A Touch of Betrayal (21 page)

She sobered. “My father set everything up. If I had children, it would be simple. But no . . . the bulk of the estate goes to a couple of universities, some hospitals, and a dozen or so charities. Daddy told me not to trust anyone. Leave people out of your plans, out of your will if you can. People are greedy. Manipulative. He set the whole thing up with . . . with James. James Cooper.”

Grant watched the color drain from her cheeks. “The broker you’ve been calling?”

“It can’t be.”

“Did he have a copy of your itinerary?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Did you tell him where you were when you called from Oloitokitok? Right before Jones attacked Mama Hannah?”

Alexandra nodded, her blue eyes wide with disbelief. “And Mombasa. I called him from . . . from the fort.”

“I imagine Jones found you there on his own. But why would this broker want to hurt you?”

“Money,” she said simply. “That’s all it could be. James has had his hands on the Prescott stocks for years. Maybe he started siphoning off some of the earnings. His wife’s been sick a couple of times. His daughter’s going to Harvard.”

“Didn’t you say he takes winter vacations in Arizona?”

“James wouldn’t use the money for his own pleasure. My father’s money? They were good friends, and my father . . . my father trusted him.”

“Sounds like your dad should have followed his own advice.”

She groaned. “Grant, maybe that cablegram I got
was
meant for me. What if there’s nothing left in those accounts? Could James have bled them dry?”

“How closely did you watch your holdings?”

“He sent me a statement every month. I always glanced at it, of course, but I never gave it much study. That money was for the future.”

“Your design firm.”

Alexandra looked like she might collapse, and Grant tried to turn her toward the verandah. If they could sit down and analyze the situation, maybe they could make sense of it. But she wasn’t into analyzing. She stood rooted to the floor, twisting her fingers together as the emotions racked through her.

“How could James have stolen that money?” she wondered aloud.

“He might have diverted your funds and invested them in dummy accounts. Given a fake name or something. Then when he began to realize he’d managed them badly and lost a lot of money, he got scared.”

“The margin call,” she whispered. “He must have known it would come, long before I had any wind of a problem.”

“Sure. When he found out you’d planned this trip to Kenya, it must have seemed like the perfect opportunity to simply delete his wrongdoing.”

“James is the one who suggested the trip.” She sank onto a chair beside the bed. “He took me to dinner one evening just to catch up on things. He’s been like . . . like a father to me since my dad died. Old friends, you know. We talked about his kids, his wife, the stock market. I detailed my plans for fabric designs and the firm I wanted to establish. That’s when he suggested that I take a research trip. He said I’d be inspired to do something really original. ‘Go someplace exotic,’ he said. ‘Remote.’”

Elbows on her knees, Alexandra lowered her head into her hands. Grant struggled against the urge to hold her again. Soon she’d be gone, and the reality of the woman’s absence had caused him enough discomfort already. The more time he spent with her, the harder it became to imagine his life rolling along contentedly without her. He couldn’t afford to get tangled. And he knew he had put one foot inside a lethal snare.

“I need to call James,” she murmured.

“James Cooper? You’re going to call the jerk who probably lost your money and is trying to get you killed?”

“I have to steer him off course so he’ll give Jones the wrong information about me. I’ll phone him on the pretense of telling him what happened at the fort. Then I’ll lead him to believe I’m staying here at the coast for another week or so. I won’t lie, but I
will
misdirect him. If I give him the address of the bungalow, you could forward anything that comes in. Would you do that for me?”

She lifted her head, and Grant didn’t know when he’d seen anyone so miserable. He couldn’t imagine how Alexandra must feel to realize she might have been betrayed by the one person she had trusted all her life. He expected anger. Rage, even. Certainly a drive for revenge.

But in those beautiful blue eyes, he read something altogether different. The spark of faith she had placed in another human being had been extinguished. Hope had vanished. Trust was gone. What he saw in her eyes was death.

“Never mind,” she said, standing. “I’ll take care of this myself. You’ve done more than enough.”

She threw the rest of her clothing into the suitcase and lowered the lid. As she worked at the zipper and clasps, Grant focused on the moonlit palms outside the window. She was right. He had done more than enough. He’d been chased and knocked around by a hired killer. His mother had been attacked with a knife. He’d lost his chance at the
Eunoto
ceremony. None of it had happened at his own instigation. If Alexandra hadn’t come along, he’d be deep into one of his notebooks right now, reviewing his research and crafting his report. And, except for Mama Hannah, he’d be alone.

Alone.

He liked being alone, didn’t he? No arguments. No big discussions. No shaving and trying to find matching socks. No need for square meals. Nothing but simple, quiet, empty . . . loneliness.

“My taxi is waiting,” Alexandra said. “I reserved a room at a hotel downtown. I figured you and Mama Hannah didn’t need Jones breathing down your necks anymore. So—” She heaved a deep breath. “Thanks for your help, Grant. Sorry about the trouble. I’ll just say good-bye to Mama Hannah.”

She swung her suitcase off the bed and started for the door.
Let her go,
Grant told himself.
Easier that way. Much easier.

“Hold it.” He’d never taken the easy way out of anything. Taking two strides across the room, he lifted her suitcase from her hand. “You’re not going downtown by yourself tonight, Alexandra. That’s a sure way to get yourself killed. You’ll spend the night right here in this room with Mama Hannah beside you and the guards and me outside the door. In the morning, we’ll take the train to Nairobi.”

She set her hands on her hips. “Don’t tell me what to do, Grant Thornton. I’m through with people ordering me around.”

“I’m not ordering you.” He slung the suitcase back onto the bed. “You said you trusted me, right? Well, this is what it feels like when someone doesn’t let you down.”

“Grant, I’m not—”

“My sister Tillie is staying in Nairobi to have her baby. We’ll drop by her place. You’ll like her.”

“I will
not
bring your pregnant sister into this mess!”

“You don’t know Tillie. She’s kind of into adventure. Besides, it’ll do Mama Hannah good to stay with Tillie and her husband while she heals up.”

“Jones will follow me to Nairobi. Your family will be in danger.”

“We’re a tough bunch.”

“I don’t want your help, Grant. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody.” She knotted her fists. “I can pray about this and rely on my faith—”

“I’m sure you will. But if there is a God, he didn’t throw you onto this earth to spend your days alone. He put me in your life, didn’t he? Now, are you going to trust me to help you or not?”

“Grant—”

“Alexandra.” He took her shoulders. Speaking slowly, he enunciated words that surprised him with their intensity. “I . . .
will
. . . take care of you.”

Her voice was a whisper. “I don’t want anybody to take care of me, Grant.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I’m strong enough alone. I have to be.”

He heard his own lifelong theme song in her words and realized how empty it sounded. “You
are
strong enough alone,” he said. “But you don’t have to be. Let me stand with you.”

Holding her arms tight around her middle as though she could lock out the world, she gave an almost imperceptible nod. “All right,” she said. “For now.”

“I’ll pay your taxi. Why don’t you come out onto the verandah with Mama Hannah and me? I’ll fix a pot of tea, and we can sit and listen to the waves. Kind of take our minds off hit men and account deficits—minor details like that—and focus on what’s really important.”

Alexandra lifted her head. “What’s really important anymore?”

“
You
,” he said. “You’re important. And you’re alive, which is very important. Me, your belated rescuer. I’m important. And then there was this morning on the beach.” He bent and brushed a kiss across her cheek. “I thought that was pretty important.”

She stood still for a moment, her eyes still closed from his kiss. “Yes,” she whispered. “That was pretty important to me, too.”

“The verandah then?”

“Give me ten minutes. I want to take a quick shower.”

Grant stroked a hand down her bare arm; then he turned and left the room.

After paying the taxi driver, he went to the kitchen, set a kettle of water on the stove, and took a collection of cups and saucers from the cabinet. He poured a little milk into a jug and placed some sugar cubes in a bowl. As he arranged the tea things, he shook his head.

Carrying the tray to the verandah, he realized he felt curiously light-headed. Odd. Nothing much had changed. Same wicker chairs. Same night watchman lurking in the shadows. Same moon shining down on the same palm trees. Mama Hannah was sitting where he’d left her.

“Alexandra came back,” he said, joining the old woman. And he knew that was the reason for his altered mood. Alexandra was back—his again, if only for a few more days. He had managed to defeat her determination to leave and his own instinct to prefer solitude. He had managed, somehow, to keep her.

“Yes, she returned,” Mama Hannah said. “But not for the luggage. She came for you.”

Grant stretched out his legs and perched his feet on the low rattan table. “You reckon?”

“Certainly.”

He sat in the silence, basking in the warm yellow glow of the verandah lamps and in the comfort of Alexandra Prescott’s presence in his life. If he could protect her, she was his—to have and to hold, from this day forward . . . until she left. Until she went back to her own life. New York, that foreign land. A place he could never belong.

He frowned. “Mama Hannah, have you ever heard of something called the home shopping network?”

The old woman shot him a look. “Home shopping network? For what purpose is this thing?”

“I don’t know. I guess you can buy things you see on television.”

Mama Hannah gave a grunt of dismissal. “Let us speak of Africa and faith and families,
toto
. Let us talk of things we know.”

Grant mused a moment. “I wonder what a thigh toner is.”

E
LEVEN

Alexandra sat on a bench in the Mombasa railway station and stared at the surrealistic scene. Africans clambered up the sides of the steel cars and onto the roofs to tie on produce headed for market—burlap sacks stuffed with charcoal, wicker baskets filled with live chickens, and cardboard boxes brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables. One man shoved a bleating goat into the air while a companion reached down to lift the animal into place. Passengers of the human species elbowed their way through the narrow car doors and crowded onto the seats. Vendors carrying trays filled with everything from grilled corncobs to Chiclets chewing gum hawked their wares at the open train windows.

Two Indian women in bright red and blue silk saris climbed aboard with their black-haired children in tow. A Sikh gentleman in a starched white turban walked by, pausing to glance at the huge gold watch on his wrist. Three children chased a scrawny puppy along the rails, while a gray-suited African businessman mopped his brow.

Oblivious to the array of colors, the babble of cries and chatter, and the swirling smells of ocean air and crushing humanity, Mama Hannah sat beside Alexandra on the bench and read her Bible. “Here the wise King Solomon has written a very interesting thing,” she said, looking up. “‘The wicked run away when no one is chasing them, but the godly are as bold as lions.’ Do you think this means it would be good for us to be bold and to hunt down the wicked man who tries to kill you?”

Alexandra let out a breath. “I don’t know what it means.”