TOUCHING SHADOWS: Book One of The Scroll of Shadows Trilogy.

TOUCHING SHADOWS: Part 3

“My professional opinion?” I glanced toward the heavy walnut desk in front of which Montford stood like a soldier on parade. “Oh, you had an El Greco without a doubt.” Montford’s shoulders stiffened “At least you did until you lost your temper.”

He stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the painting you took to with a spade. After you killed Rheda Flynn. A falling out of thieves? Not clever, Geoffrey. Not in either choice.”

I stopped. Swallowed the rest of my words when I saw Montford’s expression.

His cheeks had faded to white. Bone white with a sheen of sweat. The only color in his face came from his eyes, wells of dark torment. His breath hissed through his teeth in a long, slow inhalation.

“I was right,” he said, but he sounded more exhausted than pleased at his cleverness. “You knew about it. You were in on it. I thought you were. But you said—” His brows drew together. “It doesn’t matter. When I found your names, I knew what they were planning.”

Names? They? “Whose names?”

He ignored me. Just kept talking in the same slow, tired monotone. “She was going to leave me. Did you know?”

There was only one she in Montford’s life. “Marie?”

He nodded. “For Rheda.”

Oh shit. I’d been wrong. A crime of passion, but not for art. “And that’s why you killed her?”

He didn’t even blink. “I didn’t mean to. I only went there to talk. But then I saw the El Greco, and I knew what they were doing. You were going to help them sell it.”

He lifted those haunted eyes to me and something moved in their depths. Something terrifying. Something—

And it all went to hell.

How he’d gotten the gun past Security, God alone knew. All I knew was that between the rattle of the office door handle and the time it took for the door to open fully, Montford whipped the deadly little automatic out of his jacket and aimed the business end at me.

On the edge of my vision, I saw movement. Someone was going to try to be a hero. Die a hero.

No one dies for me, the cold, hard voice in my head said. Not again. Never again.

In the slow-motion time that seems to follow in chaos’s path, somebody shouted, someone else cursed, crockery shattered, something large and shiny skimmed through the air from the direction of the doorway, and Montford’s finger tightened on the trigger.

I was already diving when he fired.

Even before I hit him in a flying tackle, Montford staggered backwards. The second shot almost deafened me. Then my head plowed into his stomach, something solid thumped me on the shoulder blade, and we both crashed to the floor.

There was a muffled clang next to my head when a silver tray hit the carpet. For an instant time seemed to freeze completely. Then action rushed back, and the keening started.

The anguish in that high, thin howl made the hair on the back of my neck snap to attention. There were words in there too. Tormented. Indistinct. Echoes from the souls of the damned. About his wife and the El Greco and Rheda and betrayal and death. Montford flailed around, wailing, punching me until I managed to drag myself up his body and kneel on his forearms.

But not for long. I was grabbed from behind, hauled off him and into a chair. Mark and his security team took my place. I was only half-aware someone else was talking to me, shaking me, but I couldn’t respond, couldn’t take my eyes off what was happening on the floor.

It was surreal. Four uniformed security men, plus Amos, and all five of them—solid guys—couldn’t keep Geoffrey Montford on the ground. He’d snapped. Lost it. Just as he had with Rheda.

What the hell had I done? Worse, how was I going to explain my actions? My goading of a man I shouldn’t have been goading. Shouldn’t have known could be goaded. I couldn’t tell the truth, and Amos wasn’t Charles; he wouldn’t lie for me. Wouldn’t—

“Witch!”

Although everything sounded muffled as though it was being filtered through cotton wool, I recognized that word. And the emotion bubbling up my throat. Fear, primal and primitive. It scrabbled for a handhold inside me while under his blanket of security people Montford writhed, screaming . . .  screaming . . . 

“Witch! You’re a witch! Burn the witch! Burn them all.”

His eyes rolled in their sockets like white billiard balls, and froth and spittle ran down his chin.

I couldn’t take any more. Wrenching away from the hands gripping my shoulder, I surged to my feet. I had to get out—get away—before the storm of emotion I’d been running ahead of for weeks finally caught up with me and I shattered the cardinal rule of performers everywhere: don’t break character.

But I was disoriented and slow to see I had a more immediate problem. Between me and the door—a reef before safe harbor—stood Dominic Stone.