Promise Not To Tell(32)

Relieved, she hurried down the hall to the living room. But she came to an abrupt halt when she saw the otherworldly glow of a computer screen coming from the vicinity of the kitchen counter.

“How bad is this one on a scale of one to ten?” Cabot asked from the shadows.

And suddenly, the stone-cold normal way in which he was dealing with her weirdness had a calming effect.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“Let’s just say I’ve been there.”

“Nine point nine,” she said, her voice very tight.

She was still jittery but she was regaining control.

“Did you take the meds?” Cabot asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Good. Do whatever you need to do until they kick in and then I’ve got a question for you.”

“Okay.”

She started pacing. Cabot went back to work. It was a relief not to have to explain everything to him, she thought. He knew better than to try to hold her or even touch her. He didn’t tell her to get a grip or attempt to soothe her with calming words. He just gave her the space she needed to deal with the attack.

To outsiders the scene probably would have appeared bizarre, she thought – one person having a serious anxiety attack while the other one acted as if such attacks were perfectly normal.

After a while she got her pulse and her breathing back under control. She drifted across the room and perched on one of the stools at the counter.

“I’m all right now,” she said. “What was the question?”

“I’ve been thinking about Zane’s first compound.”

“That ghastly old house outside Wallerton? What about it?”

“Early on when my brothers and I started looking for Zane, we checked out that first house. Like I told you, one of his followers handed it over to him. Zane sold it to raise cash to make the move to California.”

“So?”

“It was a dead end as far as leads go,” Cabot said. “But tonight when I got my one thirty a.m. wake-up call, I decided to review some of our old files on Zane. Out of curiosity I looked up the Wallerton house to see what had happened to it.”

“And?”

“It went through a number of hands but eventually wound up in foreclosure. The bank took possession. It stood empty for years but it suddenly sold – an all-cash deal – late last month.”

“Really? Who bought it?”

“That’s where things get interesting,” Cabot said. “I can’t ID the buyer.”

“What do you mean? That kind of information is public.”

“Not when the buyer purchases the property under the cover of a trust. It isn’t uncommon for wealthy people to buy real estate through a trust, but usually it’s possible to get some idea of the identity of the owners. Not in this case, however. Whoever constructed this trust wanted to be sure his identity remained hidden.”

Her anxiety was under control, but Virginia was aware of another kind of excitement sparking somewhere inside her.

“After years of rotting into the ground, the Wallerton house is suddenly sold to an unknown party,” she said. “What we’ve got here is another amazing coincidence.”

“It’s the kind of thing we conspiracy buffs take very seriously.” Cabot closed his laptop and looked at her. “Want to drive to Wallerton in the morning? Have a look around for old time’s sake?”

She shuddered. “Not really. But given all the things that have happened lately, yes. No stone unturned, et cetera, et cetera. My gallery is closed on Sundays and Mondays anyway and my back room will be a crime scene for a couple of days. So, yes, I’m free to accompany you on a little trip down memory lane.”

He smiled.

“What?”

“You’ve got plenty of what Anson calls grit. You know that?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve suffered from anxiety attacks off and on for most of my adult life.”

“That’s got nothing to do with grit.”

“What’s your definition of grit?”

“Murder goes down in your back room, followed by an anxiety attack that ranked at nine point nine on the scale of one to ten, and yet you’re up for taking a trip to the place where your nightmares got started. That, my friend, is grit.”

She grimaced. “Not like there’s much of an alternative. I need to know if Quinton Zane is still out there. I need to know what really happened to Hannah Brewster.”

“So do I.”

She saw the shadows in his eyes and knew that when he dreamed about the past, he, too, heard the echoes of the other children screaming and felt the heat of the flames. They had both lost their mothers to the fires of hell, but Virginia had been one of the lucky ones. Her grandmother had come to claim her. No one had stepped forward to claim Cabot.

Driven by an impulse she did not stop to analyze, she leaned forward and brushed her lips gently across his.

A great stillness came over him.

“Please don’t do that again,” he said.

Shocked, she sat back quickly. In that next instant a furious tide of embarrassment swept through her.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “That was a mistake. I apologize for putting you in a difficult position. Please, just forget that happened. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my room now.”