Leap of Faith
“Caleb, what happened? What happened?” I barely heard Scarlet’s voice.
My baby.
I stared openmouthed at Simon. We locked gazes. I couldn’t miss the amusement in his eyes.
“Oops.” He grinned back.
My eyes searched the courtyard below, the grounds, out into the gardens. She’d fallen beyond the security fence on the compound’s perimeter. I caught a flash of white T-shirt as she tumbled down the hill and out of sight.
A three-story fall. Could she be okay? Could she be alive? Could— I let out a yelp as reality set in.
I felt Eric’s eyes on me. I sensed his pain at seeing my own, but I had no time for it.
Lilah. Lilah, my life.
I bounded across the crosswalk toward the eastern tower, snatching the utility belt from under my sweater. I flung it into the sky as I ran, bringing it down into the scaffolding in a fast loop around the upper bar as I launched myself into thin air. The utility hook grabbed the bar and held. I heard the chaos behind me. Simon yelling. Scarlet crying. Caleb yelling. None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was getting to my baby. The cord unraveled behind me as I swung out wide beyond the southern tower and over the security fence. I let go and tumbled to the grass. My knee gave way under me, but I pulled myself up and kept going. I had to keep going. I had to.
I plunged toward Lilah where she’d plummeted down the hill. She was sprawled like a broken doll. Arms still tied behind her at the wrists but in an awkward angle that didn’t seem human. One leg askew, obviously broken. She didn’t move.
I hit the ground and tumbled toward her. It was faster than limping. I knew before I touched her that she was dead.
“Ah, baby.” I crawled to her, touched her hair, soothed the dirty wisps that escaped from the edges of the blindfold. A scarf. Robin’s-egg blue. A beautiful blue. With gold threads through it. Probably Scarlet’s. It matched her outfit of the day. They’d used Scarlet’s scarf to blindfold my daughter. I wonder if she even knew.
“My baby,” I whispered. Full-grown. I never got to meet her full-grown. In my mind, despite the private investigator’s photographs, she was still ten years old. “I’m so sorry, baby.” I kissed her forehead. “If I could rewrite my life, I swear, Lilah, this would all be different.”
Gently I lifted the blindfold and peeled it back to look into her beautiful eyes one last time.
What the hell?
I blinked. I didn’t know these eyes.
Then I realized that I did. Green eyes. Nose ring. Nicole. The runaway. The girl in San Francisco. The girl who’d posed as my daughter to escape her stepfather. My contact in L.A.— George, who created new identities for various Adriano assignments—had betrayed me. Betrayed her. Had given her to Simon thinking she was my child. Mine and Matthew’s.
Damn you! I sobbed, sinking a clenched fist into her shoulder and then pounding her shoulder again. Damn you, damn you, damn you, you naive little girl! I let my fist rest on her shoulder and then pressed my forehead to hers. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t Nicole I wanted to strike but the man who’d done this to her. I’d sworn to keep her safe and to kill anyone who hurt her, but all I had to pour my shame into was a broken body. I pulled her to me and kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
I shook off a deep need to stay and mourn this girl. There’d be time for that later. Because if Nicole was the only child Simon had attached to me, then Simon didn’t know about Lilah. This girl had been sacrificed in my daughter’s place. And that meant—
Lilah’s still alive! Safe!
I pushed up off my feet and quickly checked the direction of the sun. I made my way to the trees and brush, the rocks, heading as fast as I could go toward the entrance of the tunnel Myrddin had shown me. I needed a place to hide, at least until things calmed down. Then, after dark, I’d head toward the place we’d hidden the car. I could hear shouting from within the Adriano compound. They’d be here within moments. I couldn’t look back. I would never look back again. Only forward.
“Leaving empty-handed?” A voice spun me around and I came face-to-face with Interpol agent Analise Reisner. With a gun. She couldn’t have picked a worse time.
“Look,” I said, palms in the air, angling to get around her, “I don’t want to fight you.”
She smiled grimly. “You don’t look like you have any fight left in you.”
Reisner was right about the way I looked. Bedraggled and exhausted. Not calm, athletic, robust like Reisner, but still with plenty of fight in me, especially if it meant Lilah was alive.
“Dropping off another artifact you acquired for your benefactor?”
“Simon’s not my benefactor. Not anymore. And I can’t stay here or they’ll kill me. And no, I didn’t make my delivery.”
“But I saw—”
“They had my… something very important to me. I mean, I thought they did. Look, you don’t owe me anything, but—”
“I’m here to help you.” The air seemed to crackle between us. My skin tingled.
I eyed her suspiciously. Help? She’d been chasing me for months. I’d saved her life in France and in return she’d let me get away, but I’d always known I’d have to face her again. No doubt, she could tell I didn’t believe her.
“Myrddin.”
“Myrddin?” I repeated. She knew Myrddin?
“I was sent to make sure you didn’t come back from San Francisco with a present for the Duke. I failed. Yesterday morning, Myrddin told Cat you were on your way to Paris with some important artifacts that had to stay out of Adriano hands. I was to tag you.” She holstered her weapon. “When I lost you, I retraced my path to here.”
“You were going to… help me?” I glanced over my shoulder at the sounds of chaos behind me. I couldn’t linger much longer. “Why would you help me?”
“I understand we have some ancestors in common.”
I froze and stared at her. No, not a descendant of Isabelle. An ancestry that went farther back than that. To a time when our foremothers had been sisters in their mission, priestesses of the Mother. She was one of my kind, too. How many of us were there?
“I have to get out of here. Now.”
“I have a boat.” She dug a set of keys out of her pocket and pitched them to me. “It’s down at the water access. Only one there. Will I see you at Cat’s?”
I nodded. “And you? What about you?”
She shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do to stir up some trouble here with the guards. Give you a delay. And don’t worry. I’ve called the local police for backup. They’ll make sure I get away in one piece.”
I caught my bottom lip between my teeth and frowned in the direction of Nicole’s rag-doll body. “The girl…”
We locked gazes, both of us silently acknowledging the casualties of this war with the Adrianos.
“Innocent bystander,” I whispered, swallowing the lump in my throat. The words were lost between us, but she read my lips and nodded.
“I’ll see that the police take care of that, too.” She gestured toward the bay. “Now, go. I’ll be safe. See? My backup’s already at the main gate.”
I twisted my jaw to one side. “One more thing. I’m not going to be able to retrieve those artifacts for a while, and they can’t stay where I left them.”
Reisner nodded. “I’d be more than happy to pick them up for you.”
“I thought so. But don’t go hauling them all back to Interpol. Some of those artifacts belong to me personally.” I frowned. “Some may belong to you personally, too.” I had no idea if she’d inherited tiles, as well. “Go to Naples. Get on the Circumvesuviana train line. Get off at the Pompeii Scavi. I left a navy-blue blanket hidden in the ceiling above the toilets. You’ll know it when you see the Adriano logo on the blanket.”
I heard her wish me luck as I ran toward the water access. I had to slide down between the rocks, digging my heels into the ground to keep from plunging down to the water. Once the Adrianos found out I hadn’t delivered the real tiles, they’d never stop hunting me. I’d have to die to escape them.
I have to die.
I wished I could tell Eric. I wished I could say goodbye to him. As long as he was a man of his word, there would be nothing for either of us to worry about.
“Ha!” Algernon shot up in front of me, grabbing my arm, spinning me around. I punched him hard in the nose, not once but twice. His face contorted and he raised a fist… then sank at my feet.
Reisner stood behind him, a big rock in her grip. “Go!” she urged. “Now!”
I pounced into the boat and started the motor before my feet were firmly on the floor. Within seconds I was out in open water, looking back at the palazzo on the hill and the four towers. I circled the boat back around, not so close as to be hit if they decided to shoot but close enough that they would know who it was.
As soon as I saw more men appear on the towers, I tugged off the red sweater and tied the arms to the steering wheel, letting the bright red flap in the wind beside me. Then I turned the boat toward the rocks, going faster and faster and faster—
At the last possible moment, I slipped over the edge and let the water cover me. Plumes of fire exploded above me, and I knew I had a long swim ahead to my rebirth.
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© 2006 Lorna Tedder. All rights reserved. Free to read here — please don’t repost elsewhere.