as a flash of lightning flickered through the darkness shrouding the unreachable windows above her. Even though she knew it was coming, she winced at the boom of thunder that followed.
Charlotte blinked when she realized her eyes were drying out from staring so hard at the door. Max danced around her feet. “We need to get a peephole installed.”
She worked her lower lip between her teeth and reached out to touch the door. The steel was cool from the temperature outside, its texture rough beneath her fingertips. Did she dare open it? Did she risk going outside on her own? She leaned closer and tuned her ears to any sounds of movement in the alley way beyond the door. But a blanket of rain continued to fall outside, drumming against the awning over the door, muffling all but the quickened gasps of her own breathing.
And Max’s singsongy growl.
Charlotte’s paranoia wasn’t fair to the dog’s bladder. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Richard?” she called out again, doubting her voice would carry through the steel and bricks and storm to the car parked outside.
The sixth ring.
Max left her side to scratch at the bricks. He whimpered.
What was wrong? Why didn’t Richard answer? Her fears multiplied with every single …
The ringing stopped.
“Charlotte.”
“Richard? Where are—”
Click.
What the …? He hung on up her? A burst of anger surged through her. He knew what that did to her—how she’d received all those calls and hang-ups in the weeks following the kidnapping. It had taken months of therapy afterward before she’d even allow a phone in her rooms, longer than that to carry one with her.
Richard knew that. He knew … “Oh, my God.”
Embarrassment washed away her unkind thoughts, leaving Charlotte’s knees weak and her heart racing with concern. What if Richard was hurt? What if he was having a heart attack and needed her help? What if he hadn’t called her because he couldn’t?
She pocketed the phone and grasped the dead bolt above the doorknob. But her fingers danced over the steel pin, hesitating to grab hold. Could she turn it? Did she dare? Richard had been with her family from the time she was a child. He was family. He’d stayed on when he could have retired because she could almost function like a normal person when surrounded by familiar faces, by the handful of staff she trusted. If he’d been driving her the night of her high-school prom, he’d have gotten her safely home. He would never, ever intentionally frighten her.
What if Richard needed her?
Listening to her worries instead of the fear, shutting down her brain and following her heart, Charlotte curled her fingers through Max’s collar and turned the bolt.
She nudged the door open, barely wide enough for the dog to stick his muzzle out. Charlotte leaned into the crack until the moisture in the air splashed against her cheek. Max strained against her grip to squeeze through to the gap. “Hold on.”
She wasn’t ready to do this. She had to do this. Face your fear.
“Okay.” Taking a deep breath and holding it, Charlotte put her left eye to the narrow opening and peeked outside. Her glasses fogged up almost instantly, blinding her. But she pulled the frames away from her face and let the lenses clear. Once she’d readjusted them on her nose, she huffed out a curse at her temerity. She could see the light from the streetlamp at the edge of the parking lot reflected in every rivulet of rain that streaked the polished black fender of Richard’s BMW. The car was right there, parked a couple of feet beyond the edge of the green-and-white awning.
Charlotte pushed the door open a few inches more and let Max run out to sniff the rear tire. “Richard?” she shouted through the downpour.
She hurried out to the car. Rain spotted her glasses, distorting her vision before she got the back door open. But Charlotte never climbed inside.
“Are you okay?”
Reprimand gave way to relief. Then her mind seized up with a whole different kind of fear.
She darted around her door and pulled open the driver’s door. “Richard!” Her beloved friend was slumped over the steering wheel. “Richard?” Charlotte pulled out her phone, punched in a 9. She swiped the rain from her glasses and glanced around, making sure the narrow lot was still empty, before lightly shaking his shoulder. She punched in a 1. When there was no response, she slid her arm across Richard’s chest, her fingers clinging to something warm and sticky at the side of his neck as she pulled him back against the seat. “Oh, my God.”
Richard’s eyes were open, sightless. Blood oozed from the neat round bullet hole at his temple. She couldn’t bear to look at the pulpy mess she’d felt on the other side of his head.
Charlotte.
She jerked her hand away.
Richard never called her anything but “Miss Charlotte.”
Charlotte whirled around. “Face your fear,” she chanted. “Face your fear.”
He had her number.
Whoever had done this had taken Richard’s cell phone. She’d called him, and now he could call her back.
She shut off the traitorous phone and stuffed it deep into her pocket. She checked every corner and shadow, marked every movement—a car speeding past on the curiously empty street, a wadded-up fast-food sack skipping across the pavement and Max giving chase. “Max …?”
She put her lips together and tried to whistle.
But any fleeting sense of security sputtered out along with the sound. Was there something moving beyond the Dumpster at the end of the alley?
The rain had finally pummeled its way through her thick hair and crept like chilled fingers over her scalp. There were brick walls on three sides of her—three stories high with shuttered windows and iron bars.
And the Dumpster.
“Face …” How could she face what she couldn’t see? Her heart raced. Her thoughts scattered. The nightmare surged inside her.
Besides the dog and the dead man, she was alone, right? She saw no one, heard nothing but the wind and rain and her own pulse hammering inside her ears.
But she could feel him. A chill ran straight down her spine.
She caught sight of the blood washing from her stained fingers, dripping down into the puddle at her feet. She snatched her fist back to her chest, her feet already moving, retreating from death and horror and him.
Whether the eyes watching her were real or imagined didn’t matter. Charlotte’s reaction was intense and immediate. Run. Hide. She clicked her tongue. “Max! Come on, boy. Come on.”
But the scent of trashy cheeseburger wrappers was too enticing.
“Max!” Operating in a panicked haze, she put her fingers to her lips and blew. The shrill sound pierced the heavy air and diverted the dog’s attention. “Get over here!”
Max bounded to her and she scooped him up, yanking open the museum’s back door and dumping him inside. Charlotte slammed the door behind her and twisted the dead bolt into place. Oh, God. She hadn’t imagined a damn thing. Softer than the pounding of her heart, more menacing than the bloody handprints she’d left on her coat—footsteps crunched on the pavement outside. Running footsteps. Coming closer.
Charlotte grabbed Max by the collar, backed away.
“Charlotte!” A man pounded on the door.
She screamed, stumbled over the dog and went down hard on her rump on the concrete floor.
“Charlotte!”
She didn’t know that voice. Didn’t know that man.
How did he know her name?
Flashing between nightmares and reality, between Richard’s murder and her own terror, the pounding fists seemed to beat against her.
“Charlotte! Come on, girlfriend. I know you’re in there!”
They couldn’t take her. She’d die before she’d ever let them take her again.
Scrambling to her feet, she scanned her surroundings.
“Shut up,” she muttered, trying to drown out the pounding on the door as much as she wanted to drown out the hideous memories.
She wiped her glasses clear. Yes. Safety. Survival.
“Max, come!”
She ran back to the workroom, shoved the top off a wooden crate and pulled out the long, ungainly sword from the packing material inside. The weighty blade clanged against the concrete floor and, for a moment, the pounding stopped.
She pulled out her keys and unlocked one of the storage vaults. “Max!” The dog followed her into the long, narrow room, lined with shelves from floor to ceiling.
“Charlotte! I’m coming for you!”
The banging started up again as she turned on the light and locked the door behind her. He was so angry, so menacing, so cruel. Charlotte crouched against the back shelf, holding the sword in front of her. Max trotted back and propped his paws up against her thigh. The smell of wet dog and her own terror intensified in the close confines of the room. “Stay in the moment,” she whispered out loud. She petted her companion, to calm herself, to take control of her scattered thoughts, but stopped when she saw the blood she’d transferred onto the dog’s tan fur.
“It’s okay,” she lied. “It’s okay.”
But she’d chosen the smart, well-trained dog for a reason beyond his scarred ear. Max scratched at Charlotte’s coat, nuzzled her pocket. Call someone. The words were in her head, hiding in some rational corner of her brain.
“I can’t. If I turn on the phone, he’ll call me.”
We need help.
The deep brown eyes reached out to her, calmed her.
Charlotte nodded and pulled out her phone. She couldn’t face the police on her own. Couldn’t handle crowds. She turned it on and immediately dialed the first number her terrified brain could come up with.
The pounding outside continued, beating deep into her head. After three rings, a familiar woman’s voice picked up. “Hello? This is Audrey … Kline,” she whispered in a breathless tone.
“Audrey?”
Pound. Pound.
“Charlotte?” Her friend’s tone sharpened, grew concerned. “Is that you?” A second voice, a man’s, murmured in the background. “Alex, stop. Charlotte, is something wrong?”
Alex Taylor. Audrey’s fiancé. “I’m sorry. I forget other people have lives. I’ll call Dad at the restaurant—”
“Don’t you dare hang up!”
“What is it?” She could hear a difference in Alex’s voice. He, too, sounded efficient, rational, concerned.
“Talk to me, Char.”
“I’m at the Mayweather Museum. There’s a man at the door. Richard’s dead. I can’t—”
“Richard’s dead?”
The scratch of a dog’s paw reminded her to breathe. “Someone shot him and I’m here by myself. There’s a man …”
“Alex is calling the police now.”
“No.”
“But Charlotte—”
“What if it’s like …?” Before. Swallow that damn irrational fear. Breathe. “I won’t come out unless it’s someone I know. Have Alex come.”
“We’re on our way,” Audrey promised, relaying the information to Alex. “Are you safe?”
Alex must be on his phone, now, too. She could hear his clipped, professional tones in the background. “He’s not calling 9-1-1, is he? I won’t come out for a stranger.”
“Shh.” Audrey was hushing her, talking to her as if she was the paranoid idiot she fought so hard not to be. “He knows.”
“I locked myself inside. Max is with me.” Charlotte needed to hear her voice, needed the lifeline to sanity to keep herself from flinching at every pound on that door. “Audrey?”
“Alex is calling a friend of his. Trip’s apartment is close to the museum. We’re twenty minutes away, but he can be there in two.”
“No. I want you to come.”
“Trip’s a friend. He’s a SWAT cop, like Alex. He helped save my life during the Demetrius Smith trial. He won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“I haven’t met—”
“We’re leaving the house now. I don’t want you alone any longer than you have to be.”
“Wait. How will I know him?”
“Trust me, Char. You can’t miss him. He’ll be the biggest thing in the room.”
The biggest thing in the room? Audrey meant the description to be concise, comforting. But Richard was dead and she was alone, and whoever was banging on the outside door was no small potatoes, either.
The pounding stopped, filling the air with an abrupt silence even more ominous than the deafening noise. Charlotte’s breath locked up in her chest. Was he looking for another way to get in?
“Char?”
She jumped at Audrey’s voice. “Biggest thing in the room. Right.”
“Trip will be right there. The whole SWAT team is on their way.”
The instant Charlotte disconnected the call, it rang again. The name and number lit up with terrifying clarity.
Richard’s number.
“Oh, God.”
It rang. And rang.
“Stop it!”
She pulled her hand back in a fist, intent on hurling the tormenting object against the door. But a paw on her thigh and a glimmer of sanity had her shoving it onto the shelf beside her instead. She’d need it on to know when Audrey got here.
Then she huddled in the darkness with the sword and the ringing and her dog and waited, praying that her friends got to her before whoever had murdered Richard did.
“AUDREY CAN’T RAISE HER on her phone, big guy. You have to go in.”
“Got it.” Trip Jones stuffed his phone into the pocket of his jeans and peered over the Dumpster into the parking lot behind the Mayweather Museum of Natural History. He pulled his black KCPD ball cap farther down across his forehead to keep the rain out of his eyes, but it didn’t make what he was seeing any less unsettling. What have you gotten me into this time, Taylor?