The Opal Legacy Part 14

"Done what? Why are you here?"

"To finish what he"-she knew he meant Jon-"didn't have the guts to finish."

She started to speak but he shook his head impatiently at her. Ice particles clung to her eyebrows and eyelashes and she brushed at them with her sleeve, then searched her pockets for a handkerchief. He thrust his at her and as she wiped her face she sensed his eyes on her. When she looked up he was laughing softly to himself.

At that moment she knew. Her eyes widened in terror. San Diego. Her apartment. He was the man who had stalked her in the darkened bedroom.

Not seeing her panic, Charles Randall took back his handkerchief, removed his gla.s.ses and, both eyes squinting, leaned away from the fall of snow and began to wipe the water from the eyegla.s.s lenses. Lesley stepped back and to one side. When he glanced at her she stopped, seeing his eyes, the pupils small, the irises opaque and colorless.

Lesley walked toward him with her head down. When she reached him she pushed her hands against his chest with all her strength. He grunted, sprawled backward over the tree, holding his gla.s.ses away from the ground.

She ran through the snow into the trees, hearing him scramble to his feet behind her. She ran twisting and turning among the trees, ran as fast and as hard as she could, the snow stinging her face. Crossing a clearing she glanced over her shoulder to see dark woods behind a curtain of white, heard only the rustle of the snow in the branches and the rasp of her own breathing. At the far side of the clearing the lower limbs of a large pine swept the ground. Exhausted, she crawled beneath its branches to the trunk where she knelt with her head on the p.r.i.c.kly surface.

She took long, deep breaths, her throat raw. A dark form came into the clearing from the snow-shrouded woods. Charles Randall, his hands in his pockets and his head down, as though he was attempting to follow a trail. Tracks. Had she left tracks in the snow? Looking back she saw her footprints near the trunk of the pine but, in the clearing, the falling snow had covered her trail.

Charles Randall stood in the clearing. Lesley, watching him, gripped the tree in front of her until the tips of her fingers stung. Randall raised his head, shook the snow from his shoulders, and took two quick steps toward her. She drew in her breath. He swung around and walked away in the direction he had come. The falling snow closed about him and he was gone.

She let out her breath in a long sigh. Safe, she was safe. Wait, she cautioned herself, don't be too sure. A trick, this may be a trick. Don't move; he could be only a few yards away, waiting, listening. She knelt behind the tree, motionless, pain shooting along her thighs.

Water from snow melting on her face found its way beneath her collar to run chillingly down her neck. She pulled off her gloves, undid the hood's drawstring and then retied the bow. The snow fell thicker than before, so heavy she could see only a few feet to either side, a wet and clinging snow, a child's snow.

At last she stood. The tingling in her body was more p.r.o.nounced now and her face felt hot. A fever? Her head ached, not the piercing pain of the day before but with a dull, permeating heaviness.

She walked hesitantly around the edge of the clearing, pausing every few steps, listening. The wind had risen, whining in the pines and swirling the snow. She heard nothing else. Charles Randall was no longer in the woods, she felt sure. I'll go back to the beach, she thought, and follow the sh.o.r.e north to the cabins. I can find help there or, if they're deserted, get inside, build a fire, and wait until the storm ends.

She headed back the way she had come, against the wind, the snow driving into her face, soaking through her shoes to soak her socks and feet. A sneeze brought tears to her eyes. She plunged ahead, stepping on a branch concealed under the snow, jumped at the loud snap. Once more she stopped but heard nothing. He's gone, she rea.s.sured herself.

Why did Charles Randall come to Iron Ridge? she wondered. What did he want from her? The power of the opal? And Jon. She didn't understand the relationship between the two men. With a start she realized she had thought of Jon as being alive. Lesley's fingers closed over the opal in her pocket as she shut her mind to his death.

Charles Randall. She shivered. Had he been at Iron Ridge all night, hiding, or had he left to return this morning? Had he followed them from the house? Was that why Jon called to her from the bluff?

The ground sloped downward ahead of her. The lake, she thought, I'm coming to the lake. The wind changed direction but still the snow limited her vision to some six feet on either side.

She sensed a lightening ahead of her-the edge of the forest. As she hurried forward, her side began to ache. The ground rose and she climbed a hillock, went down the other side, and was out from under the trees. She listened for the waves. Why couldn't she hear the waves? As she ran forward she felt clumps of gra.s.s under her feet.

A meadow. Panic gripped her. Where was the lake? She walked a few feet in one direction, then another. Which way should she go? She could not tell; there were no clues. Snow whirled wetly onto her face, rustled in the dead gra.s.s all around her. Tired, lost, she stumbled ahead into the trees. Straight ahead, go straight ahead, she told herself. On and on she went, across another clearing, into a gully, following the downhill slope in the hope it led to the lake. Instead she came to a hill.

Leaning against a pine trunk, she saw a bare patch of ground a few feet farther on in the shelter of two large trees. She sat on the bare ground, drew up her knees and lowered her head. I'm so sleepy, she thought. If only I can rest here, I'll be all right. Her breathing slowed as she relaxed and she felt a great peace and after a time she slept.

Chapter Nineteen.

Lesley opened her eyes. Beyond the shelter of the trees the snow still fell steadily. A warmth had wakened her, a warmth neither from her feet and ankles, which were wet and chilled, nor from her face, stung by the cold wind. She sat up and brought her hands from her pockets and held them before her. The chain of the pendant twisted about her wrist and the opal flashed in its setting. She pressed the stone to her face and the warmth spread through her.

Holding the opal in her palms with fingers cupped to protect it from the snow, she gazed deep into her birthstone. The opal glowed with a red, flame-like shimmer. Almost as though the gem lived and willed her to live as well. Putting the pendant back into the jacket pocket Lesley pushed herself from the ground. Her feet were numb so she moved her toes and her ankles before taking an experimental step. Stiff, awkward, yet she could walk. She wouldn't give up; she would find her way out of the forest.

Before she left the sanctuary of the trees, she pondered what she must do. Go in one direction and one direction only; that was the most important thing. If she wandered aimlessly she would never reach the beach or the highway. She frowned. The highway was at least five miles away. I'll never get that far in this storm, she thought, I must find the lake.

She began to walk, then hesitated. Her head still ached and her face was hot and flushed. And she was tired, so very tired. Think, she told herself. The wind was usually off the lake, yet time after time she had felt its direction change. Which way should she go?

Would the storm never let up? Two or three inches of snow covered the ground under the pines; the snow had bent the branches earthward and drifted around the trunks. Lesley climbed from the gully, looking at the ground next to the trees, noticing that the snow lay deeper on one side than the other, deeper in the direction of the wind coming off the lake. The way I should go, she decided.

Yet could she be sure she traveled in a straight line? So many times she had heard of hikers wandering in circles when lost in a forest. A shattered tree rose in front of her, the trunk split a few feet above her head as though by lightning, the top jackknifing to the ground. Looking past the severed tree in the direction she wanted to go, she saw the black underside of a boulder. After she walked over the uneven snow to the boulder, Lesley glanced back to the tree and then directly ahead to a small fir. When she stood beneath the fir a few minutes later she sighted from the boulder behind her to a white mound ahead where the snow covered a fallen tree.

Slowly, laboriously, she made her way from landmark to landmark and, although her feet were leaden, she now had a definite goal, a task to accomplish. The lack of feeling in her feet frightened her so she talked to herself, hummed, and tramped ahead vigorously until she felt a tingling in her toes. I'll find the lake, she said to herself, I'll find the lake.

She came to a level clearing a few yards wide. To her right a narrow swath had been cut in the forest to form a lane over which the tree limbs touched. To her left the swath curved out of sight. The driveway. She knelt, trembling with relief as she saw the snow lying in miniature hills and valleys over the frozen ruts.

There were no tire tracks in the snow. This must be the road from the state highway to Iron Ridge. The highway lay to her right, miles away, the house probably only a short walk to her left.

Did Charles Randall wait at the house? I have to take the chance, she thought. Even if I reach the highway, how do I know I can find help there?

She trudged along the middle of the drive. The road curved in a lazy S and she thought she recognized where she was, a short distance from the house, though she couldn't be sure for the snow changed the forest, creating a strange and virginal land. How I wish I could come to Iron Ridge again for the first time, she thought. If only Jon and I could arrive from California today, if only this last month had been obliterated as the snow obliterated the tracks in the road.

"Shouldn't we put on chains?" she could hear herself ask as she watched the drifting snow through the twin arcs of the windshield wipers.'

"No, we're almost there. Iron Ridge is just around the next bend in the road."

"After you told me about Iron Ridge when I drove you to the airport, I dreamed of coming here, pictured what it would be like, just the two of us, alone. I never imagined I would, not really. Yet here I am."

"Are you happy you came?"

"Oh, yes. This is all I ever wanted. Not the house, not Iron Ridge. Being with you."

"Lesley." Jon laughed as she kissed him. "Remember I'm driving." She leaned her head on his shoulder, feeling his body warm against hers. The car sluiced toward the trees and he drove into the skid, the car straightening, and then they rounded a curve and she saw the house.

"So many chimneys," she said.

Tears stung her eyes as she blinked the vision away. If only I could go back, she thought, and start again. Why didn't I even let him explain? I must shut Jon from my mind, I need all my strength merely to survive. She trudged through the falling snow, around the curve of the drive and Iron Ridge loomed darkly ahead with its many chimneys jutting above the roofline. Something stirred within her, relief, a sense of thanksgiving, but more, a feeling that she was coming home. No smoke rose from the chimneys. The heat could still be on, she knew, for the oil furnace smoked little or not at all. She saw no car in the driveway, nor any parked in the direction of the garage, though that building itself was hidden by the falling snow. Where was Charles Randall? The windows of the house stared blankly down at her.

"I love Iron Ridge," Jon had said once. Was she beginning to feel the same? Though old and weather wracked, the house endured. Storms drove rain and sleet and snow against its shingled roofs and clapboard sides, the lake washed ever closer to its foundations, and the house endured. Year after year the Hollisters had lived and died here, hating and loving the house, alternately lavishing care on it and neglecting it, and the house endured.

Grasping the opal in her hand, Lesley stepped behind a tree at the side of the drive, shut her eyes, and her mind closed.

Warm, she felt so warm. Steam knocked in the radiators, hissed in the old pipes. She entered the bedroom, her gown sweeping the floor, the opal pendant on her breast. The room was the same, yet changed, brighter than she remembered, with a larger bed, vanity and dressers matched in a style she didn't recognize, the floor thickly carpeted in colors which shimmered, seeming to mingle one into another as she watched. Her rocker sat next to the window, the draperies were open, the night was black outside. She sat at the vanity and began to brush her hair.

Gray hair. And her face in the mirror was older and thinner with lines at the corners of her eyes, yet a poised, a.s.sured face: A sound came from behind her and she turned, smiling.

Lesley's eyes opened and she found herself standing in the snow staring between the trees at the house. The tingling in her feet had stopped and once more they felt numb. The house. She had to get into the house. After glancing again at the empty windows she walked boldly to the steps, climbed them and tried the door. Locked. She listened but heard no sound from inside.

The windows. The ground rose on the left side of the steps so in places it was higher than the top of the house's foundation. She walked to the first window, luckily one of those not yet fitted with storm windows. No light shone from the room but she recognized the bedroom where the coats had been piled on the night of the party. Last night, in fact only a few hours ago. She pushed on the window. Locked. All the windows and doors were probably locked. The garage? There was no heat in the garage; she had to get into the house. Tears came to her eyes. She was so close.

Her breath misted the pane of gla.s.s as she examined the window. Like most of the others at Iron Ridge it had a top and a bottom half, the bottom sliding up, the top down. At the joining of the two halves the window was fastened on the inside with a single crescent-shaped catch. She pushed the snow from the ground at her feet. There-a stone as large as her fist. Holding the stone in one hand she struck the window, yet the gla.s.s did not break. Again she pounded the rock on the pane and gla.s.s cascaded to the bedroom floor as the window shattered.

Lesley held her breath, listening, and heard the snow and the waves on the sh.o.r.e at the far side of the house. From inside the house she heard nothing. A gust of warm air struck her face. Around the hole in the window the gla.s.s had cracked in star-like spokes. She reached inside and up, feeling along the frame with her fingers, her jacket sleeve pressed lightly on the edge of the broken gla.s.s. She touched the catch and pulled its k.n.o.bbed end inward. Removing her arm, she pushed up the lower half of the window. More gla.s.s clattered into the room but she heard no other sound. Lifting her leg over the sill, Lesley bent forward, touched the floor with her toe, then swung her other leg inside. She slid the window shut behind her. A few snowflakes drifted through the hole to leave wet circles on the wood floor.

The radiator. She knelt with her hands pressed against the ridged iron and felt the heat flow into her. After a few minutes she sat back and pulled off her shoes and socks. A tingling began in her feet, which were white and puckered, then a painful ache, and she rubbed them briskly with her hands. Feeling returned to her feet and with it a hot, burning sensation. Her jacket now seemed bulky so she slipped out of the coat and laid it on the floor beside her. A draft from the window blew her hair, yet she was warm and she nodded drowsily.

With a start she realized she had forgotten Charles Randall. Was he in the house? She walked unsteadily to the closed door and edged it open a few inches. A floorboard creaked somewhere below her. Steam hissed in the radiators. Another sound. A car. The roar of the motor m.u.f.fled by the snow. She ran toward the window but stopped beside the bed, afraid of being seen. She looked out but saw nothing except the falling snow. The motor shut off suddenly and a car door slammed, then another. Someone was coming to the house then, not leaving. Who?

Could it be...? She had not worn her watch and there was no clock in the room. Could it be only nine in the morning and Mrs. McAllister was arriving to clean the debris left by the housewarming? Would she have come in this storm? Lesley had heard two doors slam, not one. Had someone brought her?

She returned to the partly open hall door. Through the crack she saw a wedge of hallway, the top of the stairs, and the door to the attic. As she waited for the chimes to ring she pressed her bare toes against the hardness of the floor, savoring the warmth of the house. Remembering the opal-the gem was still in her coat-she ran back, knelt, and transferred the pendant to her pants pocket. Still she heard no chimes or knocking at the front door. Could they have...? Yes, they must have gone to the back. She probably wouldn't have heard the knocking on the back door from here.

Opening the door, she ran along the hall to the railing at the head of the stairs. Voices came from below. She descended the stairs, her bare feet making no noise, then paused halfway to the bottom when she heard a door close and footsteps cross the kitchen. Heavy steps, a man's steps. She ran back to the upper hall where she knelt to one side of the stairs behind the newel post. A car started outside the house. He had sent them away. Charles Randall had sent them away. Quick, she told herself. Go to the front door; stop the car before it's too late. Escape.

She threw open the door, snow whirling in her face. Down the steps in her bare feet. The car, headlights on, swept by, and she called, saw a face in the car window, a woman's face, not looking at her, not hearing her. As Lesley watched, the falling snow snuffed out the car's taillights.

She climbed wearily up the stone steps, entered the house, and pushed the door shut behind her. No sound came from below. How could she get word to the outside? Of course-the telephone. Why hadn't she thought of the phone in her bedroom before? The room was as she had left it a few hours ago, the bed unmade, her party clothes draped on the back of the rocker. The phone sat on the nightstand.

She put the receiver to her ear. Dead. She jiggled the b.u.t.ton once, twice, three times. No sound came from the receiver. The line must be down. Or had the wire been cut? There was another, a separate phone line going into the tower. Could she reach the tower? After looking both ways along the hall, she returned to the top of the stairs. The door on the other side of the hall was still open and she thought she felt a breeze from the broken window.

How can I get downstairs, past Charles Randall, and across the yard to the tower? she wondered. Footsteps! She backed away. Footsteps on the stairs. He was coming to the second floor. Panic gripped her-he would find the open door, the broken window, her coat and shoes on the floor of the bedroom. She could not think. Instinct urged her to get as far away as she could. The attic. Hide in the attic.

She ran down the hall. The attic door opened easily. A last glance over her shoulder told her he had not yet reached the hallway. She hurried up the attic stairs, made a right-angle turn past a colored gla.s.s window on the landing. When she reached the top of the stairs she was in the middle of the attic with the bulk of a chimney beside her. She looked around the dark room, unused except as a storage area. Chimneys thrust from floor to roof; gloomy recesses led to gables; light came dimly from large windows at each end, one overlooking the drive, the other the lake; light in the gables hinted at other, smaller windows; discarded furniture had been piled this way and that. A musty, dust-laden odor hung over the room.

Hide, she told herself. As she edged past a chiffonier, cobwebs trailed over her hair and she shivered. A door opened and she started, her head striking the slanted roofline and she winced, stunned, one hand reaching out to clutch the back of a chair for support. Steps sounded on the stairs, paused for the landing, came on into the attic.

Her head spinning, Lesley knelt behind a ma.s.sive chest of drawers, eyes pressed shut, her fingers ma.s.saging the bruise on her head. The dizziness lessened. She peered from around the chest. The shadowed figure of Charles Randall stood at the top of the stairs, his back to the window. She saw a metallic object in his hand.

The beam of his flashlight probed the attic, suddenly swinging toward her. She drew back. Had he seen her? She crouched, unmoving, as his footsteps, slow, inexorable, came toward her. He shoved the chest to one side and she cringed away from the blinding light.

Chapter Twenty.

Lesley backed away with one hand on the sloped roof over her head. Charles Randall made no move to stop her. She could not see him in the flashlight's glare but she heard him keep pace with her, step by step. He was, she knew, between her and the stairs, the only possible route of escape. She stumbled, saved herself from falling by grasping a chair, and then her back struck something solid and she felt behind her with her hands. The attic wall. A few feet to her right she saw the light from the window overlooking the lake.

Charles Randall laughed softly as he came toward her. She pressed against the wall, a nail in the wood siding jabbing into her back. The light wavered as Randall moved the flashlight from one hand to the other and in that moment she swung blindly at him, missed, and again he laughed. He touched her shoulder and a scream rose in her throat.

"Stop!" A man's voice echoed in the attic. Randall whirled, his light sweeping from the roof to the chimney before focusing on a figure at the top of the stairs. Lesley screamed.

Jon stood as though transfixed by the light. His hair and jacket were wet and a jagged cut scarred his unshaved cheek. The blood seemed to have drained from his face. He's returned from the dead, Lesley thought.

Charles Randall, she saw, now held a gun in his free hand. Jon came toward him, legs stiff, his hands extended as he groped like a blind man in an unfamiliar room. He lurched to one side as the gun flashed, the sound deafening. Jon came on, seemingly unharmed by the shot and, with a quick intake of breath, Charles Randall retreated. Lesley saw the uncertainty on his taut face.

She swung at him, the chain wrapped around her wrist, and heard the click of the pendant striking his gla.s.ses. They spun from his face, the lenses glinting in the light, and at the same time his gun roared again. Jon crouched, then lunged forward, his shoulder driving into Randall, the force of his charge hurling the gunman back against the window. The gla.s.s burst outward and Randall flung up his arms, gun and flashlight clattering, to the floor. His hand clutched at the frame and for an instant she saw the surprise on his face before he disappeared into the darkness.

She ran to the window but could not see the ground through the falling snow. From far below waves slapped on the sh.o.r.e. Jon. She spun about. He faced her with blood oozing from the slash on his cheek. His lips moved and she thought he spoke her name.

"What? What?" she cried, reaching to him, the cloth of his coat damp under her fingers. He fell to one side and she caught at his arm, too late, his body thudding to lie unmoving on the floor. She bent over him, brushed the hair from his forehead, and her hands cradled his face to hers.

On the following day the sun rose in a cloudless December sky. The snowfall had ended during the night and the weather had changed, a cold front moving across Canada from the Arctic and into the northern states. Ice glittered along the sh.o.r.e and the top of the wet snow had frozen to form a crust strong enough to support a boy or girl.

The storm had transformed Iron Ridge into an old-fashioned Christmas card. The roofs were white, icicles hung from the eaves, plumes of smoke rose from the chimneys into the blue sky, and birds swooped down to peck at crumbs scattered on the crust outside the kitchen window.

Lesley waited for the bread to rise in the toaster. She had squeezed two oranges, made coffee, and poured milk on the hot oatmeal. The toaster clicked, then popped the toast up. After spreading b.u.t.ter and sprinkling cinnamon on the toast, she cut the slices from corner to corner and then carried the breakfast tray to the hallway and up the stairs.

When she reached the second floor corridor she rested the tray on the stair railing, her head spinning from the climb. Last night she had been sick in bed but now Dr. Norton's penicillin prescription had begun to work. And her feet, though slightly frostbitten, were almost back to normal.

She pushed open the bedroom door and stood just inside the room. Jon, a bandage on his cheek, lay in the middle of the bed with his head and shoulders propped up on two white pillows. When, sensing her presence, he glanced toward the door, Lesley hurried across the room with the tray.

"Your breakfast," she said. This was the first time she had seen him awake since he had collapsed in the attic the day before. She was ill at ease.

He drank the juice and began to eat. "How did you know I liked oatmeal?" he asked.

"I thought it might be good for you."

"Ahhh." She expected him to say something about her being a registered nurse but instead he looked back to the tray and continued eating. Still unsteady on her feet, she sank down into the rocker.

"Are you all right?"

He sounds concerned, she thought. Lesley nodded, her fingers gripping the k.n.o.bs at the end of the rocker arms. Jon didn't speak again until he finished the breakfast and slid the tray onto the nightstand.

"You saved my life," he said. "I don't mean just in the attic, though you did there, too. But before the landslide started I remembered your vision, your dream, and I was half expecting what happened. I still fell but got a handhold on a ledge partway down the cliff and kept myself from going all the way to the beach."

"But I saw you on the rocks."

"When I was on the bluff I saw Randall come up the hill behind you. I knew he had a gun, yet I thought I was the only one he was after, not you. He claimed I wasn't living up to our bargain. If I could make you think I was dead you'd convince him and that way I'd protect us both. And it worked, up to a point."

"I ran away from him," Lesley said. I won't tell Jon, she decided, that I know Charles Randall was the man in my apartment in San Diego. "Then I lost my way in the storm and finally stumbled onto the driveway and followed the road back to the house."

"I'm not sure what happened to me after I fell," Jon said. "I must have been more shaken up than I realized because I pa.s.sed out on the beach and the next thing I knew I woke up in the garage. When I came into the house looking for you I was still groggy. I don't know how I made it to the attic. He's dead, isn't he? Charles Randall?"

She nodded. "The police said there'd have to be an inquest but no charges will be filed."

"After I'd known him a while I found that Randall had quite an arrest record. I don't know how I became involved with him or why I stayed involved. Nothing I did seemed to matter to me then."

"After Mary died?"

"Yes. The better I came to know Mary after we were married the more heartsick I became. The exact opposite of the change in my feelings for you. She was morbid, became depressed easily. Some days she was as cheerful as when I first knew her and then other times she would sit for hours staring out over the lake, brooding."

And he felt the opposite about me? she thought. How did he feel?

"Charles Randall heard of your predictions from an employee at the computer center and wanted to use your second sight. I needed money and he sold me on the idea. We weren't sure how you'd help us, perhaps as a performer, a mind reader. Or we'd put you into situations where foreknowledge would be valuable. His job was to frighten you; mine was to find out more about your abilities so we'd be able to decide how to use them." His eyes refused to meet hers.