On Wings of Magic (22 page)

KAY HOOPER, who has more than thirteen million copies of her books in print worldwide, has won numerous awards and high praise for her novels. Kay lives in North Carolina, where she is currently working on her next novel. Visit her website at
www.kayhooper.com
.

L
OOK FOR THESE BOOKS FROM
Kay Hooper
IN PAPERBACK

AFTER CAROLINE
AND
FINDING LAURA

Turn the page for a sneak peek
at these two novels
.

Two women who look enough alike to be twins. Both involved in car wrecks at the same time. One survives, one doesn’t
.

Now, plagued by a bewildering connection to a woman she never knew, driven by an urgent compulsion she doesn’t understand, Joanna Flynn travels three thousand miles across the country to the picturesque town where Caroline McKenna lived
—
and mysteriously died. There Joanna will run into a solid wall of suspicion as she searches for the truth: Was Caroline’s death an accident? Or was she the target of a killer willing to kill again?

It wasn’t much to cause such a drastic effect. Not much at all. A small spot on the road, maybe a smear of oil that had dripped down when some other car had inexplicably paused here where there were no side, streets or driveways or even wide shoulders to beckon. She never saw it. One moment, her old Ford was moving smoothly, completely under her control; the next moment, it was spinning with stunning violence.

She was jerked about like a rag doll, and clung to the steering wheel out of some dim conviction that she could somehow regain control over the vehicle. But the sheer force of the spin made her helpless. It seemed to go on forever, the summer green of the scenery revolving around her wildly, the anguished scream of tires on hot pavement shrill in her ears. Other cars cried out in response, their tires shrieking and horns blaring, adding to the cacophony blasting her.

And then there were actual blows as the whirling car began to strike stationary objects, the overgrown shrubbery that lined the street at first, and then small trees. Harsh shudders shook her and the car again and again.
The spinning slowed, she thought, but then the undercarriage snagged something that refused to give or let go, there was an ungodly wail of tortured metal, and the car flipped—not once, but over and over, as violently as it had spun on its wheels.

She didn’t realize she had closed her eyes until the car jolted a final time upright, rocked threateningly, and then went still with a groan.

In that first instant, she understood the phrase “deafening silence” all she could hear was her own heart thudding. Then, as though someone had turned up the volume, the sounds of people shouting and car horns filtered into her awareness. She opened her eyes cautiously, blinking back tears of fright.

The sight that met her gaze was appalling. The windshield’s shatterproof glass had simply vanished, and she could see with terrible clarity the long hood of her car now crumpled back toward her like some monstrous accordion, with unbroken headlights pointed bizarrely toward the sky. The passenger door had also been forced inward, so that she could have easily rested her elbow on it without even leaning to the right. And though the driver’s door seemed amazingly whole and unharmed, she knew without even looking back that the rear of the car had also folded in, so that she was encased in a tight box of collapsed metal.

She forced her hands to let go of the steering wheel and held them up to eye level, warily examining her fingers one at a time until she could convince herself that all ten were present and working properly. Then, as the voices came nearer to what was left of her car, she shifted a bit, carefully, waiting for a pain or some other indication of injury. She even managed to feel down her legs, bared by her summer skirt, and searched for damage.

Nothing. Not a scratch.

She wasn’t a religious woman, but staring around her at something that didn’t even look like a car anymore, she had to wonder if perhaps something or someone hadn’t been watching over her.

“Lady, are you all right?”

She looked through the glassless window into a stranger’s concerned face and heard an uncertain laugh emerge from her mouth.

“Yeah. Can you believe it?”

“No,” he replied frankly, a grin tugging at his lips. “You ought to be in about a million pieces, lady. This has gotta be the luckiest day of your life.”

“Tell me about it.” She shifted slightly, adding, “But I can hardly move, and I can’t reach the door handle. Can you get it open?”

The stranger, a middle-aged man with the burly shoulders that come of a lifetime’s hard work, yanked experimentally on her door. “Nope. There isn’t a mark on this door, but it’s been compressed in the front and back, and it’s stuck tight. We’re gonna need the Jaws of Life, sure enough. Don’t worry, though—the rescue squad and paramedics are on their way.”

Distant sirens were getting louder, but even so she felt a chill of worry. “I had a full tank of gas. You don’t think—”

“I don’t smell anything,” he reassured her. “And I’ve worked in garages most of my life. Don’t worry. By the way, my name is Jim. Jim Smith, believe it or not.”

“It’s a day to believe anything. I’m Joanna. Nice to meet you, Jim.”

He nodded. “Same here, Joanna. You’re sure you’re okay? No pain anywhere?”

“Not even a twinge.” She looked past his shoulder to watch other motorists slipping and sliding down the bank toward her, and swallowed hard when she saw just how far her car had rolled. “My God. I should be dead, shouldn’t I?”

Jim looked back and briefly studied the wide path of flattened brush and churned-up earth, then returned his gaze to her and smiled. “Like I said, this seems to be your lucky day.”

Joanna looked once more at the car crumpled so snugly around her, and shivered. As close as she ever wanted to come …

Within five minutes, die rescue squad and paramedics arrived, all of them astonished but pleased to find her unhurt. Jim backed away to allow the rescue people room to work, joining the throng of onlookers scattered down the bank, and Joanna realized only then that she was the center of quite a bit of attention.

“I always wanted to be a star,” she murmured.

The nearest paramedic, a brisk woman of about Joanna’s age wearing a name badge that said E. Mallory, chuckled in response. “Word’s gotten around that you haven’t a scratch. Don’t be surprised if the fourth estate shows up any minute.”

Joanna was about to reply to that with another light comment, but before she could open her mouth, the calm of the moment was suddenly, terribly, shattered. There was a sound like a gunshot, a dozen voices screamed,
“Get back!”
and Joanna turned her gaze toward the windshield to see what looked like a thick black snake with a fiery head falling toward her out of the sky.

Then something slammed into her with the unbelievable force of a runaway train, and everything went black.

There was no sense of time passing, and Joanna didn’t feel she had gone somewhere else. She felt… suspended, in a kind of limbo. Weightless, content, she drifted in a peaceful silence. She was waiting for something, she knew that. Waiting to find out something. The silence was absolute, but gradually the darkness began to abate, and she felt a gentle tug. She turned, or thought she did, and moved in the direction of the soft pull.

But almost immediately, she was released, drifting once more as the darkness deepened again. And she had a sudden sense that she was not alone, that someone shared the darkness with her. She felt a featherlight touch, so fleeting she wasn’t at all sure of it, as though someone or something had brushed her.

Don’t let her be alone
.

Joanna heard nothing, yet the plea was distinct in her mind and the emotions behind it were nearly over-whelming.
She tried to reach out toward that other, suffering presence, but before she could something yanked at her sharply.

Joanna? Joanna! Come on, Joanna, open your eyes!”

That summons was an audible one, growing louder as she felt herself pulled downward. She resisted for an instant, reluctant, but then fell in a rush until she felt the heaviness of her own body once more.

Instantly, every nerve and muscle she possessed seemed on fire with pain, and she groaned as she forced open her eyes.

A clear plastic cup over her (ace, and beyond it a circle of unfamiliar faces breaking into grins. And beyond
them
a clear blue summer sky decorated with fleecy white clouds. She was on the ground. What was she doing on the ground?

“She’s back with us,” one of the faces said back over his shoulder to someone else. “Lets get her on the stretcher.” Then, to her, “You’re going to be all right, Joanna. You’re going to be just fine.”

Joanna felt her aching body lifted. She watched dreamily as she floated past more faces. Then a vaguely familiar one appeared, and she saw it say something to her, something that sank in only some time later as she rode in a wailing ambulance.

Definitely your lucky day You almost died twice

Her mind clearing by that time, Joanna could only agree with Jims observation. How many people, after, go through one near-death experience? Not many. Yet here she was, whole and virtually unharmed—if you discounted the fact that the only part of her body that didn’t ache was the tip of her nose.

Still, she was very much alive, and incredibly grateful. At the hospital, she was examined, soothed, and medicated. She would emerge from the days incredible experiences virtually unscathed, the doctors told her. She had one burn mark on her right ankle where the electricity from the power line had arced between exposed metal and her flesh, and she’d be sore for a while both from
the shock that had stopped her heart and from the later efforts to start it again.

She was a very lucky young lady and should suffer no lasting effects from what had happened to her; that was what they said.

But they were wrong. Because that was the night the dreams began.

Over the years, the wealthy, aloof Kilbourne family has suffered a number of suspicious deaths. Now the charming, seductive Peter Kilbourne has been found stabbed to death in a seedy motel room. And for Laura Sutherland, a struggling artist, nothing will ever be the same. Because she was one of the last people to see him alive
—
and one of the first to be suspected of his murder
.

Now, determined to clear her name and uncover the truth about the murder
—
and the antique mirror that had recently brought Peter into her life
—
Laura will breach the iron gates of the Kilbourne estate
…
only to find that every Kilbourne, from the enigmatic Daniel to the steely matriarch Amelia to Peter’s disfigured widow Kerry, has something to hide. But which one of them looks in the mirror and sees the reflection of a killer? And which one will choose Laura to be the next to die?

“Did you kill my brother?” Daniel Kilbourne repeated when she remained silent.

“No.” Laura shook her head a little, her wide eyes never leaving his. “No, I didn’t kill him. I didn’t know him.”

Daniel came into the room slowly, relying on the control built over a lifetime to keep his expression unreadable. He went past her to the compact wet bar between the windows. “Drink?” She shook her head, and Daniel fixed a small Scotch for himself. He wasn’t a drinking man, but he needed one now.

Turning once again to face her, he moved toward her until he could rest a hand on the back of the couch between them. He sipped his drink, watching her, then said, “Peter went to see you Saturday. So you did know him.”

“I met him then,” she said, steady now. “But I didn’t know him. He spent less than fifteen minutes in my apartment, and then he left. That’s the only time in my life I’ve ever seen your brother.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Of course, you would say that, wouldn’t you?”

She drew a little breath, her fingers playing nervously with the strap of her shoulder bag. “You know I bought a mirror at your estate sale Saturday?”

He nodded. “Yes. The police asked me to verify that Peter had gone to see you because of the mirror.”

“You verified it?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know I was a stranger to him.”

He smiled slightly without amusement. “I know that’s the way it appeared.”

“It’s the way it
was
. He came to see me because he wanted to buy the mirror back. Do you—do you know why?”

Daniel looked down at his drink, moving his hand to swirl the ice cubes around in the glass. “No.”

He’s lying
. Laura knew it. She didn’t know why he was lying, but she knew he was. She watched him lift the glass to his lips, her gaze fastening onto his right hand. He wore a big gold ring with a carved green stone that might have been jade or emerald, and there was something eerily familiar about how he held the glass with only his thumb and two fingers.

It was difficult for her to think clearly; she was still shaken and bewildered by the instant physical attraction she had felt to him. She had never been a woman who reacted to men quickly, cautious in that as she was in no other area of her life, and she wasn’t quite sure how to cope with what she felt. He was a
stranger
, and a man moreover who thought her at least capable of being a killer, yet she couldn’t take her eyes off him, and all her senses had opened up so intensely that she felt nakedly unprotected.

Daniel lacked Peter’s beauty, but his harsh features were compelling in a sensual way that made the younger brother seem almost absurdly boyish in retrospect. Daniel’s big, powerful body moved with uncanny grace, with the ease of muscles under absolute and unthinking control, and his very size and strength spoke of command, of natural forces just barely contained. She thought of a big cat moving silently through a dark and dangerous jungle, and the image was so strong she could have sworn there was a scent of primitive wildness in the room.

To Laura’s bewilderment, her body seemed to open up just as her senses had, to soften and grow receptive as if in invitation. Her skin heated, her muscles relaxed, her breathing quickened. Her knees felt weak, shaky. She felt an actual ache of desire.

My God, what’s happening to me?

Struggling inwardly to control what she felt, to concentrate on what she had come here to find out, Laura managed to speak evenly. “You don’t know why Peter wanted to buy the mirror back, but you know that’s why he came to see me on Saturday?”

“As I told the police.” His pale eyes were fixed on her face, intent, almost hypnotically intense. He was absently swirling the ice around and around in his glass, the movement causing his ring to flash shards of green.

His hand was long fingered and strong; she wondered if his touch would be sensitive or if it would overpower with its strength. A flare of heat burned inside her as speculation created a rawly sexual image in her mind. “You don’t know why the mirror was important to Peter?” she asked with an effort.

“That’s what I said.” His voice was even, his gaze unreadable.

Whatever she felt, he seemed unaffected, and seemed not to notice that she hardly shared his composure. Laura tried to draw a steadying breath without making the need for one obvious. “He said the mirror was an heirloom. Is it?”

“As far as I know, Miss Sutherland, it was one of
many unused, unwanted items packed away in the attic by God knows who, God knows how many years ago.” He had only a trace of a Southern accent, something common to people who had lived and traveled much outside the South.

“Would anyone else in the family know more about it?”

“I doubt it.” He was abrupt now, a slight frown narrowing his eyes.
And it’s not really the best time to ask them
, he might as well have added.

It struck Laura for the first time that Daniel seemed completely unmoved for a man who had buried his brother two days before. Had the two men disliked each other? Or was Daniel merely a controlled man who gave away little of his emotions? He certainly
looked
hard, with those harsh features and chilly blue eyes, and though his attitude toward her said plainly that he was not inclined to believe her relationship with his brother had been either recent or innocent, he didn’t appear angered or in any way disturbed by the possibility that his brother’s murderer might be standing before him.

Still, he was obviously at least conscious that his was a house of mourning, and she wondered if that was why he had agreed to meet and talk to her—so that other members of the family, closer to Peter, would not be disturbed.

Slowly she said, “But you don’t believe the mirror has any value to anyone in the family?”

“I don’t believe anyone else will wish to buy it back from you, no,” he replied indifferently. His wide shoulders moved in a slight shrug, drawing her eyes and causing her concentration to waver yet again. There was so much of strength and power about him, so much of force or the possibility of force. And yet she wasn’t afraid of him, she thought.

Aware, suddenly, of a silence that had gone on just those few seconds too long, she said hastily, ‘Then you won’t mind if I try to find out why Peter wanted to buy it back.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Mind? No. But just how do you propose to do that?”

“It’s an old mirror; it’s bound to have a history. I have a researcher looking into that.”

“Why?”

Laura hesitated an instant before answering him. “I … collect mirrors, so I probably would have done it anyway just out of curiosity. But since your brother tried to buy the mirror back, and then was killed hours later, I need to know if there was some connection to his murder. For my own peace of mind.”

“I see.”

Hearing something in his voice, she said tightly, “The
only
connection between your brother and me is that mirror, Mr. Kilbourne. I was not having an affair with him, if that’s what you think.”

His eyes were narrowed again, fixed on her face, and his voice was very deliberate when he said, “I haven’t quite made up my mind what I think about you, Miss Sutherland. Let’s just say I knew my brother very well. He never met a beautiful woman he didn’t try to get into his bed. And that was not something at which he often failed.”

Laura ignored the backhanded compliment. “Be that as it may, I’m not in the habit of sleeping with men on fifteen minutes’ acquaintance. Or married men at all, for that matter. Whatever you think of your brother’s morals, you have no right to make assumptions about mine.”
Hell incline his head slightly to the side in that mocking way
.

He did just as she expected, the gesture familiar to her for no reason she could explain to herself.

“I was brought up never to call a lady a liar,” he said dryly. “So we appear to have a standoff. I don’t
quite
believe your relationship with my brother was innocent, and you have no way of proving it was.”

The fact that he was all too right about the latter point was something Laura found distinctly unsettling. She didn’t want anyone to believe she had been sexually involved
with Peter Kilbourne, not the public, not the press, not the police, not the family—and most certainly not this man.

“At least believe I didn’t kill him,” she said, hearing the plea in her voice.

She thought that harsh face might have softened imperceptibly, thought there was a glint of warmth in the chilly eyes, but whatever Daniel would have replied to her plea was lost forever when a new force entered the study.

“Thank you, Miss Sutherland. Or may I call you Laura?” Her voice was soft, her accent more Alabama than Georgia.

“Of course.”

“And everyone calls me Amelia. I hope you will.”

“Thank you.” Laura could almost feel Daniel’s sardonic gaze on the back of her head, and wished to heaven he’d move around the sofa where she could keep an eye on him. It was like having the big cat of her imagination crouching in darkness behind her, ready at any moment to spring forward and devour—or at least seize—his prey.

And she felt more than a little uncomfortable facing his grandmother, wondering how swiftly Amelia’s gracious manner would desert her when she found out just who their visitor really was. But then Amelia spoke again, her tone still pleasant, and it became clear that she knew exactly who she was entertaining.

“I understood the police are looking for evidence connecting you to my grandson, Laura.”

It was hardly a question, and the suddenness of it caught Laura off guard, but she tried to keep her voice steady when she said, “I met Peter for the first time on Saturday, Mrs. Kilbourne.”

“Amelia, my dear. Please.”

“Amelia, then. Thank you. He just came to my apartment to talk about a mirror I bought here that day.”

“Yes, my dear, so the police said.” Amelia brushed the mirror aside, uninterested. “But it appears that Peter was
seen several times in the company of a beautiful redhead, and it seems the police want to cast you in that part.” Her tone was brisk and matter-of-fact, and if she round it distressing that her grandson should have been seen in the company of a woman not his wife, she didn’t let her feelings show.

His voice level, Daniel said, “Have you been talking to the police, Amelia? I thought we agreed that I would handle them.”

“You forget, Daniel, the commissioner is an old friend of mine.” She glanced up at him, a hint of pleased triumph in her eyes. “He called to tell me how the case was progressing.”

“And obviously,” Daniel said grimly, “let his tongue run away with his judgment.”