by Nora Roberts
“All of this was just to corner me.”
He was a patient man by nature, but that patience had its limits. “You know better, just as you know saying that is an insult to both of us. So just can it.”
“Just—”
“I have feelings for you. It makes it complicated, but I’m dealing with it. And that aside, Ripley, you’re not the center of this. You’re only part of it. I’ll work around you or with you. It’s your choice.”
“I won’t be used.”
“Neither will I, as a target for your emotional storms.”
He was right, bull’s-eye right, and she wavered. “I won’t be ogled like a sideshow.”
“Ripley.” His voice gentled. “You’re not a freak. You’re a miracle.”
“I don’t want to be either. Can’t you understand that?”
“Yeah, I can. I know exactly what it’s like to be looked at as one or the other, or both at the same time. What can I tell you? All you can be is who and what you are.”
Temper was gone. She couldn’t even find the pieces of it. He’d talked her down not because he wanted something but because he got it. At the core, he got it.
“Maybe I didn’t think you’d understand, you’d know. Maybe I should have. I guess being the big brain is a kind of magic, and it’s not always comfortable. How do you do it?” she demanded. “How do you stay so goddamn balanced?”
“I’m not . . . Cut it out, Lucy.” Still gripping Ripley’s arms, he shifted as the dog barked and vibrated between them. Then he saw what had caught Lucy’s attention.
She stood on the beach, as she had before. And she watched them. Her face was pale in the moonlight, her hair dark as the wind teased it. Her eyes seemed to glow against the night. Deeply green, deeply sad.
The surf foamed up, spilled over her feet and ankles, but she made no sign of feeling the cold or wet. She simply stood, watched, and wept.
“You see her,” Mac whispered.
“I’ve seen her all my life.” Tired now, Ripley stepped away from him because it would be too easy, frighteningly easy, to step toward him. “I’ll let you know what I decide when I decide it. And I want to apologize for being rude and swiping at you, for mucking things up. But right now . . . I need to be by myself.”
“I’ll walk you back.”
“No. Thanks, but no. Come on, Lucy.”
Mac stayed where he was, between two women. Both of them pulled at him.
Ten
Nell found itstrange to knock on the door of a house where she’d once lived. Part of her still thought of the yellow cottage as hers.
She had lived much longer in the white palace in California, and had never considered it hers. Unless it was to think of it as her prison, one she’d risked her own life to escape.
But the little cottage by the wood had been hers for only a few months, and had given her some of the happiest moments of her life.
Her first home, the place where she had begun to feel safe, and strong. The place where she and Zack had fallen in love.
Even the terror she’d known there, the spilled blood, couldn’t spoil the sense of belonging that the little yellow cottage with its dollhouse rooms gave her.
Still, she knocked, and waited politely on the front stoop until Mac opened the door.
He looked distracted. He was unshaven, his hair sticking up in wild spikes.
“Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“What? No. Up for hours. Um.” He dragged a hand through his hair, tousling it further. What was she doing there? Did they have an appointment? Jeez, what timewas it? “Sorry. My mind’s . . . come on in.”
The peek past him showed her the room jammed with equipment. Lights were glowing, and something was beeping steadily. “You must be working. I won’t disturb you. I just wanted to bring you some of last night’s dessert. You missed it.”
“Dessert? Oh, right. Thanks. Come in.”
“Actually, I’m on my way to work, so I’ll just . . .” Since she was now talking to his retreating back, Nell shrugged and stepped inside, closed the door behind her. “Why don’t I just put this in the kitchen for you?”
“Uh-huh. Look at this. Wait, wait.” He held up one hand, making notes with the other as he studied a printout that put Nell in mind of a seismograph.
After a moment he looked over at her again and beamed. “You just sparkle, don’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
“The readings changed the minute you came into the house.”
“Really?” Fascinated, she stepped a little closer. And realized that no matter how close she got, she would never understand a thing about it.
“It’s different with Ripley,” Mac went on. “Her readings are all over the chart, and you never know. But you, you’re a dependable soul.”
Her lips pursed, the beginnings of a pout. “That makes me sound boring.”
“On the contrary.” He took the plate from her, lifting the protective wrap to break off a piece of the pie. Scattering crumbs. “You’re a comfort. I’d say you’re a woman who’s found her place and is happy there. I’m sorry I messed up dinner last night.”
“You didn’t. If you’re going to eat that now, let me get you a fork.”
When she walked back to the kitchen, he followed her, watched her go to the right drawer, take out a fork. “Does it . . . sorry.”
“Does it bother me to be in here?” she finished for him, and handed him the fork. “No. This house is clean. I cleansed it myself. I needed to do it myself.”
“A strong comfort. Sheriff Todd’s a very lucky man.”
“Yes, he is. Sit down, Mac, I’ve got ten minutes. Do you want coffee with that?”
“Well . . .” He glanced down at the pie. He couldn’t quite remember if he’d eaten any breakfast. Besides, the pie was here. “Sure.”
“You said it was different with Ripley,” Nell said as she measured out coffee. What was already in the pot looked nearly as hideous as it smelled, and she poured it straight down the drain. “You’re right. I don’t know all the reasons why, but she doesn’t talk about it. And if I did,I wouldn’t talk about it. It’s for her. But she’s my sister, so I’m going to ask you straight out. Is your interest in her only to do with your work?”
“No.” He shifted a bit, seeking comfort. He was a man more used to asking the questions than answering them. “In fact, it would probably be easier for me, and certainly easier for her, if she wasn’t involved in the work. But she is. Was she all right when she got home last night?”
“She wasn’t angry anymore. Unsettled, but not angry. I’m going to confess and get this out of the way. I set things up last night.”
“You mean the pink candles, the rose quartz, sprigs of rosemary, and so on?” Relaxed again, Mac shoveled another bite of pie into his mouth. “I noticed.”
“So much for subtlety.” Irked, Nell got down a mug. “I didn’t do a spell.”
“Appreciate it,” he said with his mouth full. “I also appreciate knowing youthought about doing one. I’m flattered you’d consider me someone you’d like to see with Ripley.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Not exactly. I upset her last night, and I’m sorry for that. But it’s something we’re both going to have to come to terms with. She is what she is. I do what I do.”
Angling her head, Nell studied him. “She wouldn’t be attracted to you—not for long, anyway—if you were a pushover.”
“Good to know. Will you talk to me on the record?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that? No qualifications?”
She set his coffee on the table. “I won’t tell you anything I don’t want you to know. I’m still learning, Mac. I may learn as much from you as you do from me. But now I have to get to work.”
“One question. Does the power make you happy?”
“Yes. Happy and centered and strong. But I could be all those things without it.” Her dimples winked. “Now ask me if I could be this hap
py without Zack.”
“I don’t have to.”
After she’d left,Mac sat thinking about her for a while, about how she seemed to fit so comfortably into the rhythm of the island, the rhythm of her power.
It couldn’t have been easy for her, yet he thought she made it seem like the most natural thing in the world to have started a new life out of the horrors of another.
What had happened to her hadn’t scarred her. She’d been able to trust again, to love again. To become. That, he decided, made her the most admirable woman of his acquaintance.
He could also see why Ripley was so determined to protect her. Somehow he would have to make the hardheaded deputy see that Nell was in no danger from his direction.
He packed up the equipment he wanted to take with him on his planned field trip. And spent ten frustrating minutes searching for his glasses before realizing that he’d hooked them onto his shirt pocket.
He found his keys in the bathroom medicine cabinet, scooped up a few extra pencils, and was on his way to the south point of the island.
The Logan house pulled at him. He could think of no other way to describe the almost physical tug he experienced when he stood on the edge of the narrow shale road and studied it. It was big and rambling. He wouldn’t have said it was particularly grand, particularly charming.
Compelling, he decided as he dragged out his recorder to log his thoughts.
“The Logan house sits on the south point of the island, and is accessible by a narrow crushed-shale road. There are other houses nearby, but this one sits on the highest rise and is closest to the sea.”
He paused a minute, let himself feel the wind, taste the salt in it. The water was a hard blue today, a hue that made him wonder why the sea didn’t slice itself open with its own waves.
When he turned a circle, he studied the other houses. More rentals, he deduced. There was no sound, no movement except the sea and the air, and the gulls that swooped over this quiet stretch to cry.
Mia’s cliffs—and wasn’t it odd that they were at nearly the precise opposite end of the island—were more picturesque, he thought. More dramatic. More everything. Yet this spot seemed . . . right somehow. Right for him.
“It’s three stories,” he continued with recording his observations. “It looks as though several additions have been made to the original structure. It’s wood—cedar at a guess, faded to silver. Someone must maintain it, as the paint, a grayish blue, is fresh on the shutters and trim. The porches, front and back, are deep and wide, with a section of the back area screened off. It has narrower balconies off many of the second- and third-story windows, with curling . . . maybe they’re called valances—I’ll look it up—along the overhangs. It’s a lonely spot, but it doesn’t feel lonely. More like it’s waiting. It’s odd that it feels as if it’s waiting for me.”
He walked across the sandy patch of lawn, around the side of the house, to the back, where he could stand just above the beach and study the quiet cove. There was a dock, again well maintained, but no boat tied to it.
He would want a sailboat, he decided. Maybe a motor launch as well.
And the masculinity of the house needed to be softened a bit with some flora. He would have to research what grew best in this type of soil. He wondered if both the chimneys were in working order, and what it would be like to sit in the winter with a fire roaring while he watched the sea.
Shaking off the daydreams, he went back to his Land Rover and unloaded his equipment. It was only a short hike to the cave. He noted that the shadowed mouth of it was hidden from the house by the slight curve of the land. Making it more private, more mysterious. A perfect spot for kids’ adventures and young lovers, he decided.
But if it was still used for such purposes, there was no sign. He could see no litter, no footprints, no markings as he walked across the shale.
He had to make two trips, and though the air in the cave was cool and slightly damp, he shed his jacket. He set up his equipment to the pretty music of lapping water and the echoes of the underground chamber.
The cave wasn’t large. He measured it at just over eleven feet long and just under eight wide. He was grateful that the heart of it was more than seven feet high. He’d spent time in others that had forced him to squat or hunch or even explore on his belly.
Armed with a halogen flashlight—something he hadn’t had along with him on his first trip—he studied every inch of the cave while his equipment ran.
“Something here,” he mumbled. “I don’t need the machines to tell me, there’s something here. Like layers of energy. New over old. Nothing scientific about that, but there you go. It’s a strong sense, gut sense. If this is the cave mentioned in my research, it means—What’s this?”
He paused, shining his light on the wall of the cave. He had to squat after all to see it clearly.
“Looks like Gaelic,” he said, reading the words carved into the stone. “I’ll have to translate it when I get back.”
For now he copied down the words in his notebook, and the symbol beneath them.
“Celtic knot, Trinity pattern. This carving isn’t that old. Ten years, twenty maximum. Another guess. I’ll test and verify.”
Then he ran his fingers along the carvings. The indentations filled with lights that lanced out in narrow beams. His fingertips warmed with the heat of them.
“Holy shit! Is that cool or what?”
He sprang up to get his gauge and his video camera, forgetting the curve of the cave ceiling. And he rapped his head hard enough to see stars.
“Idiot! Son of a bitch! Damn it! God!” With one hand clamped on his head, he paced and cursed until the sharpest edge of the pain dulled to a vicious throb.
Pain was replaced by disgust when he noted the wet smear of blood on his palm. Resigned, he dug out a handkerchief, dabbed gingerly at the knot that was forming. He held the cloth in place while he gathered his camera and gauge.
This time he sat on the ground.
He took measurements, logged them, then, prepared to document the changes, ran his fingers over the carving again. And nothing happened.
“Come on, now, I saw what I saw, and I have the minor concussion to prove it.”
He tried again, but the carving stayed dark, and the stone cool and damp.
Undeterred, he stayed where he was, cleared his mind. He ignored the nasty headache already full blown. As he lifted his hand again, his monitors began to beep.
“What the hell are you doing? Holding a séance?”
Ripley stood at the mouth of the cave, the sun throwing a nimbus around her body. Too many thoughts jumbled in his mind, and all of them involved her. He gave up, for now, on the carving and just looked at her.
“Are you on cave patrol today?”
“I saw your car.” She scanned his equipment as she stepped into the cave. It was still madly beeping. “What are you doing sitting on the ground back there?”
“Working.” He scooted around to face her, then sat back on his heels. “Got any aspirin on you?”
“No.” She played her flashlight over him, then rushed forward. “You’re bleeding. For God’s sake, Mac!”
“Just a little. I hit my head.”
“Shut up. Let me see.” She yanked his head forward, ignoring his yelp of protest, pawed through his hair to get to the scrape.
“Jeez, Nurse Ratched, have a heart.”
“It’s not too bad. You won’t need stitches. If you didn’t have all this hair to cushion your lame brain, it’d be a different story.”
“Are we on speaking terms again?”
She sighed a little, then lowered herself to the cave floor, sitting as he was, back on her heels. “I did some thinking. I don’t have any right to interfere with your work. I don’t have any business resenting it, either. You were up front about it, right from the start, and what you said last night was true. You haven’t pushed me.”
She was wearing earrings. She didn’t always. These were tiny dangles of
silver and gold. He wanted to play with them, and the pretty curve of her ear. “That sounds like a lot of thinking.”
“I guess it was. Maybe I’ve got to do some more. But for right now, I’d like to put things back the way they were.”
“I’d like that, but I need you to know I’m going to talk to Nell. On the record.”
Ripley pressed her lips together. “That’s up to Nell. It’s just that she’s . . .”
“I’ll be careful with her.”
Ripley looked in his eyes. “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “You will.”
“And with you.”
“I don’t need you to be careful with me.”
“Maybe I’d enjoy it.” He slid his arms around her waist, rising to his knees. Drawing her up to hers.
In the back of his mind he could hear the monitors pick up again. He could have cared less. He wanted one thing at that moment, and only one thing. His mouth on hers.
As their lips met, her arms wound around him. Her body fit to his, like the last piece of a complex and fascinating puzzle.
For a moment, it was soft, and it was warm. And it was everything.
Shaken, she drew back. Something inside her was trembling. “Mac.”
“Let’s not talk about it.” His mouth brushed her cheeks, her temples, skimmed down to graze her neck. “After a while talk just intellectualizes everything. I ought to know.”
“Good point.”
“It has to be soon.” His lips crushed down on hers. “Soon. Or I’m going to lose my mind.”
“I need to think about it a little more.”
He let out one ragged breath before he gentled his grip. “Think fast, okay?”
She laid her palm on his cheek. “I’m pretty sure I’m about done with that section of our program.”
“How odd,” Mia said as she strode into the cave. “And how awkward.” As she watched Ripley and Mac draw apart, she tossed her hair back. “I don’t mean to interrupt.”
Even as she spoke, Mac’s equipment began to shrill. Needles slashed like whips. As one of his sensors began to smoke, he scrambled up.
Saying nothing, she spun around and walked back into the sunlight.
“Jesus, it fried it. It fucking fried it.”
Since he sounded more excited than distressed, Ripley left Mac to his equipment and followed Mia outside.
“Hold up.”
As if she hadn’t heard, Mia continued over the shale to where the water of the cove lapped and retreated, where small tidal pools teemed with life.
“Mia, wait a minute. I didn’t think you walked over this way anymore.”
“I walk wherever I please.” But not here, she thought, staring blindly across the water. Never here . . . until today. “Did you bring him here?” She spun around, hair flying, eyes brimming with a terrible grief. “Did you tell him what this place is to me?”
The years fell away between them, for that moment. “Oh, Mia. How could you think that?”
“I’m sorry.” One tear escaped. She’d sworn never to shed another over him, but one escaped. “I shouldn’t have. I know you wouldn’t.” She dashed the tear away, turned to face the water again. “It was just seeing you in there together, holding each other, and in that particular spot.”
“What—Oh, God, Mia.” Ripley pressed her fingers to her forehead as she remembered the carving. “I didn’t realize. I swear, I wasn’t thinking.”
