The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,55

lock snapping into place. “What is it, Jules?” she asked softly. “What is it you want of me?”

Without warning, Jules’s left arm snaked out, spun her around, and clamped her against his chest. At the same instant, she saw the blade of the knife glimmering in the light of the chandelier, then felt cold steel caress her neck with a touch as light as a feather.

A deadly feather.

She froze, her nostrils flaring, every muscle in her body going rigid.

Then she felt Jules’s hot breath on her neck and smelled the whiskey he’d been drinking all through the day.

“I could kill you,” he whispered. “All I have to do is pull the knife across your throat. It would be easy, Madeline. And you deserve it, don’t you?”

When she made no reply, his grip on her tightened, and she felt the blade of the knife etch her skin. Her mind raced and she began speaking, the words boiling up out of some well of defense she hadn’t known she possessed. “Yes,” she heard herself saying. “I didn’t think you’d find out. I didn’t think you were smart enough. But I was wrong, Jules. I should have known I couldn’t fool you. I should have known you’d find out. And I’m sorry, Jules. I’m so very, very sorry.”

She began crying then, and let herself go limp in his violent embrace. Once again his grip on her tightened. He steered her across the entry hall, then through the parlor, the dining room, and the kitchen. Then they were at the top of the stairs leading to the basement. Madeline gazed down the steep flight at the concrete floor below.

“Lies!” she heard Jules whisper harshly in her ear. “All of it has been nothing but lies, without so much as a teaspoon of truth!” He released her, the knife dropping away from her throat as he hurled her away from him. Madeline reached out frantically, groping for the wall, the banister, anything that might stop her as she pitched forward.

There was nothing.

As she plunged headfirst down the stairs, the fear that had been rising within her broke through the dam of self-control she had struggled to hold intact. A scream of terror erupted from her throat, shattering the silence in the house, only to be cut off a second later as her head struck the concrete floor.

As Madeline’s body lay broken at the foot of the stairs, Jules—his right hand still clutching the knife—slowly descended to the basement.

In the Hartwick mansion at the top of Harvard Street, all that could be heard was an eerie quiet.

A silence as deep as the grave.

Chapter 8

Andrew Sterling punched Celeste Hartwick’s number into the keypad of his portable phone for the third time, and listened with growing worry to the continuous ringing at the other end of the line. The line had been busy when he’d first dialed her number fifteen minutes ago, but when he’d tried again, he’d gotten no answer. It made no sense: he was sure Celeste had been planning to have dinner with her parents tonight. Why was no one answering the phone? The memory of Jules’s strange behavior at the bank that morning only increased Andrew’s mounting uneasiness. Following the tenth unanswered ring on Celeste’s line, he hung up and dialed the operator. After waiting thirty seconds he heard a laconic voice inform him that “that line is currently out of order, sir. Would you like me to connect you with repair service?” Unwilling to get involved in what he suspected would turn into an impenetrable bureaucratic maze, Andrew hung up.

He pulled a parka on over the flannel shirt into which he’d changed after leaving the office an hour ago, and, gulping down the last bite of the microwaved pizza that had served as dinner, he went out to his five-year-old Ford Escort—all his bank salary could support in the way of a car—and prayed there was enough tread left on the tires to let him get up Harvard Street to the Hartwicks’ house.

A few flakes of snow drifted down as the Escort’s engine coughed into reluctant life. By the time Andrew pulled away from the curb, a sharp wind had come up. The light dusting of a minute or two earlier was rapidly developing into a heavy snowfall. He’d gone only a block when the night filled with a swirling white cloud that cut visibility down to a few yards. As the wiper struggled to keep the windshield clear, Andrew crept toward North