Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (5 page)

As she stepped over the gunwale into the broad open stern of the boat, nothing could have stopped her from looking at the one place that would never let go of her, at the stain that would never fade. Perhaps she didn’t want it to. It was the lifeblood of her beloved aunt Bess, spilled from a spear wound to her abdomen, pooled indelibly against white fiberglass. It was both a reminder of her father’s careless, whiskey-driven hand and the imprint of hope for his ongoing struggle to find his peace.

As Liesl had done so many times before, she knelt to touch the remnant of the woman who had played a penny whistle until the dolphins surfaced behind her island cabin. Then she’d slide into the tidal creek to swim with them. The same woman who’d erected a towering, roughly hewn cross on the island and ushered Liesl to the foot of it, assuring her that one day she would understand what had happened on another cross just like it and why it had to be.

The gulls flashed again overhead, and Liesl watched them assemble into a V-formation. She looked farther down the dock where two women chatted between their boats as if over a backyard fence. A dinghy from a sailing ship anchored in the harbor bounced through a light chop, its lone occupant clutching a basket of clothes headed, no doubt, for the marina laundry. Liesl looked up at the puffs of clouds, and closed her eyes. All was well.

She unlocked the cabin door and shoved it open. A stale gust escaped from inside as she descended the steps into the snug chamber. She opened the windows on both sides for a fresh cross breeze. Stretching her long limbs, she released a luxurious moan, then settled onto the forward berth. Soon, a silky sweep of air caressed her body and her breathing slowed to a mindless rhythm. The rocking berth cradled her and her eyes drooped in sleep.

Almost an hour later, the chime of her phone woke her. She pulled it from her bag and saw the image of the caller filling the screen. The face of her new husband smiled at her with that beguiling composite of manly strength and boyish vulnerability. Each seemed to surface at just the right time. Right now, Cade O’Brien was sure of himself.

“It’s time for you to come home,” he told her when she answered. “If anyone around here complains about having to listen to one of the world’s greatest pianists, I’ll deal with them personally.”

Phone in hand, Liesl climbed to the helm and sank into the captain’s seat, swiveling to take in the river view and reveling at the sound of the voice in her ear. “I’m on my way.” In her mind, she was. She hadn’t needed to come, she assured herself, but she was glad she did. It was good to be back on the water. She glanced toward the imposing bow of the powerful boat. Soon, she silently promised
Exodus
, the whole family would return for a long-overdue romp at sea.

After the call, Liesl shouldered her backpack and headed back to the car, her step lighter. She was more eager than ever to get home, to the ones who’d pieced her world back together. She’d neglected them lately, plunging headlong into the regimen she always imposed upon herself in the weeks before a concert. Besides the grueling practice sessions, she had stepped up her fitness, often running alone before breakfast and lifting weights before Cade arrived home for dinner. By then, there was too little left of her to give. That would have to change. She had been jettisoned from her insular, self-absorbed domain and, despite its persistent call, she would have no more of it. Cade O’Brien and the God of new beginnings had freed her.

When Liesl pulled away from the marina, a hand turned the ignition key in the brown SUV concealed behind a palm thicket across the street. The driver eased from his hiding place only after the Volvo was well out of sight. There was no need to follow closely. The man could now track Liesl Bower with the device he’d just fastened to the underside of her car.

L
iesl lowered all the windows in the car as she drove along the Ashley River, allowing its wild zephyrs to run invisible fingers through her hair. At some point, a honeysuckle vine hurled its sachet into the car and she slowed to capture all of it. Just beyond her open right window, the outbound river currents swept the late-morning stragglers toward the Atlantic, urging tuna-tower rigs to catch up with the earlier flotilla of fishermen hot after whatever was running in the Gulf Stream. She caught the eye of one captain and he issued a rakish salute to the fetching young woman with the golden, wind-tossed hair.

Near the tip of the peninsula, she turned east into a neighborhood whose streets were strung with homes as lovely as pearls, each as luminous as the next. They were Old World, Neo-classical, Tudor, Georgian, Craftsman bungalow—and all of them Charleston bred, especially the distinctive single house. And there was no finer example of that than the Bower home on Tidewater Lane. Though it never intended to be anything but a refuge for a once-broken family, the old house couldn’t help being grand in architectural line and proportion. Like the centerpiece of an elaborate bouquet, it rose above gardens allowed to ramble at will. It stood tall, not in defiance of its age, but in celebration of it.

Turning into the driveway, Liesl let moist, grateful eyes take in her home’s blustery sweep of porches stacked one above another, black wrought-iron gates as intricate as lace, and tall windows that reflected the canopy of oaks. Then her sights fell upon two things wholly incongruent to the rest. Two bright orange bikes had come to rest beside the heirloom camellias, and all that remained of the morning’s tension uncoiled in a burst of laughter she couldn’t contain. “Ava, you did it!” she cried to herself. “You said you’d get him on a bike. And I missed it? Ian O’Brien in a helmet and Spandex?” She grinned and slapped at the steering wheel. “We might not survive that.”

She locked the car and hurried through the garden gate, slowing only to inspect the audacious bikes. She pumped her long legs two steps at a time up to the main-level porch, and before she could reach for the door, it opened. “Too late,” Cade announced with a mischievous eye. “The ride’s over and, well, you can hear for yourself.” He motioned toward the kitchen where Ian’s exasperated voice rose above Ava’s more disciplined tone.

Liesl embraced her husband and lingered over his warm, sugary kiss. But the noise from the kitchen was too distracting. They released each other and slipped in unnoticed by the old man in long, baggy dungarees wiping sweat off the back of his neck and declaring loudly, “That is the last time you’ll catch me on that thing. Or in that ridiculous helmet.”

Looking over Ian’s shoulder, Ava made swift eye contact with Liesl and returned to the matter at hand. “If the doctor told you that roller skating backwards down Broad Street was good for your heart, you’d be wearing a helmet with a rearview mirror and a pillow strapped to your backside about now,” Ava insisted. “Instead, he told you to ride a bike. How hard is that?”

“Gee, Pop,” Cade snickered. “I thought the helmet was kind of cute.”

Ian rounded on his grandson. To Liesl, though, he stretched out his arm. “Come here, darlin’, and tell these people that I’m too old to be teetering around on a bicycle they can probably see from the space station.” He turned back to Ava. “What possessed you to rent psychedelic orange?”

“It was all they had.” Ava shrugged and bit at her bottom lip.

“Uh, Pop. Want to tell me about the ropes around your ankles?”

Ian looked toward his feet, then reached into a plastic shopping bag on the counter beside him and whipped out a pair of black biking shorts. “Ava bought these things for me to actually wear out in public. They’re called biking shorts, but they’re obviously women’s panty hose cut off at the knee. Poor woman didn’t know the difference.”

“Okay, I think I’m beginning to follow,” Cade offered. “You couldn’t bring yourself to wear the panty hose so you tied up your pants legs with rope.”

“Nothing wrong with that.” Ian frowned as he spread the legs of the new shorts apart. “Now look at this, son. See this little bitty pad they got stitched to the crotch of these things? Like that’s going to do any good.” He looked at Cade with all earnestness. “Have you ever sat down on one of those needle-nose bike seats?” Cade shook his head and glanced nervously at the women in the room. “Well let me tell you, it’s nothing short of a surgical procedure.”

Liesl clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle the giggle. Ian seemed not to notice. “So why on earth don’t they just make the seat wider?”

“And while they’re at it,” Cade added dryly, “they could strap a little bell to the handlebars, and run up a long pole with a red flag on top so nobody in Charleston would miss seeing you with your leg ropes and tractor seat.” Ian was about to sputter a reply, but Cade persevered. “But better yet. Forget the bike and just walk the block a few times every day.”

“My hips don’t work.”

Cade kept coming. “There’s nothing wrong with your hips. It’s your lips that get you into trouble. So quit complaining. It’s nothing but an excuse to avoid exercise.” Cade motioned toward Ava, who leaned against the counter with her arms folded and surrender on her face. “This good woman cared enough about your health to bring home a bike and wrestle you onto it. But if that won’t work for you, do her the honor of breaking a sweat at something else. And fishing doesn’t count.”

Ian remained impassive throughout Cade’s whole delivery. But when it was over, the faintest upturn appeared at the corners of his mouth, parting the gray hedge of his beard. He turned calmly to Liesl and said, “He’s pretty good at that, don’t you think?”

She leaned into the old man for a hug, then drew up sharp. “Eww.” She fanned the air in front of her. “Someone’s deodorant has failed.”

“Well, it’s not mine,” Ian sniffed. “I’m not wearing any.” With that, he turned back to Ava. “Well, secret agent, I guess I didn’t even thank you for going to all that trouble with the bikes. I’m sorry. But if it’s okay with you, I’ll just walk.” He turned crinkled eyes on Cade, then Liesl, and headed out of the kitchen, tossing something half-mumbled over his shoulder. “And I plan to smell real good doing it.”

When he’d left, Ava pushed off the counter and gathered up the biker shorts and discarded helmet, shaking her head. “There are no words.” She grinned, then looked up. “Why don’t you all come to dinner at my place tonight?”

Cade and Liesl looked at each other and nodded agreement. “You’re on,” Cade said. “And I’ll bring fresh grouper from Pop’s last charter. One of the customers left his whole catch behind. Said he’d rather kill ’em than eat ’em.”

“Don’t forget the size of my kitchen, though,” Ava noted. “Carriage house apartments have lots of charm but no room to team cook.”

“So we’ll prepare it here and—”

A ringtone sounded in the kitchen, and the conversation went dead. All eyes turned toward the bag where Liesl kept two cell phones, the one least used calling to her now with a preset code of beeps no one in that room had heard for six months. It was the secure phone Ava’s CIA team had programmed especially for the concert pianist on the Russian underground’s most-wanted list.

But Liesl heard more than the insistent beeps as she moved to retrieve the phone from her bag. She heard the breath of the caller to her studio that morning, the wordless void at the other end. In her mind, she could see the brown SUV close behind. Was the CIA calling to warn her? She slid anxious eyes toward Ava, the now-retired agent who’d hustled Liesl through a gauntlet of global terrorism, then answered the call.

“Who is this?” She couldn’t stop her hand from trembling. Cade moved closer.

“Miss Bower, this is the White House.” Liesl blanched and looked sharply at Ava, then hit the speaker button on the phone. She didn’t want to handle whatever was coming alone.

“Yes, go ahead,” Liesl answered weakly.

“You’ll have to speak up, Miss Bower.”

Liesl breathed deeply. “I’m sorry. Is that better?”

“Yes. Now please hold for the president.” Just like that. No hint of purpose for the call. No soothing tones. The three of them stared at each other until Travis Noland’s baritone amplified into the speaker. “Liesl, thank you for taking my call.”

“Mr. President, this is a surprise.”

“I’ll just bet it is. Are you alone?” Only then did she catch the hard pitch of his voice.

“Uh, not really.”

“Are we on speaker?”

Something was terribly wrong. “Well, yes.” She cringed.

“Who’s listening?” he asked.

“My husband, Cade, and Ava Mullins.”

“Ava? You there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Keep it on speaker. Liesl may need your backup. And you may as well hear this too, Cade.” He paused. “I’m sorry to be so abrupt. I should begin with pleasantries, but I’m afraid urgency overrides that. My apologies.”

Urgency?
Liesl thought.
No! I’m through with that! Lord, make them leave me alone.
Noland proceeded, his voice out of sync with the egg-smeared dishes still on the kitchen table, with the faded calico curtains at a window far removed from the Oval Office. “I won’t belabor the need for confidentiality regarding this phone call.”

“This is a secure line and everything said here will remain so,” Ava assured him. She looked to the others with confirming certainty.