Midnight Jewels

throaty voice held smooth satisfaction. It also held a certain degree of strain.
    "Miss Pennington. We've been expecting your call."
    "Let me speak to Gladstone."
    "You will speak to me. I am authorized to deal with this on Erasmus' behalf. Now then, I assume you got our message from your friend, Dorrie?"
    "I got it."
    "Excellent. Then you know that Mr. Falconer is once again a guest of ours."
    Mercy hunched over me phone. "Let me speak to him."
    "I'm afraid mat's not possible at the moment."
    "I'm not doing anything until I speak to him."
    "You have my word your lover is alive and well, if not particularly happy."
    "Your word isn't worth much."
    "I'm sorry you feel that way," Isobel said. "But my word is all you have right now."
    "What exactly do you want from me?" Mercy asked cautiously, staring at the strip of film in front of her.
    "We want you to join us, of course. Our house party came to a somewhat abrupt end and Erasmus is afraid that we might have made you and Mr. Falconer feel unwelcome. We'd like to make up for that."
    "You want me to come back to the estate?"
    "I assumed you'd want to under the circumstances. You and Mr. Falconer being so close and all."
    They were threatening to kill Croft unless she came back. "It will take me several hours to get there."
    "We wouldn't think of asking you to drive all that way," Isobel assured her. "I'll meet you en route. Give me a point where you can be within an hour. That will still give us an hour of daylight to get back here. Choose an isolated place and don't bring anyone along, is that clear? I won't land if I see that you're not alone or if I think you're being followed."
    Isobel was going to meet her with the helicopter. Mercy cringed at the thought. Reluctantly she reached out to pull a map toward her. "There's a resort area a few miles from the motel Croft and I stayed in the first night."
    "I know it. A little too busy. But there's a meadow five miles east of the motel. Be there within an hour."
    "It will take me longer than that. Probably an hour and a half."
    "Then you'd better get moving."
    "Damn it, it's not that simple. I don't have a car." Mercy realized she was getting angry. It had the therapeutic effect of driving off some of the fear.
    "Then you'll have to rent one. You'd better get going, hadn't you? When you reach the meadow park the car out of sight. There's a stand of fir behind a bend in the road. You should be able to conceal the car there."
    "I suppose you want me to bring the book with me?" Mercy asked grimly.
    There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Most definitely," Isobel finally said with a new note of urgency. "You are to bring us the book. That's the whole point of this little exercise, isn't it?" She hung up the phone in Mercy's ear.
    Mercy frowned at the receiver. She could have sworn Isobel sounded almost surprised, as if she hadn't known Mercy had the book. But if Isobel and Gladstone had Croft, they would know by now that he hadn't taken the book with him.
    A new horror washed over her as Mercy forced herself to consider the possibilities. If there had been a fight when Isobel and Gladstone had tried to intercept Croft, it was possible Croft had been hurt, or even, God help her, killed. Or they might have assumed he had hidden the book before he was taken prisoner.
    In which case Isobel and Gladstone might not know what had happened to the book. That would account for Isobel's surprise at hearing Mercy offer to bring
Valley
with her.
    Mercy reached out and picked up
Valley
. Experimentally she closed the book. In that position the fine crack inside the spine was sealed shut again and hidden from view. Isobel and Gladstone had no reason to believe that their secret had been discovered.
    The microfilm was the only real bargaining chip in this dangerous game.
    If Croft were alive—and for her own sanity Mercy had to believe he was—then all he would need would be an opportunity. It was up to Mercy to provide that opportunity. Once she turned the microfilm over to Gladstone she would have nothing left with which to negotiate.
    Somehow she was certain Croft was still alive. She would know if he were dead. The new sense that seemed to have been awakened by his presence in her life would also be dead.
    Her mind made up, Mercy set the book down on the table and picked up the film. She needed a hiding place for the dangerous strip of microfilm.
    After a few minutes of thought during which she considered and discarded most of