When Brad reached to pull the door open, Eden grabbed his arm, her expression telling him to be careful. Smiling at her, he patted her hand, then he pulled a pistol out of the holster at his side. He hadn’t been wearing a gun earlier. He motioned for Eden to go into the trees to safety, but she shook her head. She’d stand outside, but she wasn’t leaving.
Brad pulled the door open, and when it made no sound on its hinges, Eden knew that they had been oiled recently. The inside was darker than the house had been. She heard insects scuttling across the floor, but no other sound.
“Melissa?” Eden said into the darkness, and in the next second, she heard whimpering. Her daughter!
Stumbling over her feet, Eden ran toward the sound. She could see nothing, but her hands felt warmth. Frantically, she reached out and touched her daughter’s big, hard belly. In seconds, she found Melissa’s face and pulled down the gag from her mouth.
“Oh, Mommy!” Melissa cried. “I knew you’d come. It’s been horrible, Mommy. It’s been—”
“I know, sweetheart,” Eden said as she felt down Melissa’s arms. Her daughter was in a chair, her hands taped together behind her. Brad turned on his flashlight, and the little room flooded with pale light. Eden went to her knees behind her daughter and tried to tear the duct tape off. When her fingers couldn’t do it, she used her teeth.
“Here,” Brad asked from above her, and handed her a knife.
“Mommy, Mommy,” was about all Melissa could say.
“I’m sorry,” Eden said, sawing at the tape to free her daughter. “He wanted the necklace, so he took you. It was all my fault.” She got the tape off her daughter’s wrists, then moved to the front of her to release her ankles.
Brad helped Eden stand up, as her knees were shaking.
“Could you help me up?” Melissa said to Brad.
He had to put his arms under hers to lift her, as her legs and arms had lost their circulation. “I think we should get out of here.”
“Too late for that,” said a man from the doorway. He was a heavyset man, with thick eyebrows, and Eden had never in her life seen a man with so little life in his eyes. There was no emotion there, no feelings.
“Who are you?” Eden whispered.
“Somebody that don’t want no trouble,” the man said, looking Eden up and down, then looking at Melissa. When Brad moved his foot, the man turned quickly and shot him in the leg. The sound inside the earth-encased room was deafening.
With a scream, Melissa collapsed back onto the chair. Eden ran to Brad as he fell to the floor.
“He’s all right,” the man in the doorway said. “I just wounded him. You.” He pointed his gun at Eden. “I want you to come with me.”
“You have the necklace,” she said.
“Yeah, I got it,” he said, pull
ing it out of his jacket pocket. “I didn’t plan on that. That skinny guy held on to it so tight I had to pry it out of his hands.”
Eden looked at the man, trying to understand what was going on. If he didn’t want the necklace, what did he want? And if he hadn’t taken the necklace, who was he?
“You gonna get up or am I gonna have to shoot the kid?” He pointed his gun at Melissa.
“You want the paintings, don’t you?” Eden said softly as she walked toward him.
“Yeah, sure. What else would I want?”
She glanced down at Brad on the floor. The bullet had grazed his thigh. He was bleeding and in pain, but she knew that he’d be all right. She walked slowly, so the man in the doorway could see that she wasn’t going to cause any problems.
“My house is full of FBI agents,” she said calmly. “It will be difficult to get the paintings out of the house.”
“Your house used to be full of agents,” the man said, “but I got rid of a lot of them, including the ones around here.”
Eden tried to keep from gasping out loud. Was Jared one of the agents he’d rid himself of? She couldn’t keep the blood from draining from her face.
“Yeah, missy,” the man said, an ugly half grin on his face. “I got rid of your boyfriend too.” He glanced at Brad on the floor, who was wrapping the sleeves of his windbreaker around the wound in his leg. “One of ’em, anyway. So which one are you plannin’ to stay with?” he asked Eden, smirking like a dirty little schoolboy. He waved his gun at Brad. “He know what you and McBride did in that shed?” He looked at Brad. “And she know what you did with your fancy dame? You three are why I never wanted to settle down and have a family. Ever’body in bed with ever’body else.”
“If you’re insinuating that my mother—” Melissa began, trying to heave herself up out of the chair.