Night of the Phantom

  Even as the darkness descended around them, the brightness grew, and she knew it was the headlights of Pastor Lincoln's brigade. They were going to make it back before Ethan found them. And she knew there was no hope for her.

  She considered trying to reach the broken hypodermic, then dismissed the notion. She wasn't going to die a coward. The hand holding hers told her she wasn't going to die at all. Though at the moment, she wouldn't have put any money on that certainty.

  It seemed as if there were more trucks returning than had left. In the wind-tossed darkness, the clearing seemed covered with blinding headlights, and yet the crowd of people moving toward the grove seemed diminished. She didn't stop to consider why. She simply clung to Joseph, keeping her head high and her gaze steady as Pastor Lincoln advanced on her.

  He looked straight at her, unaware that she wasn't alone. "What have you done, you harlot? Where's Ferdy? What's happened to Doc? Answer me, or God's wrath will pour down upon you."

  She was getting a little tired of his direct connection to God's wrath. As far as she was concerned, she was of equal value in His eyes. "I gave them the evil eye and they both dropped dead," she snapped, trying to dredge up her courage.

  Definitely a major mistake, she knew that immediately. Pastor Lincoln began to shriek, calling upon God and all his saints to strike her dead, ordering his faithful followers to punish her.

  His faithful followers were already looking a little uneasy. Mob frenzy could only last so long, and the drive between the knoll and Ethan's house was a long one. The fire seemed to have sated their blood lust, for no one moved.

  "She's murdered Doc!" Lincoln shrieked, his face red with fury. "With her witchcraft, she's broken every holy ordinance. She must die."

  Still no one came close. They were looking at what Pastor Lincoln couldn't see. The man sitting in the dirt behind her. The old man, watching, warning them away.

  The knife glittered in the darkness as Lincoln slashed through her bonds. She could feel the hot, sticky wetness of her own blood as he hauled her to her feet, but she no longer wondered why Joseph didn't stop him. He couldn't.

  Lincoln dragged her over to the stake, shrieking prayers that were both macabre and eerily familiar. On that hilltop, they were the only two people moving, the others were transfixed, watching the gory tableau as Megan kicked and fought and scratched, ignoring the vicious blade in the pastor's deft hand. "Help me," he called to the others, panting as he struggled with her desperate fury, but no one moved. No one helped him, but no one stopped him, either. They stood there, transfixed, watching.

  He slapped her hard across the face, momentarily stunning her, and she fell back against the hard, wooden stake. He had ropes in his hands, to bind her to her funeral pyre, and as he advanced on her, she screamed.

  She felt his presence before she saw him. The lightning was all around, snaking down on the high, exposed place, with the thunder shaking the ground. From over the cliff, he appeared, climbing up the sheer rock face, and as the bolt of lightning illuminated him, Megan felt a sudden, superstitious terror.

  Ethan looked like Lucifer, the fallen angel. His long black hair flowed around his narrow, marked face, the beauty and the deformity a contrast in rage. He was dressed in black, and he stood there at the edge of the cliff, intent on Pastor Lincoln's mesmerized figure.

  "Get away from her."

  Lincoln dropped the ropes in sudden superstitious terror. And then he managed to regain his fury. "Kill the ungodly!" he screeched to the skies. "Send your lightning down and kill the evil ones."

  The slashing sizzle of fire was instantaneous, followed immediately by a thunder that shook the valley below. The bolt of lightning snaked down, a direct hit. Slicing through the upraised arm of Pastor Lincoln. Killing him instantly.

  It was a moment of speechless horror. The smell of fire and electricity, the sudden finality of it. For an endless moment, he stood there as the very air around him crackled. And then he fell, face forward. His body spread-eagled across the pile of kindling he'd planned for Megan's execution.

  Chapter Seventeen

  * * *

  Someone took her arm. Megan couldn't remember when she'd managed to struggle to her feet. Pastor Lincoln's body was nearby, but she kept her gaze averted, watching Ethan's distant face.

  Now that she was on her feet, she could see the conflagration in the distance as Ethan's house went up in flames. The lightning seemed to have vanished, that final, murderous bolt the end, and now rain began to fall, a steady, soaking rain. She looked at Ethan, wanting to run to him, but the hand on her arm held her steady. And then he turned his back to her, to stare out into the rain-swept night toward his burning home.

  "Come with me, Megan.' The voice was gentle, familiar, and she half expected it to be Joseph. But it was Sal, his face bruised and battered almost beyond recognition, with more kindness than she'd ever heard from him. "You're bleeding. You need to get to the hospital and have someone check you over. And the police are going to want a statement."

  "Hospital?" she echoed, dazed. "Police?" She looked around her and realized that the members of the motley crowd who'd been out for her blood just hours ago weren't subdued simply by their leader's shocking death. They were subdued by an astonishing number of uniformed policemen.

  "Come along," Sal said again, tugging her toward a police car.

  She tried to pull back. "But Ethan..."

  "I'll take care of him. I always have. Go with Lieutenant Dixon. Now." The shove was not as gentle as his hands had been, pushing her toward the waiting police officer.

  She turned back, wondering if she could break away, but Ethan's back was still turned. Tall, remote, he'd shut everything out. Including her.

  The ride to the hospital in Millers Fork was endless. She sat in the back of the police car, staring blindly at the blinking lights on the dashboard, and answered questions in a dull monotone. And had her own unasked ones answered.

  Sal had gone for help the moment he'd realized how far things had transpired in town. Pastor Lincoln had left him tied up in front of the altar in the old church, but the bonds had been looser than Megan's, and he'd managed to escape, stealing a car and heading for Millers Fork and the nearest police station. It hadn't taken much to convince the authorities—his own beaten face and Ruth Wilkins's presence in the hospital were proof enough, and the stories about Oak Grove had been rampant.

  They were too late to save Ethan's house, but the crowd was so het up that it hadn't noticed a phalanx of anonymous sedans had joined the convoy back to the old oak grove. Lieutenant Dixon was just about to make his own move when Pastor Lincoln had met his abrupt end. Megan didn't listen to the excuses or explanations. They no longer mattered. What mattered was that Ethan had come to save her. And once she was safe, he'd turned his back on her.

  It took too long, too damned long at the hospital. Lincoln had managed to give her a substantial gash across her ribs, one that required several stitches, and she had various scratches, bumps and bruises that needed attending to. At three in the morning, she didn't have the option of visiting Ruth, but she was told Ruth was recuperating quite nicely and would be released in another day. Though why anyone would want to go back to the town of Oak Grove was beyond Megan's comprehension.

  Except that was exactly where she was desperate to go. And she still had to wait, and wait, and wait while the inexorable Lieutenant Dixon drove her to the police station and plied the sleepy stenographer and himself with coffee that Megan steadfastly refused. She was already about to fly apart—she didn't need caffeine on top of her monumental case of burgeoning hysteria.

  The sun was rising when they finally decided they'd asked enough questions. There were three bodies that needed accounting for. They'd all been horrified witnesses to the Pastor's demise, but Ferdy and Doc were a little more problematic. Dixon had seen for himself that Megan was still securely bound when they'd arrived and that both men were dead. But she knew he wouldn't understand about Joseph. A
nd she didn't bother trying to explain.

  It made the whole inquisition last longer, and Dixon was far from satisfied when he finally let her go. But there was nothing more she could say, not when she didn't understand herself.

  They offered to drive her to the nearest airport or, failing that, to the nearest car-rental place, but she turned them down. For one thing, she had no purse, no identification and no one she could call for help. She'd be damned if she'd ask her father for anything.

  The same held for Rob Palmer. There was no one she could turn to, no one she wanted to turn to. Except Ethan. And he'd turned his back on her.

  In the end, she called her future stepmother, thanking heaven a few minutes later for the inspiration. Madeleine asked no questions other than to ascertain that Megan was all right, and offered no information that Megan didn't want to hear. A thousand dollars would be wired immediately, and Megan could come home and Madeleine would take care of everything.

  For the first time that night, Meg started crying. She wanted a mother, someone to take care of her, tuck her in bed, scare away the demons. But she didn't want them all scared away. What she wanted most of all was her phantom. And she was horribly afraid she'd never see him again.

  She had to wait until seven in the morning to rent a car, and even then, they weren't pleased with cash and no credit card, insisting on calling the police for verification. The car they rented her was not much better than the old clunker that had taken her to Ethan Winslowe. She thought briefly about that car, destroyed at the hands of Pastor Lincoln and his gang. She was going to have a fun time explaining that to the insurance company.

  The storm of the night before had blown through, leaving the landscape sodden and clear. The endless trip from Millers Fork seemed twice as long as it had long hours before, and Oak Grove looked even more like a ghost town than it had when she'd first arrived. Except for the police cars patrolling the streets.

  The smell in the air was unmistakable as she drove the long, twisting driveway back to Ethan's house. She knew even before she got there what she'd find, but the reality of it was devastating. She pulled the car to a stop in front of the vast, smoldering ruins, and she felt like crying.

  There was no one in sight, and she wondered why she would have expected otherwise. Even the outbuildings were destroyed, only some of the gardens having survived the scorching flames. She found herself hoping the maze had been reduced to cinders.

  She stepped out of the car, shivering slightly in the cool air. She didn't look for Joseph—he was gone. But Ethan was here, somewhere. And she couldn't leave until she'd seen him. Until he told her to go.

  He was in the moon garden. The white flowers had shriveled in the intense heat, the shrubbery blackened and stunted, and the shallow pool was filled with half-burned timbers. He was sitting in the back, still and silent in the fitful sunlight, and he didn't move when she entered the garden, even though he was as aware of her as she was of him.

  She was reminded of Joseph—there but remote. And like Joseph, Ethan's bearing kept her at a distance.

  She crossed the cinder-strewn paths, stopping a few feet away from him, waiting for him to look at her. She'd never seen him in full daylight. The mark across his face was a cruel travesty for a man blessed with such beauty, and the contrast was, as always, heartbreaking.

  "Who is Joseph?" she asked, surprised that that should be the first question.

  He looked up at her and his long hair flowed down his back. "My father."

  "Your father's dead. He's been dead for twenty years."

  "Yes."

  It explained everything and nothing. "Where is he?"

  "Gone. This time for good, I imagine." Ethan's low, once-beguiling voice sounded lifeless, dead.

  She moved closer, ignoring his unspoken need to keep her at a distance. "What are you going to do now? Are you going to rebuild?"

  That startled him into a bitter laugh. "I don't see much point in it, do you?"

  She looked around her at the smoldering ruins. "Then what will you do?"

  "Go back to the islands, I suppose. I own most of a tiny little island off Martinique. It's very remote, very secluded, and the people there accept me for what I am." He looked up at her then, and his eyes were dark with a pain she couldn't understand. "What are you going to do?"

  It shouldn't have hurt so sharply. So deep a pain that she wanted to crawl away and hide, as Ethan had hidden most of his life. She wasn't going to give up so easily, she told herself, bracing against the pain. She'd come back to fight, and fight she would. "Ask me," she said. "Ask me to come with you.''

  "I can't do that." The words were a death knell in her heart.

  "Why not? Don't you want me?"

  He laughed, the sound bitter and uneasy in the morning light. "Not want you?" he echoed. "I'm not crazy, Megan. But I'm not going to have you."

  "Why not? All you have to do is ask me." She sank onto her knees beside him in the mud, not touching him, afraid to touch him, afraid if she were to do so and he sent her away, she might hate him.

  "I can't ask you."

  She shivered, sinking back onto her heels. "And I can't go unless you do. I can't chase after you, throwing myself at you. You have to love me enough to tell me. You have to make that one small sacrifice. You have to commit yourself enough to just ask me." Her voice was pleading. She hated the sound of it, but she had to.

  "No." The word was low, flat, final.

  For a moment, she didn't move, kneeling at his feet in the mud. Slowly, she pulled the Janus ring from her finger, her fingers caressing it one last time as she didn't dare caress him. And then, dropping it in his lap, she rose, blinking back the tears.

  It didn't matter. He no longer looked at her. He'd dismissed her, wiped her out of his mind, out of his life.

  "One word," she said, her voice thick with grief. "One sign, and I'll come to you."

  He looked up, remote, devil and angel side by side in his extraordinary face, and spoke one word.

  "Goodbye."

  Megan kept waiting for life to resume some semblance of normalcy. She stayed with Madeleine for a couple of weeks after she flew back to Chicago, but she felt as if she were only treading water. She reopened her apartment, she visited the foundering Carey Enterprises offices, she fired Rob Palmer, and she visited her father. But still she moved through the days in a fog.

  She'd wake up at night, alone in her bed, and reach out for Ethan. It was absurd, after twenty-seven years of sleeping alone, two nights had forever changed her life. She'd walk down a busy street and imagine she saw

  Ethan reflected in a shop window. Ethan, who'd probably never walked down a busy city street in his life.

  She kept her father uncomplaining, silent company as he went through his pretrial hearings and plea bargaining, saying nothing as he tried to wheedle his way out of the mess his greed had gotten him into. And when it was finally clear to him that there was no way out, he accepted his disgrace with his daughter standing beside him.

  She waited until he married the ever-faithful Madeleine. She waited until he'd begun his three-month term at a place just a little bit fancier than the country club he paid thousands of dollars in dues to, waited until he was already beginning to improve his tennis game. And then she packed once more, ready to leave.

  Maybe Ethan wouldn't haunt her by the canals of Venice. Maybe he wouldn't be at her shoulder along the Champs-Elysees. Maybe he wouldn't walk with her in Devon, hike with her in the Scottish Highlands, whisper to her in Vienna. But she doubted it.

  She had no choice. Ethan was gone, disappearing from her life as effectively as his father had. She was fully alone for the first time in her life, and she was running away from the pain of it.

  She wasn't even pregnant. That had been her secret, wicked hope when she first returned to Chicago. Neither of them had used any precautions, and a pregnancy would have forced her to go after him.

  But there was no pregnancy, no easy way out. He'd left her,
and in this life, there was neither hope nor joy. He had to want her enough to risk his heart or in the end, he would destroy her. Because who could live with a broken heart and a broken life?

  Her happy ending was so obvious to her. He could design his extraordinary buildings; she could build them. Together, they could do anything, anything at all—no obstacle was too great. But he didn't believe that.

  The early-morning flight from Chicago to New York seemed longer than usual. The three-hour layover was a pain, but one Megan was prepared to endure. She'd had to endure far worse during the last two months.

  She was going to be trapped on a plane for six more hours—she certainly had no intention of spending the time waiting for her next flight sitting on her behind. She walked up and down the corridors, watching the travelers at each gate. The businessmen, the vacationers, the families and the lovers. The airline she favored flew everywhere. She passed each gate, thinking about the various destinations. Iowa, San Francisco, Honolulu. Tokyo, Vancouver, Martinique. Paris, Rome...

  The plane to Martinique left in forty-five minutes. The waiting area wasn't crowded—mid-June wasn't prime time for the Caribbean. Megan stood there in the middle of the terminal, staring at the counter, at the sleek silver plane through the windows beyond.

  Turning on her heel, she spun around, moving away from temptation, moving away at something close to a run. In the corner of her vision, she thought she saw a familiar figure, but she didn't dare turn and check. Too often she thought she'd seen Ethan near her, only to find out it was a heart-tearing fantasy prompted by a longing so intense, it was going to kill her. She wouldn't give in to weakness this time and look. .

  Her own gate was half the terminal away. A few transatlantic passengers were already there, but the area was empty enough so that there was no missing the figure waiting for her. The same, hauntingly familiar figure she'd seen at the other gate.