Jayne Krentz: Copper Beach

“I know who you are, Miss Ames.”

“You did say to call upon you if I had a problem. As it happens, I do have one.”

“I can see that,” Lucas said.

Hobson pulled up short. He made a slashing motion with the knife. “Get out of my way and ye won’t get hurt. I just want the little whore.”

Lucas regarded him with what could only be described as detached curiosity. “You are trespassing. That is a very dangerous thing to do here at Crystal Gardens.”

“What’s going on in this place?” Hobson looked around uneasily.

“Haven’t you heard the stories?” Lucas asked. “Everyone around here knows that these grounds are haunted.”

“Sharpy Hobson ain’t afraid of no ghosts,” Hobson vowed. “Won’t be hanging around long enough to meet one. All I want is this bitch.”

“What do you want with Miss Ames?” Lucas asked.

Evangeline was floored by Lucas’s matter-­of-­fact tone. It was as if he was only casually interested in Hobson’s reasoning.

“None of yer bloody business,” Hobson snarled. “But I can tell ye she’s worth a nice bit of blunt dead and I’m not going to let anyone get in my way.”

“You don’t seem to comprehend the situation,” Lucas said. “The lady is my tenant and therefore under my protection.”

Hobson snorted. “I’m doing you a favor taking her off your hands. The way I heard it, she’s a lying little bitch.”

“Someone hired you to kill her?” Lucas asked.

Hobson was starting to appear uncertain. Matters were evidently not proceeding the way they usually did when he went about his business.

“I’m not wasting any more time talking to you.” Hobson leaped toward Lucas, knife ready to slash. “Yer a dead man.”

“Not quite,” Lucas said.

Energy, dark and terrifying, flashed in the atmosphere. Evangeline had just time enough time to realize that Lucas was somehow generating it, and then Hobson was shrieking with raw, mindless panic.

“No, get away from me,” he shouted. He dropped the knife and clawed at something only he could see. “Get away.”

He whirled and fled blindly into the gardens.

“Damn it to hell,” Lucas said quietly. “Stone?”

A second figure glided out of the shadows. “Here, sir.”

The voice sounded as though it emanated from the depths of a vast underground cavern, and, like Sharpy Hobson’s voice, it carried the accents of the London streets.

In the strange light provided by the subtly glowing foliage, Evangeline could see that Stone suited his name. He was constructed like some ancient granite monolith and looked as if he would be just as impervious to the elements. The moonlight gleamed on his shaved head. The shadows and the eerie luminescence around them made it difficult to estimate his age, but he appeared to be in his early twenties.

“See if you can grab Hobson before he blunders into the maze,” Lucas said. “Whatever you do, don’t try to follow him if he gets that far.”

“Yes, sir.”

Stone broke into a run, moving with a surprising lack of noise for such a large man.

Lucas turned back to Evangeline. “Are you all right, Miss Ames?”

“Yes, I think so.” She was still trying to calm her rattled senses and rapid pulse. “I don’t know how to thank you—­”

A high-­pitched, keening scream echoed from somewhere deep in the gardens. The unearthly cry iced Evangeline’s nerves. She stilled, unable to breathe.

It ended with horrifying suddenness. Evangeline was shivering so violently it was all she could do to remain on her feet.

“Sharpy Hobson,” she whispered.

“Evidently Stone did not get to him in time to prevent him from entering the maze,” Lucas said.

“Is he—­” She swallowed and tried again. “Is he dead?”

“Hobson? Probably, or he soon will be. It’s unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate?” she managed. “That’s all you can say about the man’s death?”

“I would like to have questioned him. But as that does not seem likely to happen, you and I will talk instead.”

She tried to compose herself. “Mr. Sebastian, I’m not at all sure what to say.”

“There will be nothing complicated about our conversation, Miss Ames. You will come inside with me now. I will pour you a glass of medicinal brandy for your nerves and you will tell me what you are doing here in my gardens at this hour of the night and why a man with a knife was trying to murder you.”

“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I have no idea why Hobson attacked me.”

“Then we must reason it out together.”

He shrugged off his coat and draped it around her shoulders before she could summon up further protest. When his fingers brushed the nape of her neck, a thrill of awareness stirred her senses. The heavy wool garment was still warm from the heat of his body. She caught a trace of his masculine scent. It caused her senses to flare in a way that she had never before experienced.

Stone appeared. “Sorry, sir. He saw the open gate and ran straight inside. Probably assumed it was a way out of the gardens.”

“I’ll deal with the body later,” Lucas said. “I wish to speak to Miss Ames first and then I will escort her back to the cottage.”

“Yes, sir. Will you be needing anything else?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Yes, sir.”

Stone moved into the shadows. Evangeline watched him disappear. She was starting to wonder if she was caught up in some bizarre dream. Perhaps she was hallucinating. It was not beyond the realm of possibility, she thought. Her employers and her friends were convinced that her nerves had been badly strained by the attack two weeks earlier. Perhaps they were right.

Lucas’s powerful hand closed around her arm. The shock of the physical contact made her flinch. Her talent was still flaring wildly and it was linked to her sense of touch. She could perceive Lucas’s aura now quite clearly. The fierce bands of ice-­and-­fire energy took her breath.

“Relax, Miss Ames,” he said. “I will not hurt you.”

There was nothing in his aura to indicate that he was lying. She was safe enough, she decided, at least for the moment. She pulled herself together and lowered her talent.

“This way, Miss Ames.” He steered her around a large bush. “Watch your step. There are a number of hazards on the grounds, including those roses.”

The power she had glimpsed in Lucas’s aura warned her that he was probably a good deal more dangerous than anything in his strange gardens.

Sharpy Hobson had stopped screaming, but she knew that she would hear the echoes of his last horrified cries in her nightmares for a long time to come.