Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
This particular one leads narrowly to a set of stairs. I glance back and Jameson gestures for me to go ahead. I start climbing. Seventeen steps later, the guard at my back reaches over my head to open another door and I step out onto a landing that’s dusty with disuse. It’s circular. We must be in one of the turrets of the castle. I’d counted four from the air.
“Where are we?” I ask as Jameson now moves ahead of me to the single door that looks like it’s about a thousand years old, the wood rotten in places, the ancient iron bar that can be drawn across and latched to lock it from the outside.
“The East Tower. The only way is through that secret passage although I admit it is not nearly as prettily done as the rest of the castle. But this room serves only one purpose. You can guess how long it’s been since its last use,” he says, glancing up at the cobwebs. “Here we are.” He pulls the door open.
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end and instinctively, I take a step backward. Warnings fire in my head to turn and run and find Jet and not leave his side again, but I can’t do that. I can’t run. I have no choice, none of us do, but to see this thing through, whatever the hell it is.
“Come now,” Jameson says. “The ladies don’t bite.”
I look back down the hall toward the hidden doorway, but it’s so well masked and the corridor so dim, I can’t see the outline of it. There are torches, but they’re unlit. I imagine at nighttime it’s pitch black.
I force my legs to move, and I step into the room.
There is a moment of relief when I see three women busy setting up hair and makeup stations while another is unveiling a gown. It’s hanging from what looks to be a meat hook from the ceiling, and the train is so long, she has to stand on a step stool to reach the top of the zipper. The dress is a bold bloody red. Crystals that seem to be sewn directly onto the fine material dance in the golden light of a fireplace inside which a generous fire burns. That fire is the only source of heat up here. I know. Even though they’ve modernized what I’ve seen in the rest of the castle, this room looks to be preserved, untouched from what it must have been when the castle was first built.
Once the dress is fully unveiled, I gasp at its almost otherworldly beauty. There’s something both ancient and modern about it and for all its beauty, it makes me shiver with dread.
“This room has remained exactly as it was first built centuries ago,” Jameson says, calling my attention. I take it all in, furnishings like museum pieces upholstered in various shades of deep burgundy. Portraits of men hang all around the circular walls some looking hundreds of years old, a few more modern. Beneath each is the name of the subject but it’s too dark and the lettering too small for me to read. “I hope it’s to your liking,” Jameson says in a smaller voice.
It’s not. The whole place smells musty and old and the fresh roses set in vases on every surface stink. But it’s when I look closely at the tapestry hanging over the fireplace that my blood runs cold. That I realize how my entire body is on high alert, my heartbeats uneven thuds against my chest.
It’s the pattern again.
Roses. Vines. The bird.
The impaled, dying bird.
Within it, I see the letters that match what my mother had drawn inside her diary. The name of the man I’ve been searching for.
Fairbairn.
I turn to look at Jameson who is watching me.
“Fairbairn,” I read aloud. “Who is he?”
“He?” Jameson raises his eyebrows.
I wait.
“She, my dear. Who is she.”
30
JET
The room is empty. I know it before I even step inside.
I reach for my gun, instinct, but remember both the Glock and the small pistol are gone.
“Amal?” I speak. Maybe she’s in the bathroom.
But the silence is wrong.
My towel is still on the foot of the bed from where I’d tossed it when I got dressed. I knock on the bathroom door.
“Amal?” I ask again, my voice sharper, my heart beating in slow thuds.
Still no answer.
I open the door and just as I thought, the bathroom is empty. I see where she discarded her towel after her shower. I look around the room. I wasn’t gone more than ten minutes. Fifteen at most. Shit. I shouldn’t have left her, not for a second.
I’m about to stalk out to find Jameson and demand to know where my wife is when I see the bed’s been disturbed. One of the pillows is askew. I move it and behind it, I find her mother’s diary. She must have shoved it here quickly because it’s open and a page is bent. I know how she took care of this. How important it is to her. Someone must have surprised her for her to shove it under the pillow like this. She was hiding it.