Midnight Jewels (15 page)

"I have decided," Mercy told him with fine hauteur, "to give you a chance to explain yourself in private."

"Thank you."

"Don't try to sound humble. It doesn't work. Now tell me the exact truth. I don't want the Mickey Mouse version you gave the sheriff."

Croft glowered at her. "What I told the sheriff was the truth. I went down to the motel office a few hours ago and got
Valley
out of the safe. I didn't trust the desk clerk not to get bored enough or curious enough not to try to see what was inside the package."

"Tell me honestly, Croft, is the desk clerk going to remember any of this?"

"No. He'd been through a whole bottle by the time I knocked on the door. He won't remember a thing. If the amount of booze he'd consumed hadn't wiped out his memory, the concussion he got later would have done the trick. Just as I told the sheriff."

"Apparently he was functioning well enough to give you the combination to the safe and let you open it yourself," Mercy pointed out. "At least, that's what you implied to the sheriff."

"It's close enough to the truth." Croft shrugged.

Mercy's eyes widened. "The clerk didn't give you the combination?"

"Let's just say he conveniently left it lying around."

"Damn it, Croft, I want the whole truth."

"All right. The man was already passed out on the cot by the time I got there. Dead to the world. I tried to shake him awake and couldn't. I found the combination in a desk drawer in the office. You'd be amazed how many people keep computer access codes, safe combinations and important phone numbers taped conveniently at hand. I opened the
safe myself and removed
Valley
. I took it back to my room and went to bed. End of tale."

"Why do I always find myself believing you even when you tell me the most incredible stories?"

Croft lowered himself into the single chair in the room. "Beats me. Must be my natural charm."

"I can think of another name for it," she murmured, remembering the frightening willpower that had poured out of him when he had been attempting to force her cooperation. "Why were you so intent on convincing the sheriff that the thief wasn't after
Valley
?"

"I didn't have to work very hard at that. The sheriff came to that conclusion on his own. After all, whoever opened the safe a second time also broke into the coffee shop, lifted a stereo from one of the cars in the parking lot and got three wallets from first floor guest rooms before he made his assault on our floor. It was obvious me intruder was just checking all possibilities."

"It looks that way, doesn't it?" Mercy frowned down at the package in her hand. It was true
that the thief had covered a lot of territory. Surely anyone who had been after
Valley
wouldn't have bothered with a car stereo and a few wallets. "Who could have known about
Valley
in the first place? Unless the clerk told someone he'd put something valuable in the safe this evening. It doesn't make any sense."

"You're sure you didn't see anything of that man's face when he went past your window?" Croft asked quietly as he studied her bent head.

"No. It was just a figure in black sliding past my window. He halted for a second when I screamed and then he was gone." Mercy's head came up abruptly as she remembered exactly which direction the man had vanished. "He was headed toward your window."

Croft said nothing, watching her intent face as she worked through the possibilities.

"In fact," Mercy whispered slowly, "he could have gone onto your ledge, slipped into your room and—"

"Stripped off his clothes and appeared at your door a few seconds later in response to your scream?" Croft finished for her, not sounding particularly alarmed at the obvious conclusion. "Forget it. It wasn't me you heard going past your window tonight, Mercy."

His cool denial irked her. "You expect me to take everything you say at face value. How do I know it wasn't you running along my window ledge two hours ago?"

His eyes met hers. "Because if it had been me out there you wouldn't have heard a tiling." There was no trace of boastfulness in the words, it was just a statement of fact.

A ghost. You didn't hear a ghost when it moved. He was right.

Mercy sighed and set
Valley
beside her on the rumpled bed. "Well, I guess that's it, then. Just a casual bit of roadside violence. The desk clerk will survive and the intruder gets away with a car stereo and three wallets."

"Mercy."

"Yes, Croft?"

"There is another possibility." He spoke far too gently as he leaned back in his chair, rested his elbows on the edge and laced his strong hands under his chin. His hazel eyes were brooding and thoughtful.

"Somehow," Mercy responded wearily, "I was afraid you were going to say that. I'm not sure I want to hear this, Croft."

"I think it's time you did. There are a few tilings you should know about me and
Valley of Secret Jewels
."

Mercy touched the paper wrapping around the book, aware of a deep sadness welling up inside her. Angrily she fought it down. She had sensed from the beginning that
Croft's presence in her life wasn't going to be simple and straightforward. Still, a part of her wanted to resist hearing the full truth. She was certain that everything would change once she did. "If there are things I should know, why didn't you tell me before this?"

"Look at me, Mercy."

She gave him one quick, resentful glance and then went back to staring at the package beside her. "Just say what you have to say and get it over with, Croft. But this time around why don't you save us
both a lot of time and effort? Tell me the truth."

"I've never lied to you."

"Have you told me all the truth?" she countered tightly.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because until now there's been no need for you to know. All I had was a handful of questions I wanted answered. No facts, no real leads, no hard information, except for that copy of
Valley
."

Mercy yanked her fingers away from the package and sat waiting. "What about this copy of
Valley
?"

"It shouldn't exist. It should have been destroyed in a fire three years ago, along with a man named Egan Graves and everything in his collection."

"Why are you so concerned about its reappearance?"

"If
Valley
escaped the fire, there's the possibility Graves did, too."

"How do you happen to know all this?" Her voice was a thin reed of sound.

"I was there the night of the fire."

Mercy drew in her breath, afraid to move. "Where?"

"At Graves' estate down in the Caribbean."

"Did you set the fire?"

Craft shook his head. "No. It's not my way. I hadn't planned to use fire. There was a fight near the estate's dectrical room. A guard threw a small grenade and something exploded. The fire just blew up and consumed everything. Or nearly everything. Afterward I thought it was all over. There was no evidence that Graves had survived. I didn't see how he or anything else could have made it through the fire. It was an inferno."

Mercy was dazed. "Croft, what were you doing there? What was it all about?"

"Egan Graves ran a dirty little operation down on a Caribbean island where the U.S. authorities couldn't touch him. It was supposed to be a religious commune, a place of enlightenment. Graves called it the Society of the Graced. It was a cover for a sex and drug ring that sucked in naive young people, both male and female, and turned them into virtual slaves. They were controlled with a combination of drug addiction and a bizarre brand of hypnotic hype. The Society used its victims as prostitutes, actors in the ugliest kind of porn films, drug dealers, thieves, and whatever else seemed useful to build up Graves' empire. And it was all done under the guise of religious enlightenment."

Mercy stared at him. "How do you know about all this?"

"I was asked to go down to the island and bring out one of the victims. The daughter of a friend of mine. He also wanted Graves. He wanted him very, very badly. I understood."

"My God. What happened, Croft?"

"I got the girl out, along with several others. But not all, Mercy. I didn't get all of them. Some were so far gone that when the fire broke out they raced into the flames searching for their guru instead of running to safety." Croft's eyes were shadowed pools. "And I didn't get Graves. He vanished in the fire. Or so I believed."

Mercy looked at him, her mind conjuring up the scene readily.
Too readily
. It was as if she were getting the images directly from his memories rather than her imagination.

There was a shattering sense of emotion overlaying the unwanted pictures. "There would have been screams," she whispered. "Terrible screams."

He looked at her oddly. "You know. How do you know?"

She shook her head, trying to clear her mind of the images mat had flooded it. Impulsively Mercy lifted a hand as if to touch Croft. But she was too far away and she let her hand drop back into her lap. "You couldn't have saved all of them, Croft, especially not the really crazed ones. It must have been total chaos that night. Flames, people running around screaming, guards shooting. I can just imagine it. What a ghastly scene."

"Yes," he said softly. "It was." His eyes never left her face.

For a long moment they simply stared at each other. Mercy tried to work through what she had just been told, but it was difficult. She was torn between sympathy and fury. The combination of two such powerful emotions surging through her was disorienting. Carefully she tried to pick through the facts.

"You said your friend asked you to go down to this island?"

Croft nodded.

"He had some reason for thinking you could get his daughter out of there?"

"He had a reason, yes."

Mercy swallowed. "You'd done that sort of thing before?"

"Yes."

"Croft, what are you, for God's sake? Some kind of mercenary? Do you lease out your body and your skills to whoever pays your price?"

His expression hardened but he didn't move. "I worked for whoever needed me,
really
needed me, not just for whoever had the cash."

"I'm not sure I see the difference."

"I only took the jobs I wanted. I was sort of a private investigator, I suppose. My fees were high. I could afford to pick and choose my clients."

"Most private investigators do insurance claims and child custody work," she shot back.

He nodded in acknowledgement. "I didn't do that sort of work."

"I'll just bet you didn't." Mercy jumped to her feet and paced across the room to the window. She rested her forehead on the cool glass and closed her eyes. "Your talents lie in other directions, don't they? You said your field of interest was the philosophy of violence."

"I haven't done any investigative work for three years. I opened the schools when I got back from the Caribbean. It was time to stop doing the kind of work I had been doing."

"What are you trying to say, Croft? That you're no longer a violent man?"

"I am no longer a man who makes his living with violence," he said carefully. "Except indirectly by teaching self-defense."

She spun around. "You can say that? After going through all this trouble to accompany me to Gladstone's home? No more of your half-truths, Croft. I want it all."

He got slowly to his feet to face her. "I've told you the truth. The existence of
Valley
has raised some questions that must be answered. It's not a new job, it's old business. It must be seeded."

She watched him intently, aware of the unyielding will in the man. "And you're the type who always takes care of old business, right?"

"The Circle must be closed."

"I don't want to hear any of your macho philosophy! Just give me facts. I can deal with facts. On the other hand, maybe I've already got more than I want. You're not interested in
Valley
because you want the book for your own
collection but because it represents a link to something you thought had been settled three years ago."

"Yes."

"You're afraid you might not have finished the job you set out to do."

"Yes."

"And you're not interested in me because you find me fascinating and irresistible but because I'm another piece of the puzzle you're trying to solve. You're using me to follow the trail of the book."

Croft's brows came together in a hawklike frown. "That's enough, Mercy. Your logic is getting damned shaky. You and the book are two different issues."

"The hell they are. I can be just as logical as you, Croft Falconer. You're using me, and if you expect me to tolerate it you're out of your mind."

Croft sighed with genuine regret. "I'm sorry, Mercy. But you haven't got any choice in the matter. Things have gone too far."

She wanted to scream in frustration. Instead she fought for control. "Correction. I can stop them right here and now."

"You'd better take your shower and pack. It's almost dawn and I doubt if either of us is going to get any more sleep tonight." Croft turned and walked out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.

Mercy watched in helpless dismay. All thoughts of screaming in fury or retaliating with physical violence disintegrated.

What she really longed to do was cry. She felt trapped between Croft's rigid code of ethics and her own anger at being used.