JanesPrize (10 page)

“Does it make a big difference?” Jane
asked.

“It means the owner will have to think
again about selling. At least lower the price. They don’t need the money,
except it’s all tied up in the property and lying idle.” That was good news,
anyway.

“Did you say something about an heir?”

“Yes, old Mr. Newland always maintained
that Pierce, the one who disappeared years ago, might come back, or one of his
descendants would.”

“And that person would inherit.”

“Indeed they would. Mr. Newland has no
children so the fortune and the property would go to Pierce’s sons or
grandsons.”

How about Pierce himself?

“And no one has any idea where this Pierce
person might be?”

Abigail shook her head. “If you ask me he’s
dead long since, but try telling Mr. Newland that. He’s almost ninety but still
very active with a mind of his own, let me tell you.” The video had come to an
end and she switched off the machine. “Well thank you, dear. You did what we
asked. I’ll get your check.”

She got to her feet and opened a filing
cabinet. Extracting a file folder, she took out an envelope. “Here you are. The
remaining four thousand dollars.”

Jane took it from her. “Thank you. Do you
know where Mr. Newland lives?

“Oh yes. But he doesn’t receive many
visitors. He’s a bit of a recluse.”

“Maybe I’ll contact him anyway just in case
he has any questions about the house. Can you give me directions?”

“If you want. Please sign on the bottom of
the page.” She pushed a pen and a document toward Jane, who scribbled her name
to indicate she had received the promised amount of money.

With the remaining Newland’s address in her
purse, Jane swung by the bank to deposit the check. Pierce was waiting for her
by the car and she paused for a moment to look at him. She had parked right
outside a real estate office and he was scanning the pictures in the window,
hands in his pockets. The jeans and T-shirt he wore were totally unremarkable
but he wore them with such an air that Jane noticed several girls steal a
second glance at him as they passed by. With his dark hair falling over one eye
he had the look of his namesake Brosnan. It was easy to imagine him playing the
daredevil secret agent.

Jane moved forward and went to stand beside
him before he saw her. He greeted her with a wide smile and an arm around her
shoulders. “How did it go?”

“Okay I think. You were great as a ghost.”

“I was a ghost.”

“I mean on the film.” She stroked his arm.
It was warm and solid and very real. “I think they bought it and will advise
your cousin. I have his address.”

“Perfect. I’ll go see him after I’ve done
one thing.”

“Can I guess what that might be?”

“I should say do a few things, and I bet
you can guess one.” He squeezed her shoulder and pointed to one of the notices
in the window. “There’s a nice-looking apartment.”

Jane focused on the picture, which showed
an attractive building surrounded by trees. “One bedroom and a den. It’s a
rental.” That wasn’t necessarily a bad idea. She could use her savings for
furniture.

“Shall we take a look at it?” he said.

“When?”

“Right now.”

Suddenly the idea of moving in with him
became very real. This was serious stuff. “I don’t know—we have lots of time to
look around…”

Before she could protest further he opened
the door and ushered her into the office. Within ten minutes, a young man—“call
me Bob”—had made a phone call, pocketed the key to the apartment and was
leading them to his car.

The building was only a few blocks away, centrally
located on a quiet street.

They listened to the spiel about taxes,
heating systems and goodness knows what else. It all went over Jane’s head
because all she could think of were Pierce’s warm hard body pressed close to
her and the words he’d whispered in her ear as they followed the agent onto the
street. “We need a place to fuck before I explode.”

The apartment was on the second floor, well
carpeted but devoid of furniture. “The previous tenant had to move at short
notice,” Bob told them. “But everything is in good order.”

Pierce nodded. “I understand. We’ll take a
look around.”

“Sure thing. Take your time. I’ll wait for
you on the balcony.”

As soon as Bob disappeared through the
French doors Pierce seized her hand and pulled her in the direction of the
bedroom. A large walk-in closet occupied most of the wall opposite the windows,
making an oversized entrance through to the bathroom. Pierce opened the
louvered doors and thrust her inside, pulling the doors closed behind them. Two
clothing rails ran along each side of the open space. The connecting door to
the bathroom was closed.

“We’ve got about ten minutes,” he said
breathlessly and unbuckled his belt. “I like it when you wear a skirt. Much
easier to reach you quickly.”

Jane kicked off her shoes, flipped her
skirt to her waist and pulled her damp panties down while she watched him lower
his jeans and briefs. His cock was large and pulsing, a pearly drop shimmering
on the end. The sunlight from the bedroom came though the louvers in honeyed
bands where dust motes danced.

“The realtor—”she gasped.

“Might come in. That’s the point, isn’t it?
Pull up your shirt so I can see your breasts.” She did as he said and at the
same time unhooked her bra. Her breath was coming hard and fast.

“Grab the bar.”

She had thought of the floor, flat and
hard, carpeted though it was, but it seemed Pierce had other ideas. She reached
up and seized the closet rail, sending a couple of old wire coat hangers
spinning to the floor. Pierce put his arms under her backside and took her
weight. Her breasts were on a level with his mouth and her pussy skimmed his
crotch. She wound her legs around his waist. He buried his face against her hot
skin, took her nipple into his mouth and sucked hard. She cried out and moved
instinctively, jiggling her hips until she felt the head of his cock push
against her opening. She was so wet that he slid inside her easily, the size of
him stretching her so she gasped aloud again.

He lifted his head and licked her breast
around the areola with the tip of his tongue. “I want you to hang on.”

She was incapable of speech and could only
nod, not knowing if he could even see her.

She felt his fingers grasp the cheeks of
her ass, settling in the crack so she was held tight against him. “Have you got
the bar?”

She managed to grunt an answer.

“Because I’m going to come so hard I’ll
send you through the wall if you don’t hold it for all you’re worth.”

Jane supposed she must have done as he
said, although all she could think of was the movement of his hips, the pressure
of his cock inside her, the utter uselessness of trying to do anything but suck
him deeper and deeper in.

She felt him shudder and pause for a brief
second. The electric warmth and the wave built inside her, sweeping everything
to the one central spot exactly where his body met hers.

She convulsed and exploded at the same
moment as he and felt the warm gush of his semen as she came apart.

The clothing bar gave way, sending them
both crashing to the carpet.

Chapter Ten

Jane landed on her back, his weight
sprawled across her naked legs. After the first few seconds of shock she was
overcome by a desire to laugh. It was so slapstick comedy. She stuffed a loose
bit of his T-shirt into her mouth to muffle her giggles. But that meant he was
attached to her and couldn’t get up. She replaced the scrap of shirt with her
hand and Pierce rolled off and bent to pull up his pants.

“Is everything okay?” The voice of the
realtor floated through the small apartment. The crash must have been clearly
audible out on the balcony. Jane scrambled to her feet, suddenly stone cold
sober, pulled down her skirt and tugged her shirt back into place. Pierce
buckled his pants and shoved her into the bathroom with her underwear.

“Close the door,” he hissed.

The bathroom was a fair size with a tub and
shower. She closed the door and stepped into her panties. She could hear Pierce
talking to the realtor.

“Just checking the fittings,” she heard him
say. “She has so many clothes that we’ve had the problem of broken rails
before.”

Bob murmured something.

“No problem in fixing it,” Pierce said.
“We’ll take the apartment.”

Jane’s jaw dropped. He was a take-charge
guy, but didn’t this go a little too far? She flushed the toilet to give a
reason for lurking in the bathroom then checked herself in the mirror. Hair a
little mussed, so she smoothed it with her hands and a splash of water. Cheeks
flushed. Nothing she could do about any of that. She took a deep breath and
emerged.

Pierce and Bob were standing in the bedroom
looking at a sheet of legal-sized paper. Pierce’s eyes were bright and his
color high but he was perfectly calm and rational.

“There you are, sweetheart,” he said. “Do
you want to take a look at this contract?”

“I think I do, since it will be my name on
it.”

Bob looked a little embarrassed at her
tone.

“Don’t you like it?”

“It’s fine but—”

Pierce took her hand. “You know you were
saying we had to find somewhere fast because of our commitments.” He squeezed
her fingers. “We do urgently require a place of our own.”

She supposed they did if making love was
going to be on the schedule several times a day.

She cleared her throat and took the
contract. They could take the apartment on a monthly basis. Even if Pierce
inherited the mansion it would take months for the legal work to be completed
and make all the renovations that would be needed. He was right. This apartment
was close to her school in the town. They would also be private and
undisturbed. It would give them time to look for something else if the
inheritance didn’t pan out. And it was within her budget.

She turned to Bob. “Do you have a pen?”

Bob drove them back to the office. Jane
gave him the security deposit and the first month’s rent check and retrieved
her car.

“Okay.” She’d lost count of the tasks on
Pierce’s list. “You said a ‘few’ things on your list. What else?”

“I’d like to go to the cemetery and check
out the monuments.”

She’d never thought of that. Of course the
dates and names would be there. She unlocked the car door.

“My family had a mausoleum. They should all
be there. Or at least the memorial plaques.”

Jane had never been fond of cemeteries,
especially since her father died, but she could see how it might help Pierce in
what he needed to find out.

“No problem. Do you want to go right now?”

He slid into the passenger seat. “I think
so.”

The cemetery was old and some tombstones
were overgrown. It was obvious some families had died out, leaving no one to
tend the plots. Pierce strode to a far corner where two large stone structures
lay half hidden beneath the overhanging trees. The one on the right was closed
by iron gates, fastened with a rusty padlock. He picked up a stone.

“Make sure there’s no one around,” he said.

Jane checked back along the path they’d
taken and the surrounding bushes. “All clear.”

He gave the padlock a sharp blow then
another. Flakes of rust fluttered to the grass. “One more should do it.”

In the end it wasn’t the lock which broke
but the hasp which shattered. Pierce drew it from its setting. It needed their
combined strength to lift the gates from where they had sunk into the ground
and pull them open.

Once inside the small patch of grass they
found another obstacle. The doors to the mausoleum were closed with a bolt that
had rusted firmly into the sockets. Set into the wall to the right of the doors
there seemed to be a slab of a different color. Jane rubbed off some moss and
dirt, revealing two names.

“Look at this.”

Pierce stopped jiggling the bolt. “Good
work.” He joined her in cleaning off the stone and more letters emerged.
“There’s the list of us all, back to my grandfather at least.” He slapped his
pockets. “Do you have paper and a pencil?”

“In the car.” She ran back to retrieve the
spiral notebook that she used to jot down her notes about school or shopping.

When she returned, Pierce had uncovered the
rest of the inscriptions on the stone.

Pierce traced each letter with his index
finger and read out the names. Jane listed them in her notebook. George Arthur,
William Peter, Stanislaus…

“Stanislaus?” She stopped writing and
looked up.

“My little half-brother. My stepmother was
a Polish widow.”

“Interesting.”

Eventually they had them all noted. There
was a Pierce Andrew in there and a Pierce Lonsdale but not her own Pierce.
Because he had disappeared.

“So Pierce seems to have been a family name.”

“Right. I could keep my name. Look.” He
took the notepad from her. “I was born in 1898 and died 1928 so if I had really
disappeared I could have had children around 1930. A son could reasonably have
had another son—my grandson—in the late seventies. That would be me.”

“Okay. We can try that but—”

“Here’s my stepmother. See, she only lasted
five years after me.” Pierce brushed his fingers lightly over the name.

Jane’s cell phone rang, a jarring note in
the quiet of the cemetery, making her jump. It was Annice. “Where are you?
Weren’t we supposed to meet for lunch?”

Startled, Jane glanced at her watch. “I’m
sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late. Where can I find you?”

“Never mind. I have to get back for a
meeting in fifteen minutes.”

“Annice, I’m really sorry.”

“Forget about it. I can guess what you were
up to.”

Jane’s face grew hot. “I found an apartment
and right now we’re collecting family names from the cemetery.”

“A likely story but good for you if it’s
true. Look, do you remember Henry Galston from high school?”

“A geeky kid with pimples and thick
glasses?”

“You got it. Well I ran into him the other
day and he’s changed.”

“In what way?”

“He’s turned into a bit of a stud actually,
and he has the hots for me.”

Jane didn’t know what to say. What had this
got to do with her?

“He works for some high-end computer
security outfit and can get you a false ID.”

“What? How? Why would he do that?”

“I called him and made a date. He says it’s
a piece of cake to create a false identity as long as he has a picture of the
subject. As to why? One, he likes doing it. Says he likes the thrill. Two, he
wants to get in my pants.”

“And will you?”

“Let him in my pants? Of course I will.
He’s gorgeous and I’d do it even if he didn’t make the ID. But he doesn’t need
to know that. So come back into town and get your man’s picture taken.”

Your man
.
What a ring to those two words!

Over the next few days they worked out
their story and kept it simple. With the money from the law firm, they quickly
bought some basic furniture and moved into the vacant apartment. They had a
bed, a table and two chairs. Plus a TV so Jane could show Pierce movies and
keep up with the news.

Their next door neighbor was an elderly
widow, Mrs. Watkins, but they didn’t meet any other residents of the block.

In the scenario they devised Pierce would
be the grandson of the man who had disappeared from the family estate in Maine.
He would claim to know little of his putative grandfather. Pierce and his
invented father, named Stanislaus after the little boy who had died in the
influenza epidemic, had supposedly lived many years in California.

Pierce looked at the fictitious family tree
Jane drew. “It’s true I was fond of little Stan,” he said. “I wish he’d lived.”

“Maybe he would now,” she said. “The flu is
still dangerous for some but he probably could have survived if he’d been born
fifty years later.”

He nodded. “So I know enough about when I
disappeared and enough from what you’ve told me of events in the twentieth
century. I can fake the California stories.”

“Maybe. I still think you need more
coaching.”

He grabbed her and waltzed around the empty
living room. “Oh coach me,” he said. “I love it when you coach me. Be the
strict teacher and coach me to death.”

“Okay. You learn this list of dates and
I’ll give you a kiss for every one you memorize.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Make it a kiss and
a piece of clothing.”

“Only if you take something off if you get
it wrong. Fair’s fair.”

“No problem. When we’re both naked we go
right to bed. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

He peered at another sheet of paper she’d
put aside. “What’s this?”

“A comprehensive test I’m working on.
Politicians, political events…”

He lifted her hair and kissed her neck.
“That’s worth a lot more. If I get a perfect score we go immediately to bed.”

Jane sighed and agreed. How could she
refuse something she wanted so much? She could predict they’d be spending a lot
of time half naked or between the sheets.

“I want to leave time to watch some old TV
programs so you can see the changes that have occurred.”

She met Annice for coffee a few days later.

“Where’s the ghost?”

“Hush.” Jane looked around the coffee shop
but no one seemed interested in them. “Pierce is at home, watching a movie.”

Annice raised an eyebrow. “What kind of
movie?”

“We watch a lot of documentaries, some
detective stuff, some political thrillers…”

“Sounds okay. Probably a bit boring if
you’ve seen them before.”

Jane took a sip of her coffee. “I can stand
that.”

Annice looked at her over the rim of her
mug. “What can’t you stand?”

Jane sighed. “He likes horror movies.”

“You mean like the Elm Street ones?”

“Exactly like that. Stephen King, cult
classics, grave robbers, space aliens, the more fantastic the better.”

Annice pulled a face. “Yech!”

“I know. So we made a deal.”

“Tell me.”

“He watches those when I’m out and we watch
the other stuff together. He really liked
Sleepless in Seattle
and that
one about the brother in a coma…”

“I know the one you mean. I bet you act
them out.” Annice gave a grin and leaned forward, lowering her voice. “I know I
would.”

Jane felt the heat rise in her face, giving
her away.

Annice chuckled. “I knew it!”

Jane dabbed her forefinger against some
crumbs and brushed them onto her plate. She made herself think of the question
that had been in her mind for days, through all the coaching, the movies and
the wild sex. “You said you would do a police check. Did you find anything?”

Annice smiled. “Not a single thing. But
that doesn’t mean he’s not a serial killer. Just that he’s never been caught.”

Jane let out a long breath. “He’s not a
serial killer.”

“Maybe not but it could still be some kind
of elaborate con.”

“Tell me, what he would have to gain?”

“Well a mansion and a fortune would be a
start.”

“But why would he need me?”

“He wouldn’t. You’re just a bonus.”

“No, it doesn’t make sense. He had no way
of knowing I would tackle him and bring him back…”

“You’re still assuming he really was a
ghost.”

“We’ve been through this before. I saw the
murder scene, the furniture, everything.”

“I know. But—”

Jane put down her cup. “I know you worry
about me,” she said. “And I know you’re thinking of my welfare but I know
Pierce now better than I’ve ever known anyone in my life. I believe him and I
want to help him to fit in.” She smiled and touched her friend’s hand to soften
her words. “I’d also like to keep him. Even if it does mean a diet of horror
movies.”

Annice sighed and raised her hands in mock
surrender. “All right already. I give in. When do you want to see Henry? He’s
free tomorrow evening.”

Jane glanced to one side as a couple left
the booth next to them.

“Hey, Earth to Jane. Those films are
getting to you. Come back to me.”

Annice’s words sounded far away, as if
whispered in a tunnel. Jane felt the blood drain from her face. The woman
settling into a seat by the window looked exactly like Pierce’s stepmother.