HIS MOTHER WAS DEAD,
So was the baby.
Which made it rather odd that his mother and the baby were playing chess together.
“Your move.” Jeff’s mother smiled at the baby and waited.
The baby was a girl. She was much too young to play chess. Jeff reached out to pick her up but she slipped through his fingers, like a ghost. She picked up a piece, a black knight, and banged it down on the board, again and again and again. Jeff’s head started to ache.
“Why did you die?” Jeff asked her. “Tracy wanted you so badly. We both did. Why didn’t you live?”
The baby ignored him and continued banging. Bang, bang, bang.
Jeff’s mother started to cry.
Bang, bang, bang.
Jeff was crying too. The noise was awful.
Stop! Please stop!
“STOP!”
Jean Rizzo grabbed Tracy by both shoulders as she tried to force her way into the barn. He’d watched the squad car arrive, looked on in horror as Tracy jumped out of the backseat and tried to run across the moonlit field toward him. She was limping, dragging her left leg behind her, but sheer determination drove her on.
“You shouldn’t be here, Tracy. You need a doctor.”
“Let go of me!” Tracy kicked him hard in the shin.
Jean grimaced but held on to her. “I mean it. You can’t go in there.”
Bang, bang, bang. Tracy heard sledgehammers pounding away behind Jean, inside the barn. It sounded as if his men were trying to smash down a wall.
“Is he in there? Have you found Jeff?”
“We don’t know. There are signs that he was here but . . .” Jean’s voice trailed off. “It looks like Cooper may have built a false wall. Perhaps to conceal a body.”
Tracy let out a wail of anguish. She went limp in Jean’s arms.
“What happened?” Jean hissed at the Bulgarian policeman who’d driven the squad car. “I told you to take her straight to the hospital.”
The man shrugged. “She wouldn’t go. The ambulance take the suspect, but this lady refuse.”
“The suspect? You mean Cooper’s alive?”
“He was. I don’t know. Maybe not now. He looked pretty bad.”
Rizzo tried to process this. If Cooper really was alive, it was good news. There might be a trial, a confession even. Some sort of closure for the families . . . Milton Buck might even recover some of his precious stolen jewelry and artwork. Not that Jean Rizzo gave a damn about the FBI.
“Inspector Rizzo!” The voice came from inside the barn. The banging had stopped. “You’d better get in here, sir.”
Reluctantly releasing Tracy, Jean ran back inside. Tracy followed.
The barn was an old stone building, originally built to house cattle or sheep. It was dark inside, but Jean’s men had set up a few battery-powered lamps. In one corner a few ancient farm implements lay rusting in a heap, like broken bones. But it was the wall next to them that caught Tracy’s eye. It was covered in blood, like a child’s splatter painting. Chains had been nailed into the masonry, and various instruments of torture, including electrical wires, a whip and a hacksaw had been propped neatly against a wooden chair. Tracy put a hand to her mouth to stop herself from vomiting.
“Sir!”
The young officer was standing on top of a pile of rubble. He looked like he might be about to vomit himself. A stone wall had been erected at the back of the barn, just a few feet from the original, creating a sort of false back to the building. Rizzo’s men had hammered a four-foot hole in it, large enough for a person to squeeze through.
The officer threw Jean a flashlight.
Jean turned to talk to Tracy but he was too late. She’d already darted past him into the cavity.
The cross was enormous, at least ten feet tall. The first thing Tracy saw was a huge, iron nail impaling both of Jeff’s feet.
“Oh my God.” She burst into sobs. “Jeff! Jeff! Can you hear me? JEFF!”
There was a groan, then another.
“Jesus Christ. He’s alive.” Jean Rizzo looked at his men. “Don’t just stand there, for Christ’s sake. Get him down! And call an ambulance.”
It took twenty-five minutes to get Jeff onto a stretcher. His nervous system appeared to have shut down. There were no screams as the nails were pulled out of his hands and feet. A number of his ribs were broken and his torso was badly burned, but he showed no sign of pain.
Tracy talked to him constantly. “It’s okay. You’re okay, Jeff. I’m here. It’s all okay. You’re going to a hospital. You’re going to be fine.”
At one point he opened his eyes very wide and said, “Tracy?”
“Yes, darling!” Tracy bent down and kissed him. “It’s me! Oh, Jeff, I love you. I love you so much. Please hold on.”
Jeff smiled and closed his eyes. He looked profoundly at peace.
Tracy rode with him in the ambulance. The paramedics had him wired up to all sorts of machines. There were needles in his arms and electrodes on his chest and a screen with green lines that beeped intermittently. Tracy had a million questions but she was too afraid to ask any of them. She scanned the doctors’ faces, looking for any sign of hope or despair, but saw nothing to hold on to. She started to pray.
Please, God, let him live. Please give me a chance to make things right. To tell him I love him. Please . . .
A loud, long beep startled her.
“Jeff?” She looked at the paramedics in panic. “What’s happening?”
Strong hands pushed her aside. She could no longer see Jeff, only a wall of backs in green scrubs bent over him. Someone put paddles onto his chest. Tracy watched in dumb horror as Jeff’s thin frame leaped up off the gurney, then fell back again, limp and lifeless.
“Again!”
Another charge to the chest.
“Again!”
And another.
The long, loud beep continued.
After that, everything became blurry. Someone was shining a light into Jeff’s eyes. Tracy saw the man look up and shake his head.
Don’t shake your head! Don’t give up. Try again.
Someone else looked at his watch. “Should we call it?”
Call it? Call what? Tracy tried to move closer. She could help Jeff. She could save him. If he knew how much she loved him . . . if he knew what he had to live for . . . he’d fight. But when she tried to move her legs, or stretch her arms out to him, she found she was frozen. A black mist was descending. She was losing her balance, slipping, falling.
“Time of death . . .”
No! NO!
Strong arms grabbed her under the shoulders. But they weren’t the arms Tracy needed. They weren’t Jeff’s arms. This was all a horrible nightmare and she was going to wake up any minute. Any minute.
The voice in her head was calm and insistent. It sounded like Blake Carter’s voice. Darling Blake! Was he here? He was repeating the same words, over and over.
Let go, Tracy. Let go.
Tracy trusted Blake. She did as he asked.
She closed her eyes and tumbled backward into the mist.
CHAPTER 28
COLORADO
THREE MONTHS LATER . . .
TRACY STOOD AT HER kitchen window, chopping carrots for the soup. Outside, the ranch looked more beautiful than ever. Fall had bathed Colorado in a warm amber glow. The leaves on the trees shimmered in every shade of brown and gold and ocher, contrasting beautifully with the vivid green pastures and white wooden fences, which Blake had lovingly repainted.
Since Tracy had come home from Bulgaria, emotionally exhausted and physically weak—she’d barely noticed, but she’d lost fifteen pounds during those grueling two weeks and was badly bruised after her encounter with Daniel Cooper—Blake Carter had taken care of everything. He drove Nicholas to school while Tracy slept. He cooked meals and made sure Tracy ate them. He’d done laundry and booked doctors’ appointments and kept the rhythms of life on the ranch going when Tracy could not. He’d held Tracy when she wept, racked with sobs that confused him deeply. Blake could see that her tears were only part sadness. There was also some sort of deep release going on, a necessary reaction to post-traumatic stress of some kind, like a soldier returning from battle. Most important of all, from Tracy’s perspective, Blake Carter hadn’t asked her a single question about what had happened on her “cooking trip” to Europe. He simply assumed that she would tell him when she was ready. Or perhaps, he thought, she might never be ready. Blake could accept either scenario, as long as she was home safe and staying home.
“You won’t leave again, will you, Mom?” Nicholas asked on Tracy’s first night back.
His tone was light but Tracy could hear the anxiety underlying it. She’d explained away her injuries as the result of a minor car crash, but her appearance when she’d first walked through the door had clearly frightened him.