Iris Johansen - Blind Alley

“Tell that to Joe.”

“Quinn is willing to let me do the donkey work. He knows I'm not dumb enough to step on his toes. We're gradually coming to an understanding.” He opened the screen door. “It's Eve I'm worrying about.”

“Because she doesn't melt around you like she does Bartlett?”

“Because she's a mother protecting her cub. Talk about unpredictable.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Are you going to tell me why you want so badly for Cira to have survived that volcano?”

He obviously hadn't been deceived and wasn't about to let it go. Well, she wasn't about to confide in him. “Since everyone seems to be equating the two of us maybe I just want her to have come out on top. It would be a good sign.”

“Yes, it would.” He studied her expression and then shook his head. “But I don't think that's it. . . .”

“Think what you like.”

“I always do.” He paused. “But I need to know. I need to know everything about you. It's safer for both of us.”

“Why?”

“He'll use any secret, any memory, any feeling that will draw you to him. He's done it already once with Toby.”

“I made a mistake. I won't do it again. And I'm not about to bare my soul to you. You've taken it upon yourself to learn entirely too much about me on your own.”

“Yes.” A sudden smile lit his face. “And it was my pleasure. It's still my pleasure.” He went into the cottage.

She had to force herself to look away from that door. Sweet Jesus, he was handsome. Most of the time when she was with him she was only aware of that magnetic personality and the sense of wariness it brought her. But in that last moment it had hit home what a beautiful man Trevor really was.

Beautiful? Trevor would not have been pleased. Where had that word come from?

Beautiful as a god .

Cira had been thinking of Antonio when those words had sprung to her mind. Antonio, intelligent, cynical, and totally charismatic. Antonio, who had seduced and dazzled and betrayed her. But in the end had he also tried to save her, or was that another deception?

What difference did it make? She was treating a dream as reality. And if this was some kind of psychic connection she'd made with Aldo, she'd evidently embroidered and enhanced it on her own. She was rooting for Cira every step of the way and Aldo certainly saw her as a villainess.

And what about Antonio?

Maybe she had to have a hero to save Cira. Though he was more of an antihero.

Like Trevor.

She stiffened. Cira's view of Antonio was remarkably like Jane's opinion of Trevor. And from that first moment she had felt a strange familiarity with him. She'd even told Eve he reminded her of someone.

Antonio?

She couldn't even remember what Antonio looked like. Cira was seeing him, not her. Cira was feeling the tempest of resentment, bitterness, hope, and love.

Love? Did Cira still love Antonio?

Oh, to the devil with it. What difference did it make? There was a chance she'd never have another dream about Cira. It had been several nights since she'd had that nightmare in which the ground had cracked beneath Cira's feet and she stared into molten fire.

Lava. When she'd known about the tunnel at Herculaneum and the woman who'd lived and died there.

But Trevor had already told her that the ashes were from Vesuvius and her imagination might have made a mental leap to an active volcano. How did she know what tricks a mind could play? These blasted dreams of Cira had completely shaken her confidence. At first, as she'd told Eve, she'd been able to view Cira and her struggles with curiosity and excitement as if she were reading a novel. It had been interesting and she'd looked forward to the next installment and trying to figure out exactly what was happening to her. That was no longer the case. After what Trevor had told her, she was flailing in the dark, trying to find her way. She was caught, held captive, and she was dreading going back into that tunnel.

“Stay away, Cira,” she whispered. “I have enough on my plate. Don't come back.”

ELEVEN

M olten lava yawning before her feet.

“Jump!” Antonio held out his arms. “Now, Cira. I'll catch you.”

Jump? The crack was too wide and getting wider every second.

No time. No other choice. She leaped across the crack. The heat seared her legs even as her feet touched the opposite ledge.

It crumbled beneath her!

Then he was yanking her upward and forward in one movement.

“I've got you.” Antonio's hands grasped her forearms and they were stumbling backward.

Another rumble.

“We've got to get out of this passage.” Cira glanced over her shoulder.

The crack was widening, gaping.

“You said you knew the way,” Cira gasped. “Prove it. Get us out of here.”

“Only you'd be stubborn enough to wait until you saw the gates of hell to say that to me.” Antonio grabbed her hand and started at a dead run down the tunnel. “The crack seems to be going across the tunnel. We can't go back, but it's not following us.”

“If it doesn't cause the roof to cave in when it tries to devour the other wall.”

Heat.

The lava behind them was gobbling what little air was still in the tunnel.

“Then we'd better be out of this branch of the tunnel before it happens. There's a turnoff just ahead that should lead us to the sea.”

“Or to Julius.”

“Shut up.” His hand tightened with bruising force on hers. “I'm not taking you to Julius. If I'd wanted you dead, I'd have taken his money for your face when he offered it two weeks ago.”

“My face?”

“When you told him you were leaving and wouldn't give him back the gold, he asked me to kill you.”

“What's that got to do with my face?”

“He said he'd commissioned a dozen likenesses of that wonderful face and didn't want anyone but him to possess it. Not even you. He wanted me to kill you and take my knife and remove your face and bring it to him.”

She felt sick. “Madness.”

“I agree. And, as I have a fondness for that face, I declined his offer. But it meant I had to leave Herculaneum for a few days. There was a good chance he would have put a price on my head as well. He knew I was your lover. It was why he thought I might have a chance of killing you.”

“If you could have gotten past Dominic,” she said fiercely. “Dominic would have cut your head off and served it to me on a silver tray.”

“That was why Julius resorted to bribery. Everyone knew how well guarded you were. Where is Dominic? He should be here with you.”

“I sent him home to the country.”

“Because you didn't want Julius aiming his arrows at him. That's what bodyguards are for, Cira.”

“He served me well. I didn't want him— I can take care of myself. Shouldn't we have reached the end of the tunnel by now?”

“It winds around. Julius didn't want to make getting out of the villa too easy.”

“And how do you know how to get out?”

“I made it my business. I spent many nights in these tunnels while we were together. It would hardly be intelligent to steal the gold and then not have an escape hole.”

“Bastard.”

“I was willing to share.”

“My gold.”

“There was enough for both of us. I would have earned it. I would have provided safety and treasured you as much as the gold.”

“I'm to believe you? Good gods, what nonsense you're—”