Hear No Evil Read Free

better.”
    Damn!
Eden thought in sorrow and guilt. She hated flying. But Jessie wanted her and Jessie needed her, and it was the least that Eden could do.
    “All right,” she said. “I’ll get the first flight out. I’ll rent a car there. I need to tell my director, my agent—rehearsals start in two weeks …”
    She pressed her lips together, forcing herself to be silent. She’d been babbling, thinking aloud.
    “I’ll pick you up when you get here,” the Charteris man said firmly, as if he were used to taking charge of things. “Call me when you know your flight. Have you got a pencil? Take my number.”
    Dutifully she obeyed, too dazed to resist. She felt as stunned as if someone had struck her on the head with a brick.
    “The sooner you’re here the better,” Charteris told her. “There’s the child to think of.”
    A dark cloud of apprehension rose in Eden’s mind.“Child?” she said, knowing she sounded stupid. “What child?”
    For an instant he didn’t reply, as if her question surprised him. “Your sister’s daughter,” he said. “Her six-year-old. Peyton.”
    Child?
Eden thought in disbelief.
Child?
    “A child? Why does Jessie have her?”
    “Mimi’s child,” he said coolly. “She sent her to Jessie. Today. We don’t know why.”
    Oh, Jesus, Mimi, what have you gone and done this time?
    “Sent her? I don’t understand.”
    “We don’t, either. Maybe I’ll know more by the time you get here.”
    “This child—where is she?”
    “I’ve got her,” Charteris said. “My sister’s helping me, but she can’t stay past tomorrow morning. The sooner you get here, the better for the kid. She’s shaken by all this. She doesn’t understand, either.”
    “Of course,” Eden said mechanically. But she felt as if a second brick had struck her. She’d known nothing about a child—nothing. Had Jessie known? If she had, for God’s sake, why hadn’t she told Eden?
    She didn’t realize she’d let the script of
The Snow Queen
slip from her fingers. The pages lay in a drift of white about her as if she stood barefoot in an icy drift of snow.
    “Call me as soon as you know your flight number,” the man ordered.
    “Certainly,” Eden said. She hung up, too stunned to say good-bye or thank you.
    “A child,” she muttered to herself in disbelief. “Mimi has a child.”
    •  •  •
    Owen Charteris hung up the hospital pay phone.
    With a sigh, he sagged against the wall and tiredly rubbed his knuckles across his jaw. He was a tall, lean man of forty with prematurely gray hair and ice-blue eyes.
    Nightmares of Laurie had wakened him shortly after midnight last night; he hadn’t gone back to sleep. He’d stayed up, drinking black coffee and gazing into the rainy darkness.
    Now he glanced at his watch and set his jaw. He leaned back his head and stared at the sterile white ceiling of the hallway. Under his breath, he cursed.
    Three years ago to the day, almost to the very hour, his wife had died in this hospital. Three years ago, shortly after two in the afternoon, Laurie Anne Charteris had been pronounced dead.
    Now by some obscene coincidence, he was here again, where she had slipped away from him forever. Christ, he was tired of death.
    At least tough old Jessie Buddress was going to make it. It would take more than a broken leg and mere bruises and contusions to stop the life force that was Jessie.
    Her prodigal granddaughter Mimi was another matter; wherever the hell Mimi was, she was probably in trouble.
    The woman who’d brought the child, Peyton, to Jessie’s house had been tight-lipped to the point of rudeness. She’d handed Jessie an envelope in which there was a one-sentence note from Mimi: “Please take care of my baby.”
    There was also a copy of Peyton Storey’s birth certificate. Her birthplace was Holland, Michigan. Her father was listed as “Unknown,” and the kid herself was stubbornly not talking. She seemed afraid.
    Where in hell had Mimi been for the