Private Demon

"Alexandra!"

Something knocked her off her feet, and she landed under it. Wind, black rubber and a roar rushed past her head, only an inch away from it. Michael was on top of her. A car was screeching to a halt.

"Get up." Michael hauled her to her feet and dragged her behind a wide cement pillar, just as the back end of a black car rammed into it. Plaster and cement chips scattered around them, and there was an ominous cracking sound overhead.

Smoke from the squealing tires wafted into Alex's face as the driver of the car took off. Before she could do more than cough, Michael hurried her away from the pillar and into a waiting limousine.

"What are you doing here?" Alex asked as soon as they were inside.

"Sacher told me you had left alone. Jaus has GPS locators on all of his vehicles," he told her. "Why did you come here?"

"To see Luisa." Alex slumped back against the seat. "I saw my brother on the way out. I was trying to get to him—and then that car came out of nowhere."

"He tried to kill you." Cyprien's composure was absolute. "I will find him."

She looked down and saw the red rose corsage on her lapel. "He didn't want me."

"I watched him try to run you down," he shouted, not so calm now. "Twice."

"I heard his thoughts. The sick son of a bitch came to kill the woman wearing this jacket." She tugged at the lapel. "But it isn't mine. It belongs to someone who was visiting Luisa." She glanced over her shoulder. "We have to go back. I have to warn her."

"No." Cyprien picked up a phone. "Jaus will take care of it."

Jema stayed with Luisa for an hour, but after the visit from the obnoxious Dr. Keller, the girl didn't say a word.

"I'll be by to see you in a couple of days." She always waited for a farewell, but didn't get one. "Take care, Luisa."

The front lobby was crowded with people and police, and Jema saw there had been some sort of traffic accident right in the valet parking area. She changed direction and left the hospital through the emergency room entrance, which was directly across from the visitors' parking lot.

She thought of all the work waiting for her at the lab, but for some reason she had no ambition to go in and dive into it as usual. The huge breakfast Daniel Bradford had insisted she eat wasn't sitting well on her stomach, either. By the time she'd driven three blocks from the hospital, she had to pull off the road and hurry into the nearest restaurant, a Wendy's, so she could use the restroom.

The only stall was empty but reeked of cheap pine cleaner. She knelt down on the dark brown tile, holding the wall with one hand.

It couldn't be food poisoning. Was her blood sugar too high? It never felt like this. She'd left her injection kit in the car—

The first surge slammed up Jema's throat, and she bent over quickly, vomiting into the toilet. That was followed by another, and another, until her stomach emptied. Still she heaved, spitting out saliva when nothing else would come up.

She leaned back against the side of the stall and gulped air. She was too sick to go to work, too sick to stand up. She needed to go home, and rest, but Meryl would get upset. Maybe she could lie down on her couch in the office for a few hours. Hardly anyone came downstairs; no one would know. She was Meryl Shaw's daughter; no one would care.

"Hey, lady." A pair of ankles above dirty sneakers appeared next to the gap under the stall door. "You okay in there?"

"Yes." Jema jerked some toilet paper from the big plastic-cased roll and wiped her face before she groped and flushed. As she stood, she was relieved to see that she hadn't puked down the front of her clothes. She only smelled like she had.

She opened the door and met the owner of the sneakers, a pudgy teenage girl with huge metal braces on her teeth and the most gorgeous thick curly red hair Jema had ever seen.

"Here." She gave her a pretty smile and held out a small yellow cup filled with a clear soda and lots of ice. "Diet Sprite. It'll help."

"Thanks." Jema went over to the sink for a wash before she tried a sip. It did help, and she looked at the girl in the mirror over the sink. "I guess everybody out there heard me, huh?"

"Yeah. I think the people over in the McDonald's next door did, too." She joined her at the sink and handed her some brown folded paper towels. "My manager's pretty cool, though. If you want to sit for a while, you know, till your belly quiets down, he won't chase you out."

"No, thank you. I've got to go to work." She dug some bills out of her pocket, but the girl only shook her head.

"I know how you feel." She chuckled and touched the front of her uniform smock, and then it dawned on Jema: She wasn't pudgy; she was pregnant, probably eight months along. A mother-to-be at barely sixteen, if she was that old.

Jema thought she saw the girl's smock move a little. "Is the baby kicking?"

"Oh, yeah. He does this Jean-Claude Van Damme thing in there sometimes and I nearly pee my pants. Not so bad this morning. Here, feel." She took Jema's hand and rested it against the basketball-size bulge under her sternum.

Jema felt a weird nudge against her palm. It was tiny but it was solid and strong. That hidden, straining sign of life mesmerized her. "Wow."

"Rocks, doesn't it? Take care, lady." Another sweet smile framed her braces before she slipped out the door.

Jema looked at her tingling palm. She didn't want to go to work, or back to Shaw House. She wanted to follow the girl, and ask her a million questions, and feel the baby move again.

Depression kicked in, a mule with sharp hooves. You will never be pregnant. It was the reason Meryl had Daniel started Jema on the pill as soon as she had her first period, so there could be no possibility of pregnancy. Even if she'd been married and willing, the strain on her kidneys would kill her. You'll never know what it feels like to carry a child.

The air turned freezing. It became so cold so fast that Jema wouldn't have been surprised to see snowflakes start drifting around her. Hallucinations seemed logical, given the way her morning had gone.

She waited and sipped Diet Sprite until she felt steady enough to drive, and left the restaurant. There were three voice-mail messages waiting for her at the museum, all from Detective Newberry.

"I've got to go do some interviews, so I won't be in," Newberry said after leaving two messages for her to call him. "The FBI would like a copy of the report you get from your expert. Seems they can't identify the hair either. We need this hair to substantiate a tentative ID on a couple of suspects, though, so it's become vital to the case. Leave me a message or call me after three p.m. Thanks."

Jema contacted Sophie Tucker, who was still in the process of collecting reports from her overseas contacts. "We've ruled out Europe and Asia," Sophie told her, "as it doesn't match any animal sample in their database. I should have South America's report by tomorrow. Strange how it doesn't match anything."

"Well, if it does, call me. This detective really needs the information to help with an arrest warrant," Jema told her.

The rest of the day continued to be problematic. She had difficulty concentrating on her work, and she was terribly clumsy. She nearly dropped a krater on loan from a central dig in Pompeii, which would have cost the museum's insurance company several hundred thousand dollars. Thomas couldn't find the next lot she had on her inventory list, either.

"I don't know where it is, Miss Shaw," the young guard told her. "I checked everywhere. I think Roy might have moved it when we got that last shipment in from Venice, but he called in sick today."

"That's all right, I was going to quit a little early." Jema gave him a wry smile. "Leave a note for Roy to see me in the morning about it."

On the way home, Jema debated whether or not to tell Daniel about her morning purge session at Wendy's. He'd be upset with her again, and she was sure it was just caused by forcing down so much food. Her stomach had obviously shrunk. To her surprise, neither Daniel or Meryl was home when she arrived, and one of the maids told her that they'd gone to see a specialist in the city.

God, don't let my mother go downhill now, too, Jema thought as she ate an early dinner alone in the gloomy dining room.

Daniel and Meryl still hadn't returned by dark, and Jema decided to make an early night of it. She'd been sleeping like a rock lately, and woke up feeling rather wonderful in the morning. She still felt hot, however, even after a cool shower, so she pulled down the quilt and decided to forgo her nightgown. After a moment's hesitation, she stripped out of the bra and panties she had put on after her shower.

She rarely slept naked, but it wasn't as if anyone would see her.

Chapter 12

Thierry was glad he was already damned to hell for his sins as a human, because if he was not, what he was doing to Jema Shaw every night would sure send him to burn at the devil's right hand.

Each night he swore he would go and hunt and stay away from her. He would go, and he would hunt, but he always ended up on her balcony a few hours from dawn, feeling with his talent to be sure she was asleep, sliding the lock open with his dagger.

He couldn't stay away from her. He couldn't get enough of her.

Even as Thierry now walked into her room and went to stand over her sleeping form, he tried to discipline his mind. Only do this to gain her trust. Only go into her dreams to find out who hurt Luisa.

He was sure she knew; there was some terrible secret her mind held locked tight from him. After entering three of her dreams he knew she was hiding it from herself as well. Jema Shaw knew something so terrifying that she wouldn't let herself remember it.

Her dreams could be the key to his salvation. The problem was that they were destroying him.

Angelica had never been like this. She had made a pretense of wanting him all the time, but Thierry could look back now and see how he had been played for a fool. He had loved a woman who had shaped her personality as easily as she had her body. She had played a role that appealed to his desires while never showing her own. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">