Нора Робертс - Megan’s Mate

Colleen's mouth thinned at the memory. “He tried to break her in every way, with his rules, his money, his need to own. In the end, he killed her, then he slowly, slowly, went mad. But not with guilt. What ate at him, I think, was the loss of something he'd never been able to fully own. That was why he rid the house of every piece of her, and locked himself in his own private purgatory.”

“I'm sorry,” Megan murmured. “I'm so sorry.”

“For me? I'm old, and long past the time to grieve. I learned from my experience, as you learned from yours. Not to trust, never to risk. Let Coco have her orange blossoms, we have our freedom.”

She walked away stiffly, leaving Megan to flounder in a sea of emotion.

Colleen was wrong, she told herself, and began to fuss with napkins again. She wasn't cold and aloof and blocked off from love. Just days ago she'd declared her love. She wasn't letting Baxter's shadow darken what she had with Nathaniel.

Oh, but she was. Wearily she leaned against the doorjamb. She was, and she wasn't sure she could change it. Love and lovemaking didn't equal commitment. No one knew that better than she. She had loved Baxter fully, vitally. And that was the shadow. Even knowing that what she felt for Nathaniel was fuller, richer, and much, much truer, she couldn't dispel that doubt.

She would have to think it through, calmly, as soon as she had time. The answer was always there, she assured herself, if you looked for it long enough, carefully enough. All she had to do was process the data.

She tossed down her neatly counted napkins in disgust. What kind of woman was she? she wondered. She was trying to turn emotions into equations, as if they were some sort of code she had to decipher before she could know her own heart.

That was going to stop. She was going to stop. If she couldn't look into her own heart, it was time to...

Her thoughts trailed off, circled back, swooping down on one errant idea like a hawk on a rabbit.

Oh, God, a code. Leaving the linens in disarray, she flew down the hall to her own bedroom.

Fergus's book was where she'd left it, lying neatly on the corner of her desk. She snatched it up and began flipping frantically through pages.

It didn't have to be stock quotations or account numbers, she realized. It didn't have to be anything as logical as that. The numbers were listed in the back of the book, after dozens of blank sheets—after the final entry Fergus had written. On the day before Bianca died.

Why hadn't she seen it before? There were no journal entries, no careful checks and balances after that date. Only sheet after blank sheet. Then the numbers, formed in a careful hand.

A message, Megan wondered, something he'd been compelled to write down but hadn't wanted prying eyes to read. A confession of guilt, perhaps? Or a plea for understanding?

She sat and took several clearing breaths. They were numbers, after all, she reminded herself. There was nothing she couldn't do with numbers.

An hour passed, then two. As she worked, the desk became littered with discarded slips of paper. Each time she stopped to rest her eyes or her tired brain, she wondered whether she had tumbled into lunacy even thinking she'd found some mysterious code in the back of an old book.

But the idea hooked her, kept her chained to the desk. She heard the blast of a horn as a tour boat passed. The shadows lengthened from afternoon toward evening.

She grew only more determined as each of her efforts failed. She would find the key. However long it took, she would find it.

Something clicked, causing her to stop, sit back and study anew. As if tumblers had fallen into place, she had it. Slowly, painstakingly, she transcribed numbers into letters and let the cryptogram take shape.

The first word to form was Bianca.

“Oh, God.” Megan pressed her hand to her lips. “It's real.”

Step by step she continued, crossing out, changing, advancing letter by letter, word by word. When the excitement began to build in her, she pushed it back. This was an answer she would find only with her mind. Emotions would hurry her, cause mistakes. So she thought of nothing but the logic of the code.

The figures started to blur in front of her eyes. She forced herself to close them, to sit back and relax until her mind was clear again. Then she opened them again, and read.

Breathless, Megan read on. The directions were very simple, very precise. For a man going mad with the enormity of his own actions, Fergus Calhoun had retained his conciseness.

Tucking the paper in her pocket, Megan hurried out. She didn't consider alerting the Calhouns. Something was driving her to finish this herself. She found what she needed in the renovation area in the family wing. Hefting a crowbar, a chisel, a tape measure, she climbed the winding iron steps to Bianca's tower.

She had been here before, knew that Bianca had stood by the windows and watched the cliffs for Christian. That she had wept here, dreamed here, died here.

The Calhouns had made it charming again, with plump, colorful pillows on the window seat, delicate tables and china vases. A velvet chaise, a crystal lamp.

Bianca would have been pleased.

Megan closed the heavy door at her back. Using the tape measure, she followed Fergus's directions. Six feet in from the door, eight from the north wall.

Without a thought to the destruction she was about to cause, Megan rolled up the softly faded floral carpet, then shoved the chisel between the slats of wood.

It was hard, backbreaking work. The wood was old, but thick and strong. Someone had polished it to a fine gleam. She pried and pulled, stopping only to flex her straining muscles and, when the light began to fail, to switch on the lamps.

The first board gave with a protesting screech. If she'd been fanciful, she might have thought it sounded like a woman. Sweat dripped down her sides, and she cursed herself for forgetting a flashlight. Refusing to think of spiders, or worse, she thrust her hand into the gap. She thought she felt the edge of something, but no matter how she stretched and strained, she couldn't get a grip. Grimly resigned, she set to work on the next board.

Swearing at splinters and her own untried muscles, she fought it loose. With a grunt, she tossed the board aside, and panting, stretched out on her stomach to grope into the hole.

Her fingertip rang against metal. She nearly wept. The handle almost slipped out of her sweaty hand, but she pulled the box up and free and set it on her lap.

It was no more than a foot long, a foot wide and a few pounds in weight, and it was grimy from the years it had spent in the darkness. Almost tenderly, she brushed away the worst of the dust. Her fingers hovered at the latch, itching to release it, then dropped away. It wasn't hers to open.

“I don't know where she could be.” Amanda strode back into the parlor, tossing up her hands. “She's not in her office, or her room.”

“She was fussing in a closet when I saw her last.” Colleen tipped back her glass. “She's a grown woman. Might be taking a walk.”

“Yes, but...” Suzanna trailed off with a glance at Kevin. There was no point in worrying the child, she reminded herself. Just because Megan was never late, that was no reason to assume something was wrong. “Maybe she's in the garden.” She smiled and handed the baby to Holt. “I can go look.”

“I'll do it.” Nathaniel stood up. He didn't really believe Megan had forgotten their date for dinner and gone walking in the garden, but looking was better than worrying. “If she comes in while I'm gone—” But then he heard her footsteps and glanced toward the doorway.

Her hair was wild, her eyes were wide. Her face and clothes were smeared with dirt. And she was smiling, brilliantly. “I'm sorry I'm late.”

“Megan, what on earth?” Dumbfounded, Sloan stared at her. “You look like you've been crawling in a ditch.”

“Not quite.” She laughed and pushed a hand through her disordered hair. “I got a little involved, lost track of the time. Sloan, I borrowed some of your tools. They're in the tower.”

“In the—”

But she was crossing the room, her eyes on Colleen. She knelt at the old woman's feet, set the box in her lap. “I found something that belongs to you.”

Colleen scowled down at the box, but her heart was thrumming in her ears. “Why would you think it belongs to me?”

Gently Megan took Colleen's hand, laid it on the dusty metal. “He hid it under the floor of the tower, her tower, after she died.” Her quiet voice silenced the room like a bomb. “He said she haunted him.” Megan pulled the transcribed code out of her pocket, set it on top of the box.

“I can't read it,” Colleen said impatiently.

“I'll read it for you.” But when Megan took the sheet again, Colleen grabbed her wrist.

“Wait. Have Coco come in. I want her here.”

While they waited, Megan got up and went to Nathaniel. “It was a code,” she told him, before turning to face the room. “The numbers in the back of the book. I don't know why I didn't see it—” Then she smiled. “I was looking too hard, too closely. And today I knew. I just knew.” She stopped, lifted her hands, let them fall. “I'm sorry. I should have told you as soon as I'd solved it. I wasn't thinking.”