Night Mist. Helen Myers R.

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СКАЧАТЬ she said, her boldness waning. “Do you have one?”

      “Why do you ask?”

      “I’m not sure.” She’d noticed that as she grew more uneasy, a deadly calmness had entered his voice. “I suppose it’s because I keep getting this feeling we’ve met before. Do you? Have a twin, I mean?”

      “No.”

      He spun around and walked away. She couldn’t say she was disappointed; she simply didn’t breathe until she heard the sound of his door shutting. Only then did she expel the breath she’d been holding, shut her eyes and let her clamoring nerves charge through her body like a pinball machine gone haywire.

      As soon as she could be sure her legs wouldn’t buckle beneath her, she hugged her bag to her chest like a shield and hurried to her room, where she shut the door and bolted it. Only then did she allow herself a shaky sigh of relief.

      Things were getting far too complicated. What had she been thinking of to ask him that? She’d as good as told him she was onto him—pure foolishness since she didn’t have a clue as to what she was stirring up.

      “Well, you’re up to your neck in it now,” she murmured to herself. The gauntlet had been thrown, leaving her little choice but to figure out what could follow.

      Wishing for once that she hadn’t been born with a natural curious streak, Rachel placed her bag onto the cane chair beside the door and considered the state of her dubious sanctuary.

      When she’d first taken the room, she hadn’t minded that its spareness paralleled that of a convent cell, unlike the more ornate ones below. She’d explained to Adorabella that she would be working so much she only needed a place to collapse and sleep off the inevitable fatigue that would be status quo until she fulfilled her contract. Maybe she’d been too hasty.

      What was it she’d once heard or read about the simplest room containing any number of weapons? Right—the floral wallpaper could bore Jay Barnes, or whoever he was, to death if she could get him to stand around and stare at it long enough. The lamp on the single, scarred bedside table might be good for one throw. The equally abused dresser held her few toiletries, but most were contained in paper or plastic. She couldn’t even count on using the twin-size bed as a hiding place. Strange how until this moment she hadn’t noticed its smallness, when even as a child in her family’s summer home she’d had a full-size mattress. It showed how tired she really had to be.

      Strange, too, that she’d originally taken this room because she’d liked the idea of having a man across the hall—even an unsociable one. Big houses were creaky, and this one wasn’t any exception; the sounds of aging often resembled footsteps on the stairs and outside her door.

      Adorabella claimed they were the spirits of previous owners. Rachel had smiled politely at that, but had decided she would stick with more logical rationale, like settling boards or the weather. At any rate, she’d claimed Jay Barnes as her invisible, but de facto guardian, and let the knowledge of his presence insulate her confidence in her security.

      But now that confidence was shattered. Who was going to protect her from him if she had made an exceedingly poor judgment call?

      She glanced at the cane chair and, before she could talk herself out of it, moved it under the doorknob. The jiggling and scraping sounds made her wince, but once done she felt slightly better. Confident enough to slip out of her jacket and conscientiously hang it in the starkly bare closet. Then she crossed back to the bed, sprawled onto it and slipped off her shoes.

      The cross-stitched bedspread was one Adorabella Levieux had made herself, and it carried the wonderful smell of a fresh laundering. The clean scent also reminded her of the condition of her work clothes. Worried that she might have a drop of blood or street dirt on them, and not wanting to stain the painstakingly made cover, she pushed herself back off the bed. After turning off the light, Rachel stripped off her jeans, blouse and T-shirt in the privacy of near darkness. Then, relying on the faint glow from the security lamps outside, she laid her clothes over the chair and slipped into an oversize shirt.

      What now? she thought, facing the shadow-filled room. No way could she go to sleep after the last hour’s upheaval. Her nerves were stretched tighter than piano wire and her mind was racing. In fact, she doubted there would be peace for her before dawn came, and maybe not even then.

      Because it took her farthest from the door, she padded across the deliciously cool hardwood floor to the window and curled up on the low, wide ledge. Through the screen and beyond the gnarled fingers of the sentinel oaks, night lingered deathly still, as it had since the mist descended Sunday on Nooton.

      From this perspective the bridge took on a surreal quality. It almost resembled some phantom beast out of mythical lore—colossal, yet skillfully cloaked by a vaporous veil of gray. Only a leg showing here, an ear there, a hint of spine and ominous jaw.

      Rachel shivered. Strange visions to conjure—considering she’d never been a fanciful person. And, as one who had until recently felt well-acquainted, comfortable, with the night, the changes were as depressing as they were unwelcome.

      What a mess she’d gotten herself into this time. She could imagine what her parents would say: “It’s no less than we expected, Rachel. Only you would give up all we’ve provided for you to live in some backwoods swamp town where the roaches are as big as domestic animals. Far be it for us to interfere with your right to live below the poverty line, but did it ever occur to you to once consider how embarrassing these selfish gestures are for your family?”

      And yet, if she would ask, they wouldn’t hesitate to do everything in their power to get her on a plane back to the east coast. Even if it meant calling in favors from among their Washington, D.C., contacts, including borrowing a private corporate jet. Nothing would be too good for Phyllis and Earl Gentry’s only daughter and youngest child, because Gentrys, they liked to point out, stuck together.

      Especially if there was good press involved, Rachel reflected bitterly.

      But she also knew any favor extended to her would come with a price tag. One she wouldn’t pay, regardless of her anxiety over what she might have gotten herself into. She’d worked too hard for her independence to hand it back to them, even if it looked slightly stress-fractured at the moment. Eleven years’ hard, she thought, remembering Roddie. An old, familiar pain gripped her heart. There was another reason to stand firm: if she surrendered and ran home, it would be turning her back on what her brother had died for.

      Gestures, indeed. No, she would have to see this situation through on her own. But never had she felt more unsure of herself or about what to do.

      Trying to think back to the beginning, she rested her forehead on her updrawn knees. Think about Joe…. Joe warning you about…who? Jay Barnes, who looked like him, but couldn’t be him? It didn’t make any sense! Jay Barnes was no more Joe Becket than she was Princess Whatshername. His unignorable physique versus her sexually deprived status aside, there had been no real chemistry between them.

      Except for that one moment when…

      None, she argued with herself, repressing her mutinous thoughts. While on the other hand, Joe, with a few simple words, a look and a caress had made her feel…special…needed…wanted.

      Bright Eyes. Like a whisper carried on the night’s steady wing, the memory of his voice, as well as his words, floated to her. No one had ever called her that before. Being a woman who’d gone through college, graduate school, medical training and hell’s internship in her own noncomformist way, she was too experienced СКАЧАТЬ