Gift of Fire (33 page)

“I had to kill him. He was so freakin’ scared. The old fool wouldn’t tell me a thing, but I knew I could find it on my own. It had to be there in the villa. I didn’t need him to tell me where it was.”

“But you never found the treasure, did you?” Jonas asked as he jerked Spencer back toward the villa. “You’ve killed two people but all you ever got was a ring, a drug and alcohol problem, and a few loose screws. Maybe Hazelhurst was right. Maybe the treasure is cursed. You should have left well enough alone. Tell me something, how did you get that rental boat over here? Doug brought you here in his launch, didn’t he?”

“That was easy. As soon as I knew about the plans to spend a week at the villa, I rented the boat. Then I hired a kid who had his own boat to follow me here. I hid the boat in that first cove and the kid gave me a lift back to the other island. I told him I planned to use the skiff for a fishing party this week.”

“Why did you think you’d need a boat?”

Spencer looked at Jonas as if he were the crazy one. “To get off this damned island in case things went wrong.”

“The way they did this morning?” Jonas asked harshly.

“I got scared after I had to hit that old busybody. But you know, now that I think about it, there’s no need to be afraid, is there? Nobody can prove I killed Hazelhurst, even if someone does find his body. Except the old bag. When she recognized me, she started getting suspicious. Told me she’d been watching me, even went through my things one night. She found me in that torture chamber this morning.”

“What were you doing in the torture chamber at this hour?”

Slade wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, his eyes haunted. “I finally decided I had to have another look at that goddamned treasure room. I didn’t want to go back into that horrible tunnel but I had to. The secret’s in there somewhere, I’m sure of it. I was awake all night thinking about it. I’ve been afraid you might stumble onto the tunnel somehow, even though I tore the last pages out of Hazelhurst’s diary. I finally figured out that I had no choice but to go back inside. Jesus, I hate that tunnel. So much darkness.”

“And Maggie found you there?”

“She must have been watching me all night, waiting for me, the bitch. Accused me of having done something to Hazelhurst a couple of years ago. Started screaming like a madwoman, wouldn’t shut up. The damn bitch would not shut her goddamned mouth.”

“So you hit her.”

“Had to.” A twisted craftiness appeared in Slade’s eyes. “I got scared. There was so much blood. Knew I had to get out of there, so I ran back to my room to pack my things and get out. Then I realized I could just hide the body in the tunnel—no one would ever know. I went back down to the torture chamber but I was too late. The light was on and I knew someone had found her. Verity was in there. I saw her when I dumped Maggie’s body in the tunnel. She must have run in there to hide when she heard me coming.”

Jonas froze. He swung around, his eyes threatening violence.
“
What have you done with Verity?
”

Spencer peered at him, blinking rain out of his eyes. An insane intelligence blazed in his eyes. He
grinned slowly. “I left her in the tunnel with the old bitch, naturally. You don’t know about the tunnel, do you? That was Hazelhurst’s big secret. Verity’s in there now and you’ll never find her. No one will ever find any of them. But that’s the best way, you see. There’s no proof. As long as all of them are buried in that tunnel, there’s no proof.”

“Did you hurt Verity or just leave her in the tunnel?” Jonas’s hands tightened around Spencer’s neck. His fury and despair made him oblivious to everything except finding the truth in Spencer’s mad eyes. “Answer me, you crazy bastard. What did you do to Verity?”

“You’ll never find her or Frampton’s body. Just like no one ever found Hazelhurst. I’ll bet Verity thought she was hiding from me when she ran in there. She thought she’d be safe in that tunnel. But now she’s locked in there forever. No proof. No proof.” Spencer started to giggle. Then he looked frightened. “My pills. It’s time for my pills.”

“You don’t get your pills until you tell me if you hurt Verity.” Jonas tried to keep his voice calm; tried to remind himself that he was dealing with a certifiable lunatic.

Spencer looked mildly surprised. “I didn’t hurt her. I didn’t have to. I told you, she can’t get out. Stupid woman ran right into the tunnel. She’ll never find her way out. It took Hazelhurst months to learn how to operate the tunnel doors. Even if she finds the lock, it won’t work. I jammed the mechanism on the outside. The only witness, you see. She’s the only witness, the only one who saw me put Maggie’s body into the tunnel.”

Jonas thought of Verity lost in the endless darkness of the hidden corridor. If she couldn’t get out through the torture chamber door, she would have to find her way back to the bedroom entrance. And he’d never explained to her how to operate the door mechanism. She would be shivering in abject terror there in the endless blackness of the tunnel, searching for the secret to unlocking the door.

Jonas looked deep into Slade Spencer’s insane eyes. He wasn’t going to learn anything else from this bastard. He slammed his fist into Spencer’s jaw, and the man dropped to the ground without so much as a gasp. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Jonas left Spencer lying in the mud and ran for the villa. The wind howled through the trees. Branches snapped at him and the rain was a sheet of ice.

He burst through the front door of the silent villa and took the stairs to the second floor in great, hungry strides. Then he was racing down the hall to the bedroom.

Jonas pounded into the bedroom. The tunnel door was closed. He struggled furiously with the mechanism behind the tapestry and watched the stone door swing ponderously inward. It seemed to take forever.

A quick glance through the widening crack showed no sign of Verity. Either she had not been able to find her way back to the bedroom, or she was still trying desperately to open the door at the other end of the tunnel.

Jonas stepped through the opening as soon as there was
room. He shone the flashlight quickly to the right. Verity wasn’t anywhere in sight.

A rattle of bones and a scraping sound from behind the tunnel door made him whip around in a dangerous crouch. The flashlight beam illuminated the face of his beloved.

Verity emerged from behind the door with a stark, savagely determined expression. Her eyes were strangely unfocused. Her arms were raised above her head, her hands clutched around the hilt of the stiletto that had been buried in Digby Hazelhurst. Digby’s bones rattled at her feet. Jonas stepped hastily out of reach and held up both hands. “Easy honey. I’m a reasonable man. You want to delay the wedding a couple of weeks while you buy a fancy dress? We’ll delay the wedding, no problem.”

“
Jonas!
”
Verity dropped the stiletto. It clattered on the stones as she flung herself against his chest. “It’s about time you got here.”

“Always nice to feel appreciated.” Jonas wrapped his arms around her and held her so tightly he was afraid she would break. But all she did was give a small squeak. “Jesus, honey, I was scared. But I should have known I wouldn’t find you huddled shivering in terror. Did anyone ever tell you that you do a nice impression of Lady Macbeth?”

“You were scared! You want to compare notes? I’ve never been so frightened in my life. And I couldn’t see who was coming into the tunnel a minute ago. It’s so dark in here that I was blinded when you opened the door. I thought it might be Slade.” Verity lifted her head, her eyes wide. She was blinking rapidly. “Jonas, Spencer’s nearly killed Maggie. She’s at the other end of the tunnel, unconscious and bleeding. We’ve got to get her out. Then we’ve got to do something about Slade.”

“I’ve already taken care of Spencer. I found him making a try for the boat. He panicked, thinking he’d killed Maggie and sealed both of you in the tunnel. I gather he lost what was left of his nerve at that point and decided it was time to vacate the premises. I don’t know how far he thought he was going to get in this storm.”

“But where is he? What did you do with him?”

“He’s tied up outside. Come on, let’s get out of here. I’m sure you’ve had enough of this tunnel to last you a lifetime.”

“We’ll have to get Maggie out. We can’t just leave her there.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Jonas said gently. He urged Verity out into the bedroom. She was shaky but in control of herself. That was the thing about tyrants, he told himself with pride. They were tough. Then he saw her looking down at something she had just pulled out of her pocket. “What have you got there?”

Wordlessly she opened her palm and displayed an egg-shaped piece of green crystal.

Jonas took a step closer, awed by the realization of what she had found. “Where the hell did you get that?” he asked softly.

“It’s Maggie’s. She had it on that chain she always wore around her neck. Digby must have given it to her. I found it when I checked her throat for a pulse. I must have grabbed it when I heard Spencer returning. Funny, I didn’t even realize…” She looked up at him, her aquamarine eyes questioning. “It’s the right one, Jonas. It’s the crystal you’ve been looking for, the one you think will unlock the vision.”

Jonas’s gaze went from the ugly green crystal to her serious face. “Spencer says that all he or Hazelhurst ever found were the stiletto, that chunk of sword hilt, and a ruby ring. But he’s convinced the rest of the treasure is still buried here somewhere.”

“And so are you,” Verity concluded quietly. She looked down at the crystal. “Do you believe in curses, Jonas?”

“No, but I have great respect for the intricate workings of the Renaissance mind. And a psychic Renaissance mind boggles the imagination. I don’t think there’s a curse on the treasure but I do believe that someone has locked it up very carefully. Hazelhurst believed that crystal was the key, and I think he might have been right.”

Verity looked at him, her expression unreadable. “You’re going to try it, aren’t you? Sooner or later, you’re going to try to unlock that frozen vision.”

“If I don’t, I’ll probably wind up as nutty as Hazelhurst or as insane as Spencer,” Jonas said harshly. “I have to know the truth about it, Verity.”

She nodded. “Yes. I can see that.” She carefully repocketed the crystal. “When the time comes you’ll need my help.”

Jonas was startled. “What makes you say that?” he demanded as she started to turn away.

She glanced back, her mouth softening slightly. “I can tune this crystal to the one on the desk in the vision.”

He took a long stride forward and caught her by the arms. “Verity? What are you saying? Are you sure?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I’m fairly certain I can do it. Don’t ask me how Jonas. I really don’t understand it myself. And if you want my professional opinion as your business manager, I suggest we forget the whole project. But I know you don’t want my professional opinion.” She turned away again and went into the bathroom to wash the dirt and blood off her hands.

After a little fiddling with a screwdriver he’d located in the kitchen, Jonas managed to open the torture chamber entrance. Spencer had been too panicked to do a thorough job of jamming the mechanism.

Inside the passageway Maggie was still unconscious. Jonas managed to get her upstairs to the salon, where he put her on the couch. She didn’t awaken but her breathing seemed steady and the bleeding had stopped. Verity left her tucked under a quilt and went outside with Jonas to retrieve Slade Spencer. They locked him in a spare storage room.

“What are we going to do with him?” Verity asked as she followed Jonas upstairs.

“There’s nothing we can do until Warwick and Crump get back with the launch. We’re sure as hell not going to try to get off this island in that little skiff Spencer rented. In the meantime, I want to see if we can find those missing diary pages in Spencer’s things. He may have kept them.”

“Doug and Oliver might not be able to get back here for hours,” Verity remarked as they walked down the hall toward the room Spencer had used.

“True.”

“We’d better wake Yarwood and tell him what’s going on. To think that all this time we wrongly suspected him of being up to no good,” Verity said, chagrined. “I suppose it must have been Spencer who pushed Elyssa off the cliff. Maybe he thought she was getting suspicious about the boat.”

“I don’t know about that,” Jonas said thoughtfully. “You mentioned finding the boat earlier and he never made an attempt on your life.”

“He didn’t make an attempt on my life then, but he tried to do something nasty to me before that,” Verity stated quietly.

Jonas’s head snapped around abruptly, his eyes fierce. “What? He tried to hurt you? When?”

“That night we stayed in the bed-and-breakfast inn.”

“The joker who tried to grab you outside the bathroom?” Jonas asked in amazement. “It was him? You’re sure?”

“I recognized the tobacco he uses. I just caught a whiff of it on his sweater that night, not enough to make a real impression. I didn’t recognize it when he was smoking his pipe around here because the odor was so much stronger then—it overpowers you. But when I caught a trace of it again in the torture chamber, I knew it was the same tobacco. No one else smokes around here except Spencer.”

Jonas started back down the hall, his fury reignited. “I’ll kill him.”

Verity grabbed his arm. “No, wait, Jonas. There’s no need for that. He’s already under lock and key.”

“I should have strangled him the night he made a pass at you.” He shook off her hand.

Verity made another grab for him and caught hold of his sleeve. “Jonas, stop it. Listen to me. Everything is under control, there’s no need for any more violence. Lord knows there’s been enough in this place. Let’s go wake Yarwood and tell him what’s going on. He’s got a right to know.”

A door creaked. Verity and Jonas both turned.

“I’m glad you feel that way, Verity.” Preston Yarwood stood in the doorway of his bedroom. I would very much like to know exactly what is going on. And when you’ve finished telling me, we’ll all go searching for Hazelhurst’s missing treasure. But when we find it, I’m afraid there will be a slight change of plans. You see, too many psychic treasure hunters spoil the image.”