Alex wasn’t terribly surprised when he headed them straight back to the house, but she
was
concerned.
“What’s going on?” she asked as soon as they were in front of the house, and he shut the engine down again.
“Nothing,” he muttered, getting off the machine and striding toward the house. “I just need to have a talk with someone.”
Alex narrowed her eyes and hurried after him. “You are not going after Jack.”
Cale didn’t respond but stepped into the house, and shouted, “Sam?”
“Yeah?” her head poked around the kitchen entrance, eyebrows raised in question.
“Can you call Mortimer and Bricker down at the garage and have them come up here? “ he asked as he removed his boots. “I need a word with them. It’s important,” he added as he finished with his boots and started upstairs in full snowmobile gear.
Cursing, Alex kicked off her own boots and gave chase. “Cale, tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing for you to worry about,” he assured her as he reached the hall at the top of the stairs. “I just need to check into something.”
“That’s bullshit,” she snapped, following him into his room. “You’re going after Jack, and it’s stupid. He was just a childhood fling. He means nothing.”
“He’s still affecting you, which means you could still be affecting him,” Cale said absently as he began to remove his outer gear.
Alex paused and stared at him blankly. “What are you talking about? I mean, I know I said it affected me,
but it was just one more thing, not the be all and end all. And it certainly wouldn’t be affecting
him
anymore. He never loved me.”
“Alex, his relationship with you, and getting caught stealing your recipe is what got him thrown out of culinary school in disgrace,” Cale said patiently as he tossed his helmet and gloves on the bed and began to unzip the jacket of his snowmobile suit. “Of course it’s still affecting him. He probably blames you for it somehow. People like him always twist things around in their heads so that they can blame someone else for their own shortcomings.”
“But—”
“Did he start Chez Joie before or after you started La Bonne Vie?” Cale asked, tossing his coat on the bed and starting to work on removing the bottoms.
“About six months after,” she said, not sure what that had to do with anything.
“How close is it to your restaurant?”
Alex frowned as she watched him step out of the bottoms, leaving him in his jeans and a sweater. “I don’t know. Not far. You can walk there on a nice day.”
“And do you really think it’s a coincidence that he started a French cuisine restaurant just like yours, here in Toronto, so close to yours, and only months after your own restaurant opened?” he asked, hands on hips.
She blinked in surprise at the question, and then admitted, “Well, I never really thought about it.”
“And he’s changed his name to Jacques Tournier to give himself more credibility because he doesn’t have the culinary school’s stamp of approval as you do,"he added dryly, and then frowned. “You really should have told me this earlier.”
“I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t important,” Alex said defensively. “And it still isn’t.”
“What’s up?” Bricker asked, leading Mortimer into the room.
“Jacques Tournier, the owner of Chez Joie, Alex’s biggest competitor, is also Jack Turner, the jerk who messed with her head in culinary school and got kicked out in disgrace for stealing her recipe,” Cale announced as if they would understand the significance where she hadn’t, and much to her amazement they appeared to.
“Interesting,” Bricker said slowly.
“More than interesting,” Mortimer said dryly. “That’s one hell of a coincidence.”
Alex’s eyes widened, and she turned on Cale with dismay. “You told them about Jack?”
“It wasn’t Cale. Sam told us some guy at culinary school broke your heart and stole your year-end project,” Bricker said absently, his expression thoughtful as he apparently considered the ramifications of Cale’s words.
“Maybe we’d better make a visit to Chez Joie,” Mortimer said quietly.
Alex turned on him with amazement. “Why? This is stupid. What—?” She stopped abruptly as she felt a ruffling in her mind and turned furiously on Bricker and Mortimer. “Cut that out. If you want to know something, ask me. Don’t read my mind.”
Bricker raised his eyebrows. “She’s more sensitive than most. She felt me poking around.”
Alex merely scowled. “What were you trying to find?”
“It’s all right, I found it,” he said with a shrug, and then glanced to Cale, and announced, “She hasn’t connected any of the events.”
“What events?” Alex asked through gritted teeth.
Cale moved to her side to take her hands, “Honey, you’ve had a lot of setbacks and problems recently.”
“Yes, I
had
noticed,” she said dryly. “It’s been one thing after another for months.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s just bad luck,” he said quietly.
Alex stilled. “What do you mean?”
He hesitated, and then said, “When I first found out about all the troubles you’d been having, it bothered me. It reminded me of my family.”
“Your family?” she asked with surprise, and then shook her head. “How?”
“You remember I told you my brothers were all soldiers?”
“Actually, you said warriors, and then claimed it was your English and you meant soldiers,” she said, recalling the conversation … and then she recalled how old Sam had said he was and raised her eyes to his, and said, “You really meant warriors, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “My father hired himself out as a mercenary. As my parents had sons, he trained each of us in battle, and we joined him until we had a small army. We were considered the best in the business. But we had a competitor, another immortal, Niger Malumus. He had his own small army of sons, and they vied for the same contracts. It was no big deal when both groups were small. They often ended up both being hired andfighting together and did so for centuries. But as each side grew in number, one or the other was hired rather than both, and they started competing for contracts. It was a friendly competition at first, but then it got less friendly … and then we started having a run of bad luck,” he said grimly. “Sudden accidents, horses going wild and throwing their riders, weapons with defects, small fires starting in the stables.”
Cale sighed and ran a hand wearily through his hair. “We didn’t realize it at the time, but one of our men was a traitor, paid to make these accidents happen. But those accidents were just the appetizer. Niger was working himself up to removing us as competition, permanently.”
“What happened?” Alex asked quietly when he paused.
Cale shook his head. “That’s the hell of it. We don’t know for sure. One day a messenger came with a supposed job offer. My father and eight of my eleven brothers rode out.”
“Why only eight?” Alex asked.
“I had been thrown from my horse that morning. One of those accidents that kept happening,” he said bitterly. “I’d broken my back in a fall from my usually faithful horse, who suddenly went wild and threw me into a tree. I was still healing. As for my two still-surviving brothers, the eldest, Darius, lived a little distance away with his new life mate and my brother Caleb was sent to collect him and catch up to my father and the others on the way.”
He paused and swallowed and closed his eyes. “Caleband Darius caught up to them sooner than expected, a mere hour from our stronghold. They’d ridden into some kind of trap and been slaughtered down to the last man. Everyone beheaded and left to rot on the side of the road like so much garbage.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex breathed, squeezing his hands. She couldn’t even imagine it. Eight brothers and a father lost in one night, murdered for the sake of a few jobs. “What happened to Niger Malamus and his sons? Did they ever catch them? ”
Cale sucked in a deep, steadying breath. “They were taken care of, eventually,” he said quietly. “But it didn’t bring my father and brothers back.”
She glanced down to their entwined hands and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Cale, I can’t imagine suffering such a huge and tragic loss, but I really don’t understand how that relates to Jacques.”
“Don’t you?” he asked quietly. “I see the same pattern. Competition, setbacks, accidental deliveries of the wrong supplies …”
“I had a really bad project manager. That’s why I fired him,” she pointed out impatiently.
“And the fire right after you bought the house?” Bricker asked.
“That was an electrical fire,” Alex said at once. “It was an old house, old wiring.”
“What about the attack at your restaurant?” Mortimer reminded her.
“A mugging attempt,” she said firmly.
“And then the pickup that forced me off the road,” Cale said grimly.
Alex blinked in surprise. “I’m sure that was just a drunk driver.”
“Alex,” he said dryly.
“I know there have been a lot of problems lately. Believe me I know,” she added grimly. “But it’s just been bad luck. I don’t think anyone is behind it. No one has any reason to want to hurt me, especially Jacques. For heaven’s sake, if anyone has a right to a grudge between him and me, that’s me. And I don’t.”
“Well, someone does,” Bricker said dryly.
“Why would you say that?” she asked with surprise.
Mortimer glanced to Cale. “You didn’t tell her?”
“Tell me what?” Alex asked, turning to Cale with a frown.
He looked grim. “When I was being forced off the road, I started to try to take control of the other driver to get him back in his lane. I thought perhaps he was drunk or having a heart attack.”
“He probably was,” Alex said at once. “Couldn’t you control him?”
“I didn’t get the chance. You laid on your horn, distracting me, and I glanced around to see that I was headed for the concrete divide. I gave up on worrying about the other driver and concentrated on trying to avoid the crash. But while I didn’t get to read the driver’s mind, I did get the flavor of his thoughts before you honked.”
“The flavor of his thoughts?” she asked with confusion.
“People’s minds are …” He frowned. “Think of it like a dish. You smell it before you actually bite into it, and that gives you a hint of what you’re about to taste.”
“Our brains smell?” Alex asked with amazement.
“No.” He chuckled softly. “But they have a general feeling about them that you can sense before you actually penetrate and touch on their thoughts. For instance, you would have a general sense of confusion and unconcern before penetrating a drunk’s brain, or you might get a sense of panic and pain before touching on someone having a heart attack.” He waited for her to nod that she understood, and then said, “The driver didn’t have either of those.”
Alex felt her heart begin to sink. “What did he have?”
“It was a heavy feeling. The only way to describe it would be malice,” he said quietly. “I’m pretty sure he knew exactly what he was doing. He deliberately ran me off the road.”
Alex frowned. “Who would do that to you?”
“I don’t think he knew it was me. It was your car,” he pointed out quietly.
Alex stared at him wide-eyed, floored by the possibility that anyone would wish her harm, but then shook her head again. It just couldn’t be. It was ridiculous. Why would anyone deliberately try to drive her off the road?
“Bricker called around while I was healing,” Cale said quietly. “No one reported the accident to the police, and no one has shown up at any of the many auto shops in town with the kind of damage that pickup must have suffered when I drove up the side of it. Do you know what kind of vehicle Jacques drives?”
Alex shook her head with a frown, and then turned abruptly and headed out of the room.
“Alex? Where are you going?” Cale asked, following her past Mortimer and Bricker. She didn’t glance back to see if they were following too, but heard their footsteps as the trio trailed her down the stairs.
“Alex,” Cale said impatiently, catching her arm at the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m going to find out what Jacques drives,” she muttered, shaking his hand free and hurrying into the kitchen.
Sam was there and turned with surprise as she entered with the three men following. “What’s happening?”
Alex ignored the question, a bit miffed with her sister for blabbing about her relationship with Jack to Bricker and Mortimer. She moved to the phone on the counter but heard Mortimer murmuring and knew he was explaining things.
It was seven o’clock on Tuesday. La Bonne Vie was closed, but Chez Joie stayed open seven days a week, and Mark would be working, so he wouldn’t be available to take Bev out. Alex called her at home, relieved when she answered after only a couple of rings. That relief turned to concern as she heard the girl’s watery voice and sniffles.
“Bev? Are you okay?” she asked, worried the girl was coming down sick.
“Alex?” Bev asked in a stunned voice.
“Yes, are you okay?” she repeated.
“Me?” the girl practically shrieked. “Oh, my God, I’ve been worrying sick about you. I was so upset I—”
“I’m fine,” Alex interrupted with a shake of the head. She’d been standing right beside Cale when he’d called Bev from the hospital after the attack. He’d told her she was all right, for heaven’s sake. “It was just a bump on the head. That guy who attacked me didn’t get the chance to hurt me thanks to you.”
“That bastard,” Bev suddenly growled.
Alex raised her eyebrows, but merely said, “Look, I was just calling because I wondered if you knew what kind of vehicle Mark’s boss drives?”
“Jacques?” Bev said the name with disgust. “No I don’t, and I don’t want to know. What a jerk. Do you know he gave Mark some cock-and-bull story about seeing on the news that you’d been in a terrible crash? He said your car was an accordion, and it looked fatal. He asked Mark if I’d heard anything or knew what was going to happen to the restaurant. Of course Mark called me right away, and I’ve been a wreck ever since. I’ve been calling your house, and when I didn’t get an answer, I started trying to find your sisters’ numbers to call them. I even called the hospitals and the police to try to find information about you. I should have known when they couldn’t tell me anything that the dirt bag was lying.”