Circle of Bones (43 page)

“Well, I reckoned we were almost there, and if I was gonna cop a feel, it was now or never.”

Hazel laughed. “Riley, Sweetcheeks here’s a hoot. Stick with him and I won’t have to worry about you getting a cat.”

Cole said, “A cat? You mean like a boat cat?”

“Ignore her,” Riley said.

 “Well,” Hazel said, “your fella is right about us almost being there. The house is right up here.”

“He’s not
my fella
.” As she spoke the car went over a little rise and Riley saw the white columns of an enormous old antebellum mansion. “Jesus, Hazel, are you dating Rhett Butler?” she asked.

“No, darling, he’s an adorable Greek by the name of Niko Boulis and we’re not an item anymore, just good platonic friends.”

“He must be gay,” Cole said.

“You know those Greeks, darling. They always play for both teams — or at least they’re more honest about it than the rest of us.” Hazel chuckled. “His father’s in shipping and they have the nicest couple of yachts.” She pulled the car up in front of white steps and swung around to face them. “The
Savannah Jane
happens to be in Antigua at the moment, only a few miles from Guadeloupe.”

“
Savannah Jane
doesn’t sound Greek to me,” Riley said.

“Well, he’s got this sort of obsession with the Old South. Like this place. Looks historic, right? Nope.  It’s a reproduction — right down to the last detail.”

The front door swung open and a tall, dark haired man in a white linen suit came running down the steps. He opened Hazel’s door and offered her his hand to help her out of the low car. “Hazel, honey! How wonderful to see you!”

Riley could hear the smacks of the air kisses coming from that side of the car. She felt Cole’s hand moving along the outside of her hip, then the door swung open. He shifted his knees, and she slid right off his lap onto the hard packed snow.

“Wake up,” he said. “We’re here.” After he climbed out, he reached out a hand to help her to her feet.

She rolled onto her knees and made a wobbly ascent to her feet on her own. The pins and needles in her legs were killing her, but she wasn’t about to let it show.

In the porch light, she admired the shine on the big, black curls that clung to Niko’s head. Platonic, my ass, she thought. 

He led them inside the house, and it looked to her like all the furniture pieces were museum-quality antiques. It was as though the plantation owner had just left and handed over the keys.  

Their host led them upstairs and showed Riley and Cole to their rooms. “The bathroom is down the hall,” Niko said, “as it would have been in the 19th century.” Riley’s room had a four-poster bed with what looked like handmade lace fringing the canopy. Niko explained she should help herself to any clothes in the wardrobe and that his cook had prepared some food for them. They could eat downstairs once they had freshened up from the trip. 

Hazel, who was holding Niko’s hand, whispered, “I know we’re safe here, but are you going to be okay?”

“I’m good. I just need sleep. You go have fun. But spare me the details.”

Hazel smiled at her. “See you in the morning.” She fluttered her fingers at Riley.

Riley leaned against the closed door. So much for Hazel and Niko’s “just friends” status. She flopped down backwards onto the bed and stared up at the canopy. As usual, her friend would be having hot sex with some deliciously sensuous man and here she was back in her Semper Fi Immaculate Heart Convent for Wayward Marines.

Riley closed her eyes and the image of Diggory Priest standing over her father flashed in her mind.

Her eyes snapped open. 

Through the wall, she heard them usher Cole into the room next to hers. With everything that had happened over the last few hours, she hadn’t asked him what he was doing in DC. How did he come to be in her father’s house today? What made him leave his beloved submarine hunt and come up here?  

Time to change the subject again, she told herself. She didn’t want to think about him so close on the other side of that wall. But thinking about him kept her from reliving the events of that afternoon.

She got up and explored the room. On a dressing table, she found a pitcher of cold water, soap and towels.  Just what she needed. She pulled her shirt off over her head and splashed her face and hands, then scrubbed her skin with the soap and washcloth. The cold water felt good on her hot skin. 

As she dried herself, she looked at her reflection in the mirror above the dressing table. Her eyes darted between staring at her scars and looking into her own eyes.

“Stop dreaming, sailor,” she said aloud. “Men aren’t interested in women who look like you.” She bent her shoulder forward to examine the red skin there again. “He might be attracted to you when you’re dressed, but once you take your clothes off?” She held her index finger up straight, then slowly let it droop down. She looked at the grim smile reflected in the mirror. “Better to laugh than to cry, right?” She had cried enough today, she thought as she pulled her T-shirt back over her head.

From the armoire, she selected a white, long-sleeved men’s shirt and draped it over a chair to put on before going to bed. She needed a good night’s sleep, she told herself.

When she found her way to the kitchen a few minutes later, Riley discovered Cole already standing next to an enormous stone fireplace. He was staring at the spread on a long rough-hewn wooden table. The surface was covered with bottles and dishes including Greek salad, quiche, various cheeses and meats, a bowl of large prawns nestled in crushed ice, warm French bread, and a selection of wines.

Cole looked up when she came in. “Can you believe this spread? Or this house? Not to mention Hazel’s house. I feel like I’ve been dropped into the reality TV show, ‘Who Wants to Visit the Millionaires?’”

Riley looked at the food and felt her stomach churn. “I’m not really hungry.”

“How about a glass of wine then?”

She nodded. As she wandered around the room exploring, Cole opened a bottle of pinot noir and poured them both glasses. He motioned her over to a pair of chairs set up before the big stone fireplace.

When they’d settled themselves, she said, “I still don’t understand why you’re here.”

He puffed out his cheeks and blew out air in a long sigh. “Well,” he said, “it’s kinda’ hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

 “Okay.” He reached into his pocket and drew out the green marble and brass calendar device. “After you left, Theo and I took
Shadow Chaser
back to the Saintes that same afternoon. En route, I kept going over the journals and thinking. Why this device? What is he trying to tell us? The only passage I could find that seems to refer to any sort of date is that weird nursery rhyme song where the old man refers to the End of Days. Then Theo reminded me about the Mayan calendar, so I decided to come to DC to do some research.”

Riley sighed. “It’s difficult to care about those games anymore.”

“It matters more than ever now.”

She shook her head. “Not to me. Not after today.” She set her glass down on the hearth and rubbed her eyes. “I’m not at all sure what matters anymore.”

“Riley, I don’t believe that.”

She felt the tears returning and she steeled herself against them by taking another big gulp of the wine.

“What about truth?” he said. “Does that matter? Or honor, duty, reason, freedom?”

She sighed. “Cole, I don’t want to talk about it.”

He stood up and crossed to the table and leaned on it with both his arms stretched out straight. Without turning, he said, “That’s the problem these days. Nobody wants to talk about the things that are most important.”

“Sometimes, it just hurts too much.”

 He spun around and walked back toward her. “It always has. But we’ve grown soft — too into comfort. We Americans have our fancy imported foods,” he said pointing to the display on the table before them. “We have our big cars and cheap fuels, all the shiny trinkets they’ve convinced us we can’t live without, and our ‘reality’ has become what appears on the screens we stare at 24/7.” As he spoke, he paced the room, his arms carving his points in the air. “Guys like Priest and the men he represents can get away with their crap because people don’t question things that are too good to be true – whether it’s a sub prime loan or the idea that we can keep services without paying taxes.”

“Jesus, Cole. Enough already.” She rubbed her forehead. The man was passionate, all right, but politics weren’t what she wanted to think about at the moment.

 “I mean, give me a break,” he continued.  “You mean to tell me we can find Saddam hiding in a hole, but after all these years our government still can’t find Bin Laden? Why should we? That would end all their profits! And the saddest part of all is that we can’t claim to be victims. We helped them to it,” he said as he pantomimed the motions of throwing something at her. “Too many Americans decided truth and honesty don’t matter. The end justifies the means, and it isn’t wrong unless you get caught.” He stopped and slapped his hand down on the table making the dishes jump. “Well, I’m gonna head back down there and make sure that sonofabitch gets caught — by finding whatever this Operation Magic is.”

“That’s quite a speech,” she said keeping her voice calm and even. “And I’m going, too, you know.”

“You? No, it’s better if you stay here with Hazel. It’s safer.” 

She set down her glass, made an effort to smile, but her lips just stretched thin across her lips. “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you, Thatcher?”

“Well, yeah. I know who the bad guys are and what I intend to do about them.”

She stood. “So it’s all black and white to you, eh? The big, tough guy goes back down to the islands to search for his submarine, while the little women stay home safe. How sweet.” She turned her back on him and walked away. At the kitchen door, she paused and turned to face him again. “You don’t get it. Your father did. I read in his journal where he talked about living in the world of the
‘tween
where things aren’t black and white, right and wrong – where it’s hard to figure out who’s good and who’s bad. For the last 24 hours, I’ve been deep in that ‘
tween
world, Cole. I found out for certain, today, that
they
killed my brother –
and
that my father was one of
them
. I’m going, Cole Thatcher, and there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop me.” She headed for the stairs before he could say another word.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

Leesburg, Virginia

March 29, 2008

12:15 a.m.

Cole leaned back on a pile of embroidered pillows on the big four-poster canopied bed still wearing his jeans, T-shirt and socks. It was after midnight. There were no lights on in the room, nor was there a fire in the big brick fireplace. The room was cold, and Cole wondered if the Greek guy took his authenticity kick to such an extreme that he had no heat in the rooms. No sense in getting undressed if he wasn’t going to be able to sleep. His knees were bent, and one foot rested on the opposite knee. In his right hand, he held the marble and brass calendar paperweight. He tossed it into the air and snatched it on the downswing with his opposite hand. Then he repeated the motion. 

Through a tall window opposite the door, the light from a slender moon lit the spindly dressing table covered in lace doilies. On it was a collection of antique perfume bottles and an engraved silver comb and brush. The wallpaper was covered with hundreds of little bouquets of flowers, and the dominant color in the room was a cross between purple and pink. On the wall opposite the bed was a portrait of a guy in a military-looking coat with a curl of brown hair falling across his forehead. The guy wore white pants that were so tight they might as well have been a dancer’s tights. 

God, he thought, it was like trying to sleep in a fifteen-year-old girl’s bedroom. He couldn’t wait to get on that plane in the morning and get back to his own cabin on his boat. He looked at the paperweight in his hand and turned the brass face plate. He would do this on his own — no problem. He didn’t need anything else complicating his life. As if trying to find the
Surcouf
wasn’t enough complication already.

Shit, he thought, what the hell was he supposed to do? What did she expect from him, anyway? Some whack job is trying to kill her, and he wanted to see her safe. He was trying to be a nice guy. She could at least give him a little credit for that. 

He threw the paperweight into the air again and snatched at it with his right hand. He sat up suddenly drawing his arm back, poised to throw it at the wall that separated his room from Riley’s. Why, he should go in there right now and —

Cole lowered his arm and fell back into the pile of pillows. No, that would be way too dangerous a thing to do: going into her room when all he could think about was how much he wanted to undress her and hold her naked body close, skin to skin? No, what was he thinking? He rested his forearm across his brow, hot in spite of the chill in the room. How the hell was he ever going to sleep? He closed his eyes and thought back to the long car ride, holding her on his lap, feeling drunk on her citrus scent. He’d wanted to bury his face in her hair, then, starting with her ears and that long curve of throat, he would kiss and nibble all the way down to —

“Stop it,” he said aloud. His jeans were starting to bind uncomfortably and this stranger’s house was no place to be dealing with that.

“Stop what?” a soft voice said. 

He hadn’t heard the door open, but there she was, stepping into his room, the moonlight reflecting off the streaks of gold in her tousled hair. 

“I need to talk to you,” she said, her voice not so soft now. More demanding. “You’ve got some nerve, you know. I’d like to know where you get off telling me where and when I am allowed to go back down to the islands to my own boat.” She stood at the foot of the bed, her hands on her hips the way she had stood on her boat that night with that fish oven mitt on her hand. Only this time, she was wearing a man’s dress shirt, the top three buttons open, her suntanned skin glowing in the V formed by the open neckline.