Magic

THIRTEEN

“Now, keep your eye on the dollar bill,” Bryan said.

He sat back on his barstool, his concentration on the trick rather than on the small group of semi-interested onlookers. He folded the bill into an intricate bow shape, squeezed it between his palms, turned his hands. When he turned his palms outward again, the bill was gone.

“Great trick,” Dylan Harrison said from behind the bar. He wiped his hands on a towel and leaned against the polished surface. “Now make it reappear, Houdini. I want my buck back.”

Bryan sighed, took a sip of his whiskey, and performed the trick in reverse. The bill did not reappear. On three tries the best he could manage to produce was a wilted flower and a lint ball. He frowned, his broad shoulders slumping dejectedly as his audience wandered away.

Dylan reached across the bar and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t sweat it, Bry. I’ll put it on your tab.”

“I’ve lost it again,” Bryan mumbled. “I’ve lost my magic.”

“You’re having an off day, that’s all.”

“There’s an understatement.”

Losing Rachel put the day in the catastrophic category. He’d seen it coming, of course. It was just that his unflagging optimism had convinced him he would be able to prevent it when the time came. He’d been wrong.

After the fight to end all fights, he had taken Aunt Roberta out to Keepsake-Faith and Shane Callan’s inn-dumped her there, and made a beeline for Dylan’s Bar and Bait Shop, the popular waterfront establishment owned and run by Alaina’s husband. He still needed to return to Drake House for Roberta’s and his belongings, but he hadn’t been able to face that task without a little fortification of the distilled variety. He needed something to dull his too-sensitive senses. Time, mostly, but in lieu of that a nip or two of Dylan’s Irish wouldn’t hurt-especially since Dylan was liberally watering the stuff when he thought Bryan wasn’t looking.

That wasn’t the standard practice at Dylan’s. It was a neat bar that catered to tourists and locals alike. The floors were swept, the glasses clean, and the booze uncut. He was getting special treatment because he was obviously in such rough shape. Dylan was looking out for him, like any good, conscientious friend would. It made him feel a little better to think that Alaina had ended up with such a good guy. If he had to be lonely and miserable for the rest of his life, at least his best friends had found happiness.

“My, you look like hell,” Alaina said mildly, sliding onto the stool next to his.

“I know, I know.” He sighed. “I need a haircut.”

“That too.”

She was immaculate as usual, every chestnut hair in place, not so much as a speck on her Ralph Lauren ensemble of gold slacks and a midnight-blue silk blouse. Bryan, on the other hand, knew he looked as if he’d been sleeping in an alley. His jeans were rumpled. Roberta had burned a hole in his sweatshirt, and the tail of his white T-shirt hung down beneath the hem. It might have been a style popular with the fraternity crowd, but it didn’t cut the mustard with Alaina, who probably would have given up her civil rights before her Neiman-Marcus charge card.

He shot her a look, wincing at the tender sympathy and concern in her gaze. He didn’t know if he was up to having Alaina feel sorry for him. She was more in the habit of giving a person a swift kick in the britches and telling them to buck up and get on with it.

“Oh, don’t get nervous,” she said, extracting one of her precious, rationed cigarettes from her monogrammed case. Ignoring her husband’s scowl, she lit it and took a deep, appreciative drag. As she exhaled, her shrewd gaze shifted to Bryan again. “I’m not going to do the poor-Bryan routine. Faith tells me she already failed in the attempt.”

“Have the three of you ever considered sharing your amazing communications skills with the intelligence community?” he asked, his brows pulling together in annoyance. “I could give you a phone number.”

Alaina ignored the remark if not its implication. “And if it’s spiritual analysis you want, Jayne will be more than willing to provide that. Practical advice is more my line of expertise.”

He cringed at the mention of the word. “Please. I’ve had all the practicality I can stand for one day. I think it’s giving me a rash.”

“Can we see?” Dylan asked with a bright smile. His wicked sense of humor actually managed to cut through Bryan’s cloak of pain and coaxed a chuckle out of him.

Alaina rolled her eyes. “Don’t you have to go gut fish or something?”

Her husband leaned across the bar, grinning as he touched the tip of his nose to hers. “Yeah, but I was saving that to share with you later, sweetheart. I know how you like to get slimy.”

“Beat it, Harrison,” she said without batting an eyelash. The polar ice caps would melt before Alaina Montgomery-Harrison would put her manicured hand on a dead fish.

“You don’t want me around?” Dylan shrugged. “I get it. I can take a hint.”

“Since when?” she said dryly, tilting her cheek up for his kiss.

He waved to Bryan and let himself out from behind the bar so he could help attend to the many customers who had wandered in before heading off for dinner at one of Anastasia’s several fine seafood restaurants.

“You’ve got a good one there,” Bryan commented.

“Yes, I have. How about you?”

“Dylan? Gee, honey, I like him, but…”

She gave him a look that ended his nonsense in mid-sentence. “Don’t pull that act on me, Bryan. I’m sure you fool the uninitiated on a regular basis, but I am hardly that, now, am I?” She paused with typical lawyerlike drama to let her point sink in, then started her line of questioning over. “Rachel?”

Bryan sipped his drink and stared across the bar at the crowded shelves that lined the wall. “It’s not working out,” he said shortly.

Alaina took another long pull on her cigarette. She had been afraid something like this would happen. Still, her instincts told her Rachel Lindquist realty loved Bryan, and an idiot could have seen how in love Bryan was with Rachel. The man was absolutely besotted. She even knew the problems-irreconcilable differences of philosophy, and extenuating circumstances. The question was, how to reconcile the irreconcilable?

“Look,” Bryan said, hoping to avoid any more painful prodding of his feelings for one night, “maybe it’s best this way. I didn’t come to Anastasia looking to get embroiled in another hopeless situation. I did what I could to help Rachel and Addie… It didn’t work out,” he finished lamely.

Alaina chose her strategy with ruthless calm. Delivering the blows, however, was another matter. She didn’t enjoy inflicting pain, especially when Bryan had suffered so much already, but it seemed the only way.

Taking a deep breath, she braced her shoulders and launched her attack. “Yes, maybe you’re right. You’re really not up to this. You gave it a shot, you failed the test,” she said with an idle shrug. “Let it slide. Heaven knows a chance at everlasting love comes along as regularly as the bus to Mendocino. You might as well wait for a woman who isn’t so much trouble.”

Bryan sucked in a surprised breath, but Alaina retreated before he could voice his rebuttal.

“If you’ll excuse me, sweetheart, I think I’ll go help my husband gut fish.” She slid gracefully off her stool, leaned over to kiss Bryan’s cheek. “You have fun wallowing in your self-pity.”

She left him sputtering, sauntering away in a cloud of Chanel and smoke.

“Dirty player,” he muttered. He should have known better than to go against her. He probably had a note someplace reminding him of that, but he was too tired to look for it.

So he was feeling sorry for himself, he thought angrily. So what? He had a right to.

So does Rachel.

“Right?” He sneered. “She practically makes a living at it.”

That’s not fair.

“Oh, shut up,” he said to his little voice, ignoring the stares he drew from several other patrons at the bar. He wrapped his hand around his chunky tumbler of liquor and took another sip.

It was a matter of circumstances conspiring against them, he reflected. If he and Rachel had met at another time, in another place. If he had been able to prove to her Wimsey’s existence. If he had found the gold.

To take his mind off his self-pity, he thought about the gold. Lorraine Clement believed Wimsey had stolen it. But if Wimsey had stolen it and Addie truly spoke to Wimsey on a regular basis, if Wimsey was indeed the force he knew was present in Drake House, then why wouldn’t Wimsey have led Addie to the treasure?

No. His mind kept turning to Arthur Drake. He knew with certainty that Ducky was their man. If only the clever thief had thought to leave a clue for some worthy adversary…

“Adversary,” he mumbled, his brows pulling together. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. Suddenly his eyes went wide. “Adversity.”

Realization roared through him like a flood tide, leaving him awash in goose bumps. It had been there all along, right under his stupid nose!

He swiveled around on his barstool just as the front door opened and Felix Rasmussen slipped in and slinked along one wall like the rat he so resembled. Bryan fought back a grin. Maybe his luck hadn’t all run out.

Helping himself to the whiskey bottle, he splashed a little more in his glass, then on his hands, and he baptized his cheeks with it as if it were aftershave lotion. He rubbed a little through his hair, took a quick swig, and gargled before swallowing. Then, with his glass in one hand and the bottle in the other, he made his way unsteadily across the room to the small table where Rat had taken a seat.

“Mister Rasmussen!” He gave the man a lopsided grin. Rasmussen’s eyes darted back and forth as he searched hastily for an escape route. He found none, and his bony shoulders drooped in resignation as Bryan straddled the chair across from his. “How ya doin’?”

“I’m-fine-Mr. Hennessy,” Rasmussen said solemnly, the way a dying man might say he was fine.

Bryan slapped a big hand down on the tabletop. “Glad to hear it! Me, I’ve had better days.” He leaned back in his chair and took a gulp of his drink, letting it dribble down his chin. “Yeah, yeah. Got tossed out of Lindquist’s, you know. She gave some feeble excuse about my drinking, but…” He waved a hand. “Women, huh, Felix? Women! You know how it is.”

“Women,” Rasmussen echoed. He looked as uncomfortable as a man who had accidentally sat down in something wet. “A-yes.” He nodded, but his expression clearly said he had not the slightest idea of how it was.

Bryan gave him a shrewd sideways look. “You’ll never get that house away from them. You know that? You never will.”

Rasmussen’s thin mouth tightened to the point of disappearing entirely.

“You know what I think?” Bryan asked, breathing heavily in the man’s face. Rasmussen coughed and blinked. “Do you know what I think, Felix? She said she didn’t believe me, but I think she wanted it all to herself, the little-”

He paused to belch, tapping his sternum with his fist. Rasmussen was on the edge of his seat, waiting to hear the rest of the statement, but Bryan waved it away.

“Forget it. What do I care? Huh, Felix? What do I care? I don’t need her with her loony mother. Rich babes are a dime a dozen.” He paused to take a swig right out of the bottle and wiped his shirtsleeve across his mouth. Leaning across the table, he pointed at Rat. “Hey, you got a dime?”

Half the bar turned to stare as he burst into loud, obnoxious laughter, reached across the table, and thumped Rat on the arm in a gesture of male camaraderie that nearly knocked the man to the floor.

“Jeez, I kill me!” Bryan laughed. “I’m a damn genius. Did you know that, Felix? Huh? Did you know you were up against a damn genius?”

“Genius,” Rasmussen murmured, his furtive gaze zipping nervously around the room.

“Let ’em rot in their ugly ol’ house. Ha! I can get what I want. It’s in the wall behind that por-hic!-trait. I can get what I want just like that.” He tried to snap his fingers and managed to overturn his drink in the process. The watered-down liquor pooled on the table and ran over the edge and onto the floor, the whole process enchanting Bryan. He smiled boyishly, leaning down close to the mess. “I made a waterfall. Look at that, Felix.”

Dylan suddenly appeared beside the table, looking sad and sympathetic. He dropped a towel into the miniature lake and put a steadying hand on Bryan’s shoulder, just saving him from falling off his chair. “Come on, pal. I think you’ve had enough.”

“Says who?” Bryan demanded. His chin jutted out at an aggressive angle.

“Says me.”

“Yeah? Both of you?” He dissolved into giggles and reached across the table toward Rat, who arched back out of his way. “Maybe they’re right!”

“Come on,” Dylan said with the tolerance of long experience. “You can sleep it off out back. There’s nothing like the smell of live bait to sober a guy up.”

He helped Bryan up and led him toward the door that separated the bar from the bait shop. Rasmussen bolted for the front without hesitation. The instant he was gone, Bryan straightened and stretched and grinned at his friend.

“Well, that was fun!” he said brightly. “Can I use your phone?”

Dylan shook himself out of his incredulous stare. “Yeah, sure.”

Bryan was already across the room and behind the bar. He dialed the number of Keepsake from memory.

“Shane, it’s getting exciting.”

Rachel went into her bedroom, barely dredging up enough energy to put one foot in front of the other. She was exhausted, done in, wrung Out. She couldn’t imagine being more tired without actually lapsing into unconsciousness.

After straightening out the situation at the accident, she had packed Addie into the Chevette and gone to a fast-food place for dinner. That had been a disaster in its own right, with Addie accusing the help of giving her food she hadn’t ordered because they wanted to poison her. Neither of them had ended up eating very much. By the time they had returned to Drake House, her mother had insisted on going straight to bed. Rachel hadn’t argued.

She had spent a couple of hours sorting out the papers she had left in neat stacks on the dining room table. They hadn’t been neat upon her return. They had been shuffled into one enormous multicolored mountain. The sight had brought tears to her eyes. She supposed she was lucky Addie hadn’t set the pile ablaze, but lucky was the last thing she was feeling. Finally she had given up on trying to concentrate and had dragged herself upstairs.

Maybe things wouldn’t look quite so bleak in the morning.

“Now I sound like Bryan,” she muttered, pulling her Bach T-shirt out of the dresser drawer. “A good night’s sleep won’t make everything better.”

But it would have been a comfort. To sleep in Bryan’s arms, snuggled against his warm body, her legs tangled with his. To have him hold her and kiss her hair and sing in his sleep.

She shook her head. “Whoever heard of anyone singing in their sleep?”

She pulled her sweater off and dragged her T-shirt on in its place. She let her jeans drop to the floor and lay there, too tired even to dream about being neat. Taking her hair down from its messy knot, she turned toward the bed.

There was a red rose lying on it, a perfect red rose lying on the bodice of another old dress. This dress was pearl-pink satin encrusted with seed pearls and trimmed in lace that had turned dark ivory with age. It was of the same era as the burgundy dress. It was beautiful.

Rachel let her fingertips brush across it as she picked up the rose. Tears flooded her eyes. Bryan. When had he put it there? She tried to sort out the answer to that question as she brushed the rosebud against her cheek, but her brain was too exhausted to function. He couldn’t have had time to do it that morning, but he had to have. The only other explanation was that he had come back after… after and done it, but that made no sense at all. Besides, she knew his things were still there-his clothes and magic tricks and juggling balls and all the paraphernalia associated with his odd work.

He hadn’t come back. He probably wouldn’t come back while she was in the house. She had made it more than clear that she didn’t want him around.

Sniffing back a tear, she sank to the bed and sat there clutching the rose and the satin dress. She’d never felt so empty in her life, not even when she’d left Terence in Nebraska and headed west. That was probably because she hadn’t loved Terence anymore, had never loved him in that deep, soul-searing way she loved Bryan. She couldn’t have felt this empty, because she hadn’t lost nearly as much.

She tried to tell herself it was best they had ended it now. She’d known all along it would have to end before she and Addie left for San francisco. But she had never wanted it to end so bitterly. She would have preferred they part as friends, that they let the passion simply fade away into sweet, gentle memories. That would have been nice, to have those memories stored away inside so she could take them out on long, lonely nights and smile at them and hold them close to her heart. Now there would always be a certain sadness attached, even to the best of them. And every time she took them out, there would be regret for the way they parted, for the things that might have been if only she had been able to believe in magic.

Closing her eyes, Rachel tried to block out the pain. It was no good having regrets for being practical. Someone had to face life’s problems and deal with them in a sane, rational way. It didn’t do any good wishing that someone weren’t her.

Addie stood at the door to her daughter’s room, peeking in, hesitant to enter. Rachel looked tired and miserable, and Addie couldn’t help but wonder how much of that was her fault.

She had awakened from a deep sleep, feeling strangely calm and clearheaded, but also feeling a sense of urgency. She needed to see Rachel, to speak to her.

The accident had etched itself in her otherwise foggy memory with a clarity that made her heart clench every time she closed her eyes. She had been behind the wheel, driving toward town, when whatever knowledge she had possessed about driving went right out of her head. She had suddenly looked at the steering wheel and had no idea what to do with it. She knew the pedals on the floor served some purpose, but she hadn’t been able to recall what it was. And when her brain had tried to send a message to her hands or her feet to do something, anything, the message had never arrived.

It turned her stomach to think of it. The result could have been disastrous. She might have hit someone. That strange woman who had been with her might have been injured or killed. She might have been killed herself, and then she never would have seen Rachel again.

The chill that drifted through her frail old body made her pull her robe more closely around her. She had it on inside out, but she hadn’t been able to fix it, and it didn’t really matter anyway. The only thing that mattered right now was Rachel.

The door drifted open a little wider, and she was suddenly stepping forward with her heart in her throat.

“Rachel?” she asked softly.

Her daughter looked up at her with luminous eyes that were brimming with tears. “Mother? What are you doing up? Is everything all right?”

“No,” Addie murmured. “It’s not.”

She shuffled into the room and sat down on the bed, her back perfectly straight, her hands folded on her lap. They had done this before. It might have been a long, long time ago-she wasn’t sure-but it seemed like yesterday. They had sat on her bed in the little house in Berkeley and made plans about Rachel’s future. Now her daughter sat across from her expectantly, waiting for her to say something.

“Don’t slouch, Rachel,” she admonished, tapping the girl’s knee. Then sadness settled over her like a veil, and she drew her hand away. “I’ve always pushed you too hard. Talent needs a firm hand directing it, but I pushed too hard. That’s why you left with that guitar player, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Rachel whispered.

Addie shook her head. “He’s not good enough for you.”

Rachel smiled sadly. “I know, Mother. I don’t see him anymore.”

“Good,” she said decisively. “You’ve always been a sensible girl, except for that business.”

“I wanted you to love me in spite of that. I wish you could have.”

“Love you?” Addie asked, incredulous. She stared at her daughter, certain Rachel had taken leave of her senses. “I’ve always loved you. You’re my life.”

“But you wouldn’t forgive me.”

“I wouldn’t forgive myself either. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love you, it means I wouldn’t forgive you. They are two quite different things,” she insisted.

“Do you forgive me now?”

“You threw away all our dreams,” Addie began, but she cut herself off. What good were those dreams going to do her now? They were gone forever. Rachel had to run her own life.

She straightened her shoulders and stared at the floor, at the green rubber garden boots she wore all the time because they were easy to get on and off. The hem of her pink robe hung above them, inside out. “I’m not a well woman, Rachel. I know I do a good job of hiding it, but I forget things. All the time, more and more. I forgot how to drive that car today.”

“It’s all right-”

“No, it isn’t,” she insisted sternly. “It isn’t all right at all. It’s the pits. I had a perfectly nice collection of bird cages. Do you think I have any idea where they’ve gone?”

“We sold them,” Rachel said carefully. “At the tag sale.”

Addie just stared at her, drawing a blank.

“Never mind. I came back to help you, Mother. We’ll manage.”

Addie mustered a smile and patted her daughter’s knee. “We’ll manage. We always have. We have each other. And we have Hennessy.”

Rachel closed her eyes against the wave of pain. “No, Mother, we don’t have Hennessy.”

Addie’s brows pulled together in concern. “You sacked Hennessy?”

“He can’t come with us to San Francisco. It wouldn’t work out. He’s not a butler.”

“Oh. Well…” She guessed she’d known Hennessy wasn’t a butler. He had played along so well with her, she had eventually decided to believe their little game was real. She waved her hand in a regal gesture that managed to combine resignation and regret. “He made me laugh.”

“Me too,” Rachel murmured. She bit her lip against the tears, but they fell nevertheless, down her cheeks and onto the bodice of the beaded dress.

“You mustn’t cry on satin, Rachel,” Addie said in gentle reproach. “It stains.”

She took the dress from her daughter’s hands and brushed it off before hanging it over the foot of the bed. She got up then and went to the dresser to fetch the hairbrush.

“We have to move, Mother,” Rachel said, watching as Addie plied the brush to the squirrel’s nest she’d made of her hair. “Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” Addie said, staring at their reflection in the mirror above the dresser. She didn’t want to talk about moving. The idea frightened her more and more. She didn’t precisely understand why they had to move. Rachel would explain it to her if she asked, but what was the point? The decision was no longer hers to make. Her independence had slipped through her fingers. Fighting it only made her tired.

“One hundred strokes a night,” she said, shuffling across the floor to stand behind Rachel. Slowly, gently, she drew the brush bristles through her daughter’s pale gold hair, “You’ll have to count, dear, I can’t get past forty anymore. Or is it sixty?”

“That’s all right, Mother,” Rachel said, smiling through her tears. “I’ll count.”

“No.” Addie brushed steadily, methodically, her ability to accomplish the simple task calming her. “Sing for me. You have a voice like an angel. Sing the aria from Zaïde. Mozart was an idiot, but he made wonderful music.”

Rachel took a deep breath, swallowing down the knot in her throat, and she sang the aria from Zaïde, “Ruhe sanft”-rest quietly. It was a sweet song, the notes all purity and light and innocence. She was out of practice, but she had been blessed with a natural talent that made practice seem redundant. Her voice held an ethereal loveliness, a purity of its own that carried the song throughout the old house though she sang softly. And when she finished, the silence was absolute, as if the house itself were holding its breath in awe.

Addie put the brush aside and rested her thin, age-spotted hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “You’re a good daughter, Rachel.”

Rachel smiled. This was what she had prayed for, what she had pinned her hopes on, some sign from Addie that all was forgiven. There would be no emotional reconciliation scene full of hugs and kisses and tears of joy. That wasn’t the way of the Lindquists. But this, in its own way, was just as touching, just as meaningful. It was certainty every bit as precious to her. She had feared this moment would never come, that Addie would slip away from her and they would never be anything but strangers with nothing between them but bitterness.

She reached up to cover her mother’s hand with her own and wished fleetingly that she could have shared this moment with Bryan. But Bryan was gone. All she had now was Addie.

“Thank you, Mother.”

Addie sighed and shuffled toward the door. “Go tell Wimsey dinner will be ready soon. I just have to feed the bird first.”

That quickly Addie was gone. The fragile connection between reality and her mind was lost.

What a gift these last few minutes had been, Rachel thought, watching her mother shuffle away. Like magic.

Maybe there was such a thing after all.

Addie’s shriek pulled Rachel from her musings and catapulted her off the bed. She pulled her jeans on and ran out in to the hall, heading in the direction of her mother’s angry voice.

“I’ll get you this time, you ugly thing!”

Addie stopped halfway down the hall and flung a rock at the apparition standing wreathed in smoke near the secret door. Her form would have done a major league pitcher proud. The stone sailed high and inside, catching the ghostly figure squarely on the forehead.

He grunted in pain and fell back against the partially opened door, closing it and sealing off his own escape route. His sunken eyes went wide with panic. He turned toward the two women, raising his arms and his white cape along with it.

“I am the ghost of Ebenezer Drake!” he wailed, stepping toward them, smoke rolling out from behind him accompanied by a high-pitched wheezing sound. “I come to cast you from my-ouch!”

Addie let fly another stone, bouncing this one off his chest. Rachel grabbed her by one arm and attempted to drag her away from the advancing figure, but her mother shook her off long enough to reach into her pocket. She heaved a half-finished cheeseburger that hit her target smack in the face. Ketchup trickled down his long nose.

“Mother, come on!” Rachel insisted, pulling Addie down the hall. “We have to get the police!”

“Leave!” the ghost wailed. “Leave this house!”

Miles Porchind let himself into the study through the French doors. Dressed all in black in a vain effort to hide his considerable bulk, he waddled across the room with a flashlight in his hand, going directly to the portrait of Arthur Drake III that hung on the paneled wall behind the desk. He shined his light up at the man’s face.

“Thought you were so clever, didn’t you?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Bryan said, stepping out from behind the curtains. “I think I was awfully clever, don’t you?”

“You!” Porchind gasped, wheeling away from the wall. He made a dash for the door to the hall, grabbing the knob, twisting and rattling it. The door didn’t budge.

“Oh, that door sticks something fierce,” Bryan said mildly, flipping on a light. “You know how these old houses are. Actually, I like to think the ghost is holding it shut.”

“There is no ghost, you moron!” Porchind snapped, wheeling back around to face him, his florid face contorted with rage.

“No?” Bryan frowned in mock disappointment. “I guess that means Shane might get to use his gun after all.” He shrugged as the fat man blanched. “Well, that’ll make him happy. So, Mr. Porchind, to what do we owe this not-so-unexpected visit? Doing a little after-hours art shopping?”

“I came to claim what is rightfully mine!” he declared emphatically.

Bryan looked surprised. “Yours? Hmmm. I think the authorities might have something to say about that, seeing how you don’t own this house or anything in it.”

“Drake stole that gold.”

“From a notorious criminal.”

“I will have the gold, Mr. Hennessy,” Porchind said purposefully.

Bryan raised a brow as the man produced a revolver from behind him. “Deciding to follow in the family tradition, I see.”

“Shut up,” Porchind ordered, his breath coming in short gasps. “Come over here and take this picture down.”

Bryan shrugged. “If you say so.”

He sauntered across the room and easily lifted the heavy gilt frame from its hook. The wall behind it was blank.

“Where’s the safe?” Porchind demanded, his chest heaving like a bellows. Sweat beaded on his bald head and ran down the sides of his face in little rivers.

“There is no safe.”

The fat man’s eyes bulged as his cheeks turned crimson. “But-but-you told Rasmussen-”

Bryan grinned engagingly. “I lied.”

His admission met with a murderous look. “You rotten…”

Porchind lifted the revolver and aimed. Bryan swung the portrait sideways, catching the man hard across the stomach with the thick frame. Porchind staggered back as his breath left him in a gust. Suddenly his feet kicked out from under him, and he fell backward with a strangled squeal. The revolver discharged as he hit the floor, the bullet exploding into the fireplace, nicking a chunk out of the brick.

The study door burst open, and Shane Callan charged into the room with a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson in his hands. He trained the gun on Porchind and smiled a purely predatory smile, gray eyes gleaming.

“I’d drop that peashooter if I were you, sport,” he said, his voice a low, rough caress.

“Where’s Rasmussen?” Bryan asked.

“Out front with Deputy Screwup.”

“Bryan!” Rachel exclaimed, rushing into the room, her face white, eyes wide. “Are you all right? We heard a shot!”

“I’m fine,” he said coolly.

Turning away from her, he hung the portrait of Arthur Drake back in its place, brushing his fingertips across the tarnished brass plate that was affixed to the bottom molding.

“Are you all right?” he asked as they Watched Shane haul Porchind to his feet and shove him out into the hall.

“I’m fine.”

“And Addie?”

“Are you kidding? The police are here,” Rachel joked, trying to muster up a laugh of her own and failing. “She’s ecstatic.”

The silence that fell between them was awkward, filled with unspoken questions. Bryan let his gaze drink in the sight of her, memorizing everything about the way she looked at that moment-young and frightened in a baggy T-shirt and jeans, her hair falling around her like a rumpled curtain of silk.

Finally, she broke the quiet, asking a question that had nothing to do with the ones in her heart. “How did you know they would be here tonight?”

“Oh, I had a hunch. I sort of sent them.”

She gave him a puzzled look.

“I guess I just wanted to clear all this up for you before I left.”

Rachel’s heart leapt into her throat. “You’re leaving? Leaving Anastasia?”

“I’ve been asked to go to Hungary.”

“I see.”

“I wanted to find the gold for you first,” he explained. “After all, you and Addie deserve it more than Porky and the Rat do.”

Rachel hung her head and sighed. He’d come back here and risked his life for something that didn’t exist. All for her. What was she going to do? She would love him with her last breath, but she couldn’t afford to go chasing rainbows with him.

She watched as Bryan went to the fireplace and selected the poker from the stand of heavy brass fire irons. Using the handle end, which was shaped like a hammerhead, he rapped it against the brick that Porchind’s bullet had struck. The thin layer of brick crumbled and fell away, revealing a surface of shiny gold.

“ ‘Gold is tried by fire,’ ” he said, “ ‘brave men by adversity.’ Seneca.”

Rachel stared in stunned disbelief. She fell to her knees in front of the fireplace and lifted a trembling hand to touch the treasure that had lain hidden all these years, safe and snug behind a wall of false brick.

“Oh, my-It’s real,” she said on a soft breath. “Gold.”

“Yes,” Bryan murmured, watching her. “A considerable fortune’s worth, I’d say, though I admit I don’t exactly keep abreast of the market prices. You’ll want to call Dylan Harrison. He does a little investment counseling on the side. He can tell you what it’s worth in dollars and cents.”

At the moment she didn’t need to know what it was worth in dollars and cents. She knew what it was worth. It was the answer to all her financial woes. It meant they wouldn’t have to sell Drake House. They wouldn’t have to leave Anastasia. Practicality could take a flying leap right out of her life.

She closed her eyes and laughed as giddy joy flooded through her. Sighing, she pressed her cheek to the exposed bar of gold.

“It was really here,” she whispered. “Like magic.”

“Yes,” Bryan said sadly. “It’s a good thing one of us believed in it.”