Again, there was a long silence.
If Darci and Taylor Raeburne hadn’t looked so much alike that he was sure they were related, Adam wouldn’t have dared say what he did next. “Yesterday, a man pulled a gun on us, and Darci, your daughter, used her mind to stop the man—and me—where we were standing. Both of us were paralyzed. Until she sneezed and broke the connection, that is.”
There was no hesitation before Raeburne spoke. “I’ll be there as soon as I can get there.”
“We’re staying at—” Adam didn’t finish the sentence because the phone went dead.
Putting down the phone, Adam looked at Darci, and from the expression on her face, he didn’t know if she was going to laugh or start crying.
You really think he’ll like me? Darci said to him in her mind.
“Yes,” Adam answered. “I really do. Look, why don’t we drive down the highway today and do a little sight-seeing? Unless your father can get here on a broomstick, we have hours before he arrives.”
Darci didn’t so much as smile at Adam’s attempt at humor. Instead, she looked at him hard. “If you want us to leave here today, then you have a reason. What are you really after?”
“To get us both away from here for a few hours. To get our minds off this whole thing.” Darci was staring at him so hard that he knew she didn’t believe a word he said. Adam threw up his hands in surrender. “Okay, so sue me. I want to get you away from here. I can’t imagine why. Unless it’s because someone wants to kill you. Or maybe they want to kidnap you and use you because you can do astonishing things with your mind. You have an unbelievable power, but you seem to have no idea how dangerous it could be in the wrong hands. You— Oh, the hell with it!” he said. “Get your coat. And don’t you dare tell me not to curse. If we live through this, I may take up cursing as a hobby.”
Darci didn’t hesitate but ran to the closet and got her jacket. Ten minutes later they were in the rental car and on the highway.
12
“SO WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO?” Darci asked when they were alone in the car. “What’s to see around here?”
“I don’t know,” Adam answered. “I just want a break from computers and research books. It’s been too much of ...well,too much of everything.”
“You mean, you’ve had too much of me, don’t you? Me and my relatives, Putnam relatives, and now my father.” She said the last word at a lower pitch. She still couldn’t comprehend the idea that she was soon going to meet her father.
Adam’s laugh brought her back to the present. “I haven’t been so entertained in all my life. If someone made up that town of yours, no one would believe it. Why don’t you quit worrying about meeting your father and look at the scenery? It’s beautiful in New England in the autumn.”
Instead of looking out the window, Darci opened the glove compartment and looked inside. “What makes you think that I’m concerned about meeting my father?”
“How many nails have you torn off in the last hour?”
Darci curled up her fingertips out of sight.”I always tear at my fingernails. Nervous habit. It doesn’t mean—”
“Ha! You file your nails every night. They’re always perfectly shaped into little pink ovals with not a ragged edge on them. And they’re—” He broke off because Darci was staring at him in speculation. “What is that!” he snapped when she pulled something out of the glove compartment.
“It’s a map of Connecticut,” Darci said, smiling as she opened it. “You like my fingernails, do you?”
“Why are you looking at a map?” Adam asked, frowning. “I know this area. You do not need to look at a map.”
“What is wrong with my looking at a map?” she asked, starting to look up at him, but something on the map caught her eye.
“What’s wrong?” Adam asked quickly.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she answered quietly, her eyes fastened to the map.
“How about if we go to Bradley?” he said loudly. “It’s a pretty little town, and I believe there are some nice antique shops there. Do you like antiques?”
“I like you, don’t I?” Darci said distractedly, still studying the map, her fingers tracing the distance from Bradley to another town.
“Very funny,” Adam said. “What is it that you’re so enthralled with on that map?”
“Nothing,” she answered quickly, then folded the map and put it back into the glove compartment. “Bradley’sfine with me. In fact, since it’s straight ahead, I could almost believe that’s where you planned to go.”
“Caught,” Adam said easily. “I’ve been there before, so I know it’s pretty. It’ll be good for us to have a whole day with nothing whatever to do with witches, and....”
Darci didn’t hear the rest of what he was saying because she was looking at his profile and concentrating. All she needed to do was to get rid of him for a few hours. If she could make him want to go off by himself for a while....
“Stop it!” Adam said without taking his eyes off the road. “I didn’t notice it at first, but when you do that, I get a tiny pain under my left shoulder blade. It’s not really a pain, just a feeling, but it’s enough that I know when you’re . . . when you’re trying to manipulate and control me,” he said, giving her a glance that told her what he thought of her action. Then, giving her a fierce glance, he said, “Your ‘sacred word of honor’ doesn’t mean much to you, does it?”
Darci smiled, unperturbed at his attempt to make her feel guilty. “I didn’t do anything. But it seems that when I think about things really hard, you feel it. Maybe you are psychic. Anyway, that tiny pain you feel, I can make it a lot worse. I can even give you a headache. Wanta see?”
“You do and I’ll make you sorry,” he said instantly. Turning away to look out the window, Darci hid her smile from him. It was odd, it was awful, and it was wonderful, all at the same time, to have someone know what she could do. But it was nothing but . . . delicious to have someone know and not think she was a freak—the thing she’d always feared and why she’d never told anyone about what she could do. She knew that the people in her home town considered her “different” even though they hadn’t an inkling of the depth of the truth. Over the years Darci had almost convinced herself that what she could do, anyone could. But now it was out in the open and this man who knew about her was acting as though her “power” was something almost normal.
Within minutes, they were in Bradley, and Darci could see that it was indeed a pretty little New England town, especially since it was all dressed up in autumn leaves of fabulous colors. There were several quaint little shops that she would have loved to visit, but she knew she couldn’t. After she’d looked at the map and seen a name that jumped out at her, she’d known that there was something else she had to do today.
Adam parked the car on the street, and they got out. “I have to go to the ladies’ room,” Darci said abruptly, then, before he could say a word, she ran across the street to a gas station.
Annoyed, because she had again ignored traffic, Adam remained on the opposite side of the street and waited for her. Looking at his watch, he saw that time was moving quickly, and he knew he needed as much time as he could get to do what he had to today. But now he was wasting precious minutes while he waited for Darci to—
Good heavens! he thought as he looked across the street. What was she doing now? She was standing by the pumps talking to a young man who was putting gas in a customer’s Volvo. Did she have to talk to every person she met? he thought, annoyed. Couldn’t she—?
No, wait, he thought, this was good. He looked at the boy she was talking to. He looked to be in his twenties and was passably good-looking. Could Adam make Darci believe that he was jealous of such a child? No, she’d never fall for it, he thought. She’d never in a million years believe that he, Adam Montgomery, would be jealous of that scrawny, bad-complexioned boy.
But as Adam again looked at his watch, he knew that he didn’t have time to come up with another reason to start an argu
ment. When he saw Darci turn away from the boy, Adam drew a deep breath. He hoped he didn’t hurt her feelings too much when he started an argument with her. But he had to get time alone and he knew from experience that he couldn’t just ask Darci for that time. No, he’d have to start a fight between them, then storm off so they would separate for the day. The good thing was that they were many miles from Camwell, so he didn’t think there’d be much danger if she was unprotected for a few hours.
“Who was he?” Adam demanded as soon as Darci returned.
“Someone I met,” she said. “What do you want to see first? There are a couple of antique shops over there.”
“Why were you talking to him so long?”
Darci looked up at him, her face full of fury. “You know something? I’m sick of your jealousy, just plain sick of it! I can’t talk to anyone. You won’t even let me eat in the dining room at the inn because you don’t want me to see the other people.”
“I do no such thing,” Adam said, surprised. “You can eat anywhere you want. I thought you liked the diner and that you liked our . . . our picnics in the guest house.”
“But you never asked me what I want, did you? For your information, I’d much rather eat in the dining room. At least there I can give orders. When I eat alone with you, I just get ordered about. ‘Get me food,’ you say. Is it because you think you’re superior to me because I come from the South? Is this a racist thing?”
“Racist?” Adam asked. “What are you talking about? You and I are the same race! And you can eat wherever you want! I had no idea that eating alone with me offended you.” He was holding his back so rigidly that his muscles were beginning to ache.
“I can assure you that I’d much rather eat with people who don’t order me about. In fact, I’d have more fun anywhere than with an old, humorless, puritanical, stick-inthe-mud like you,” she said. “I could have more fun at a convention of dead monkeys than I do with you.”
“With— At a—” he said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “All right then, might I suggest that we separate? In fact, I suggest that when we return to Camwell, we separate permanently, but for today, I’d like to see Bradley. Alone. Actually, I want to buy someone a gift.” They were standing in front of a jewelry store. “Maybe diamonds,” he said. “For a female.”
Darci didn’t say anything, just glared up at him in anger.
And Adam couldn’t believe that the words of this snippet of a girl could hurt so much. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been called a downer before—it was the favorite appellation from his cousins—but he hadn’t thought that Darci believed him to be a. . . . He didn’t want to think of what she’d just said about him.
“All right,” Adam said through clenched teeth, “you’re free of my company for the day. I’ll meet you back here at this spot at five o’clock. Do you think that will give you enough time to have ‘fun’?” He said the last word as though it were something vile.
“Yes,” Darci answered. “Plenty of time.”
He would have thought, after what she’d said to him, that she’d run to get away from him, but instead, she just stood there looking up at him. Maybe he shouldn’t move either, he thought. Maybe he should give her time to apologize.
“Check your watch,” he said, “and make sure it has the right time.”
“I can figure out what time it is,” she said, hostility in her voice, as though what he’d just said was a further slur on her character.
“All right then. I’ll see you here later.”
But neither of them moved; they just stood there staring at each other. After all, for days now, they hadn’t been apart for even minutes, and Adam was thinking that he was going to, well, maybe miss her company. But no, he told himself. He was responsible for her. She needed him.
“Do you have money?” Adam asked tightly. “Cash? Because I know that you’d starve rather than spend any of your own money, and I can’t have anyone say that I don’t feed my employees.”
Darci didn’t answer but just looked at him.
Taking out his wallet, Adam handed her a ten. When Darci didn’t take the money, he removed a fifty. Darci took both bills, then turned on her heel and walked away quickly. As Adam watched her leave, he had an impulse to run after her. Would she be all right? Who was going to take care of her if he wasn’t with her every minute? Who was going to make him laugh?
But then he remembered what she’d said to him, that she wanted to get away from him and his “puritanical” ways. He’d like to show her “puritanical”! he thought. If he weren’t under constraints right now, vital constraints that included no touching of Darci, he’d show her—
But Adam didn’t have time to waste in thinking about what he’d like to do to Darci. If he was going to do what he set out to, then he had to hurry in order to get back to Bradley by five. But when he looked at his watch again, he knew that the reason Darci hadn’t checked hers was that she didn’t have one. When he turned, the glittering jewelry store window was right in front of him. As he opened the store’s door, he didn’t think about what he was doing or why, but fifteen minutes later Adam emerged with a small box containing a gold Piaget watch. Then, feeling quite self-righteous that he’d bought her such a lovely gift even after what she’d said to him, he walked back to the car, all the while looking for Darci and making sure that she didn’t see him leave the little town of Bradley.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Darci said through the car window to the young man sitting in the driver’s seat.
“Sure you can,” he said, his voice oozing with suggestion. “I can think of lots of ways that you can repay me. We could—”
With a smile, Darci stepped back onto the sidewalk. “Thanks again,” she said in a voice that had finality in it. “You better go now or your boss will be worried.”
“Nah,” he said. “My uncle owns the station, and— Hey! Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should get back.”
As he pulled away from the curb in his noisy car that was covered in rust and paint primer, Darci breathed a sigh of relief and rubbed her temples. She’d had to True Persuade him so hard that her head was hurting. But then, she thought, it also might be hunger, as it had been hours since she’d eaten.
Reaching into the pocket of her skirt, she pulled out a little piece of paper and looked at the address she’d written on it. “Susan Fairmont, 114 Ethan Way,” she read, then the telephone number. But Darci didn’t want to call the woman for fear that she’d say no to Darci’s request.
She walked two blocks, then took a left. The young man had said that Ethan Way was just down the street. He’d wanted to drive her to the address, but Darci had taken one look at the shady, tree-lined street and had politely said, no, thank you, she could walk. She’d had quite enough of his hands that had “accidently” strayed from the gearshift to her knee.
What time was it? she wondered, glancing up at the sun as though that would help. She had to be back in Bradley by five and heaven only knew how she was going to get there. Her plan—if anything concocted that fast could be called a “plan”—had been to pay the young man twenty-five dollars for a round-trip fare. He’d wanted fifteen to drive her one way to Appleby, but she’d thought that once they were in the car, she’d be able to True Persuade him into taking twenty-five for returning for her. But his hands and his confirmed belief that it wasn’t a ride she wanted but him had made it impossible for her to concentrate enough to True Persuade him into anything.
So now she was in Appleby, but she had no way to get back to Bradley. But then, maybe she could use this as an excuse to knock on Susan Fairmont’s door. “Instead of using a pay phone,” Darci muttered. “Oh, yeah, that’s a great idea. I’m sure she’ll allow a stranger into her house.”
At the corner she saw the street sign of Ethan Way. Turning, she looked at the house numbers. One thirty-two was the first house. Looking down at the paper in her hand again, she checked the number of the house she wanted.
It w
as because her head was down and her attention on other things that she didn’t see the man step out from behind a six-foot-tall hedge until she’d run smack into him.
“Excuse me,” she said, then looked up to see Adam Montgomery.
And Darci knew that she was in for it.
“You planned this,” he said under his breath. “Why, you scheming, conniving little—”
“Me?” she said in the same quiet but urgent tone. It was a warm day and some of the houses had their windows open. “You’re here, too, so that means that you’re after the same thing that I am! And you—” She looked at him in speculation.”You planned this last night, didn’t you? That’s what you did when you stayed up all night.” Her voice changed to falsetto. “You just wanted to ‘get away from here for a few hours,’ didn’t you? Isn’t that what you said? You wanted to ‘get our minds off this whole thing.’ But here you are—”
“You said that being with a bunch of dead monkeys was more fun than being with me,” he said stiffly.
“And you believed that?!”
Adam opened his mouth to reply, closed it, then opened it again. “Of course not, but it . . . it wasn’t a nice thing to be told.”
Darci blinked at him. “Nice? These people are murdering women and—”
With his hand firmly on her upper arm, Adam pulled her a few feet down the street, away from the corner. “All right, you’ve played your little game so you can go sit in the car and wait for me.”
“Now, that’s a good idea. I think I’ll do just that,” she said sweetly.
Adam dropped her arm, counted to ten, then took a deep breath. “All right, what’s your plan?”
“I didn’t have time to come up with one. Unlike you, I don’t stay awake all night planning devious, underhanded things to do to someone I’m supposed to be working with. And, besides, that kid in the car had so many hands that I couldn’t think, and before that, you were so awful that I couldn’t think then either.”