Teresa Medeiros (14 page)

The witch was wicked. She deserved to die
.

His callous words haunted her. How was she ever to determine if his exquisitely polished exterior hid a man’s vulnerable heart or simply a shriveled kernel, as dry and bitter as wormwood?

She ambled around the elegant suite, hoping to find some clue to his character, some evidence to prove her nightmare had been only an echo of her fears instead of a dire warning.

It was almost as if the salon had been deliberately cultivated to protect its occupant’s secrets. The rich cream of its walls, carpet, and settee was unbroken by a single splash of color. There were no cozy quilts to snuggle beneath on a snowy winter night, no leather-bound books scattered across the lacquered tables to expose his favorite authors or private passions. Perhaps he had none, Arian thought, running her finger along a sterile expanse of wall. The notion made her feel strangely melancholy.

She wandered over to an Oriental secretary and tugged open a drawer, ignoring a twinge of guilt.

Her search yielded only a stack of cream-colored stationery engraved with Lennox’s name, its edges precisely aligned to match the rim of the drawer. An exploration of the drawer beneath revealed a row of pens, neatly grouped by color and type. Arian sighed. Perhaps she’d been ignoring the obvious all along. Perhaps the salon’s very barrenness revealed Lennox’s nature more clearly than any discarded volume of poetry or threadbare pillow.

Perhaps he was nothing more than a methodically tidy man. A man who loathed any disruption of his orderly
routine. Her lips curved in a rueful smile. If that were so, he must truly despise her and the chaos her unconventional arrival had created.

She was sliding the bottom drawer into place when it hung on something she could not see. She reached into its recesses, drawing out a crumpled pamphlet printed on glossy paper. Her breath came a little faster. It wasn’t the pamphlet itself that excited her, but the very disregard with which it had been shoved to the back of the drawer.

“Forbes?”
she whispered, smoothing the wrinkles from the slick cover. “November nineteen ninety-five?”

It wasn’t the bold script of the unfamiliar title that made her heart leap, but the portrait beneath it. Not a portrait sketched by an artist, she quickly realized, but a photo-graph, an eerie likeness similar to the one of the woman on the bedroom dresser. But this was no stranger.

This was Tristan Lennox, captured for a moment in time in a thousand subtle shades of gray. Tristan as she had first seen him—waistcoat unbuttoned, shirt open at the throat, one arm draped casually over bended knee, sandy lashes unable to completely veil the steely glint in his eyes.

Tristan Lennox—Boy Billionaire or Financial Wizard?

The snide caption beneath the photograph jarred her from her reverie. She flipped impatiently through the pages until she found another photograph of Tristan, this one captured while he sat at the far end of a long, polished table. The artist’s choice of angles made him look undiminished, yet very alone.

Eager to scan the article, Arian groped blindly for the settee behind her. Perhaps now she would learn something of her enigmatic host more beneficial than his weakness for wheat-germ waffles or his distaste for disorder. Many of the modern terms eluded her, but she
struggled to piece together the fragments of Tristan’s life into some recognizable pattern.

The article made scant mention of his early life except to report that he’d been raised in a Boston orphanage. Arian felt a twinge of pity, although she knew instinctively that Lennox would despise her for it.

In 1986, at the age of twenty-two, he’d sought a patent on a computer microprocessor so fast it had made the 386 then in use look as if it were standing still. Within three years he had parlayed his discovery into a Fortune 500 company and added the feather of corporate raider to his cap. Arian studied a rare smiling image of Tristan. ’Twas only too easy to envision a dagger clamped between his gleaming teeth. What could a “corporate raider” be if not a polite euphemism for “pirate”? She wrinkled her nose in exasperation. ’Twas like trying to make sense of a foreign language.

Turning the page, she read aloud, “ ‘While many express grudging admiration for his meteoric rise in the competitive world of high finance, Lennox’s legendary ruthlessness has earned him more than a few enemies.’ ” The paragraph concluded with a quote from one of his many detractors (who had allegedly begged
Forbes
to let him remain anonymous for fear of retaliation): “Everything the son of a **** touches turns to gold. It’s almost like he has some sort of supernatural power. Like he sold his ****ing soul to the devil or something.”

Arian slowly lowered the magazine. Having been the victim of just such gossip herself, she knew how insidious its poison could be, yet she could not quite suppress a shudder of foreboding.

She muddled along through another page, then, frustrated by the obtuse blathering about “CPU’s” and “motherboards,” began to study the accompanying photographs instead: Tristan stepping into a long, black wagon that resembled a horse-drawn hearse without a horse; Tristan touring something called a stock exchange.
Arian was baffled by the absence of cows or pigs in the background. Tristan resplendent in black breeches and tailed coat, smirking down at the hollow-cheeked brunette on his arm; Tristan exchanging the brunette for an equally emaciated blonde. Beset by an unfamiliar pang, Arian touched her slightly rounded belly through the silk nightshirt, feeling plump for the first time in her life.

She sought the next page only to discover it was missing—not neatly excised as she would have expected, but ripped out by the seams, leaving only a jagged edge where it should have been. A curious chill crept over her, but it was banished by a treacherous swell of warmth when her gaze lit on the final photograph of the piece.

Tristan standing in a lumpy shirt etched with the letters MIT, his striking eyes almost hidden by a pair of thick, wire-rimmed spectacles. A lock of uncombed hair fell over his brow, and Arian absently touched the page, thinking to brush it back. He looked so young, so painfully awkward—his smile shy and uncertain, yet full of hope for the future. She searched, but could not find even a shadow of the cynical, dangerous man he would become.

She read the caption beneath, groaning at being presented with yet another challenge to her limited vocabulary. Hugging the pamphlet to her chest, she promised herself she would corner Sven first thing in the morning and force him to explain exactly what a “geek” was.

The laboratory staff of Lennox Enterprises stood at rigid attention, looking less like a delegation of the most brilliant scientists and technicians in the world than a defeated army facing a firing squad. A firing squad consisting of only one man, a man whose caustic tongue contained all the firepower necessary to annihilate them.

Tristan knew his pleasant smile had developed a distinctly unpleasant edge over the past three days. “So, Montgomery,” he said, pacing the immaculate white tile as a possible prelude to offering the engineer a last cigarette. “After seventy-two hours of gathering data, plotting flight trajectories, and analyzing theories, you have only one conclusion to offer me.”

The imposing Scotsman was all but squirming in his brogans. “Aye, sir. The wee lass was ridin’ a broom.”

Tristan paused, keeping his eyes downcast. His staff drew in a collective breath, waiting for his temper to ignite like carbolic acid pitched on a Bunsen burner.

But when Tristan finally lifted his gaze to their anxious
faces, his countenance was that of a condemned man. “Very well. Resume your duties.”

Starched lab coats rustling, they fled to their work stations, leaving Copperfield to unfold himself from his post by the door and follow Tristan into the corridor.

“Any word from Interpol or the local police?” Tristan asked.

Copperfield shook his head, falling into step beside him. “Lieutenant Derschiwitz promised us some answers no later than Friday afternoon. So how is our wee enchantress doing?” he added, valiantly trying to inject a note of levity into a situation growing grimmer with each passing day.

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen her since late last night. Sven says she’s spent the morning wolfing down tubs of Häagen-Dazs and watching Jerry Lewis movies.”

“Good God,” Cop muttered. “She is French.” He eyed the smudges of exhaustion beneath his friend’s eyes with concern. “It’s ridiculous for you to go on sleeping in your office, you know.”

“The problem isn’t where I’m sleeping, because I’m not.”

“At least you’re
not
sleeping with her,” Copperfield said darkly. “Another paternity suit could cost you a hell of a lot more than a million.”

Tristan knew the casual warning was meant to remind him that Arian was nothing but a ruthless scam artist, not inflict him with a stabbing pain in his chest. He slowed his pace, scowling. He’d already suffered a peculiar tightness in the region of his heart, then shortness of breath in Bloomingdale’s private salon. As soon as he was rid of the troublesome Miss Whitewood, he promised himself, he would have his assistant schedule him an appointment with a reputable cardiologist.

He wasn’t aware he was massaging the offending area until he caught Copperfield’s uneasy glance. “Is something wrong?” Cop asked.

“Nothing a productive day at the office won’t cure,” Tristan replied, seeking solace in the only place he’d ever found it. “Did Miss Alonzo fax you those figures I requested?”

Copperfield winced. “I was waiting for just the right moment to tell you this, but I’m afraid the only thing Miss Alonzo faxed me was her resignation. She’s lucky the tearstains didn’t short out her fax machine.”

“I was a little hard on her yesterday. Call her at home and tell her I’ll double her salary if she can be here by one o’clock.”

“Too late. Rumor has it that the
Global Inquirer
already tripled it in exchange for an exclusive.”

The soft-spoken, efficient Miss Alonzo had been Tristan’s personal assistant for over five years. Even as his lips tightened in a bitter smile, he wished he hadn’t lost the ability to be surprised by her desertion. “I suppose every woman has her price, even one as devoted as Miss Alonzo. She also has an ailing mother to support. Send her a generous severance check and have the agency rush over a temp.”

Arian had no inkling of Tristan’s personnel problems when she tiptoed into the penthouse elevator late that afternoon. She suppressed a groan when she saw the abundance of numbered buttons on the panel. ’Twould take hours, perhaps even days, to search every floor of this monstrous mansion for a library. But she had little choice. Despite her prodding, Sven had been unable to provide her with any fresh insights into his employer’s character. When she’d asked him what a “geek” was, the bespectacled behemoth had simply shaken his head and said, “My English is not so good. I think maybe is some kind of duck.”

Arian timidly tapped a random button, then clutched her stomach as the conveyance took a dive. She was thankful it wasn’t an express elevator. Despite Tristan’s assurances to the contrary, she still wasn’t convinced
the narrow glass tube wouldn’t send her hurtling toward a gruesome and inescapable death.

After Arian had wandered aimlessly through ten floors of nondescript corridors, earning nothing but indifferent shrugs and scathing glances directed at her bare feet in reply to her queries, a gruesome and inescapable death began to gain appeal. She almost wished she was back in her penthouse refuge watching
Bewitched
or playing Chutes and Ladders with Sven. A cry of relief escaped her when she spotted an elderly black man wielding a mop at the end of a lonely corridor.

He flashed her a grin that was more gum than teeth. “Hello, sweetheart. You lost?”

“More than you know,” she confessed. “I’m trying to find the library. Doesn’t anyone in the twentieth century read?”

He shook his head, clucking sadly beneath his breath. “Not as many as used to. Too many can’t and them that can are too busy watching TV.”

Arian sighed, beginning to fear her search for that other Tristan—the boy with the wire-rimmed spectacles and shy smile—was all in vain. “So there’s no library.” Her mind raced, seeking alternatives that might be more suited to this curious century. “Where would historical records be kept? Ledgers? Photo-graphs?”

The old man scratched his graying head. “Probably in Archives on the thirteenth floor.”

“Oh, thank you, sir! You don’t know how much you’ve helped me.” Arian stood on tiptoe to kiss his grizzled cheek before racing for the elevator. She could only pray that thirteen would prove to be her lucky number.

Arian pushed open the first pair of frosted glass doors she came to on the thirteenth floor, sniffing hopefully for leather and mildew. She almost got her nose knocked off when a red-faced young man came charging through the doors in the opposite direction without even bothering to beg her pardon.

She hopped out of harm’s way only to find herself plunged into a scene of utter chaos. Men and women rushed this way and that, darting in and out of tiny glass cubicles, waving fanfolded sheets of paper and bellowing orders. The deafening cacophony was underscored by inhuman beeps, shrill rings, and an incessant humming that jangled Arian’s nerves even more than the discordant shouts. What a noisy century this was! Her overloaded ears could catch only snatches of conversation.