Midnight Jewels (39 page)

"Dead!"

"It's how he would have left them if he'd been in my place." Croft shrugged. "By now he'll have something more important on his mind."

Mercy chewed her lower lip. "Escaping?"

Croft shook his head. "I don't think he'll run very far. Not yet. There are too many loose ends. But that helicopter makes him too damn mobile. With any luck he'll decide he's safe enough where he is for the time being. Even if Dallas and Lance turn up in the hands of the sheriff, Gladstone isn't in danger of anything more than having to answer a few polite questions."

"Won't he be afraid we'll lodge a complaint against him?"

"I don't think so," Croft said. "He'll probably assume we're operating on our own. That's what I want him to think. That means we aren't likely to complain to the cops. Even if we did, all Gladstone has to do is deny any knowledge of Dallas and Lance's activities."

"You really do believe he's Egan Graves, don't you, Croft?"

"I'm almost sure of it now. But I can't move until I know where he's going to go to ground. As soon as I find out…" Croft let the sentence trail off as he paced to the window and stood looking out. He sipped his tea. "That book is still the key to
this mess." He looked at Mercy over his shoulder. "And we've got it because you had the guts to go back into the vault and get it last night. Thanks, Mercy."

"Don't thank me," she told him waspishly. "I didn't have any choice. You refused to leave the pool room without it, remember?"

His smile was rueful. "Vaguely."

Mercy's brows came together. "How are you feeling? Any sign of a hangover?"

"No. Whatever it was seems to be gone from my system."

"It's amazing you could function at all last night, let alone handle Dallas and Lance. You were on the point of collapse."

"You were the one who got me out of the pool and got us out of the house."

Mercy set her back teeth. "So you owe me, right?"

He nodded seriously. "Right."

"Oh, goody. I can't wait to collect."

He surprised her with a fleeting expression of mischief. "I thought you already did. Bright and early this morning."

Mercy lost control over the blush that had been threatening her since he had walked into the room. She tried to brazen her way through the embarrassing little scene with a deliberately lofty smile. "I'll admit you make a very interesting sex slave."

"Thank you. My only goal is to please. Tell me the tram. Do you still respect me?"

She wasn't sure what to make of his provoking banter, but her pride wouldn't let her back down. She felt obliged to hold her own. "There are certain aspects of you that definitely command respect." She let her eyes drop to a point below his waist.

"So help me, Mercy, one of these days—"

She didn't see him move, but suddenly he was across the room. His hands closed around her shoulders and he hauled her lightly to her feet. When she jerked her startled gaze up to meet his she found herself staring into hazel depths filled with a combination of laughter and exasperation.

There was no sign of the too-familiar remoteness in Croft's eyes, no evidence of detachment. Mercy was entranced.

"About this little matter of respect," Croft began warningly.

Mercy smiled, her eyes brilliant. "I want to assure you, Croft, that you have my sincerest respect."

The laughter faded from his gaze to be replaced by an unreadable expression. The look he gave her wasn't remote or distant this time, just enigmatic. He leaned down to kiss her slowly and possessively.

"I guess mat's a start," he said.

"Croft?"

He released her and went back to the window. "We have to talk, Mercy."

"I know."

He threw her a narrow glance. "About Gladstone. Or Graves, or whoever he is."

She sighed. "I know. What happens now?"

"You're going to phone your bookshop and alert the woman who's covering for you that someone will be trying to reach you through that number. She's to take the caller's number and then give it to you when you check in with her. Keep it casual. No need to alarm her. But make sure she knows she's not to give the number here to the person who calls her looking for you."

"What are you talking about? Who's going to call Dorrie looking for me?"

"Gladstone will call her," Croft said with absolute certainty. "It's the only contact point he has."

"But why would he try to reach me?"

"Us," Croft corrected absently. "He'll be trying to reach us and he'll figure we're waiting to hear from him."

"But why, damn it?"

"Because he wants the book back, of course. By now he'll have realized it's gone again. He went through too much, risked too much, took too many chances to get that copy of Burleigh's
Valley
. He'll want it back."

"He's a collector. Collectors will do a lot to get an item for their collection."

"Not Gladstone. He wouldn't risk exposing his new identity. None of the other books in that vault are duplicates of the ones he collected when he was known as Egan Graves. He's not trying to rebuild his old collection. In fact, judging from what you saw in the vault, he's deliberately avoided picking up the kind of books he wanted when he was Graves. He's smart enough to know he shouldn't do anything that might make someone suspect his old identity. Trying to duplicate his old collection of rare books would be too big a risk. If someone were watching and waiting for him to reappear—"

"Okay, I get the point. He's not trying to duplicate his old collection, but he went through a lot of trouble to get
Valley
."

"
Valley's
an expensive book, but it's not exactly priceless. It's valuable but not a true treasure—not to a man like Gladstone. It's not special enough to go into his collection."

"Yet he tried to kill us because of it?"

Croft nodded. "That book is the key. He's going to keep trying to get it back."

"I wonder why?"

"I wish I knew." Croft ran a hand through his hair. "I looked through it again this morning while you were sleeping. I didn't see any signs of altered pages, but that doesn't mean there's not a code of some kind imbedded in the text."

"A code!" Mercy was struck by the possibility.

"Don't look so thrilled. I'm grasping at straws, believe me. I'm just trying to come up with a reason why Gladstone wants that book so badly." He came away from the window again, finishing his tea. "Let's go get something to eat. You can call your shop and alert Dome
that someone might be trying to reach you. But whatever you do, don't tell Dome
where you are, understand? She might accidentally mention our location to Gladstone and that could be awkward."

"When you're not indulging your streak of melodrama, you have a nasty way with the classic understatement. Tell me something. What will Gladstone hope to accomplish by contacting us about the book?"

"By now he'll be fairly certain we're not representing the forces of law and order. That means we're just small-time opportunists who've stumbled into the biggest deal of our lives and are trying to take advantage of it. He'll probably assume we're holding
Valley
for ransom now that we know how important it is to him. I imagine he'll offer us a real deal."

Mercy eyed him warily. "But we're going to refuse it, right?"

"No," said Croft. "We're going to accept. On our own terms."

"I don't like it, Croft. I don't like it one damn bit." Mercy paced up and down in front of him, her brows drawn into a straight line. This was not the first time she had made her impassioned plea for common sense. She had been arguing with Croft off and on all afternoon. It was nearly time for dinner and she still hadn't made any headway. He was stubbornly determined to handle the Gladstone situation on his own.

"You don't have to like it, Mercy. I'm the one who will handle tilings from here on in." He was reclining on the bed, his back propped against a stack of pillows, his arms folded behind his head.

There was the same note of abiding patience in his voice as they went through the argument for the umpteenth time as there had been when they went through it the first time. Mercy was convinced that his endless patience was beginning to bug her as much as his endless stubbornness. "This is stupid. This is crazy. We should be running to the cops."

"No."

"What have you got against the cops? We pay taxes so they can handle this kind of thing."

"They can't handle Gladstone. They couldn't touch him when he was Egan Graves and they can't touch him now. He's too well protected. Too careful. It's obvious he's involved in something as dirty as his guru scam down in the Caribbean, but it's going to take some doing to prove it,"

"But he has acted illegally. He sent Dallas and Lance to run us off the road," Mercy pointed out.

"Prove it. Dallas and Lance were a couple of hired, two-bit hoods who snuck around during their leisure time and robbed motel guests. The cops will be lucky to make
that much stick. There's no chance of making attempted murder stick."

Mercy swung around and confronted him with her hands on her hips. "Do you have this lack of trust in all authority or is it just the law you don't trust?"

"I told you, I don't—"

"Deal well with authority figures. I know. You want to know why?" She pointed a finger at him.

He smiled at her, his eyes strangery curious. "Why?"

"Because you are one, yourself. People who tend to dominate don't take to
being
dominated. Somewhere along the line you never learned to relax occasionally and let someone else take charge."

"That's an interesting theory. Were you giving me a lesson in how to let someone else take charge this morning when you assaulted me on this bed?"

"Forget this morning. I'm not finished with my observations on your behavioral eccentricities. There's more," Mercy said threateningly.

"Yes?"

"Yes," she muttered, resuming her pacing. "It isn't just that you're a dominant personality, it's that you're so isolated, so self-controlled. You operate in your own universe—which just happens to collide once in a while with the real world. Occasionally, probably only when absolutely necessary, you try to cross over into this world, the one where people like me live."

He gave her an odd look. "Is that why you call me a ghost? Because you think I don't belong in your world?"

She sighed and flopped down on the foot of the bed. "Maybe. Except that you're not a ghost, Croft. You're as real and as human as anyone else. But you've found a separate place for yourself, haven't you? How did you manage that?"

To her utter shock, he answered her wistful question. "I had to find that place very early in my life."

Mercy looked at him, willing him to explain. "What happened, Croft?"

He shrugged. "Nothing that hasn't happened to a lot of other kids. But it changed things for me."

"What was it?"

He hesitated, clearly sorting through old memories and emotions. "My father drank. Heavily."

"Oh, Croft."

"I told you, it's not an uncommon problem. He tried, I mink. He worked at whatever job he could get, factory work, day laborer, crop picker, you name it. He married my mother when she was eighteen and pregnant. But after a few years of living hand to mouth, my mother decided she couldn't take the life and left for the bright lights of Los Angeles. I was five or six. We never saw her again. I think mat's when Dad started drinking. It got worse as I got older. He used to go on some real binges and when he was lost in the booze he was… violent. Dangerous. It was as if the liquor released all his inner rage. I finally got smart and learned to hide until it was all over. I mink I hated him."