The Dark Glamour (2 page)

Nonetheless, he had ultimately tried his best to keep her safe, and whatever the little key was guarding was probably something she could use now. She knew that Malcolm had spent the month before their wedding setting up safe houses around the world for the two of them—in fact, he was probably in one of them at that very moment. She allowed her mind to wander longingly for a minute or two, wondering what kind of life he had imagined the two of them sharing.
Something beachy,
she guessed idly,
or maybe the desert.
After her eighteen years in bleak Alsace, six in rainy, dreary Paris, and a New York winter that involved multiple near-death experiences, Jane hoped that Malcolm would have thought “sunny.”

She took a long moment to picture him in an unbuttoned white linen shirt, his tan glowing and his golden waves of hair throwing off light like a second sun. In spite of her better instincts, she felt an almost physical ache to be with him, wherever he was. She would never be the naïve girl who had fallen head-over-heels for him again, but it was impossible to completely forget their powerful chemistry . . . and the amazing curl of his smile.

He wanted to take care of me,
she reminded herself, running her fingers along the edges of the key.
Even if he’s not here to know about it, I should let him try.

“First thing tomorrow,” she declared out loud, and the words sounded good in her ears. A restless sort of shifting noise filtered up from the room below hers, but apparently her voice wasn’t loud enough to warrant more banging.

Just wait until I put the furniture back,
Jane thought ruefully, eyeing the jumbled mass against the door. Sahara would thump and shout herself into a premature stroke.
It’ll keep,
Jane decided. The bed wasn’t especially comfortable anyway, and although it felt good to have a plan, it felt even better to have a plan
and
a barricaded door.

She replaced the key in her passport, slid the passport back into her bag, and then propped the bag under her head like a pillow and stretched out on the floor. She didn’t really expect to sleep, but as soon as her eyes closed, she lost consciousness. For the first night since her escape from 665 Park Avenue, Jane didn’t even dream.

Chapter Two

T
he bank felt more like the lobby of a posh hotel than anything. The glass doors vaulted into high glass ceilings, and the teller lines wound discreetly among exotic trees in pots and tinkling fountains. It was actually rather intimidating, Jane admitted to herself, but she drew her spine perfectly straight when it was her turn at the window. She set the key on the gray marble counter that separated her from the teller, a woman with a slick black bun and aggressively rouged cheeks. Jane opened her mouth, but suddenly realized that she didn’t remember how her hastily rehearsed cover story was supposed to begin. “H-hi,” she stammered, and then stopped.

Fortunately, the teller took just one quick look at the key and seemed to know exactly what to do. “I’ll call the manager, miss,” she announced in a clipped tone, and pressed a button on the console in front of her.

Calling the manager, or hitting the panic button?
Jane wondered wildly, but the man who popped out of a side door in response definitely looked more “manager” than “security.” He was a sturdy but somehow fragile-looking man with a delicate nose and tiny wire-framed glasses, who seemed almost painfully delighted to meet Jane. She hesitated for a moment after he introduced himself as James McDeary, but his hazel eyes darted first to the little key, and then to the passport she held loosely open in one hand.

“Miss Chase, I presume,” he announced, wringing his hands in a thoroughly depressing mixture of anxiety and delight. “This way, please.” McDeary whisked her along a dizzying series of glass-and-marble hallways, his voice pattering nearly as quickly as his footsteps. He had been happy, he told her—terribly happy, in fact—to see Malcolm Chase again last month. Of course, he had been handling Mr. Chase’s account personally for quite some time, but, to his sincere regret, hadn’t seen him in years.

At that last bit of news, Jane had to fight her impulse to turn and run straight back out of the bank.
He’s known this “Malcolm Chase” for
years
?
Jane had only known Malcolm for a few months. What had he been up to that he had needed an alias, apparently, before even meeting her? It couldn’t have had anything to do with their escape plan, and she wondered if she had even been supposed to come here at all. But she held her ground and kept her face composed as they turned into the silent, airless-feeling safe room.

“It’s this one in the corner,” McDeary told her, pointing with a finger that trembled faintly with his obvious joy. Jane took in row upon row of stainless-steel doors lining every wall. A simple table made of matching metal stood in the center of the room; other than that, it was as bare as the surface of a star. “Box 41811. I was concerned that it might be too small when your . . . your . . .”

Jane squeezed the fingers of her left hand together surreptitiously: Gran’s silver ring never left her second finger, but she had removed her incredibly conspicuous engagement ring weeks ago. Luckily, she had also left off her plainer wedding band. “My brother,” she told the manager firmly.

“Brother, of course! I see the resemblance, naturally. Anyway, I thought you might need a larger safe when he came in with the new item, but luckily it all fit. Many customers are, you know, very particular about keeping the same box, especially when it’s one they’ve had for a long time. And Mr. Chase is one of our very valued, long-term customers, of course, so I was pleased to be able to keep his location consistent, as I’m sure that he hopefully was as well . . .”

Jane’s head was swimming, and she could barely read the tiny numbers on the stacked rows of boxes. She held up the key Malcolm had left inside her passport in one faintly trembling hand. He removed a matching one from his pocket, inserted it into one lock on box 41811, and nodded meaningfully toward the other one. They turned their keys in near-unison, and the box slid smoothly free of the wall. Jane carried it to a stainless-steel table in the middle of the room, while McDeary lowered his eyes discreetly to the floor.

The box was almost completely filled by a black leather case, and Jane could feel her heart pounding in her ears as she reached for it. She fumbled with the latches, snaps, and ties—
just how many ways do you
need
to keep a lid on
—until finally, unexpectedly, the case opened.

Money,
she told herself.
Of course it’s just money
. There was a lot of it, in fact: certainly more than she had left in her Grand Central stash. But she couldn’t deny the shiver of excitement that ran down her spine when, looking past the neat green-and-gray stacks, she saw the corner of something . . . else. She dug eagerly through the pile of cash, carelessly moving more hundreds than she could count out of the way like empty candy wrappers. Money was welcome, but the real proof that Malcolm had been thinking of her was finally in her hands.

“It’s a . . . checkbook,” she said out loud, flipping the faux-crocodile cover open. The checks were drawn on an account at the First Trust Bank of New York, in the name of Caroline Chase. After a quick search, Jane found a second book, with a different account number, for Malcolm Chase.
He was careful,
she thought sadly.
He knew one of us might be caught, and kept our names separate even when we were supposed to be together.

McDeary cleared his throat, and Jane jumped. “Sorry,” he mumbled, offering what looked an awful lot like a bow of apology. He pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “Your brother had some instructions about that.”

My who?
Jane almost asked, but bit the question back.
Right. My name is Caroline. Malcolm’s name is Malcolm. My husband is my brother, because he killed my grandmother and now his mother wants to steal my as-yet-unconceived baby. It’s simple, Jane; keep up!

McDeary was eagerly explaining a complicated-sounding system of linked accounts and automatic transfers from somewhere offshore, triggered by withdrawals from her checking account. The gist, Jane eventually understood, was that she had as much money as she wanted, replaced into her account as fast as she could spend it.
No more Rivington,
she thought gleefully. After a quick mental catalog, she decided that she wouldn’t have to go back even once. Everything that mattered was in her purse; everything else could be left behind. She was rich again, and money equaled freedom.

“Thank you,” she said randomly, hoping it had come out during an appropriate pause in McDeary’s lengthy elaboration on the finer points of international banking treaties.

“My pleasure, certainly,” he chirped, looking as though he was seriously considering another bow.

Jane ran her hands over the leather of the case, looking futilely for a handle. She finally settled for folding it awkwardly in her arms. It was an inconvenient way to walk, but it was only temporary, she reminded herself: everything was about to get a whole lot easier.

“But, Miss Chase!” McDeary nearly whimpered in sudden concern.

Busted!
her brain shouted, and Jane stopped breathing. But McDeary wasn’t chasing her, setting off the bank’s alarm system, or even looking at her at all: his entire focus was on the dark interior of box 41811.
Not busted. Yet.

“Did you not want the personal item?” McDeary frowned uncertainly, straightening back up and turning a small blue box between his smooth palms. He hesitated and then cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing vulnerably. “Mr. Chase didn’t leave instructions about this, specifically, but he clearly assigned you full ownership of the safe . . .”

Jane turned, softening. Knowing that Malcolm had left her something personal, meaningful, suddenly meant much more to her than all of the stacks of cash she could carry. She fought the urge to rip the box out of his hands, and instead reached for it as politely as she could bear. “Yes,” she answered firmly. “I’ll be taking that as well.”

The manager’s hazel eyes, made small and watery-looking by the lenses in front of them, followed the box as Jane took it. “That was the item that brought Mr. Chase to us to begin with. He said we had excellent references among his friends, and I do hope he has been happy with our services.” His thin chest puffed out with pride. “He
has
been a client for nearly fifteen years, of course, so I like to think that we have met his needs.”

“Of course,” Jane assured him automatically. “He told me so.” McDeary smiled deferentially, but Jane’s mind was racing.
Nearly fifteen years, and it started with this.
She lifted the box’s catch with numb fingers. This box wasn’t for her. Whatever it was, it had predated her in Malcolm’s life by more than a decade. She felt a blush mounting on her cheeks and wondered if there was a graceful way to back out of taking it now.

Just then the catch released, and the lid fell open so easily that Jane, startled, nearly dropped the whole thing. The inside of the box was lined with soft blue velvet, and tucked securely inside was a glass unicorn. It was pretty, with finely pulled legs and an elegantly arched neck, and little touches of gold on the hooves and horn. But “pretty” was the only word to describe the unicorn: there was nothing about it that gave any impression whatsoever of magic, or even of substantial monetary value. It looked, Jane decided, like the sort of thing you could buy in any mall in America.
Why this?
she wondered, touching a tiny hoof experimentally with one chipped fingernail. She half-expected a magical frisson but got nothing. As far as she could tell, the “personal item” Malcolm had been storing all this time was nothing more than a piece of glass.

It’s not for me. It’s none of my business what it is,
she reproached herself sternly. She closed the box with a snap. “Thank you,” she began, unsure what to say next.
“I had no idea what was in here, and now I don’t think I should be taking it” doesn’t really have a great ring to it.

“Of course; I’m thrilled to be able to help Mr. Chase and his family. And I’m sure that item is sentimental for you as well, since he told me it belonged to—” McDeary stopped midsentence, his small eyes narrowing to slits. “Excuse me. You
did
say that you are Mr. Chase’s younger sister, yes?”

I
didn’t
say younger,
Jane’s mind hissed. Not that it was a huge leap: Malcolm was eight years older than her, and anyone as ingratiating as McDeary had to know that it was always good policy to assume women were young. But his eyes were riveted on her in a new and unpleasant way, and Jane’s skin crawled a little. The still, dead air of the safe room prickled at her skin with a new sort of static charge.

Jane fought her panic: the secure room of a secure building was a terrible place to freak out and blow her cover for good. She bit the inside of her lip so hard that she tasted salt, forcing herself to meet McDeary’s eyes and smile at him. It was the very same smile she had turned toward Lynne countless times during the horrible, dangerous month after she’d learned that Lynne was a totally evil witch; it fit like her favorite pair of jeans. “Yes. And I’ll be sure to tell him how
thorough
you’ve been in explaining all of this to me.”

She saw doubt flicker over McDeary’s face, and knew he was wondering if he might have somehow been indiscreet. She felt bad for making him worry, but she had no choice but to press her advantage. She shoved the little blue box into her straw purse, bundled the larger black case back into her arms, and turned resolutely for the door. “It’s to the left and then the third door, yes?”

“I’d be happy to escort you, of course,” McDeary offered politely.

“That won’t be necessary,” she told him frostily, doing her very best impression of Lynne Doran’s effortlessly commanding voice. McDeary snapped to attention, his right arm twitching in an almost-salute.

Thank God he’s used to being bossed around,
she sighed as her kitten-heeled feet clicked out of the safe room.
And that I’ve learned how to do it.
As she strode purposefully out of the building, not even the two armed guards hulked at either side of the front door could stop her from smiling at the irony of Lynne having taught her such a useful skill.