A faint rumble of thunder sounded in the distance.
Where was he anyway? This time the fear was sharper. Had he seen the person and given chase himself? “Duncan?”
Whirling from the window, she raced the length of the library and opened the door to the hallway. “Duncan?”
No answer.
Once Alba joined her, she locked the library door and hurried to the kitchen. But she knew he wouldn’t be there even before she entered. He would have answered. Turning on a dime, she ran back down the hall that led to the large foyer, calling his name again.
The only answer was Alba’s bell as she followed.
At the foot of the stairs, Piper made herself stop. Pressing a hand to her chest, she took a deep breath. Silly to panic. What in the world was the matter with her? Duncan was a smart man. Not only that, he was an FBI agent. She thought of his big gun. He could handle himself.
But there was that person who’d followed them into the cave that morning. And there was Patrick Lightman, who seemed to have a knack for slipping away from surveillance any time he felt like it.
Squaring her shoulders, she climbed onto the first step. She’d just search the castle, room by room, until she found him. Alba whined and she turned to see the dog standing at one of the glass windows that framed the front door. When she got there, she scanned what she could see of the yard. The drive was empty.
Alba whined again.
Piper spotted Duncan then. Because her view was partially blocked by the garden, she could only see the side of his face and his shoulder. He was in the stone arch. Even as she watched, he raised a hand to brush it through his hair.
And he was wearing his glasses. Of course. Maybe he’d needed a change of scene. He’d probably taken a file out there to read. Maybe he was thinking the power of the legend would give him some insights.
“He’s fine,” she assured Alba. The degree of relief she was feeling was ridiculous. And telling. It wasn’t just that for a couple of minutes she’d been afraid for him. When she’d woken up in the library and found him gone, she’d actually missed him.
“No, no, no.” Alba’s bell jingled and Piper glanced down to see the dog was looking at her strangely. “I’m not talking to you.” She paced to the stairs and back. “It’s just the stress. It’s been a long day. Starting with digging that box out of the stones and refreshing my mind about that sexual fantasy I wrote with Duncan in mind.”
Alba had stretched out on the floor and tilted her head to one side.
“So, I decided why not? On-demand sex is simple, uncomplicated. The perfect solution to the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about getting my hands on him. And I was nineteen when I thought it up.”
When she paused, Alba just looked at her.
“Okay, so I’m older now and supposedly wiser, and it still seemed like the perfect solution this morning. Maybe it would have been if it hadn’t been for the person who followed us into the cave or the fact that Patrick Lightman, aka the RPK, has decided to be my BFF.”
Alba was looking at her as if she were taking in every word.
Piper sank onto the floor in front of her. “It still is a good solution. I want him. He wants me. All I have to do is keep the complicated stuff in a bottle.”
Closing her eyes, she pictured the bottle. Then she imagined the words that described what she’d been feeling in the library. Fear. That funny kind of emptiness. That incredible and scary yearning. And … she felt her heart take a little bounce. Okay—panic, too. Those were the emotions that she could put a name to when she’d woken up alone. In her mind, she did what she could to separate each word into letters and imagined them disappearing into the bottle. Then she jammed the cork in.
“There.” She opened her eyes and looked into Alba’s. Leaning forward, she hugged the dog. “You’re a good listener.” She rose to her feet and reached for the door handle. “And now that I’ve sorted everything out, I’m in the mood for some sex on demand.”
Thunder rumbled again.
DUNCAN HAD SPENT MOST OF HIS adult career getting into other people’s heads. He was good at it. He enjoyed it. But he didn’t think he’d ever looked forward to doing it quite this much. The metal box had been right where Cam had said it would be—a couple of feet into the stone arch on the right. No CIA or FBI skills involved. The stones were loose, as if they’d been recently replaced in a hurry.
Had Piper dug out the box? Was that why she’d paid that early morning visit to the stone arch?
It was the size of a cigar box, but sturdy. The small padlock hadn’t even been fully closed. The compartments inside were filled with scraps of paper in three colors, just as Cam had said, and they all seemed to be folded. That argued that, in spite of the fact the sisters had shared the box, they’d valued each other’s privacy.
A pang of guilt assaulted him, but it wasn’t enough to make him close the box. If Piper had a fantasy that she’d buried in the stones, he wanted to know what it was. More, he wanted to fulfill it.
He took Cam’s word that the yellow paper was Adair’s. And pink seemed to fit Nell with her blond curls and blue eyes. She’d even worn a pink dress on the day that their parents had wed.
And Piper was the middle sister; logically, she would choose or be assigned the middle section of the box. He assumed the fantasies the girls had penned were on the larger sheets of paper that lay on the top of the compartments. To test his theory, he lifted the blue one and selected one of the smaller scraps of folded paper beneath it.
I want to win the spelling bee on Friday.
A noble ambition, but not telling. He could imagine any one of the MacPherson girls being that competitive. Digging deeper, he selected another one.
One day I want to clerk on the Supreme Court.
Bingo, he thought. That could only be Piper. Then because he couldn’t help himself, he opened a few more. The wish to master long division made him smile. The wish that she would one day become a black belt fascinated him. Had she achieved it? And how many other things didn’t he know about her dreams and ambitions?
A lot, he thought as he stared at how crammed her compartment was. Not that her sisters were slackers. His admiration for the MacPherson sisters grew. There was a lot of academic research to support the fact that simply writing down one’s goals dramatically increased the odds of achieving them. Kudos to the girls for tapping into that power, as well as whatever extra power the stone arch possessed because of the legend.
Inspired, he pulled out a pen, and using the back of Piper’s wish to win a spelling bee, he wrote: “Keep Piper and the other MacPhersons safe.” Then he folded it and buried the slip of paper beneath the others.
Only then did he pick up the folded blue sheets of paper on the top of the center compartment. “My Sexual Fantasy: Sex on Demand.”
He skimmed the first page. It presented various settings and scenarios for making love, each one spur of the moment. On a deserted beach with the waves pounding on the shore, in a limo, on a coffee table, on a bathroom counter. There were more on the second page—some of which went beyond his own experience. He had to admit, he’d never made love to a woman in a phone booth—but then seven years had passed since this had been written and phone booths were hard to find. By the time he’d finished the last one, he’d had to use the sheets of paper to fan himself.
Each scene illustrated the excitement and convenience