“All of which explains her obsession with fitness and fighting—and none of which explains her obsession with winning the International Ninja Challenge.”
“Maybe she’s throwing up a smoke screen and has no intention of entering the contest,” he suggested.
“She says she’s already entered and been accepted.”
“Have you seen proof?”
“No.” Kellen finished the salad. “You’re right—she could be lying and will sadly announce she didn’t make it. But I don’t think so. I think if Mara is the Librarian, she has such an impenetrable ego this is really the challenge—to show herself on television and online, to be seen by the world and make fools of everyone.”
“You have quite an unflattering opinion of her.”
Kellen struggled to explain. “She’s not an easy person to be around. She’s demanding. She’s selfish. I don’t know her any better than I did on the day we met. She has said that everyone here has secrets.”
“Do they?”
“No one comes to live at the lonely, battered edge of the continent unless they’re escaping a past.”
“What are you escaping?”
Her temper crackled. “You tell me. You did the research.”
“I’ve never seen blue eyes spark quite like that.” He leaned forward. “May I kiss you?”
She couldn’t have been more horrified. “Good God. Why?”
He threw back his head and laughed, and for the first time since she’d met him, he looked carefree. “Because we’d be good together.”
“I’m not here for that. If that’s the game you’re playing—”
“No!” He held up one hand. “This is not some long scene I’ve concocted to seduce you. Forget I said anything. It was an impulse. I’m not usually given to impulse, but you’re an unusual woman. Intriguing.”
“And you’re nosy. It’s not an attractive trait. Try to contain yourself.” Kellen pulled the mac and cheese out of the oven and tested it. It was still frozen in the middle, but warm around the edges, and she was desperate. With a serving spoon, she shaved off the warm parts and mounded them into a bowl, then covered the casserole again and put it back in the oven. She took her first bite and sighed with pleasure. “You can keep your crummy lobster mac and cheese,” she told him. “Dungeness crab is the clear winner.”
“I couldn’t begin to say. I’ve never had crab mac and cheese.”
An appeal for a serving, and she ignored it. She pulled a stool into the kitchen and settled across the counter from him. “Adrian and Mitch are on the list as possible assistants to the Librarian. They were good soldiers and I like them, and mostly I trust them, but Adrian got into something bad, I don’t know what, but he’s jumpy and scared. Sometimes Mitch lacks a moral compass. Both have had problems adjusting to civilian life. I don’t know whether they truly could be tempted by the Librarian to be the muscle of the Yearning Sands operation, but I know sometimes money leads them.”
He studied the list intently. “Right. You didn’t include your other two friends as either the Librarian or assistants.”
“No.” She didn’t have to explain herself, or defend Birdie and Temo.
He went on to the last name on her list. “Sheri Jean Hagerty. Why her?”
“Sheri Jean’s father was by all accounts a lovely man. But her mother is the matriarch of her extended family and absolutely the most ruthless human being I’ve ever met.”
He scribbled a note beside Sheri Jean’s name. “So she could have learned heartlessness at her mother’s knee.”
“I guarantee she did. The family has a small truck farm east of here where they grow fruits and vegetables to sell on a stand beside the highway. Everyone in the family works that stand while they’re growing up and everyone, no matter who they are, spends part of their summer working the farm. We’re talking about high-powered people. Business owners, CEOs, president of a prestigious Midwest college. Every autumn, her mother comes to the resort to negotiate the terms for next year’s produce, and on that day, chefs tremble, Annie cries and Sheri Jean hides.”
“You’re saying her mother is forcing Sheri Jean to be the Librarian.” He pulled a long, disbelieving face.
“Not at all. I’m saying Bo Fang crushed her dreams, and a woman without dreams has no hope or joy.”
“The old lady’s name is Bo Fang?”
“Appropriately.” She laughed at his reaction. “Sheri Jean told me that Fang means fragrant, but I wasn’t sure she was serious.” She slid her spoon into the thick cheesy dish, over and over, filling the empty spaces in her belly.
In a goaded tone, he asked, “Do you mind if I try a bite of your mac and cheese?”
“Do you know how to get it out of the oven by yourself?”
His eyes narrowed on her. “I may be a Brooks, but I assure you, I have a Bo Fang in my background. My grandmother Mrs. Judith Irene Brooks does not tolerate idle hands.”
She had rather enjoyed provoking him, and her one-shoulder shrug was the polished epitome of indifference. “Help yourself.”
He came around the counter and into the kitchen.
She scooted until her back was against the wall. Tonight she might feel more at ease, but she didn’t intend to discover she was wrong about him.
Of course, he observed her maneuver, and those glorious brown eyes snapped in irritation. “You don’t like lobster?”
“I don’t like anything from Maine.” TMI. She needed to be careful about that; he’d already proved himself able to dig through her past. When he seated himself with his own bowl and spoon, she continued, “Sheri Jean is the youngest daughter. According to Bo Fang, the youngest daughter’s duty is to stay close to her mother and care for her into her old age. She sent Sheri Jean to a private high school in Massachusetts, where Sheri Jean excelled and was accepted to an Ivy League college. Bo Fang wouldn’t let her go there—or anywhere. She made her come home and learn the truck farm business.”
“Sheri Jean didn’t go to college? Because of her mother?”
“That’s right.”
“She could have defied her mother.”
“She did. She married the most inappropriate man… From all accounts, Dirk Hagerty was a lazy, cheating gigolo, and it cost Bo Fang dearly to get rid of him.”
“Which put Sheri Jean in debt to her mother.” He took his first bite. “You’re right. This is wonderful. The chefs here are gifted.”
“The crabs here are pretty gifted, too.” She watched him eat again and wondered where he stashed all those calories. “My last point—Sheri Jean was born on this coast. She knows every inch of it. Whoever is in charge of this smuggling operation is intelligent, and Sheri Jean is smarter than the rest of us put together.”
“You’re pretty smart yourself. She wasn’t even on my list.”
“That’s why you picked me to help you, isn’t it?”
“Your military records indicate you have a gift for situational analysis.”
“Right.” Had Nils discovered the real reason she was medically discharged? If he had, he didn’t care much, and that gave her some insight into his character. Not a flattering insight, either. And what was with that request for a kiss? “I thought you were involved with Jessica Diaz.”
“We were friends. Old friends, good friends. Friends with common goals.”
“Hmm.” If that was true, that made his appeal a little less offensive.
Damn him. Why had he introduced the man/woman thing into this mess? Sex was for people who had a future, who could remember all the days of their lives and could live without looking over their shoulder wondering what was sneaking up behind them…and what they had done.
Her appetite vanished. She took her bowls and placed them in his sink, ran some water and left them. Let the bastard load his own miniature dishwasher. She said, “The problem is—I can make a list all day lon
g and my suppositions carry the highest percentages of being correct. Commanders tend to command, and thus I listed the resort’s department heads. But while we can play the percentages, we have to face the fact the Librarian could be a resident of Cape Charade. It could be one of the housekeeping staff. The people I have on the leader list could be the assistant and vice versa. And how many people does the Librarian have on the payroll?”
“I figure to make an operation of this size work—ten to twenty?”
“There you go. I don’t know how you’re going to make this sleuthing work.”
He finished his mac and cheese and pushed the bowl away. “In the autumn, a collection of illegally seized South American tomb art went astray.”
“About the time Priscilla went astray?”
“Exactly at that time.” He pulled out his tablet and passed it over.
Kellen flipped through the tomb art photos. A stone tablet covered in hieroglyphs, stone statues of angry, broad-cheeked faces, a carving of a woman’s naked pregnant body and the pièce de résistance, a red stone figure of a man squatting on his haunches with an enormous and well-polished penis protruding from between his legs. “Eye-catching,” she said drily and passed the tablet back.
“The private collector paid a lot of money to own those artifacts, and the knowledge of his displeasure spread throughout the art world. It’s said he demanded a refund and was told some version of ‘Ya pays yer money, ya takes yer chances.’”
“I’ll bet that went down well.”
“Wealthy people don’t take being swindled with any amount of grace. Word spread that the Librarian is losing his grip.”
“Who spread that word?”
“I may have helped.” He twirled his imaginary mustache. “But I didn’t start it. I want to find the Librarian, get him off the streets, dismantle the operation from the inside. It’s important to me.”
“Revenge for Jessica?”
“Yes, and a fulfillment of our mission.”
Kellen nodded.
“The Librarian created this very profitable operation, but you must know everyone would like to step into the Librarian’s shoes. He has to deliver Central American tomb art to this collector or be discredited. So—four days ago, another tomb was looted. Two archaeologists were shot. One died.”
“You think the artifacts are coming here?”
“Yes, and the Librarian can’t afford for anything to go wrong this time.”
Kellen thought about Mr. Gilfilen, lurking in the dark outside in camouflage, watching and waiting for his chance to break open the smuggling ring. If Nils Brooks was correct, Mr. Gilfilen faced a danger he could not imagine. How could she tell him without revealing what she knew about Nils Brooks and his operation?
She sagged. Was she ever going to enjoy another full night’s sleep?
Nils leaned over the counter. “Priscilla Carter was somehow involved in the theft of those artifacts. They haven’t resurfaced. Do you have any idea where she might have hidden them?”
“I didn’t know Priscilla. I wasn’t here when she was alive. Everyone who knew her tells me she wasn’t very smart and she wasn’t particularly principled. Assuming my information is correct, she might have taken the art, one assumes because she recognized the potential for profit, and she could have stashed it anywhere. The resort is huge and old, riddled with closets, storage, even some secret passageways.”
“I know it’s difficult, but—”
“But perhaps she didn’t realize its worth, or she wanted revenge on the Librarian and put it in the garbage.”
He put his hand on his chest as if his heart hurt. “Why would she want revenge?”
“If she was romantically involved with the Librarian and discovered he—or she—was using her as camouflage… A woman scorned, Mr. Brooks. You may never recover that tomb art. You may never uncover the Librarian.”
She was quite enjoying Nils’s horror, when out of the corners of her eyes, she saw something move outside the window. Someone was looking in.
Slowly, heart thumping, she turned to face the intruder.
Her husband, Gregory, was there, looking in. Dead and looking at her, a soft green light on his evil face.
24
Kellen gasped and slammed her back against the wall.
“What?” Nils swiveled around.
Gregory had vanished.
She cleared her throat, swallowed, said, “Nothing.” Because the cottage was elevated above ground level. No one could stand on the ground and look in unless they were ten feet tall.
“A light?” Nils walked over and looked out into the winter darkness. “Are the smugglers out there tonight?”
“No. Just…an overactive imagination. Mine.” She pressed her hand to her forehead over the scar and worked to bring her heart rate down to acceptable levels. Ever since the Army had discharged her, she’d been afraid something like this would happen: optical illusions, madness, another year lost and no idea where it went, what happened, what she had done.
“We don’t need to imagine anything bad.” The big, strong man was chiding her.
But right now, she was glad of the company of this patronizing, mansplaining jerk. She was glad she wasn’t alone.
In a businesslike tone, he said, “It’s all happening here. I don’t exult in the disappearance of a law officer, but you and I both know the loss of Lloyd Magnuson and Priscilla’s body means the Librarian is here and taking steps to conceal his crimes. We are so close.” His eyes gleamed with radical fervor.
When he looked like that, he made her uneasy. “Nils, you’re rocking the boat, and rocking this particular boat will result in someone going overboard. That someone could be you.”
He half turned his head, and his profile was sharply etched against the shiny dark of the window. “I’m remarkably well-balanced.”
She got to her feet. “Let me be clear. You should be careful, because I won’t go over the side with you. I didn’t survive Afghanistan to recover a penis statue.” She donned her oversize coat, walked to the door, opened it, looked behind her and saw him watching her, his beautiful brown eyes avid, his face speculative.
She stepped out onto the porch and firmly shut the door behind her. Alone and aloud, she said, “I didn’t survive Gregory Lykke to take a second lover I don’t trust.”
She looked around, saw no smuggling lights and no disembodied heads.
She found that comforting. But she’d run to Nils’s cottage to avoid being seen as a target. Now…now she was more spooked by the phantom she’d imagined than the killer she knew was out there. So she sprinted to the resort, keeping to the lighted paths, taking her chances with smugglers and knowing in the corner of her mind that she was trying to outrun the ghost of her long-dead and viciously brutal husband.
* * *
“Mara. Mara! Did you see?” Destiny Longacre peered out the blinds in Mara’s cottage. “That’s Kellen Adams, and she’s sneaking out of that guest cottage!”
“Really?” Ellen leaped up from the coffee table, where Mara was filing her nails, and ran to the window.
“Wait. Wait! I want to see, too!” Daisy hobbled over, her newly painted toes separated by cotton balls. “Whose cottage is that?”
Xander lifted his hands from Mara’s shoulders—he had been massaging her and urging a regime of stress-relieving yoga breathing—and wandered over to look. “That’s Nils Brooks’s cottage. The author. Nice-looking man and I spoke to him today. Intelligent, insightful and curious about how the resort works.”
Mara was hosting a spa worker evening to get their minds off the past two days, and they had been fixing hair, massaging tense knots of muscle and snacking on caramel corn while waiting for the pizza to bake.
Now Mara went over and slapped the blinds out of Destiny’s hands. The blinds fell with a clatter and everyone turned to
find Mara with her hands on her hips. “It’s nobody’s business.”
“You’re right,” Ellen agreed. “But he’s got good hair.”
“How does she have time for this while Annie is away?” Destiny shook her hands as if she had hurt them. “She’s been working all day.”
Daisy chortled. “But not all night!”
A short burst of laughter. Groans.
When the merriment died down, Xander said, “She has superpowers.”
He was so calm, so Zen, everyone stared at him trying to decide if he was serious.
“Frances is dating Mitch, and Mitch said while overseas she saved them more than once from impossible situations. They found out—”
“They who?” Mara asked.
“Her team, the people in maintenance, found out that her parents were spies, bred by the government to have superhero powers.”
“Wow,” Destiny said in an awed voice.
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Daisy said.
Mara sighed and used the corkscrew to noisily crank the cork out of another bottle of wine.
The oven timer dinged. Xander swooped in and removed the margherita pizza, sliced it and put it in the middle of the coffee table.
Everyone settled down to food, drink and speculation about Kellen Adams, who she really was and where she had come from.
25
“Mr. Gilfilen, please. Priscilla Carter is dead. Lloyd Magnuson has disappeared. Someone out there is smuggling something they’re willing to kill for. Won’t you let the government agencies handle this rather than putting your life at risk?” Kellen stood with her hands clasped at her chest, watching Mr. Gilfilen make himself a cup of oolong tea.
He had returned to his suite mere moments before, dressed in military camouflage, frozen to the bone and calm in the face of tonight’s failure. “Miss Adams, I appreciate your concern. But I am not without resources. Like you, I’ve served in the military, and unlike you, I promptly went into security as a way to utilize my training. If these smugglers are bringing in illegal and lethal drugs to distribute to our young people, or munitions that they plan to assemble in an act of terrorism, would I be satisfied to tell myself, At least I kept myself safe?” He lifted the tea bag out of his cup and looked inquiringly at her. Politely.