The house was three ostentatious floors of diamond light trickling out the windows, making the afternoon’s snow sparkle on the lawn. She had grown up here after her mother had married Stephen’s father but Letitia had legitimately bequeathed the house to Stephen—even Tara’s will said that. It had been his father’s, and his grandfather’s before him. It was rightfully his, just as the Rose was rightfully hers.
Tara stared at it long enough that the driver cleared his throat. “Oh, thanks. Sorry.” She checked the meter and shoved a generous handful of bills at him.
“You want me to wait?” He frowned at all the money.
“No. Keep the change.” She had a feeling that it was going to take a while for her to seal this deal.
She got out of the taxi and stood on the sidewalk. An errant clump of snow fell from one of the telephone wires overhead and hit her squarely on the shoulder. Tara let out a startled sound that showed how tense she was. She heard the cab’s wheels crunch over ice as the car rolled again, then she started up the walk.
The sound of the car had receded before her nerves eased enough that she realized Stephen’s front door was open. On a December night? He was arrogant, yes, and showy about his wealth. He was also stingy. He wouldn’t throw handfuls of money at the utility companies if he could help it. Tara went to the door.
“Hello?” she called.
There was no answer from within the house. But, she noticed again, there was a great deal of light. She stepped into the entry, then through a second, inner door into the main hall.
Her gaze barely glanced off the curving central staircase but she shivered a little anyway and found herself remembering the time Stephen had pushed her down those steps. She’d broken her arm. He’d told their parents that she’d tripped. He’d explained it with wide-eyed amazement and they’d believed him. He’d always been an excellent liar.
“Hello?” Tara called again. “Stephen, what on earth are you doing? Heating Philadelphia? Did you suddenly decide to give something to charity?”
Still, there was no answer. Tara strode purposefully down the hall. She was annoyed. He was up to something but, as usual, she couldn’t even begin to fathom what it might be. Stephen always kept a few cards hidden up his sleeve.
Tara kept calling his name as she went down the hallway. She turned into the library, Stephen’s favorite room, then she stopped cold. “What on earth?”
It was dark in here, though light spilled in from the hallway and the windows. She could see just enough to make out the details of the room. For some bizarre reason, Stephen was lying on the floor. She crossed to him slowly.
“Stephen, this is ridiculous.” She nudged his beefy shoulder with her toe. “Get up.” She wanted to say, Get up or I’m leaving. But, of course, she wouldn’t do that, not without the Rose, and they both knew it.
Stephen didn’t move.
Exasperated, Tara knelt beside him. Then she frowned. The fireplace poker was beside him, hidden on his far side.
It had blood on it.
Her body reacted to what she was seeing before her mind even registered it. Her heart began jackhammering. Her gorge rose. She felt suddenly chilled; her skin had gone dewy and damp.
“No, no, no,” she whispered, not aware she did it aloud. “Stephen?” She touched his wrist. There was no pulse.
He was dead.
The realization went through her like a shot of electricity. She couldn’t feel grief, not for him, a man who had perpetrated cruelty after cruelty on her for too many years to count. But shock rolled through her body, somehow cold and hot all at once. And she knew that somehow, even in death, he would still manage to hurt her.
Call an ambulance, she thought first. But he wasn’t just dead. He’d been killed and she had found him. The press had followed every detail of their court battle. She had told the cab driver—emphatically—not to wait. And she’d given him a huge tip, mostly because she’d been too nervous and too impatient to worry about taking change back.
Real fear began to beat in her blood. She could make an anonymous call to 911, she realized, but then she should just leave.
Tara shot to her feet and spun for Stephen’s desk and the phone there. She grabbed it and it dropped from her nerveless fingers. She cried out instinctively at the clatter it made on the desk then she picked it up again and managed to punch in the correct numbers.
“I—yes,” she babbled to the voice that answered. “There’s a body. Somebody’s dead here. You should—” Tara broke off and pressed a trembling hand to her temple as something else occurred to her. The Rose! Had Stephen been killed for the Rose? “The ruby!”
She slammed down the phone. Her gaze swung wildly to Stephen’s safe. It was open. She took a quick step that way but then her foot came down on something vaguely round and hard, something that pressed into the rug beneath her weight and made her ankle roll. Tara gasped at the pain and looked down.
The Rose. On the floor?
She bent and grabbed it. She had the wild thought that heat pulsed from it, that the ruby somehow knew who she was and that it welcomed her touch. Then she heard a sound. Somewhere…over there, she thought, near the window.
The killer was still in the room with her.
Every instinct told her to be still but Tara was trembling hard enough now that her teeth snicked together. Then she heard it again, a warning…vibration. A growl? She moved back to the wall and inched along it cautiously. Then there was a high-pitched yip and Tara jumped inside her skin.
It was a dog. Apparently, Stephen had acquired a pet.
“I don’t believe this,” she whispered aloud. And then she saw it. It walked into the milky spill of white from the streetlight outside the window. It was a…
…a Chihuahua?
She’d been expecting a watchdog if anything, a Shepherd or Doberman, something he might have used to guard the stone. But this dog was tiny with a long, crooked muzzle and too-big dark eyes. Its ears stood straight out from the sides of its head and they were easily half the size of the rest of it. She could have sworn it was grinning at her.
She’d called 911. The cops would be here any minute. She had to get out of here.
Tara bolted from the room. The dog let out a cacophony of barking and chased after her. Tara made it only as far as the door to the hallway before she felt sharp little teeth slide down the back of her right calf. She choked on a scream and braced herself against the doorjamb to shake her leg. The nasty little dog wrapped itself around her calf and held on, bouncing up and down.
“No!” She swatted at it with the hand that held the Rose. “Stop it! Let go!” Then she let out a low, agonized cry as she lost her grip on the stone.
It sailed off somewhere into the shadows gathered in the corners of the library near the window. There was a soft thud as it hit the wall. Then, only then, did the dog let go of her leg.
Tara heard a steady thumping sound. The Chihuahua was wagging its tail! From the front of the house, she heard a sharp male voice.
“Hello? Police!”
Tara knew she could talk her way out of this. She could talk her way out of anything. It was her gift. But she knew better than to try when the stakes were this appalling, this high. This, she realized, feeling sick, was one of those situations where the less that was said, the better—at least until she called her lawyer.
So she ran.
Out in the foyer, at the very front of the house, she heard the steady tap of heels. Tara sprinted fast and silently through the shadows gathered in the hallway. She hit the swinging door to the kitchen just as she heard the officer call out again. She was running out of time. She’d never get out of