“Duncan wants to see both letters. We’ll take a taxi to Reid’s office, and he’ll meet us there.” She left two bills on the table to pay for their coffees.
“Reid’s office? Why do we have to go there?” Nell asked.
“It’s halfway between Duncan’s office and here. Plus Duncan says Reid’s on vacation, and he’s going to the castle with you.”
In her mind, Nell pictured a guardian angel swooping down on her. “I don’t need anyone to protect me. I can handle this.”
“Don’t be silly.” Punching another number into her phone, Piper moved quickly toward the curb. “Abe, I’m going to be a little late for work. Family emergency.”
Family emergency? Nell frowned. Nell grabbed one last swallow of chocolate-laced caffeine and rose from her seat.
Piper turned back to her. “The best place to catch a taxi is at the opposite corner. Follow me.”
Then she stepped in between two parked cars to wait for traffic to clear.
A horn blast drew Nell’s attention. A few stores down, a dark sedan was blocking traffic. The driver behind him demonstrated his displeasure by leaning on the horn again. Piper glanced at the noise also and then turned her attention back to her phone call.
Nell had only taken one step when a woman came up to her. “Ms. MacPherson? You are Nell MacPherson, right?”
“Yes, I am.”
The woman was a tall brunette in her early fifties who looked as if she could have stepped right off the cover of a high-end fashion magazine. “I missed your signing, and I was wondering if you could autograph a book for my granddaughter?”
“Of course.”
While the woman fished in her bag for the book and a pen, Nell heard the horn again and the sound of a motor revving. She caught a blur of movement out of the corner of her eye. The image of the dark sedan shooting forward had barely registered, when she realized that Piper was directly in its path. Fear flashed so brightly in her mind that for a moment she was blinded. Pure instinct had her pushing past the woman and racing toward the street.
Piper seemed so far away, the sound of the car so close. Nell felt as if she was moving in slow motion, the car on fast-forward. She slammed into her sister, grabbing her around the waist and using Nell’s momentum to hurl them both forward. They were airborne for a second. Holding tight to Piper, Nell twisted so that she took the impact on her side when they tumbled onto the pavement. Then with every ounce of energy she had, she rolled, dragging her sister with her. Hot wind seared her cheek, and she smelled burning rubber as the dark sedan whipped past and sped up the street.
“Nell? Are you all right?”
Pain was singing through every bone in her body, but Nell managed a smile as she opened her eyes and looked into Piper’s. “I’m fine. You?”
“Yeah,” Piper said. “Thanks to you.”
“He was crazy,” a man said as he helped both of them to their feet.
Piper ran her hands over her sister. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I’m better than I was a moment ago.” Nell didn’t want to ever replay those few seconds in her mind again.
For a moment Piper just held on to her sister’s hands. There was a look in her eyes that Nell had never seen before. Surprise?
“You saved my life,” Piper said. “I guess you were right about it being just as dangerous here as at the castle.”
“It’s all good,” Nell said as she pulled her sister close and just held on to her for a minute.
“I wrote down his license plate number,” a woman said. “It looked to me like he wanted to run you over, young lady. You should report him.”
“I will.” Pulling away from Nell, Piper took the slip of paper.
“I called 9-1-1,” another woman said. “They’re sending the police to take a report.”
Glancing around, Nell noted that they’d attracted quite a little crowd. On the edge of it, she saw a young man pushing forward. As he reached her, she saw that he had an envelope in his hand. “Sorry, lady,” he said. “The guy in that car gave me this to deliver to you after you left the café. He paid me fifty bucks and told me to wait until you crossed the street. I had no idea he was going to try to run you down.”
“Thanks,” Nell said. But it wasn’t her the driver had been aiming for. It had been Piper.
“Let me open it for you,” Piper said, then pulled out her phone to call Duncan once more.
“No.” This was her story, and if she’d had any lingering doubts about that, they vanished as she read the message on the letter inside.
You have forty-eight hours to find the sapphire necklace, or you run the risk of losing another member of your family.
4
HORNS BLASTED AS Reid made an illegal left-hand turn that would cut five minutes off his trip to Piper MacPherson’s apartment in Georgetown, near the latest Stuart sapphires crime scene. Now if he could just make it through the next few traffic lights. He cut off a car in the right lane, pressed his foot on the gas and shot through a yellow one. Duncan’s ringtone had him grabbing his cell just as he headed into one of D.C.’s traffic circles.
“I’m still ten minutes out,” Duncan said.
“I’ll be there in less than five.” Reid slammed on his brakes as the car in front of him slowed. “I’ll let you know the second I arrive.” He dropped his cell on the passenger seat and concentrated on snaking his way through the traffic.
He should have told Duncan to have the two women wait for him where they were, as soon as he’d first heard about the first two threatening letters. Why hadn’t he? He seldom had to second-guess himself. His success in the Secret Service depended on him being right the first time.
But this particular scenario simply hadn’t occurred to him. The writer of the letters had threatened Nell’s family if she didn’t locate the rest of Eleanor’s sapphires and hand them over to their rightful owner. It was a good ploy. It would have probably scared her into taking a shot at finding the necklace ASAP. Who would have thought the writer would try to make good on his threat within the hour?
He should have, Reid thought. When his cell rang again, he grabbed it.
“Piper just called me again,” Duncan said. “Nell asked the officer who responded to the attempted hit-and-run complaint to stay until one of us gets there.”
“Smart,” Reid said.
“Yeah, but we should have been smarter. I had Piper put the officer on the line. He filled me in on what the eyewitnesses saw. They say the driver of the car accelerated as soon as Piper stepped into the street—as if he’d been waiting for her. He would have run her down if Nell hadn’t tackled her and gotten her out of the way.”
Reid heard a thread of panic in his brother’s voice he’d never heard before. “The important thing is that Piper’s alive and unharmed.” But he was thinking of Nell, the little fairy-tale princess of a girl he’d done his best to protect that long-ago summer. The image of her tackling her sister didn’t quite gel with that. Nor did it fit with the fragile-looking teenage girl he recalled standing beneath the stone arch as their parents had taken their wedding vows.
“I knew there was another shoe that had to drop,” Duncan said. “I should have known something like this might happen. The facts are all there. It’s just that the attacks on Adair and Piper occurred at the castle, and only after they’d each found one of the earrings.”
Reid