Dark Rhapsody Page 2

  One year … I still love you, Johnny, I always will. But now …

  Now, Colonel Michael Beckett was in her life. Alone on the high deck, Maggie looked out at the indistinct shapes floating on the dark water. The colonel’s face was hidden, but she knew every plane and angle under the old cap. The battered, hard face. Spiky peppered brows drawn over storm-gray, distant eyes. He was like his mountains, she thought. Hard as granite, towering as the pines, with eyes like river stones.

  These last two weeks, she’d lived with him here in the shadow of his beloved Blue Ridge Mountains—this proud, scarred man with the darkness always at the back of his eyes—learning about him and watching the September-green leaves turn slowly to russet and bright amber.

  Now the mountain air was bitter-cold with the hint of first snow, and the last leaves were about to fall. She thought of the short story she’d read late into the night—“The Last Leaf”—when the dreams invaded and sleep once again eluded her.

  I won’t leave you until the last leaf falls, Michael.

  That had been her silent promise. But the call from Carnegie Hall had come this afternoon. She needed to be in New York; she had to leave first thing in the morning. How do I tell him?

  And what would he do when she left? She knew the answer, deep in her bones. He would go after Dane.

  An image of Dane’s cruel face spun into her head. He was always there, like a wolf watching her from a curtain of fog. Waiting.

  Shivering with a sudden, cold foreboding, she raised her eyes. Above her, the huge vault of sky shimmered with the deep indigo blue of twilight. Without warning, the sky exploded with wild roaring and the light became a drowning, fearful blue, a blue that had flooded like spilled ink into her dreams since childhood.

  Panic stirred in her chest, and she felt the first waves of pain behind her eyes. With an oath, she turned and ran back toward the sanctuary of the lamp-lit cabin.

  The high-beamed room wavered with firelight. This was Michael’s refuge, a beautiful room of glowing red woods, huge windows, and handmade bookcases—as dark and rough-hewn as the colonel himself. Tonight, the room smelled like autumn, spicy-sharp with the scent of chrysanthemums and apples piled high in a deep earthen bowl. Soft leather chairs were drawn close to the fireplace, and her eyes were drawn, as always, to the framed quote by John Muir above the mantle. The Mountains are Calling and I Must Go. Yes, they suited this man she was coming to love.

  In the far corner of the room, a circular staircase disappeared into the bedroom loft. Just looking at those stairs brought a faint flush of heat to Maggie’s skin.

  Reaching unconsciously for the small pink rubber ball on the table, Maggie began to squeeze it in her right hand the way the physical therapist had taught her. Her eyes sought, as always, the old Baldwin grand piano set against the rear picture window. The dark-visaged colonel, whose musical taste ran to guitar, country, and blues, had bought the piano for her in a secondhand shop in Front Royal, surprising her that first night in the mountains.

  The piano will help you heal, Maggie.

  “Surely you haven’t abandoned Otis and BB King, Michael?” she’d teased him, overwhelmed by his uncharacteristic tenderness.

  “Mozart may not be the sharpest knife in my drawer, ma’am,” he’d answered gruffly, “but he tends to grow on you.”

  She had tried to play that piano for hours every day, willing her weakened fingers to grow strong again, while Shiloh, the Golden, slept at her feet and the great picture window glowed like a painting as the sky spun from day to night. Twelve major scales, thirty-six minor scales, fingering, technique. Over and over. Maggie looked down at her slender fingers clutching the rubber ball and walked slowly toward the old piano, allowing the memories to flow like a sonata into her mind.

  Only one year earlier, she’d believed her life was settled. She’d been happy and filled with purpose, a wife and mother of a married son, owner of The Piano Cat Music Shop in Boston, and an acclaimed concert pianist. Then her godson had disappeared. Her husband, Johnny, had flown to Europe to search for the child, and her life had changed in one shattering October night when Johnny’s boat had exploded on a faraway sea. That night, with the horrific words of a stranger’s phone call, grief had enveloped her in a numbing, haunted smoke.

  Her husband’s death had been the beginning of a terrifying journey that eventually led her to France—and to the dark, fierce-browed colonel. Angry and remote at first, more adversary than protector, still, somehow, he had understood her pain. And, in the end, had found a way to ease her sorrow.

  But not before she crossed paths with Dane.

  Maggie shuddered as she sat down on the piano bench and held out her hands toward the flames of the fire. The heat felt good on her fingers, taking away for just a moment the image of a brutal monster with a wolf’s face and eyes the color of yellow ice.

  Dane.

  Months earlier he had attacked her on a beach in southern France, and she’d been fighting off the memories of those eyes ever since. And finally, as she forced her fingers to move again and again over the keys here in the refuge of the mountains, the music lost to her for so long began to return.

  But still the nightmares came.

  Maggie bowed her head. For a time, she’d even dared to believe that the always-hovering violence of the colonel’s life was behind them.

  We dared the gods, she thought. I should have known.

  Because just last night, while searching for a pen, she had opened his nightstand drawer and seen the gun. Black, shining, deadly.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  She’d jerked back as the memory of quick loud shots crashed into her head.

  I almost killed a man in France, she thought. I wanted to.

  Was it any wonder she couldn’t sleep? Any wonder the headaches were growing stronger? Maggie gazed into the red embers of the fire as if she could find the answers she sought. But all she saw was Dane’s face, smiling at her through the flames. And then, rising from the hiss of the embers, she heard the last words Dane had spoken against her hair, the whispery, terrifying voice of her nightmares echoing like a Bach fugue in her head.

  I will come for you, Magdalena. And I will break your fingers one by one.

  God. No. That part of her life was over.

  Wasn’t it?

  CHAPTER TWO

  A VILLAGE IN TUSCANY, ITALY

  LATE NIGHT, OCTOBER 15

  THE MAN STOOD at the narrow-arched window, gazing out across the vineyards that fell away in undulating waves beneath him. The midnight moon was full tonight, spilling on the purple vines and hillsides in a river of silver light. He had been staring at these hills day and night for weeks. Waiting. Waiting.

  He shook his head as he turned away from the window. “My home was a white cube on a cliff overlooking an azure sea,” he murmured, “with the sun so bright it blinded me.” Now, all he saw every morning were browns, faded yellows, dusty green.

  But all the pain and loss would be worth it. Interpol had the photos of his old face. Not the new one.

  He moved across the peaked attic room toward the single cracked mirror over the basin, his bare feet soundless on the tiles. The face staring back at him was a mummy’s face, swathed in broad white bandages, with only holes for his nostrils and his right eye. The golden tiger-colored iris glittered back at him with a cold, angry light.

  He needed at least two more surgeries, but that fool of a doctor had sealed both their fates when he threatened to go to the Policia. Il Dottore’s funeral had been held just that morning, attended, he’d been told, by the whole village.

  The local newspaper had run an unheard-of special edition—Farewell, Il Dottore. A terrible accident, they reported, describing in excruciating detail the late hour, the treacherous mountain road, the brakes in the old truck worn beyond repair.

  Rest in peace, Il Dottore. You should never have threatened me.

  “What’s done is done,” he murmured, turning away from the mirror. His f
ace no longer mattered. Now, it was time to move on. Finding the art was his number-one priority. He had to have those paintings if he was to take control of the business. The opening act would begin in Rome, where he would make the first of the many moves in the intricate dance to take back his life.

  He reached for the newspaper he’d tossed onto the table. It was a three-day-old edition of the International Tribune, folded to the arts page. He found the article he’d circled just hours earlier, and smiled. An invitation-only Old Masters auction at La Galleria dalla Chiesa in Rome on October 23.

  Perfect. All the black-market art dealers would be there. He would plan his attack for October 23, in Rome. Send a message, loud and clear. Show the buggers who should be in charge now that Victor Orsini was dead.

  The patient reached for his iPhone. He still needed the new identity papers. Then he could open bank accounts under his new name, get fitted for contact lenses, color his hair, arrange transportation to Rome.

  His first call was to Angelo Farnese—“the Angel”—the Roman black market art dealer known to have the best connections with the wealthiest private collectors and clients. The man who wanted, at all costs, to maintain control of the stolen art market—and the enormous wealth and power that went with it. The man who had told Dane he was not welcome to attend the meeting of the art dealers.

  And so, using an assumed name, Dane arranged a meeting on October 23 to discuss the private sale of a Botticelli, at the Angel’s gallery in the Piazza Navona. La Galleria dalla Chiesa—The Art Gallery by the Church.

  The cost may be higher than you thought, Angel.

  Then, pressing a series of international numbers, he placed a call to his contact in the United States. “I have two jobs for you, Thanos.” A nervous, murmured response. “I didn’t kill you when I could have. I thought I might need you some day. Now that day has come. Go to New York and wait for my instructions.”

  Finally, his business done, he turned once more toward the casement window. By week’s end, the bandages would come off. He would make his way to Rome, and his new life would begin. He would take back the power that was rightfully his; he would find the art that had been ripped from him. And the woman who destroyed his life—who took away his face, his future—would suffer before he took her life.

  “A kiss long as my exile, sweet as my revenge,” he quoted softly.

  The moon’s light fell in golden bars through the high window, sending wavering patterns of dark and bright across the tiles. He reached into his duffel bag, searching for the CDs he always carried with him. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata would be perfect for tonight.

  Finding his choice, he slipped the disc into the ancient player, careful to keep the volume low. The soft notes of the first movement flooded into the room. Evocative, surely. Nocturnal. But the pianist was brilliant. She understood that the music was not describing the romance of moonlight but a mood far more mournful. Ghostly. A lamentation.

  He remained still, listening and remembering. He pictured a long, light-filled gallery, lined with the most beautiful paintings he had ever seen. A ballerina in green tulle tying her slipper. A busy Parisian square at twilight. A portrait of an Italian Renaissance youth. And, of course, the Klimt.

  Degas, Pissarro, Raphael, Klimt. Just four of the dozens of paintings, looted from a Jewish art dealer named Hoffman in World War II, that his mentor Victor Orsini had found hidden in his mother’s Italian villa. Where were all those exquisite paintings now? Orsini was dead, the villa long ago burned to the ground, the priceless Hoffman Collection hidden away once again—somewhere—just before Orsini’s death.

  The second movement of the sonata began. He leaned back on the narrow bed and let the memories flow. A lavender field beyond an old abbey, a thunderstorm in the hills. A violent and brutal fight with an American colonel, a scorching lighter flame held to his hand. The patient looked down at his hands. The burn scars, ridged like thick, bright red worms, would never heal. He would have to wear gloves when he left the village.

  Now Beethoven’s third movement began, the most powerful of the three. The storm of notes flung into the air, the unbridled arpeggios, the ferocity. The music as astonishing as the pianist who played the chaotic notes with such breathtaking intensity. He flexed his fingers, closed his eyes, and saw a woman’s green eyes, looking into his with fear and loathing, her body struggling beneath him. Saw the silver flash of his dagger …

  He lifted the CD case, held it beneath the light of the candle. The pianist’s face gazed back at him, flickering in the shadows, almost alive. Beautiful, ethereal, with deep emerald eyes and hair that was black as a starless night. The woman responsible for his scars, his pain. His exile. For Interpol’s freezing of his bank accounts and chasing him to ground for murder. She had taken away his life.

  No more. Now he would watch her suffer.

  “The past is prologue,” whispered Dane. “I am coming for you, Magdalena O’Shea.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS, VIRGINIA

  OCTOBER 15

  “YOU’VE SCARED OFF all the damn trout again, Shiloh.”

  The Golden Retriever, a three-legged dog rescued from Afghanistan and still fearful of most humans, gazed at him with a sorrowful expression.

  “Yeah, you’re right, trout has too many bones anyway.” Colonel Michael Jefferson Beckett scowled at the dog as he reeled in the line. He’d expected a look of satisfaction. Of “gotcha.” The dog had been doing so well. Until now—he was losing weight, just wasn’t himself these last few days. Beckett looked down at the sad eyes, the soft ears folded back. What was going on?

  Depression comes and goes, he reminded himself. Even for animals.

  The Golden struggled to his feet, his aging limbs stiff, and Beckett felt his heart twist in his chest. “We’re just a couple of old dogs,” he murmured, “going grayer by the day.” It was getting late. Beckett turned to search the mountainside.

  The deck was empty now. Nothing but blowing leaves, dark shapes in the dusky shadows. She’d gone inside.

  But he’d watched her as she stood alone on the balcony, so still, with the maple leaves falling around her like scarlet rain and the setting sun burnishing her hair with fire. Hair the color of a mountain night sky. Gazing out over the water, like the oil painting of a woman he’d seen in the National Gallery—mysterious, complex, and very, very beautiful. A woman of haunting grace. What had she been thinking?

  He grinned as he pictured her lifting her head to watch the geese. She loved watching the wild birds—but always worried that they were flying in the wrong direction.

  “You are still a piece of work, Maggie O’Shea,” he murmured.

  He’d fallen for her the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, without knowing it, in an old Paris cemetery lit by the violet light of dawn. Slender as a birch tree, small and pale as winter sunlight, with a voice like a bass guitar that a man couldn’t get out of his mind. And—the most remarkable eyes he’d ever seen. Shining with intelligence. Green as river moss.

  Speaking eyes.

  When he’d first met her, she’d been grief-stricken. And haunted. He’d watched as she’d come slowly, fiercely back to life, brave and strong as Persephone returning from a cold dark world.

  And then he had betrayed her.

  Beckett’s breath came out in a harsh gasp. It was his fault she’d almost been killed in France. Now the killer was still out there, somewhere. And Dane was a man who sought vengeance. Beckett had followed him for weeks, coming close, but lost the trail in Greece. And then last week, the untraceable text appeared on his cell phone.

  I am coming for her.

  To take away the one thing a man fears losing … it was the ultimate revenge. What the devil should he do now? Because Dane would come for Maggie. There was no doubt in Michael Beckett’s mind.

  Unless I stop him first.

  Beckett’s fist hit against the old boat in frustration. He thought of the gun near the bedside, and reac
hed for the oars. The familiar pain speared like hot pokers through his chest.

  “I’m still putting her in harm’s way,” he said to the Golden. Shiloh turned to gaze thoughtfully up at the cabin in the woods.

  Beckett clamped his teeth together and pulled on the oars, ignoring the fire that shot through his body. The air was blue with twilight as he turned the boat toward the shore. His eyes found the cabin windows through the pines. He thought he saw Maggie’s shadow move across the lamp-lit glass.

  I wish you were right here beside me now, Maggie.

  But that would never happen, he knew. She was deathly afraid of water—he’d seen it for himself the day he’d tried to get her to board a Parisian houseboat moored in the Seine. Paralyzed with terror. And now—she steered well clear of the lake, wouldn’t swim, or step a foot into his rowboat. He’d thought that it was caused by her husband’s drowning. Well, maybe. Or maybe not. Something told him this fear ran deeper. One more piece of the intricate puzzle that was Maggie O’Shea.

  All he knew now was that something was wrong with her. She was too pale, too damned skinny, skittish as a cat in a room full of hound dogs. Lately the huge eyes that looked into his seemed bright with pain and fever, like moons under green water.

  He reached to ruffle the Golden’s fur. “You and I, we’re both vets. We know more than we want to about PTSD, don’t we, boy? We’ve seen too much death,” he murmured, trying not to think of the carnage they had witnessed together in Afghanistan. And the post-traumatic stress that had followed.

  Like night follows day, he thought.

  Maggie, too, had been through a horrific trauma. And she wasn’t ready to talk.

  First, he knew, she would pour her feelings into the piano …