First Impressions Read online

  The streets of Arundel were empty at that time of the morning, so Eden ran the red lights and made her way to the bridge as fast as she could. She went over the bridge at sixty, twice hitting her head on the roof of the car. I won’t sign anything until he releases everyone, she thought.

  She stopped the car on the road, jumped out, grabbed the two weapons, and started running toward her house. Standing on the side of a wooden flower bed, she looked into the living room window. She could see a light in the center hall and she thought she could see the silhouettes of at least three people. Who were they?

  “Where the hell did you come from?” came Jared McBride’s voice close to her ear. “I thought you were inside.”

  “Who is in there?” she asked as she handed him the rifle and the pistol. She still had the little gun in her trouser pocket.

  “Granville and his son-in-law are taped up and on the floor in the hall. Jolly and his goons are moving around.”

  “I guess you know that man Jolly.”

  “Oh, yeah. We’ve never been able to get him on anything before because he leaves no witnesses. Where’s your daughter?”

  “With her husband at the sheriff’s.”

  “When Jolly hears the sirens, he’ll shoot Granville and the kid.”

  Eden swallowed. “What do we do?”

  “We do nothing. Now that I know you’re safe, I plan to go in there, and—”

  “And save everyone? All by yourself?”

  “If you think that you are going with me, I’ll tie you up first.”

  “Sex later. Right now we have to think about business.”

  Jared gave a snort of laughter. “You can’t go in there. There’ll be gunfire.”

  Eden swallowed again. “How about if I go in there, sign his papers, and he leaves with the paintings?”

  “You think he’ll leave after he gets them? Wave good-bye? Say thank you? No, he intends to kill anyone who’s seen him.”

  “But Melissa is already at the sheriff’s house.”

  “He’ll get her later.”

  Eden pulled the little gun from her pocket. “Show me how to work this thing.”

  Jared hesitated, then took the gun from her. “I want you to know that I’m only doing this because I have no other choice. I want you to go in the back, up those little stairs, then come down the big stairs. Just wait there and do nothing. When the time is right, I’ll shout, ‘Look out!’ then I want you to fire this. Don’t try to hit anyone because you’ll miss. Just shoot in the air. The noise will create a diversion and that’ll be enough. Understand me?”

  All Eden could do was nod, then she followed him to the back of the house. He climbed on the giant air conditioner on the ground, lifted the window up, then bent down to help Eden to climb up. She started to climb through the window, but he stopped her, and for a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, but he didn’t. Instead, he just looked into her eyes, and the look said that he’d die to save her. Chills ran up her spine, and she leaned toward him, but he gently pushed her toward the window.

  She knew the old house well. No one else could have sneaked around on the old floors in silence, but she could. She knew to lift up on the door to the stairs so its hinges wouldn’t make noise, and she knew that she had to step over steps six and nine or they would creak. When she reached the top of the stairs, she put her ear to the door and listened, but she heard nothing. Slowly, she opened the door and peered out. Tyrrell Farrington’s paintings had been stacked on the floor, ready to be taken out of the house. When she heard a sound outside, she tiptoed to the window. Two men were loading a paneled truck with the paintings. They were taking their time and seemed to be arguing about how to get all the paintings into the truck, but Eden knew that soon they’d return to the house, to this hall, to get the paintings stacked there.

  There are too few of us and too many of them, she thought. Bad men were outside and in, and it was only her and Jared. If only she could create a big diversion, she thought.

  On her bedside table was her ring of keys, the one Brad had given her when he’d turned the house over to her. Her first thought was, What are they doing there? They should have been in her handbag.

  In the next second a ray of moonlight came through the window and landed on the little silver angel on the ring. Mrs. Farrington’s angel. Eden looked at the angel, and she could hear Mrs. Farrington’s voice. She’d always hated the cellar, and one of her many reasons was that she was afraid that everything in it would explode. Eden smiled. She knew what to do and how to do it.

  A second later, she was running down the stairs, leaping over the creaking steps as she whispered “Thank you” to what she knew was Mrs. Farrington’s watching spirit.

  In the dark kitchen she could hear the voices of the men in the hall. The two men from outside had come back in. She heard Jolly’s voice, and he sounded agitated. The thought of Brad and Remi tied up on the floor gave her new courage. She hurried across the room to the pantry. First, she lifted the window that led to the side porch. She’d read that a thief always planned his exit first. When the window was open, she lifted the door in the floor, then she took out the gun Jared had given her. She knew she couldn’t shoot something small, but maybe she could hit a wall full of jars of twenty-two-year-old pickled fruit. They’d had time to ferment by now.

  Turning her head away, she aimed at the wall she couldn’t see in the dark and shot. She was rewarded with an explosion—and the exploding jar set off a chain reaction. As Eden dove through the open window, she heard men running. She hid behind an overturned chair, her breath held, as she heard men shouting. The next second, she heard a door slam and knew that Jared had locked the men in the pantry. When one of them started to come out the window, Eden fired a shot in his general direction and he went back inside. Two minutes later, she heard sirens, and in the distance, she heard a helicopter. Eden stayed where she was, the gun aimed at the open window, ready to shoot at anyone who tried to leave the pantry. There were tears running down her cheeks.

  It was over.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “EDEN,” Brad said, reaching for her hand. He was half reclining on the cushioned swing in front of his house, a cane propped against the wall. Summer had finally come to Arundel, and the unusually cool spring was over.

  Eden didn’t take his hand, acting as though she didn’t see it. Holding on to her glass of sweet tea, she looked out at Arundel. She now had absolutely everything that she’d ever dreamed of having. It was as though she’d spent her entire life as a tightly wrapped flower bud, and now she was at last blossoming. When she was a child and had lived with her repressive parents who told her that everything in life was bad, she’d looked at the other children at her school with longing. She used to listen to them talk about their parties and their dates, and she imagined what it would be like to be one of them.

  When she’d become pregnant and had been discarded by her parents, thrown out, tossed aside like so much rubbish, she’d been terrified beyond comprehension. She’d been too young to think clearly, but the question Why me? had filled her mind.

  Mrs. Farrington had been the first person who had really cared about her, and Eden used to imagine what it would be like to be Mrs. Farrington. She daydreamed about growing up in that beautiful house, with that beautiful garden, and belonging to a group of people whose friendship extended back hundreds of years. To belong! she thought. To belong to a group of people who never threw you out.

  In the last weeks since Melissa had been kidnapped, Eden had found out that a lot of people knew about Drake Haughton’s mental instability. The young man hadn’t been kidding when he said that all he’d done was draw Brad’s ideas. Eden found out that Drake had never wanted to be an architect. Just like Tyrrell Farrington, Drake had wanted to study fine art. But Drake’s father, like Tyrrell’s father a century before, had forbidden his son to do something so bohemian. If Drake wanted his father to pay for his education, if Drake wanted to receive his inhe