Always in My Dreams (56 page)

He shook his head. "Keep it. And don't think twice about using it."

"I won't."

It wasn't Skye who responded. Both Skye and Walker turned toward the open doorway. Corina Reading stood there. Her small hands held her gun as steadily as Skye and she was aiming it squarely at Walker. Sixteen feet separated Corina and her target. Her delicate features were sharply set, her sloe eyes coldly focused.

Skye's own weapon remained leveled at Parnell's chest. She eyed Corona's gun critically. "That's a single-action pocket revolver," she told Walker. "A Smith and Wesson .32. The range is fair; the accuracy is poor. She has only one shot. She has to be very good or very, very lucky."

Corona's flinch was centered in her eyes. "I only want the money."

Skye's position hadn't changed. Even with her gun pointed in another direction, she remained perfectly poised and said; "I can get the drop on her."

A faint smile curved Walker's mouth as he held Corona's eyes with his own. His words were issued with the slight edge of a challenge. "You heard her, Corina. She says she can get the drop on you."

Corona's hands tightened.

Skye elbowed Walker aside and pivoted in the same motion, squeezing off a shot as the lead ball from Corona's revolver split the air. She felt the Colt's recoil charge her muscles and shudder her bones and the infinitesimal sensation of something hot and hard whispering past the curve of her shoulder. In the same moment Skye saw Corina Reading's feet leave the floor and her shoulders heave backward. She was thrown against the far wall of the hallway, her features registering both surprise and pain as she remained suspended there for a second. Her collapse followed, her body folding forward like a rag doll until she lay face down on the hardwood floor.

The single-action Smith and Wesson slipped out of her hand and skittered across the floor.

Silence held them all still. Parnell's limbs were rigid against his bonds. Skye's extended arms were locked in the action of firing. Walker's frame remained in the half crouch that Skye had forced on him.

Walker was the first to recover. He straightened slowly and removed the gun from Skye's hands. He laid it on the desk. "Are you all right?"

She nodded. Her face was pale and her heart was slamming, but she was all of a piece. "I'll see to her," she said quietly. "Watch Parnell." Skye crossed the room to Corona's side and knelt. Blood was pooling on the floor near Corona's shoulder and Skye was gentle in turning her over. She opened Corona's bodice and eased it off her wounded shoulder. Ripping more of her shredded shift, Skye bound the injury. "We need to take her to a doctor," she said.

"It's a clean wound?"

"All the way through."

"What about Annie and Matt?"

Skye glanced at Corina. Her color was ashen but her pulse was steady. The flow of blood had slowed and was no longer dangerous. "There's time. It's not life threatening." Corina moaned softly as if to object, but Skye paid the theatrics no attention. She pointed to Parnell. "He can help you find them."

Parnell struggled to sit up. "Hank drove them to Baileyboro."

"He's lying," Skye said. "I heard Corina say that she hoped they couldn't get out. They argued about it. Annie and Matt are trapped somewhere in this house."

"You need me to find them," Parnell interjected quickly.

Walker ignored the interruption and looked at Skye. "Do you know where they might be?"

She shook her head. "One of the locked closets... a passage I've never had time to investigate... another cellar. I couldn't find them quickly. Young Matt..." Skye's bright green eyes glistened as tears rose unchecked. "Annie will be so frightened."

"Then we need this bastard," Walker said.

Skye didn't look at Parnell. "Be careful."

Parnell jerked at his bonds. "You'll have to untie me. I won't tell you anything unless you untie me."

Walker hunched down beside him. His eyes were sharply splintered, cold in their remote indifference. "I can make you tell me anything I want," he said softly. He watched a bead of sweat form on Parnell's upper lip. Walker had made his point. "In the interest of time, I'll let you up."

"Is it the money?" asked Parnell. "Is that what you want?"

Walker took a letter opener from the desk and used it to undo the knots securing Parnell's ankles. "My uncle was Jonathan Parnell," he said. "That's what this is about, Mr. Curran. A good and decent man is dead, buried in a shallow grave below this house, and you'll have to answer for it." He paused a beat, releasing the last knot and tossing the opened letter back on the desk. He hauled Morgan Curran to his feet. "Does that sufficiently explain my purpose here?"

The man who had been known for months as Parnell was reeling. "You know who I am?"

"I've always known."

"The threats on my life?"

"I'm the only threat on your life."

His throat was dry. Morgan Curran didn't have enough saliva to spit. He thrust his chin in Skye's direction. "Is she your partner?"

"She is now."

"Your uncle's death was an accident. The tunnel collapsed."

Walker was unmoved. "He shouldn't have been in there."

"That was Corona's idea. She thought the Granville fortune was buried at the end of it, just like some damned pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."

"And you always follow your sister's lead."

Curran blinked. "My stepsister," he corrected. "But yes, I follow her lead. She's a very forceful woman. Not easily subjugated." His eyes shifted pointedly to Skye again. The stare she returned was filled with loathing. Curran's reply was delivered with a mocking sneer. "Some women are more easily mastered."

Skye could not remain quiet. "You drugged me!" she accused him. "I wouldn't have let you—" Too late she realized the danger. Walker's attention had shifted in her direction, and Morgan Curran's conversation had had a purpose. The bonds on his wrists were loose now. "Walker!"

Walker sidestepped Curran's lunge only to realize that he hadn't been the intended target. Curran meant to have the gun.

Walker and Curran laid their hands on the Colt simultaneously. They wrestled for control of the weapon, sliding across the desk, toppling the chair and an un-lighted oil lamp. Broken glass ground into Walker's back when they rolled off the desk and onto the floor. Curran came away with the weapon and scrambled to a crouching position. Walker's foot shot out, but Curran retracted his hand in time. He fired in Walker's direction, missing by inches when Walker pushed the fallen chair at him and upset his balance. It was enough time for Walker to come to his feet.

Curran reacted immediately, swinging his aim toward Skye to hold off his adversary.

It was a mistake. Walker's rage was a controlled explosion. From perfect stillness he became a blur of motion. He leapt feet first. Curran fired as his wrist was struck while Skye flattened herself against the floor. The shudder she felt didn't come from her own body. The cry she heard didn't come from her own throat. She looked up in time to see Walker's sharp hand blow send Curran to his knees. A second thrust, delivered with the heel of his hand, pushed Curran's head backward. His shoulders slammed against the floor. Walker's foot made contact with Curran's chest, pulling back at the last possible second, breaking two ribs instead of bruising his heart. Curran groaned painfully as he tried to draw his next breath.

Walker stood over him, winded more by the strength of his anger than by the struggle. He glanced at Skye. She was rising to her knees, her hands attending to Corina, not to herself. "Is she—" He didn't have to finish his sentence.

Lowering her eyes, Skye shook her head slowly, the message clear.

Walker heard Curran's anguished moan as he understood what was left unsaid. It was then that Walker's splintered glance shifted downward. Unmoved, his voice was quiet, intense. "Annie and Matt," he said.

Skye listened, her heart easing, as Walker, true to his word, made Morgan Curran tell him everything.

Epilogue

For the second time in their short marriage Walker Caide carried Skye across a threshold. Although she made a small protest that the deed had been done before, she did so while looping her arms comfortably about his neck and snuggling against him.

"It's not the same," he said. "That was the St. Mark. This is our home."

Skye liked the sound of that. Her lips brushed Walker's cheek as he set her down in the entrance hall of the Granville house. He turned his head so the kiss could settle more fully on his mouth. The contact was brief. Skye drew back, smiled, and gave him a knowing glance. "This way," she said. She was eager, slightly breathless. Taking his hand, Skye pulled Walker toward the wide staircase. He barely had time to kick the front door closed behind him.

The Granville mansion was deserted. Skye's light footsteps up the stairs took on a faintly hollow sound. Her laughter, when Walker tried to grab her from behind, echoed along the corridor. Not that either of them noticed. Having the house to themselves was liberating, not eerie. During the two-month investigation into the death of Corina Reading and the trial of Morgan Curran, Walker and Skye found themselves with little in the way of privacy. Jay Mac's palatial granite home at 50th and Broadway could have quartered an army brigade with more ease. The endless parade of attorneys and bankers and investors and reporters and police touched everyone's nerves. As a scandal it held the city enthralled. It was not often that men the likes of Worth and Rockefeller and Gould and Carnegie were duped. The public took no small measure of glee at poking fun of the men who ruled industrial empires and were relieved of their pocket change by a brother-and-sister team of thieves.

During the course of the trial, as the details were brought to public attention and public ridicule, Jay Mac alone received more than eight hundred requests to invest in inventions ranging from machines that were supposed to reproduce the human voice to newfangled clothing fasteners. "What's wrong with buttons?" Jay Mac asked on more than one occasion.

It was left to Skye to sort through the pleas for money and separate fact and fancy. It was a difficult task, but one perfectly suited to Skye's wonderfully fluid imagination. Inventing, by its very nature, combined elements of what existed with what might exist, and Skye found herself intrigued by the possibilities. She dedicated herself to finding the requests that deserved funding and making recommendations to her father.

"Why should I give anyone a nickel?" Jay Mac was moved to ask. He held up the morning edition of the
Herald
at breakfast and showed everyone the headline: ROBBER BARONS ROBBED. "It says right here that greed was our downfall."

"Oh, then it must be true," Moira said. "If it's there in the paper for all the city to see."

Jay Mac snorted, but he was moved to see reason in the end. While other men who were similarly gulled into investing with Morgan Curran received the same mountain of requests as Jay Mac, he was the only one to respond with financial support even to a select few.

"It's always been about risks," Skye had told him.

Her green eyes were bright, her voice earnest. "That's what I learned from you. The real Jonathan Parnell had an idea that would have caused a revolution in our lives. You invested in a possibility, tried drawing to an inside straight. Had circumstances been even a bit different, you might have been holding a patent for an engine that would have brought thousands of people something better than they have now. It didn't work this time and we're all a little poorer for it. But do you really want to leave the game altogether?"

When it was put that way, Jay Mac wasn't about to refuse. He had looked at Walker then. "She wins a lot of arguments," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"You have years of this ahead of you."

Walker glanced across the table to Skye. His eyes held a smile and a challenge. "I know."

"You might think you've caught her," Jay Mac said, "but she's going to lead you a merry chase the rest of your life."

"I look forward to it," Walker had said.

Those words came back to him as Skye eluded his grasp when she turned the corner on the landing. She passed the master bedchamber, which had been Curran's, and then moved quickly past her own. She shot him a siren's smile over her shoulder, beckoning him with a sultry green glance that held a fair amount of mischief.