Sudden Recall Page 19

  She watched him start across the courtyard in the direction of the obelisk. The two workmen were still banging chairs and didn’t bother to question his presence.

  Turning away from the doorway, Eden moved out into the hall a few paces where she had a view in both directions. On her left, the broad corridor stretched off toward the back of the building. It was currently empty of visitors. The view on her right, equally deserted, ended a couple of yards away where the corridor turned a corner on its way back to the main entrance.

  Just a precaution. But why? Why should it even cross her mind that the two-man crew in the courtyard could in any way be interested in Shane’s errand? Or that if a museum guard happened to wander this way he might challenge them? Why should he when they were just another pair of visitors?

  There was no reason for her concern. Except she was concerned, because the Jamisons had a great deal of influence in this town. And she was beginning to fear that anything was possible with that family.

  Eden learned several seconds later she had good reason for her uneasiness. The silence was broken by a sudden conversation. It came from somewhere around the corner, close enough that she could clearly overhear it.

  “Doing your rounds, Jerry?”

  Eden went rigid. She knew that voice!

  “Actually, I’m just on my way out front for a break. Thought you folks had all gone.”

  “My wife is missing her sunglasses. She thinks she may have left them behind on the platform.”

  “Be happy to go back and help you look for them.”

  “No, Jerry, I’ll find them if they’re there. You go ahead and take your break.”

  “Guess I’d better if I’m gonna get one. I have to relieve another guard in twenty minutes over in the wing where the Vermeers are on show.”

  Eden made a fast decision. She could either race back to the courtyard and warn Shane that trouble was on the way, or she could remain here and risk a bold confrontation with the man who had once meant everything to her. It was vital Shane have sufficient time to examine that obelisk, the key that could unlock the rest of his memory and lead them to Nathanial. She knew she had to stall Charles Moses.

  “Have a good day, sir.”

  The guard must have departed. Eden steeled herself. A second later Charlie came swinging around the corner. And halted abruptly as they came face-to-face.

  “Eden! What are you doing here?”

  She gazed at him without reply. He had always been good-looking, with almost perfect features and a head of midnight-black hair, and that hadn’t changed. If anything, he was even more handsome than when they had been together. And all she could do was stand there and wonder how she could ever have loved him when she could see that, even with those spectacular looks, he wasn’t a fraction of the man Shane was.

  “It’s been a while, Charlie, hasn’t it?” she said with a careless smile.

  Her friendliness didn’t fool him. His gaze left her face, searching the area behind her. She knew he was looking for Shane. “Where is he?” he demanded.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t pull that innocent act on me, Eden. You know who I’m talking about. The guy you’ve been on the run with.”

  “Oh, you mean Michael Reardon.” Charlie wasn’t quick enough to hide his surprise. “That’s right, he knows now who he is. Funny thing though, Charlie.”

  “What is?”

  “The way you looked just now when I told you he’d recovered his identity, as if you knew he’d lost his memory. And you couldn’t have known that unless you, or someone close to you, had learned it from Harriet Krause just before she died.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do. You visited her a couple of weeks back, and she told you all about Lissie Reardon. I think she must have also told you that Lissie had a brother, and you figured there was a good chance Lissie had gone to him. It took you a while to track him down, but, being the able P.I. you are, you must have eventually located him in Arizona. That’s about the way it went, didn’t it, Charlie?”

  “So what? The family was worried. We had a right to know where the boy and his mother had gone.”

  “I’m his mother, Charlie, but I guess you already know that by now. I guess Harriet would have told you. Or whoever visited her there at the end.”

  He stared at her without a response.

  “So what happened in Arizona?” Eden pressed him. “You were too late when you got there, I bet. Lissie was dead, and Michael was already on his way to Charleston with my son. So what did you do then, Charlie? Contact your wife’s stepbrothers to intercept him? Turn those two brutes on him with their dirty methods?”

  “Reardon had no legal right to Patrick,” he ground out. “He’s no better than a kidnapper.”

  “No right to bring the son of the woman he’d married back to his own mother?”

  “What’s this?” Charlie sneered.

  “It’s true. Michael is my husband. See?” She held out her left hand, showing him the wedding band.

  She knew Charlie would soon figure out Shane wasn’t her husband, that nothing he had learned about Michael Reardon could have hinted at the possibility of a wife. But if it put him off for now, bought Shane a few more minutes in the courtyard, then the ruse was worth it. And to be honest about it, she enjoyed the astonished expression on Charlie’s face. It gave her the momentary satisfaction of letting him know that, although he’d once dumped her, another man had wanted her.

  “Anyway, if you were convinced Michael is such a villain, then why didn’t you let the police handle it? What are you all hiding?”

  Charlie’s surprise vanished and was immediately replaced by something else. He advanced on her, his eyes narrow now with anger as he loomed over her threateningly. “You’re not being smart, Eden.”

  She held her ground. “No?”

  “I recommend that you tell me where Reardon is.”

  “And I recommend,” said a cold voice behind her, “that you back away from her.”

  She and Charlie had been so involved in their verbal duel that neither one of them had been aware of Shane’s sudden arrival on the scene.

  “Because if you were even thinking about touching her,” Shane warned him, “I’m going to tear you apart piece by piece.”

  Charlie’s startled gaze shifted in Shane’s direction. Swinging around, Eden saw the savage look in Shane’s eyes. Charlie hesitated. Then, apparently realizing he was no match for Shane, he dropped back, turned and strode away swiftly in the direction of the entrance hall.

  “He’s going for help,” Eden said.

  “Yeah, and with the clout that bunch he married into seems to have in this place, there’ll be security swarming all over this wing. Not to mention the Dennis brothers, if they’re still hanging around out front waiting for Moses.”

  She dragged at Shane’s arm. “Then we’d better get out of here. But which way?”

  “Let’s see if we can find an exit at the back.”

  Praying it wasn’t sealed off before they could get there, Eden fell into step beside Shane as they hurried along the corridor toward the rear of the museum.

  They had broken no law. There should have been no reason why they couldn’t simply walk out the front door. But if the Jamisons had enough pull to have them held and questioned, Shane possibly charged with abduction, the delay would give the family the time they needed to find Nathanial. She and Shane couldn’t risk that. It was more imperative than ever now that they stay free. Her maternal instincts sensed that Nathanial’s very existence depended on them reaching him first. But was that possible?

  “The obelisk,” she questioned him breathlessly. “Were you able to—”

  “Yeah, I recognized one of those reliefs. I know the place, Eden. Looking at it finally kicked my last missing memory into place.”

  “Nathanial?” she asked, striving to control her excitement.

  “He’s nearby. And he’s in safe hands. I’
ll tell you all about it when we get out of here.”

  Shane was right. They needed to conserve their breath, concentrate on finding an exit. She would have to be content for now knowing that her son was secure and they were on their way to him.

  This section of the museum was devoted to Eastern culture, with things like samurai swords and tribal masks from New Guinea. They were no more popular than the art photos in the other wing. Eden and Shane met no one. Not even a guard was evident.

  They were rapidly approaching the end of the corridor when Shane decided to share another discovery with her. “There was something else about that obelisk. Or at least in the air around it.”

  She slid a sideways glance at him. What was he talking about?

  “Perfume,” he said. “I could catch a whiff of it still hanging in the air. No way to be sure, but I’d swear it was the same stuff we smelled in Harriet Krause’s living room.”

  The Jamison women! They had both stood there close beside the obelisk posing for photographs. “If you’re right, that means either Claire or Irene were in that apartment before Harriet died.” And could have killed her, Eden thought.

  Shane nodded. “Something more for us to look into.”

  And that, also, would have to wait until they got out of here. Which didn’t look promising, Eden realized when they reached the end of the corridor. There was no exit here, only one of the museum’s few windows.

  Shane muttered a curse when he looked out, trying to determine their position. Eden could understand his chagrin when she joined him at the glass. They were no longer at ground level. The bluff dropped away at the back of the building, putting this floor at the height of a second story.

  The corridor, however, was not a dead end. It branched off both to the left and to the right. “Which way now?” Eden wondered, glancing first in one direction and then in the other.

  “That way,” Shane decided, nodding to the right. “Looks like stairs down there.”

  It was a stairway to the first floor, but they were unable to descend it when they reached the flight. One of the uniformed guards stood at the bottom, his head lowered as he spoke earnestly on his hand radio.

  “Wanna bet we’re the subject of that conversation?” Shane whispered as they backed quickly away from the landing before the guard had the chance to look up and spot them.

  Eden feared he was right and that the guard was being told to look out for them. Worried that he would mount the stairs and catch sight of them before they could take cover, she kept checking over her shoulder as they rushed back the way they had come.

  Their only choice now was to try the left branch of the corridor and hope it would somehow lead them out of the building. In the meantime, they had to leave that guard far behind them as swiftly as possible, a need which Shane didn’t seem to appreciate when he brought them to a halt again just as they started past the window.

  “Hold on a second,” he said. “There’s something I want to check.”

  “Make it fast,” she urged, puzzled by his sudden interest again in the view from the window.

  “Yeah, I was right. Look at that other window across there and what’s just below it.”

  Eden saw what he meant. Away to their left, in the same direction they were now headed, a short wing projected from the back of the building. On this side of that wing was a ground-floor utility extension with a flat roof. The second-story window Shane indicated was located directly above it.

  “If we can get through that window,” Shane said, “we’ll be on the roof.”

  “And then what?”

  “I think there’s an easy way down. See the pair of iron handrails there curving up over the edge of the roof on the river side?”

  “A fire escape?”

  “No, a permanent ladder for servicing the roof and all that ventilation equipment on top of it. There are probably metal rungs attached to the wall just below those rails. Let’s go.”

  He gave her no opportunity to question his intention. But why should he? He had been an Army Ranger, Eden reminded herself as she trotted after him. This kind of stuff was probably no challenge for him.

  Eden kept thinking there had to be an easier way down and out. However, a quick look at a museum map they passed, posted under glass on the wall, indicated there was no other stairway in this section of the building. It would have to be the window, after all.

  But the window proved to be even more difficult than she’d feared. To begin with, they had trouble finding it. When their route finally turned into the shallow wing, its sharp right angle making the guard somewhere behind them less of a threat now that they weren’t visible from the other corridor, they found themselves in a gallery exhibiting Native American artifacts. There was no window in sight.

  “It’s got to be along here somewhere,” Shane insisted. “I’d judge it to be just about— Uh-oh.”

  They had reached a closed door on the right. Presumably, the window was on the other side of it. And that could be a bit of a problem, Eden thought, considering the door was marked Women.

  “Maybe it’s empty,” Shane said.

  This was a strong likelihood. They had encountered no one in this wing but a father and his two children wandering along the glass cases of relics. But there was sure to be another guard somewhere in the vicinity, and if they didn’t hurry—

  “Let me be sure,” Eden said.

  She spread the door inward. Behind it was an L-shaped rest room. There were sinks directly in front of her, with the window they sought between them. And off to the right, in the base of the L, was a row of stalls, their doors all open.

  “It’s clear,” she reported to Shane hovering behind her.

  Except it wasn’t clear. Eden hadn’t thought to look behind the door. And not until they were both inside the rest room, with that door swung shut behind them, did she see the alcove with a full-length mirror on its wall. The alcove’s occupant was a tall woman with a startled expression on her face.

  “Um, sorry,” Eden hastily apologized. “I have this medical problem, so I need my husband with me to help out whenever I—well, you know.”

  The poor woman nodded, as if she understood, but Eden knew that she’d probably spend the rest of the afternoon wondering what medical problem could possibly require a husband’s presence with his wife in a rest-room stall. Scooting past them, she fled from the place.

  “Our marriage just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?” Shane observed with a wicked grin.

  There was no easy way for Eden to respond to that one. Her emotions on the subject ran too deep by now. Is our pretend marriage nothing more to you, Shane, than what it started out to be? A masquerade to facilitate our search for Nathanial? That’s what she wanted to ask him. And then she would have followed it with a heartfelt: Because for me it’s come to mean more than that.

  A lot more.

  But she didn’t say any of those things. There was no time for them. Nor was she certain she had the courage to hear what he might tell her. So, instead, she replied with a very ordinary, “Our marriage isn’t going to rescue us where that window is concerned. Look.” She pointed to the alarm high on the wall above the frosted window.

  “Yeah, with that roof out there, it figures it would be wired to go off if anyone tries to get in or out this way.” He dug into one of the pockets of his jacket. “Ah, I still have it,” he said, producing the short-handled screwdriver he had armed himself with back in Charleston, and which he hadn’t bothered to return to the glove compartment of Eden’s car.

  “It can’t be that easy to disconnect the alarm.”

  “It shouldn’t be, but if you know what you’re doing…”

  His Special Forces training.

  “Keep watch,” he instructed her over his shoulder as he crossed to the window.

  Eden posted herself at the door, opening it a crack and ready to warn him if anyone approached the rest room. Nothing should have been on her mind but her vigil and the tense
hope that Shane would succeed with disarming the device, but an unexpected question intruded into her thoughts.

  How did Sebastian Jamison die?

  She suddenly realized that Harriet Krause hadn’t told them that, probably because she hadn’t known. Nor had she and Shane learned the cause of the old man’s death when they searched the newspaper files. They’d begun with stories of the family in the society pages, but Shane had recognized his sister in that photo before either of them had the opportunity to move on to an obituary.

  So they didn’t know how Sebastian had died. Was the cause important? Quite possibly it was, and, if so, this was something more for them to inves—

  “Somebody deserves to be shot.”

  Shane’s muttered complaint put an end to her speculations. He didn’t have any luck with the window, she thought, her hope sinking as she released the door and turned around to see for herself.

  The window was wide open.

  “But you’ve done it! So why—”

  “It was too easy,” he grumbled, slipping the screwdriver back into his pocket. “There’s no excuse for an antiquated security system in a place like this. And the bathroom window back at Harriet Krause’s apartment, that’s another example. She should have had that broken catch repaired. And since she didn’t, certainly the police ought to have seen to it before they left the apartment.”

  “Shane—”

  “Yeah, I know, all this can wait. It’s given me an idea, though. But that’s for the future. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Shane helped her through the window and onto the roof, then scrambled through the opening after her. He made no effort to close the window behind them.

  “A guard will check the bathroom before closing,” he said. “Let them see they’ve got a problem that needs to be corrected.”

  Eden held her breath, fearing an angry shout behind them as they made their rapid way through the ventilation equipment to the metal service ladder at the far edge of the roof. They reached it without a challenge.

  “The rest should be a piece of cake,” Shane said.

  Thankfully, it was. Minutes later, they were back inside the Toyota and headed away from the museum. And at last Eden was able to learn from Shane what she had longed to hear from the moment he had emerged from the courtyard.