A Murder in Time (10 page)

“Authentic, my ass,” she muttered under her breath.

Her eyes focused on the man across the room.

Sir Jeremy Greene.

His hair gleamed like polished silver in the room's soft light. His patrician features looked at least a decade younger than his sixty-one years, thanks to a cosmetic surgeon's careful scalpel, the judicious use of Botox, and the latest collagen fillers. His body, beneath evening attire that vaguely resembled a tuxedo, albeit with knee breeches, was trim and still fairly toned, credit, no doubt, to his membership in one of the most exclusive fitness clubs in London.

As she watched, he lifted the delicate crystal flute to his lips, drinking champagne that probably cost a week's salary of one of the lowly employees at Greenway International. Once again, Kendra felt the molten rage rise within her. Damn him. He was chatting, smiling,
laughing
. This man, this monster, who was responsible for so much destruction.

The anger felt good.
Cathartic
. It rubbed away some of the gnawing anxiety that had been building all day in the pit of her stomach.

It was time.

Kendra drew out the note from her pocket and glanced around. A footman was standing off to the side, observing the guests much as she had been.

Summoning a smile, she walked over to him. “Excuse me,” she began, and was astonished when he flicked her a cold look before turning on his heel and stalking off.

“Asshole,” she muttered under her breath, staring after him. She shook her head and scanned the room again, relieved when she spotted Ian, decked out in a similar wig and royal blue footmen finery, weaving his way through the guests, clutching a tray filled with empty champagne glasses. She intercepted him at the Carrara marble columns near the double doors.

“Ian? Hey.”

His eyes swiveled in her direction, and he grinned. “Cassie. What're you doing here? I thought lady's maids were confined upstairs.”

“I'm on a mission.” She called on every ounce of her latent acting ability to infuse her voice with a lightness she was far from feeling. “One of the . . . er,
ladies
has an interest in a certain gentleman.” She managed a chuckle. “Sir Jeremy Greene. Do you know him?”

“Cassie,
everyone
in Great Britain knows Sir Jeremy Greene.”

That was probably true. They just didn't know
what
he was.

“Well, she wants this note passed to him discreetly—
very
discreetly, since she happens to be married.”

“Really?” Ian's eyes gleamed with masculine interest. “Who is she?”

“My lips are sealed, but you've probably seen her in the movies.” That seemed ambiguous enough. Kendra didn't want to name names in case the actress in question happened to be standing next to Sir Jeremy when Ian delivered the note. Better to be vague. “She wants to meet him in the study.”

Ian frowned. “The study? That's in the old part of the castle, isn't it? We're not supposed to go there. I don't think the toffs are even supposed to go there. It's been cordoned off.”

“I think privacy is what she's looking for.”

“Guess it's none of my business where this lot wants to shag,” he shrugged, reaching for the note. “Let me get a fresh tray of drinks, and I'll deliver it.”

“Discreetly,” she warned.

He grinned, nodding, and moved away. Kendra waited a moment before making her own exit from the ballroom. She dodged playacting servants rushing up and down the servants' stairs, and retrieved her purse from the locker room.

Earlier, she'd done a quick reconnaissance of the castle's rooms, based on her Internet research. She'd selected the study in the oldest part of the castle for two reasons. One, like Ian had said, it was off-limits. Whoever owned or ran the castle (probably England's National Trust) had roped that section off to discourage guests from traipsing into the area.

And, second, the room boasted a secret passageway.

In truth, that wasn't uncommon in the older, historic households throughout Great Britain. The country had a long, bloody history filled with political intrigue and religious persecution. Priest holes and secret passageways had come in handy for many of England's aristocrats. And, if anything went wrong, it might come in handy for her.

Kendra approached the velvet rope that cordoned off the private area, shooting a furtive glance around before ducking under it. Despite her best efforts, her heart began to race as she moved down the corridor.

This far away from the party, the castle was silent. The only noise was the whisper of her skirt and muffled footsteps as she walked the length of the burgundy and brown hall runner. The rug looked old—but then again, so did everything else in the castle. Still, she knew this section was older by centuries. If a castle had a heart, this would be it. These cold stone walls had been silent witnesses to both birth and bloodshed. It was a moody thought for a moody atmosphere. Adding to it were wall sconces, carefully spaced and cleverly designed to look like flickering candles, making shadows leap and dance.

Kendra suppressed a shiver. Even though she told herself that she was being fanciful, she was still relieved when she arrived at the door of the study. It had been locked earlier, and she'd made sure that she'd locked it again when she left the room two hours ago. Better to be safe than sorry.

Her heart began to hammer in her chest, so loud that the uneasy staccato filled her eardrums, but her hands were steady as she reached into her purse and withdrew two thin wires. Lock-picking wasn't a skill one learned at Quantico, but she'd studied it when she'd tried to get into the head of a perp who'd been entering homes in the middle of the night.

She held her breath as she worked the wires, then let it out in a rush of satisfaction as the tumblers fell into place. It had taken less than a minute, much less time than when she'd first entered the room. She dropped the wires back into her bag and slipped through the door, switching on the lights—more cleverly designed wall sconces.

She looked around. Nothing had changed, she thought. No one had entered this room since she'd been there earlier. The claret, in its cut crystal decanter, was exactly where she'd placed it on the elegant sideboard.

It was an interesting room. Octagonal in shape, it had high walls paneled in mahogany and papered in green silk, the same dark hue as the velvet-upholstered furnishings around the room. There was a fireplace here, too, as big as the one in the servant's hall, but the mantelpiece was more ornate, carved in a neoclassical design. Above it was an elaborately framed oil painting depicting a woman and child dressed in what looked to be late eighteenth-century garb. On the opposite wall were Grecian fitted bookcases, flanked by two breast-high Chinese vases with a blue dragon motif against a pearly white background. The mahogany desk—Chippendale, if she wasn't mistaken—was positioned in front of an enormous medieval-looking tapestry embroidered with a hunting scene. Behind the material, cunningly hidden in the wall's paneling, was a door.

She'd studied it earlier, had found the mechanism that sprang the lock. Behind the door was a claustrophobic space and stone stairs that spiraled upward. The steps led to a large room with enormous mullion-paned windows on the north and east wall. She didn't know what the space had been used for, because it was empty now, but there was another door that opened to the hallway not far from the servant's stairs that could take her all the way down to the ground level.

She'd take those stairs before anyone noticed Sir Jeremy had disappeared. Of course, he might not even be discovered until morning, and she'd be on the plane to Rome by then.

Kendra pulled her thoughts back to the present, and went to work. Opening her purse, she slipped on latex gloves and withdrew a small jar of face cream. Briskly, she unscrewed the lid, and fished in the cream for the small plastic packet, which contained exactly one gram of white powder.

Her heart thumped now for an entirely different reason. Her palms, inside the latex gloves, began to sweat. She wanted to be calm, but there was something terrifying about handling one of the most deadly toxins known to mankind. Ricin. One fourth of a teaspoon, and it could wipe out a population of 36,000.

She didn't want to think what it would do to one man.

Cautiously, Kendra tapped out the white powder into the Waterford crystal wineglass she'd brought. Her hands trembled only slightly as she lifted the decanter and poured the claret into the glass. In the soft light, it gleamed like blood.

She put the glass and decanter on the silver tray, and stepped back. Only then did she realize she'd been holding her breath.

She let it out and took a few minutes to regulate her breathing before stripping off the latex gloves, putting them into her purse. She glanced at the marble and bronze clock on the mantel. In ten minutes, Sir Jeremy Greene would arrive, believing he'd be rendezvousing with a mysterious starlet.

There was no doubt in Kendra's mind that he would come. She'd studied him.
Profiled
him. Even though he already had a mistress—a beautiful young Italian model who'd accompanied him here—he wouldn't be able to resist the coy invitation of another. That was his pattern. And when he came, she'd serve him the claret. It would only take one sip before the effects of the poison would shut down his system and he'd collapse to the floor with multiple organ failure.

Imagining it, she felt a little sick, and wondered suddenly if she could go through with the plan. Then she heard approaching footsteps.

Too late to reconsider.

She drew in a steadying breath, and tried to reassure herself that what happened next was justice. And once it was meted out, there'd be no turning back.

The door, only partially closed, swung open. From her position, she could see Sir Jeremy's hand, slim and elegant, wrapped around the doorknob. Kendra straightened, forcing her expression into one of subservience.

Sir Jeremy paused, and Kendra knew a moment of confusion when he took a step back from the door. Then she heard it. More footsteps.

Kendra froze. Had Sir Jeremy's mistress followed him, suspecting his infidelity? Her eyes cut to the glass of wine.
Crap.
The idiot might have bad taste in men, but she didn't deserve to die. She'd have to abandon her plan after all.

“What are you doing here?” Sir Jeremy said, his voice sharp and too loud in the silence of the hallway.

“Our last shipment was confiscated by the DEA.” The other voice was lower, masculine and faintly accented.

“I heard. You should be more careful.” Sir Jeremy's tone was dismissive.

“We were careful. Our sources tell us that somebody talked.”

“What? Who—What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?” Greene's voice rose. “Are you
mad
?”

There was a strange
ppfftt
ing sound, and Kendra nearly jumped out of her skin when the door suddenly flew inward, crashing against the wall. Shocked, she watched as Greene fell backward into the room, his features contorted into grooves of agony while his hands clutched at his chest. Blood seeped between his fingers. Even as her mind reeled at the implications, she looked at the man in the doorway, recognizing him instantly: the unfriendly footman from the ballroom.

Their eyes met; time stood still. Then Kendra's gaze dropped to the gun he held deftly in his hand, a silencer elongating the barrel, and instinct took over. She raced toward the hidden passageway just as he pulled the trigger. Another
ppfftt
. The bullet scored the fireplace mantel, spraying chips of marble. Kendra made it to the tapestry as the blue-and-white Chinese vase shattered into a million pieces.

She'd left the panel door open a fraction—a foresight that now may have saved her life. Wrestling with the tapestry, she yanked the panel open and dove through. She pulled the door shut behind her, and was plunged into instant darkness.

It would take the killer less than a minute to figure out how to open the secret passageway, she calculated.

Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .

Blind, she stumbled up the stairs, using her hands to feel the way.

Fuck!
Why was it so dark? She'd left the door at the top of the stairs open . . . but of course, it was evening, and whatever moonlight penetrated the windows in the upstairs room would be too weak to reach the stairwell. How could she have been so utterly stupid? She should've left the light on in the room above. But she hadn't anticipated this. Who'd have thought that she wouldn't be the only one after Sir Jeremy? What were the odds?

Listening for any sound that would warn her that the assassin had found the hidden doorway, Kendra attempted to hurry up the stairwell. But as much as she wanted to, she couldn't climb the narrow, twisting stairs fast enough. The darkness was too absolute. She couldn't even see her hands as they reached out to slide against the stairwell's cold, damp walls. One wrong move, and she'd fall, probably breaking her neck.

Would that be better than a bullet in the head?

She could hear her breath, coming in and out in fast pants. Her skin was oily with her own sweat, and there was a sour taste filling her mouth.
Fear.

Her heart raced as she climbed upward, spiraled around. She was beginning to feel claustrophobic, like there was an enormous pressure on her chest, crushing her. How many more steps?

The air around her seemed to crackle with static electricity, and then suddenly the temperature plunged about twenty degrees. Even as her teeth began to chatter, and she struggled to make sense of that oddity, a wave of dizziness hit her, knocking her down a step.

Panic clawed like a trapped beast inside her chest, and stunningly, she felt pain. Like she was on fire. Her flesh was burning, the epidermis peeling away, layer by layer, exposing the subcutaneous tissue, then the stringy cords of muscle beneath, until that, too, was stripped, leaving only bone.