The Secret Night. Rebecca York
for help with her clothes looking as if they’d been run through a boot camp obstacle course. She bought clean jeans, a couple of T-shirts, tennis shoes, and a toothbrush and toothpaste. After changing in the ladies’ room and brushing her teeth, she felt more like herself. And much more secure about making a decent impression.
Storm clouds were gathering in the west as she consulted the detailed street map she’d picked up in Wal-Mart. With Vickers’s address still imprinted on her brain, she quickly saw that she’d been closer to his place in Elkridge. She plotted a circuitous route that would take her northwest, and headed for the private detective’s home.
It was a long drive, over an hour, and as the sky grew darker and more ominous, so did Emma’s thoughts. An odd sense of fate seemed to be drawing her forward, toward Nicholas Vickers. As if she were seeking him out not merely because he was a private investigator and Damien Caldwell loathed him, but because of her dreams and fantasies as well. As if she and Vickers really did have some intuitive connection, the way she and Marg did—or used to before Damien Caldwell sucked all the autonomy out of Margaret’s brain.
All day she’d been focused on getting away from Caldwell’s goons and getting to Nicholas Vickers. As her thoughts turned to her twin, she held back tears. Gritting her teeth, she blinked to clear her vision.
She had no time for tears. She had to help her sister. And finding Nicholas Vickers was her best option. She hoped.
When she finally turned onto the rural road where Vickers lived, the clouds hanging low in the sky had turned the afternoon as dark as midnight. Lightning crackled, making her feel as if she were an actor in a horror movie.
The map showed no other access to the narrow, poorly maintained country lane, and no houses peeked through the trees as she drove by. It appeared that Vickers had no close neighbors. Yet when she had gone a few hundred yards, Emma saw a bunch of motorcycles parked on the gravel shoulder beside the crumbling blacktop. Was Mr. Vickers hosting a biker convention?
She slowed the car, craning her neck, looking for the riders, but she saw no one.
The wind began to blow, and a shaft of lightning split the sky, followed a few seconds later by a long roll of thunder. It was followed almost immediately by another flash and, within a shorter interval, another rumble. The storm was going to break soon. Emma sped up, trying to beat the rain.
A little farther along the lane, she rounded a curve and saw a beautiful, large Victorian farmhouse, complete with gingerbread and a wraparound porch. She felt a flood of relief at the sight. It looked so very nice and normal.
Her relief was short-lived, dying as soon as she spotted a cluster of tough-looking young men on the left side of the house. Clad in dirty jeans and leather jackets, they were sneaking along, hugging the foundation. One of them was carrying something red. Something that looked suspiciously like a can of gasoline.
NICK WOKE WITH A START. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was just after seven—still well before sunset at this time of year. Unless something unusual happened, he normally slept until dark.
Wondering what was going on outside his private lair, he sat up and reached for the controls that activated the security cameras, which were set to show exterior views of the house. Pressing the remote, he opened the floor-to-ceiling drapes along the wall opposite his bed, uncovering the eight screens that displayed what the cameras were picking up.
Seven of the screens showed nothing out of the ordinary except that the sky was already as black as night. But the eighth riveted his attention.
There, on the east side of his house, he saw the Ten Oaks graveyard gang.
Bloody hell! How the devil had they found him?
As he watched the screen, Nick saw lightning fork through the storm-gathered clouds. A second or two later, he heard a massive clap of thunder. And in the next second, a car pulled into view.
Now what?
Hitting the remote again, he switched on the sound and heard the bikers speaking.
“Hurry up. If it starts to rain, the fire will go out.”
“Not with gasoline, man. This old place will go up like an oil refinery.” He punctuated the comment with an evil laugh.
Nick muttered another curse as he leaped out of bed and reached for the black highwayman’s britches he’d draped over a chair the night before. Pulling them on and jamming his feet into the high boots, he paused only long enough to turn off the basement alarm system. Then, throwing open the bolt on the door into the storage area, he raced for the stairs.
WIDE-EYED, Emma stared at the man with the gas can as he took off the cap and doused the foundation of Nicholas Vickers’s clapboard house. When he pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket, she grabbed her new gun and jumped out of the car.
“Hold it right there!” she shouted, pointing the automatic at the would-be arsonists.
The guys’ heads all jerked up, and to a man, their jaws dropped open in shock.
“Jeez! What’s a broad doing here?”
Emma felt her adrenaline pumping, but she managed to keep her voice steady as she replied, “Making sure you don’t do something stupid.”
“You’re the one acting stupid, honey, stickin’ your pretty little nose in where it doesn’t belong,” one of them called out tauntingly, taking a step toward her. “Put the gun down, and we won’t hurt you.”
In answer, she squeezed off a shot, aiming for the ground right in front of the thug’s feet. The bullet kicked up dirt, and the guy stopped in his tracks.
“If you don’t want me to aim for your crotch, get the hell out of here.”
Some of the gang looked ready to run. But she soon learned that a couple of them had come armed with more than a cigarette lighter. One pulled a small pistol from his boot and raised the weapon. Another pulled an automatic from the waistband of his pants.
Faced with the decision to shoot one of these guys, Emma hesitated a split second too long.
The bikers had no such compunctions. A bullet slammed into her body, and she staggered backward, dropping her gun to wrap her arm around her middle.
“That’ll teach you to mess with us,” the shooter called out, advancing on her.
He was going to kill her—Emma knew it as surely as she knew her name. Gritting her teeth, she tried to stagger away.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he taunted. “You think I can’t follow you into the bushes? Come to think of it, that would be kind of fun.”
She didn’t bother to answer. Then she saw something strange behind the biker.
Chapter Four
Bloody hell! What was she doing here?
No mistaking who she was—he recognized her immediately. The woman from his dreams.
But this was no dream. He was wide awake, and from his vantage point on the porch, Nick saw one of the bikers advancing on the woman, gun in hand, ready to finish the job he’d started. The rest of the low-life animals were watching with wicked grins on their ugly faces.
Roaring like a lion, Nick leaped from the porch and zoomed toward the gunman so fast that he was only a blur in the darkness. Lightning flashed, providing perfect horror-movie effects as he swooped down on the guy. Knocking the weapon from his hand, Nick took him down, slamming him to the ground. For good measure, he stomped on the man’s grimy fingers with his boot heel, wringing a scream of pain from him.
He heard the woman gasp, and he looked over to see her staring at him with a mixture of shock and bewilderment. She was sitting propped against a tree, and he could see she’d been shot in the side. Quickly, he gave her a closer inspection. Seeing no arterial blood gushing, he figured her life wasn’t in immediate danger.
Which