Into The Fire

She got to her feet without stumbling, and even took a step toward him, just to show that she wasn’t afraid of him. “Where did you say the telephone was?” she said. “I need to call my mother and have her wire me some money.”

“Down in the garage. But you’ll have to call collect, princess.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You have to have more than a pay phone here!”

He shook his head. “No need. There aren’t that many people I want to talk to.”

“Or who want to talk to you?”

“You got it. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding it. I’m going to take a shower.”

“I’d appreciate the privacy.”

“Whereas I couldn’t care less. If you have any interest in joining me in the shower—”

“I don’t!” He was saying it just to annoy her, but it worked, to her utter shame.

“Give the Duchess my love, then,” Dillon said lazily. And he closed the door behind him.

He was lying to her. Nate hovered overhead in a dreamlike state. He’d always been a good liar, and he could recognize when his old friend was lying, as well. What did Dillon want with jamie? Maybe what he’d always wanted with Jamie and had never admitted .

It didn’t mean that Nate didn’t know just how fixated Dillon Gaynor had always been with little Jamie. And now she was here, stuck in the old building with no one to play chaperone but the ghost of the one person they had in common .

He was going to enjoy this .

5

A t least he’d left the door open to the kitchen, so that light filtered into the bottom of the stairwell. There’d be no dead rats beneath her bare feet this time, thank God. Just the live one upstairs in the shower.

Jamie didn’t want to think about that. Dillon and a shower meant Dillon naked, and that was one image she could happily do without. The only mental image she wanted of Dillon was with his head on a platter.

No, she didn’t even care that much, she reminded herself as she crossed the now surprisingly neat kitchen. She just wanted to be gone. To take Nate’s few possessions and get the hell out of there. Dillon unsettled her, even after all these years. Unsettled her more than the unanswered questions about Nate’s death. She’d loved her cousin, deeply, but in the last few years she’d lost most of her illusions about him. Nate was a bad boy, maybe almost as bad as Dillon Gaynor. He’d done drugs, he’d broken the law, he’d broken her mother’s heart. With his charm and good looks he’d managed to talk himself out of the consequences for his bad behavior. Until at the end, when someone, maybe even his childhood friend, had had enough and killed him.

Nothing was going to bring him back. Nothing would make the loss of him less painful, not the truth, not revenge. In fact, they’d lost Nate long ago. He needed to rest in peace.

But her mother wasn’t about to accept that simple truth, and Jamie would have done anything Isobel asked of her. Except that this time it was too much, and she needed to get the hell out of there.

She dreaded going into the garage to use the pay phone but she had no choice. “Why in heaven’s name are you calling me collect, Jamie?” she greeted her in the faint, slightly querulous tone she’d taken to using in the last few years. “You have a cell phone and a phone card.”

“I’ve lost my purse,” Jamie said flatly. And then guilt hit her. “How are you feeling, Mother?”

“The same,” Isobel said with a sigh. “What can one expect? How did you happen to lose your purse? Where are you, for that matter? Have you seen that man?”

Jamie had no doubts that “that man” was Dillon. “I’m here in Wisconsin. At his garage. My car went off the road, I lost my purse, and I need to get home.”

“How unfortunate,” Isobel said in her faint voice. “And a bit careless of you. How long have you been there?”

Jamie took a deep breath. “Twelve hours. Twelve hours too long. I need you to wire me some money, and any form of identification of mine you can find. Bella can look for you. She could even call the motor vehicle department to see what I need to do about my driver’s license. I can’t rent a car without one, even if I have a credit card.”

“I try not to ask my nurse to do personal favors for me,” Isobel said stiffly. “She’s got enough to do, taking care of an old woman in a wheelchair.”

Jamie pounded her forehead against the wall beside the pay phone, just once. Isobel never missed a chance to use her crippling arthritis as a weapon. “I don’t think Bella would mind in an emergency,” Jamie said.

“I don’t see that it’s an emergency. You’re staying with Dillon, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then that’s perfect. Your cousin died there, Jamie. Our Nate was murdered there, and now you have the perfect chance to find out what happened.”

“I’m not Nancy Drew, Mother.”

“Don’t be flippant with me,” Isobel said in her faint tones. “You care just as much as I do—you can’t fool me. A few days there won’t do you any harm. I’ll call my lawyer and have him put something in motion to get your paperwork back for you, but in the meantime you stay put and pay attention. Nothing happens without a reason. I think fate must have wanted you there.”

Jamie didn’t bother arguing. She loved her mother dearly, but Isobel did tend to think fate worked at Isobel Kincaid’s whim. She was a Kincaid, after all, twice over. She’d even married her second cousin Victor, and Nate used to say she’d done it just to keep the name.

“I really don’t want…” she tried one more time, but Isobel sailed right over her, her voice uncharacteristically strong.

“I don’t think your wants should be paramount right now, Jamie. I’ll call Miss Finch’s—I’m sure they can make do without you for a few days. In the meantime you should concentrate on what happened to Nate. Why he was even there, what he did during his last days. Anything.”

That tone of desperation had slid into Isobel’s voice, the one that always destroyed Jamie’s defenses. “All right, Mother,” she said wearily. “I’ll give it a few days.”

“Thank you, Jamie. I knew I could count on you. After all, we both loved him so much.”

“Yes, we did,” Jamie said. “Let me give you…”

“Goodbye, darling.”

“…the telephone number here.” But Isobel had already hung up. Jamie stared at the phone in frustration. She could always try calling her back, but knowing Isobel’s gift for getting what she wanted, she probably wouldn’t answer the phone. Either that or she’d refuse to accept the collect charges.

She was trapped. She resisted temptation, putting the telephone back into its cradle very carefully. Her mother was right—a couple of days wouldn’t kill her. And surely she could do something herself about getting her license and credit cards back. If only Dillon had a goddamned private telephone line.

She headed back toward the kitchen, then paused, looking at the cavernous garage.

It must have been some kind of warehouse or factory in the distant past. The place was huge, with a line of cars along both ends, half of them covered with tarps. She recognized an old Thunderbird, a Mustang Cobra and a stately ’49 Oldsmobile. For some reason she had always been good at recognizing cars, and the ones she could see in Dillon’s garage were beautiful and rare.

There were two more in various stages of disarray. The one missing an engine was a Ford from 1954 or 1955. The other was nothing less than a Duesenberg.

She took a step, irresistibly drawn to it. It had taken the years with surprising dignity, and even in its current state it had a certain grace and elegance that filled her with a rare covetousness. She’d never been particularly materialistic—her needs had always been more emotional and elemental. But looking at the old Duesenberg, she wanted it.

She turned her back on it, resolutely, and stalked to the kitchen. There was no sign of Dillon, thank God, and she was hungry. It was no wonder the man was still skinny—there wasn’t even enough food in his cupboards to feed the dead rat. She half expected to find pellets all over the place, but whatever rodents had taken possession of the kitchen had left no sign behind.

She gave up looking, starting to eat stale Wheaties from the box, when the door opened and a very small guardian angel stepped in. Or more specifically, Mouser, with a boxful of groceries.

“Hi, there, sugar,” he greeted her. “I brought you some food. Dillon never has a damned thing in the house, and I figured you’d be starving about now. Don’t eat those Wheaties—I think the guy on the box was in the 1936 Olympics.”

She set the box down hurriedly, swallowing her last dry mouthful. The little man was unpacking milk, orange juice and a bakery box that smelled like divine intervention.

“Cinnamon buns, no nuts, right?” he said.