Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Craig covered his head with his arms as debris rained down around him. As soon as he could, he scrambled to his feet and ran toward the building.
Stephanie. Oh Lord, Stephanie,” he called out as he surveyed the damage. The building simply wasn’t there, and the man who had stepped inside had vanished.
Craig’s whole body was shaking. He’d left Stephanie here when she’d begged him to take her with him. He’d thought he was doing the right thing, and now she was gone—the way Sam was gone. That had been the worst thing that had ever happened to him. This was a thousand times more devastating.
He heard a siren in the distance. The fire department, and probably the cops. Instinct told him to get the hell out of there before the authorities arrived.
Quickly he backed away and ran down the block to the spot where he’d left his car.
“You got her out of the cottage okay?”
“Yeah. We’re already a piece down the road. Be there soon,” the man in the backseat said into his cell phone. He listened for a minute, then said, “We expect to be there in forty-five minutes.”
Stephanie knew that John Reynard had several residences. One was a plantation house about forty miles from New Orleans. Which was where they were going, Stephanie surmised.
In the distance she thought she heard a clap of thunder, but when she looked out the car window, the sun was still shining.
The driver glanced back at her and grinned like he knew something she didn’t.
She looked away, wondering what had happened back there. After one of the men had hustled her out of the cottage, the other had gotten something out of the trunk and gone back to the cottage, but she’d had no idea what he was doing. Was the thunderclap something to do with that?
A shiver went through her. Thunderclap? Could it have been an explosion? She went cold all over and cried out in her mind, Craig, are you all right, Craig? But she got no answer.
She had to get back to him. She had to know he was okay. But how?
She belonged with him, not with the man she’d promised to marry because of misplaced loyalty to her father.
She’d felt guilty about her relationship with him, and she’d told herself that was her fault. Now she knew it wasn’t true. It had as much to do with him as with her, and it was too bad she hadn’t seen that a long time ago.
But her father wasn’t her immediate problem. That was John Reynard. Every time the car slowed to take a curb or stop at a traffic light, she thought about jumping out and making a run for it. but that would only confirm her guilt. And what was the chance that she could evade these men?
She would have to face John, but what could she say to him that he would want to hear—and that he’d believe?
It was hard to make her mind work coherently, and she was still trying to figure out what she was going to say when the car stopped at the gate across the access road.
Once the house had sat in the middle of cotton fields.
Now it was a fortified compound, guarded by men and a fence that circled the area around the house.
The barrier slid open, letting the car through, then slid closed behind her—like a prison gate clanging shut.
The long drive was lined with live oak trees, making a majestic approach to the restored plantation house that had been newly painted white.
It had a portico across the front that reminded Stephanie of Tara in Gone with the Wind, except that the entrance was on the second floor, as in most Louisiana plantation houses.
When the vehicle pulled up beside the wide front steps, Stephanie dragged in a breath and let it out, preparing for what was coming next.
Unable to move, she simply sat in the passenger seat.
“Get out,” the man in the back said, climbing out and opening her door.
There was no point in trying to stay in the car. It wouldn’t do her any kind of good. She climbed out and stood on shaky legs, looking up at the steps.
When a figure appeared, she blinked. It was Claire Dupree, the woman who had been helping her in the dress shop for the past few months. Once the shop had been her life, but she hadn’t thought about her business or her assistant in days. Now she tipped her head as she stared at Claire.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“John thought you’d appreciate having some female companionship.”
“John asked you here?”
“Yes.”
As Stephanie tried to work her way through the implications, a light bulb suddenly went off in her head. Claire had come to the shop looking for a job not long after Stephanie had met John Reynard. She’d offered to work for almost no salary.
Now it was clear why. Stephanie had been paying her a small salary, but she’d really been working for John Reynard. He’d sent her to Stephanie so that he could keep tabs on his fiancée.
All those calls Claire had made to her mother. They were probably really to John. All that flashed through Stephanie’s mind in a few seconds.
“We’ve been waiting for you. Why don’t you come in?” Claire said as if she were the owner of the house, inviting in a guest.
With no other choice, Stephanie followed the other woman up the stairs and into the house, which had many antebellum antiques as well as some comfortable modern chairs and couches.
The wide front hall boasted a sideboard imported from England with a gilt mirror hanging on the wall above.
Like her father’s house, but in much better condition.
On the polished floorboards was a rich Oriental rug.
“Where’s John?” she asked.
“He’s in the lounge. There’s some very interesting news on television.”
The edge in Claire’s voice made her wary, but she followed the other woman down the hall to the sitting room that John had set up like a room in a turn-of-the-century men’s club, furnished with comfortable leather chairs and couches.
The walls were wood-paneled, and the only piece of furniture that looked out of character in the room was the flat-screen TV on the wall across from the sofa.
John, who had been sitting in one of the leather chairs, stood up.
He looked from her to the television, where an announcer was breathlessly reporting some catastrophe, and it took Stephanie a few moments to orient herself.
First, she realized it was in Houma. Then she saw it was at a bed and breakfast. The reporter was pointing to what must have been a house—or a cottage, but nothing was left but a blackened hole in the ground.
“Police say there are no survivors from the explosion that destroyed one of the cottages at the Morning Glory B and B about an hour ago. At the time, Mr. and Mrs. Craig Brady were registered at the cottage.”
Stephanie tried to take that in. In the background, she could see the main building, and it looked like the blackened ruin was the cottage where she and Craig had been staying.
“Sorry to report that your friend Craig Brady, whose real name is Craig Branson, was blown up in an explosion while you were en route here,” John said, the tone of his voice making it clear that he wasn’t sorry at all.
Unable to catch her breath, Stephanie swayed on her feet. Claire caught her arm and eased her onto the couch, where she sat gasping for air.
John tipped his head to the side as he stared at her. “It isn’t confirmed that your friend was in the cottage, but I presume that he rushed back home to you, opened the door, and triggered an unfortunate incident.”
“No,” Stephanie whispered.
John glanced at Claire. “Go get Stephanie a glass of brandy. I believe she could use a drink.”
Stephanie watched the other woman leave the room. Then swung back to John when he said, “You’re in a delicate position now.”
She answered with a small nod, wondering exactly where this conversation was going. She was still struggling to come to grips with her new reality—back in the clutches of John Reynard. If it was her new reality. The explosion was real, but what if, by some miracle, Craig was all right?
She had to cling to that. It was her only option because, if she admitted that he was dead, what was the use of her going on? Or, to put it another way, what did it matter what John Reynard did to her?
He was speaking, and she struggled to focus on his words. “So whatever you’ve been doing with him, it’s over. And now we can take up where we left off.”
“Yes,” she managed to say.
“You refused to sleep with me until we were married,” he said suddenly, his words and his tone lancing through the wall she had tried to build around her emotions. “A very old-fashioned attitude, I must say. Did you sleep with him?”
She should have been expecting the question. Well, perhaps not so bluntly. Now she froze, knowing that she was skating on very thin ice.
Raising her head, she looked John square in the eye, calling on all the salesmanship she’d learned at the dress shop.
“No,” she said aloud, and as she spoke, she did something else as well—gathering her mental power and putting it into her silent order to him.
You believe me. You believe I didn’t sleep with Craig Branson.
You believe it because you want to believe it.
That’s the answer you want to hear, and you believe me.
Would it work? She certainly hadn’t been able to do anything like that before she’d met Craig. The power had developed because of her connection to him.
A stray thought danced in her mind, a thought that gave her hope. Or was it false hope?
She brushed aside that last part. If she’d developed this power with Craig, could she still use it if he was dead?
She clung to that as she kept shooting her silent message to John, and maybe her faith that Craig was still alive made the suggestion stronger.