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But then a couple of weeks ago, Dani had come “on-line” again. Out of the blue, her sister had touched her thoughts because she needed help. She wanted her to promise to take care of her son, Alex, if anything ever happened to her.
She’d told Anthony about it. And then all hell had broken loose.
The confrontation had taken place in their apartment, the one that Anthony insisted they share so that he could “look after her.”
“Look, she walked out on us, we didn’t walk out on her,” he’d railed, furious, when she tried to get him to talk about Dani. To mend broken fences so that they could be a family again.
Elizabeth tried very hard not to take his outburst personally, not to let his yelling affect her. She knew better than anyone how Anthony felt about things, how sensitive he actually was. When Danielle had left them abruptly to go off on her own, their brother had taken it as a sign of abandonment. Another in a long line of abandonments, beginning with their mother.
Of course, that hadn’t exactly been of their mother’s own volition. Deanna Payne had been killed when they were only three, strangled in their living room. When the commotion had begun that awful, sticky summer night, Anthony had shoved both Elizabeth and Danielle into the closet to keep them safe. He’d stayed with them, telling them to be quiet as the clothes around them cocooned the sounds of raised voices and then the screams.
And then there was silence, an awful silence that ate into the darkness. Anthony slipped out first, telling them to stay where they were.
She’d stayed there as long as she could. Until she couldn’t anymore. When she ventured out, holding Dani’s hand in hers, she saw her brother kneeling on the floor beside the lifeless body of their mother. Her beautiful face was bruised, beaten. And there was blood, so vividly red against her pale, pale lips.
Her little heart hammering, unable to take in the full meaning of what she saw, she’d knelt on one side of her mother while Dani had knelt on the other. They’d each taken one of their mother’s hands and tried to will her back to life.
She wasn’t sure when her brother had gotten up to call the police, but she knew he had. Just as, somewhere in her heart, she knew that it had been their father who had killed their mother.
But Anthony had never confirmed it, never said yes or no when she asked. It was a piece of himself he’d kept locked away from both her and Dani. The police took him at his word when he’d told them he didn’t know who had done this. People didn’t waste too much time questioning a three-year-old.
Whether or not their father had killed their mother, Benedict Payne had disappeared from their lives that night. It was the second abandonment.
The foster system they found themselves catapulted into was fraught with abandonments. They were yanked from one home to another, sometimes taken in all together, sometimes taken in separately. Throughout it all, they’d managed to maintain their silent connection.
Until now.
Dani had used a conventional method, the telephone, to connect with her, calling her several days ago to reconnect. Her sister had called to tell her things Dani felt she needed to know. Unique though they thought themselves to be, they were far from alone. That there were others like them, others with “gifts” that did not belong to ordinary people. In addition, the DNA test results which Danielle had undergone to prove the link and which had involved samples from each of the fellow “gifted” individuals were now unaccounted for at the private lab where they had been processed and stored. It wasn’t a case of misplacement, but something more. Something, Dani confided, far more sinister.
It had been a great deal to assimilate and Elizabeth wasn’t a hundred percent sure she believed all of it, even though she knew that Dani did.
Elizabeth pressed her lips together. She had no idea if Anthony believed any of it. He’d been too busy yelling at her the last time she’d seen him to discuss it.
They’d just finished up a job, and instead of going out to celebrate, Anthony had insisted they come back home and turn in early in preparation for the next assignment. She remembered being resentful that Anthony constantly controlled her life.
When she’d told him about Dani’s call, he’d turned on her, livid. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to hear anything about Dani.”
She couldn’t make herself believe that he meant what he said. “Anthony, please, just listen—”
His green eyes had darkened. “No, you just listen. Dani made her choice. She left us. Fine, she’s gone. We’re here and we have a job to do. Now go to bed, we’ve got an early day tomorrow.”
It was then that she’d decided enough was enough. Looking back, she realized she should have taken a stand a long time ago, before Anthony had become so accustomed to controlling her life. “No.”
He’d looked at her, astonished, angrier than she’d ever seen him. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
She’d turned her back on him, heading for the front door. Beyond that, she had no clue where she was going.
“It’s a two-letter word,” she’d said over her shoulder. “You figure it out.”
Anthony had grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. “What’s gotten into you?”
And then the dam broke inside her. “What’s gotten into me is that I don’t want to live this way anymore. I don’t want to go from job to job, jumping when you say jump.”
Anthony looked as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. “Hey, Jeremy is the one who gives the assignments—”
She’d gritted her teeth together, refusing to cave in the way she always did. Her position may have been peacemaker in the family, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t above making a little war herself. “And you’re the one who acts as gatekeeper.”
“Gatekeeper?”
“Yes, gatekeeper. To my prison. Anthony, we don’t do anything but the jobs that Jeremy gives us. We don’t socialize, we don’t go out. Just because we have these—these gifts doesn’t mean we have to hide like freaks.” More than anything, she desperately wanted to spread her wings and fly.
“We’re not hiding.”
“Well, you certainly try to hide me.” One word was leading to another and she couldn’t seem to stop. “When have I had a single relationship? You won’t let me out of your sight.”
“We don’t have time for relationships.”
“That’s just my point. It’s always what you think is best. There’s never any discussion, never any room for another opinion, just yours.” His expression had remained impassive. Stony. She might as well have been making her case to a wall. “Damn it, that’s why Dani left. You were suffocating her. She wanted to be her own person.”
“Fine,” he’d shouted. “She has what she wants. She’s her own person.”
“But that doesn’t mean cutting her off, dead.”
His eyes were cold, steely. “Can’t have it both ways, Lizzie.”
Suddenly, the argument was back in her court. It wasn’t Dani they were arguing about but her again. And she was fighting for her life. “Why? Why can’t I have it both ways? Why can’t I work for Jeremy, be your sister and still have a life of my own? Why can’t Dani have a life of her own?”
For a moment, there had been genuine concern in his eyes before the wall went up again. “Because it doesn’t work that way. Because we’re different. Because things can hurt you out there.”
“I’m thirty-one years old, Anthony. You can’t keep me in bubble wrap forever.”
And then he’d taken the ball out of her court. In typical Anthony fashion, he’d made the decision for her, even though he probably hadn’t realized it at the time. “You want to be free? Fine, be free. Go off on your own, just leave me the hell alone.” The words echoed in his wake as he slammed the door behind him, storming out of their apartment.
At the time, she’d been incensed—and hurt. She ran about, collecting her things and tossing them into the suitcase they used when they went out of town on jobs.
And all the while, she’d filled the spaces in her head with snippets of songs she knew. So that Anthony couldn’t tune in and discover what she was up to.
The wheels had been set in motion. She needed her space.
She’d left.
Once inside her car, she placed a call to Jeremy on her cell phone. To say he was surprised when she told him she was going on a much needed vacation was an understatement, especially since she said she was going alone. She’d lied and added she wasn’t taking her cell along.
“How can I get in contact with you?” he’d wanted to know.
“I’ll call you,” she’d promised.
But she hadn’t. And she wasn’t going to. Not for a while.
When she’d finally let her guard down, she’d discovered that there were no communal thoughts for her to let in. No feeling that something that Anthony was experiencing was touching her.
Like smoke on the wind, Anthony was gone, out of her life, as if he’d never been there.
It felt wonderful to be normal, to be alone with her thoughts.
Wonderful and strange and lonely, she slowly discovered.
So this was what everyone else experienced. After being part of a trio and then a duo for so long, she wasn’t all that sure she liked this change completely.
No, she silently argued with herself as the temptation to call Anthony one more time rose within her. Anthony’s terms were total surrender.
She sank back against a pillow. It was high time she took the training wheels off her life and rode on her own. Maybe not in a straight line, but at least unassisted.
The apartment she’d gotten was a studio. She had enough money in her account—Jeremy had always been generous with their cut—to get any sort of living accommodations, but she wanted to start out small and see how she liked it.
There was always time to get something bigger later. But she wanted to take baby steps because baby steps guaranteed that you didn’t fall flat on your face the way you might if you leaped.
Her attention drifted toward the newspaper she’d picked up earlier. She noticed a large, splashy article about the grand opening of Cole Williams’s new gallery. It promised to be a major event with a great many celebrities there, rubbing elbows with the CEOs of industry.
She smiled.
Just the kind of stomping grounds a newly released sparrow was looking for, she thought.
Beside the article was a rendition of the invitation that had been sent out to legions of people who periodically made the news. The article said that the party was “by invitation only.”
Her smile grew wider as she reached for a sketch pad. “Not a problem.”
Chapter 2
Elizabeth didn’t have to glance in the mirror. She knew. Knew that she was a certified, pull-out-all-the-stops knockout.
But a languid review of the evidence certainly didn’t hurt.
A smile curved her generous mouth as she looked at her reflection in the freestanding oval mirror that allowed her to get an overall view of herself. Satisfaction wrapped itself around her like a warm, velvety blanket as she surveyed her image.
She was loaded for bear and ready to go.
Rather than some prim hairstyle, she wore her hair loose. Coming down just past her shoulders, the midnight-black torrent of swirls and waves seductively brushed against her bare back. Her eye makeup, done to perfection, brought out her hazel-green eyes and accentuated the Gypsy blood that ran through her veins, thanks to her Romanian mother.
But it was the dress that pulled everything together. A flaming-red bit of fabric that nipped in at her small waist, highlighted her subtly rounded hips and, because the hem flirted outrageously with her thighs, allowed anyone with eyes to take in the fact that she had long, shapely legs that seemed to go on forever.
If this didn’t bring the great and near-great moneyed men milling around at the gallery opening to their collective knees, then nothing would, she thought with a toss of her head.
Upon scrutiny, Elizabeth couldn’t have been accused of having a vain bone in her body, but what she did possess was confidence: confidence in her skills, in her abilities to use them. She knew exactly what to do to stir up a reaction, be it from a crowd or an audience of one.
It didn’t take any of her special gifts to bring her to this conclusion; it was instinct, pure and simple. Survival instinct, because once upon a time those same skills had been what had helped her, Anthony and Dani survive on the street after they had run away from their last foster home.
Even after all this time, the memory still sent a shiver sliding down her spine. Living in that house had been surreal. On the outside, they all appeared to be the perfect family, being trotted out to church every Sunday, looking like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. But once behind closed doors, it had been different, completely different.
Amanda Toliver had been little more than a mousy servant to her husband, Wayne. And Wayne, with his large, beaming smile and his even larger hands, had felt that he was entitled to do whatever he wanted within his own residence.
That had included enforcing his will on the three of them.
Taking a hairbrush from the bureau, Elizabeth ran it through her hair one final time. Toliver had been roughest on Anthony, demanding all sorts of things from him, never satisfied with anything Anthony did. She remembered being surprised that Anthony had taken being ordered around for as long as he had, but she’d been aware of her brother making an effort, a really big effort this time, to blend in. They’d wanted so much to fit in, to have a normal life after what they’d gone through, after all the homes they’d been sent to.
But then it got uglier.
Always smiling at her and her sister, Wayne was constantly reaching out and touching them, petting them, hugging them. They were thirteen and just beginning to mature, but they both felt uncomfortable with what he was doing, even though they tried to reassure each other that it was just harmless.
And then they were forced to face the truth. One night Wayne slipped into their room, the one that she and Dani shared. Sensing someone’s presence, she woke up and screamed. Wayne was in her bed.
Anthony came flying in from the next room, his beloved baseball bat in his hand. He swung it against Wayne, knocking him out. She was sure that Anthony had killed the man. Amanda never came into the room. It was as if she didn’t want to know what was happening.
Grabbing their clothes, the three of them fled into the night. To hide from the system. To hide from a society that looked the other way when they were being herded around like so much chattel.
For the next few days, they stole newspapers from people’s front steps to find out if there was any mention of Wayne. If Anthony had killed him, there would have been a story, an article, a line. But there wasn’t. Wayne Toliver obviously hadn’t been killed and the law wasn’t looking for Anthony for murder.
It was a relief.
It was also a position they were determined never to put themselves in again. So they stayed hidden, living by their wits and talents. Outcasts again.
On the outside, looking in, that was how they always felt. Even after Jeremy came into their lives and took them in.
The feeling had only intensified because Jeremy found ways for them to make use of their unique talents, talents that set them apart from the rest of the world. A client coming to Jeremy for “help” could be assured that if he’d had something stolen, it would be returned, no matter where it was or how well guarded.
That laws had to be bent in order to retrieve stolen items was something no one concerned themselves about. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was an active motto in all of their lives. Jeremy told them more than once that he didn’t care how they did something, as long as they covered their trail and that it didn’t lead back to them. Or him.
Elizabeth had used some of her personal talents to ensure that she’d gain entrance to the gallery tonight.
The invitation sitting inside her purse on the coffee table had not arrived via mail but via her rather uncanny ability to copy whatever she saw, whether it was a work of art or an invitation to an exclusive gala.
Right now, the latter promised to be more fun.
Elizabeth set the brush down and did a slow turn before the mirror, watching her hair move. She was really looking forward to tonight. Not just because she’d be crashing a gala where the rich were rubbing elbows with one another, but because she truly loved art. In whatever spare time she had away from her duties for Jeremy, she liked to haunt art galleries and museums.
Anthony had no patience with that sort of thing, and even Dani, when she’d been around, had no interest in spending her time staring at sweeping lines and trying to discern different brush strokes, so it had been the one thing she could do on her own.
Elizabeth had gone into her hobby the way she went into everything—wholeheartedly. She’d immersed herself in every single aspect and detail of art.
Her skills ran to forgery. She was able to copy adeptly any style, any artist.
She’d used both skills in printing up her invitation. The rest had required a little research. She’d gotten a lead on the company that had printed the original invitations. Paying a visit to the store, she’d affected a Southern accent and gushed, professing utter admiration for the look of the invitation when it had arrived at her home. The printer had been in the palm of her hand within two minutes, answering her questions unconditionally. After all, what was the harm in telling someone about the kind of paper that was used to print the invitation?
Armed with that and the newspaper photograph of the invitation, the rest was easy.
She smiled to herself as she slipped her wrap around her shoulders and gave herself one last look before picking up her purse. Ready.
Cole had no idea who she was. Only that he quite possibly—despite his wide circle of friends, acquaintances and business associates—had never seen a woman quite this beautiful in his life. In the crowded gallery, he’d noticed her the moment she’d walked into the room.
