the illusion and expose the truth. She was no angel.
“What do you want from me?” she asked with caustic interest, studying him across the murky darkness.
Power and pain. He could hear both in her voice, sense the fragile mask of tough over hurt little girl. Freddy didn’t want her to know the true reason he was here, but this time Freddy was wrong. To gain her trust Tyler had to give her a measure of truth. “Your uncle sent me.”
“I write my own copy for the articles on my horses. We communicate through his secretary.”
“He’s starting a new column called ‘Texas Tales.’ It’s a series on Texas legends. People from Texas who’ve made it big.”
Her fingers paused in their stroking of the cat. “Then you have the wrong Carnes. My father is the one who managed to build an empire from nothing. I merely spend his fortune.”
“Your father passed on.”
“He would still make a better story than me.”
Sometimes the shortest distance between two points was the long way around. “What about your paintings? They’re unique collector’s items. They must afford you a decent income. Then there are your horses. Your stallion’s success warrants a feature.”
She said nothing. The soft purring of the cat sounded like a well-oiled chain saw.
Without quite knowing why, he found himself imitating her clipped regal tone. “Then, of course, there’s your reputation. Some say you’re a witch, the devil incarnate. Others say you’re merely a harmless recluse. Yet others claim you’re an agoraphobic who’s turned into a vengeful neurotic.” He paused. “But that’s what you expect, isn’t it? Persecution.” Was that why she’d fallen prey to Randall’s schemes? Innocent victim or willing participant?
The cat bumped its head against her stopped hand.
“If you don’t believe any of those reasons,” he said, watching every flicker in her shadowed eyes for signs of deception, “then there’s always the truth.”
Fingers laced over his lap, he waited.
“Truth,” she said finally, her fingers resuming their slow stroking of the cat. Tyler almost purred.
“Freddy got a warning that you might be in danger.”
“A warning?” The cat arched to keep its head in contact with her hand.
“Do you play chess?”
“Yes.”
Why didn’t that surprise him? She had the mind for it. And the time. “He received an article about the mason who broke his leg doing repair work on one of your towers and a bishop from a cheap plastic chess set.”
Silence deepened and the shadows seemed to curl around him.
“Freddy wants me to find out who sent those items and keep you safe.”
“Safe?” she said, sneering. “What can be safer than a fifteenth-century castle with walls six feet thick, a moat and a drawbridge?”
No point sugarcoating the situation. “According to Freddy, a bishop works on the diagonal and makes long moves. Working from a distance on the sly. Isn’t that your relationship with Randall Industries?” He sensed more than saw her tension.
“Really, Mr. Blackwell, you take your work much too seriously. There truly isn’t a conspiracy around every corner. James Randall is a friend and patron of the arts. Look at all he’s done in the area with his charitable donations.” Her strained laugh held none of its previous lilt. “A bishop has relatively little value. It can’t win a match by itself.”
“Exactly.” Tyler noted that her gaze was level and her voice was steady. If Randall was using her, she didn’t have a clue. So maybe it did all boil down to a family feud, and he was just letting his own past failures interfere with his present task. “Sometimes a billion-dollar trust fund is enough to make a bishop think he has a chance at the prize.”
“My money? You think someone wants to harm me for my money?”
“Money is the number-one motivator for crime. Who benefits if you die?”
“The same people who benefit if I live.”
“Do you know that women are more likely to hire a surrogate to kill for them?”
“Are you insinuating that my stepmother wants me killed?”
He shrugged. “If the shoe fits…”
“Wicked stepmothers went out of style with the Brothers Grimm, Mr. Blackwell. I happen to get along with mine just fine.”
He had to reel back the urge to stand nose-to-nose, toe-to-toe with her, to retain an air of calmness in the electricity snapping through the air. “Then why are you stuck in this dusty museum in the middle of some hick town while she and your half sister are living it up in a mansion in Dallas?”
“By choice.”
“Your birthday is a little more than three weeks away. If you die before you reach thirty, your stepmother and sister split your father’s holdings. If the trust reverts to you, then you can do as you please with it. Your stepmother and sister are then at the mercy of your generosity.”
“They’re my family. They know I wouldn’t deny them their share of my father’s fortune.”
“Do they?”
“If that’s all you have—”
Tyler kicked the steel bucket by the cot. The sound resonated across the room like a gunshot and startled the cat that dug its white claws into its mistress’s black-clad arms, making her flinch. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said. Someone has set a game in motion, and you’re somehow the objective.”
Melissa returned his steady gaze unblinkingly. For an instant he was a kid back in Pennsylvania, playing chicken with one of his stubborn sisters. First one to blink is a rotten egg!
“I’m not a princess in a castle, waiting to be rescued,” Melissa said. “I don’t need some knight in tarnished armor to conjure up a conspiracy because he needs a new victory to prove to the world he’s still a hero.”
Forgetting his resolution of cool calm, Tyler stood up. The cot scraped back with a sound that would have pleased a medieval torturer. “No, you’re a recluse in a castle, shutting out the world. You can’t shut this out, Melissa. Your lifestyle makes you easy prey.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “What do you have to gain by coming here and disrupting my peace?”
He wondered at the tremor in her voice and felt a nudge of sympathy for her. Not knowing was always the worst part. Answers didn’t come until you pushed past the fear. He should have remembered that after Lindsey. “I owe Freddy.”
Her short sharp laugh jabbed through the darkness. “Don’t you know by now that some debts are too costly to repay?”
He
