“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.
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 had reviewed the same things in his own mind, until it had become a continuous loop. He’d first suggested they come to his office to get them out of the neighborhood. But he should have—
“I knew Deanna Lewis was working with someone,” Duncan continued. “I knew they were obsessed with getting their hands on the Stuart sapphires. I should have—”
Reid cut his brother off by saying, “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been blaming myself for not going there right after you called about the letters.” Not that he would have gotten there in time. But he’d be there now.
There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line. Then Duncan said, “You’ve been blaming yourself?”
“That’s what I said.” With one hand, Reid eased the car out of the traffic circle.
“Wait. I’m going to punch the record button on my phone. Would you mind repeating that?”
“You can always dream, bro. And if you even breathe a word of that little confession to Cam, I’ll deny it. Then I’ll have to beat you up.”
“You can always dream, bro.”
With the panic in Duncan’s voice replaced by humor, some of Reid’s tension eased. But traffic had slowed to a crawl. Two blocks ahead, he saw the revolving lights of a patrol car. “I’m within sight of the apartment. I’ll update you soon.”
Reid jammed his car into a No Standing zone, jumped out and ran down the sidewalk.
NELL TURNED THE flame on beneath the teakettle on Piper’s stove. She preferred coffee, but the ritual of making tea had always soothed her nerves. It brought back memories of the times she’d talked through her problems while she’d watched her aunt Vi brewing a pot in Castle MacPherson. Nell had spent a lot of time in the sunny kitchen after her sisters had left for college.
Adair had been the first to leave. Nell and Piper had shared one more year before Piper had deserted her, too. Then for her last two years of high school, she’d been alone. Of course, she’d still had her aunt Vi. And her father had been there, tucked away in his rooms painting or teaching some art classes at nearby Huntleigh College. But there’d been no one to sneak out to the stone arch with in the middle of the night, no one to laugh with as they’d written down their hopes and goals and dreams on different-colored papers and buried them.
Spotting