Without a Trace by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

shoulder, Trace took Gillian’s hand. Her initial resistance only caused him to tighten his grip.
    “Try to look a little romantic. We’re on a date.”
    “You’ll understand if I find it a bit difficult to look starry-eyed.”
    “Shoot for interested.” He pulled the guidebook out of his back pocket. “The place dates back to the sixth and seventh centuries. That’s comforting.”
    “Comforting?”
    “Over a thousand years and we haven’t managed to destroy it. Up for a climb?”
    She looked at him but couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark lenses. “I suppose.”
    Hands linked, they started up the rough steps of the Pyramid of the Magician. She wasn’t immune to the atmosphere. Even with sweat trickling down her back and her heart thudding with dull fear, she was moved by it. Ancient stones lifted by ancient hands to honor ancient gods. From the top she could look out over what had once been a community filled with people.
    For a moment she indulged herself and held herself very still. The scientist in her would have cocked a brow, but her ancestors had believed in leprechauns. Life had been in this place. Spirits still were. With her eyes closed, Gillian felt the power of the atmosphere.
    “Can you feel it?” she murmured.
    It was captured memories, lingering passions, that drew him to places. The realist in him had never completely overshadowed the dreamer. “Feel what?” he asked, though he knew.
    “The age, the old, old souls. Life and death. Blood and tears.”
    “You surprise me.”
    She opened her eyes, greener now with the emotion that was in her. “Don’t spoil it. Places like this never lose their power. You could raze the stone, put a high-rise on this spot, and it would still be holy.”
    “Is that your scientific opinion, Doctor?”
    “You
are
going to spoil it.”
    He relented, though instinct told him they would both be better off it he kept his distance. “Have you ever been to Stonehenge?”
    “Yes.” She smiled, and her hand relaxed in his.
    “If you close your eyes and stand in the shadow of a stone, you can hear the chanting.” His fingers had linked with hers, intimately, though neither of them were aware of it. “In Egypt you can run your hand along the stone of a pyramid and all but smell the blood of slaves and the incense of kings. Off the coast of the Isle of Man there are mermaids with hair like yours.”
    He had a fistful of it, soft, silky. He imagined it heating his skin with the kind of fire magicians conjure without kindling or matches.
    She could do nothing but stare at him. Though his eyes were still hidden, his voice had become soft and hypnotic. The hand on her hair seemed to touch every part of her, slowly, temptingly. The little twist of need she had felt that morning became an ache, that ache a longing.
    She leaned toward him. Their bodies brushed.
    “The view better be worth it, Harry. I’m sweating like a pig.”
    Gillian jerked back as if she’d been caught with her hand in the till as a middle-aged couple dragged themselves up the last of the stairs.
    “A pile of rocks,” the woman said when she took off her straw hat to fan her flushed face. “God knows why we had to come all the way to Mexico to climb a pile of old rocks.”
    The magic of the place seemed to retreat. Gillian turned to look out over the ruins.
    “Young man, would you mind taking a picture of my wife and me?”
    Trace took the disc camera from the slightly overweight man, who had an Oklahoman accent. It was the least he could do after they’d prevented him from making a mistake. Letting his mind wander off the task at hand and into more personal matters wouldn’t get him his revenge, and it wouldn’t get Gillian her family.
    “Little closer together,” he instructed, then snapped the picture when the couple gave two wide, frozengrins.
    “Kind of you.” The man from Oklahoma took back his camera. “Want me to take one of you and the lady?”
    “Why not?” It was a