As they flew, she’d tried to track down more information about Mr. Hough’s client, but there were hundreds of Daniel Knights listed online. Of course age was a factor, along with income and location, but until now, she hadn’t known exactly where this Mr. Knight lived.
Samantha had calmed any fears she had over traveling alone with Lucas, replacing her trepidation with a strange sense of anticipation and a host of questions.
How did Mr. Knight know about the Rickers? Whom did he want her to find? And why had he picked her to do this job?
The plane descended toward a grove of pines behind the castle until it seemed they were skimming treetops. Then the forest opened into a long spray of asphalt framed by green. The plane landed smoothly and stopped near a lone hangar.
Groaning, Quenby pried her fingers from the armrest and swept her hair back into a ponytail.
Samantha pressed a button, and the door on her left opened, the airstairs unfolding onto the runway. “It’s almost eleven local time.”
“Are you coming with us?” Quenby asked.
The flight attendant shook her head. “But I’ll see you tonight. You like scallops?”
“If they’re broiled with butter.”
Samantha laughed. “How else do you eat scallops?”
“Where I’m from, they eat them fried.”
Her fists on her slender hips, Samantha looked insulted. “Nothing fried ever comes out of this galley.”
Two men stepped out of the hangar to help them with luggage, and—Quenby assumed—maintenance and fuel before they returned to England.
At some point Lucas had slipped into the lavatory, and when he stepped back out, his blazer was buttoned, hair combed, face apparently shaved. He didn’t look up to see if she was ready, his gaze devoted solely to his iPhone as he climbed down to the runway. He’d done his job delivering her to this island. Now, she’d apparently trickled back to the bottom of his priority list.
A metallic gray Cadillac Escalade pulled up beside the plane, windows too dark to see inside. Who needed tinted windows on a remote island? Only someone, she surmised, determined to hide.
Perhaps this Daniel Knight was some sort of Hollywood star or politician, living here under an assumed name. But then why would he build a medieval-looking castle on the cliff? That was hardly inconspicuous.
Perhaps the castle wasn’t his after all.
Or maybe Mr. Knight was a mob boss, Lucas Hough his devoted crony. One of her articles in the past year might have offended him, and she would end up in the sea instead of a river.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she pulled her mobile out of her handbag to text Chandler one more time.
We’ve landed on an island near the Puget Sound, middle of nowhere. You’re tracking me, right?
Before she sent the message, Lucas reached out. “I’m afraid I’ll have to take that.”
She pulled her phone back to her chest. “I’m keeping my phone.”
“Mr. Knight doesn’t allow mobile phones in his house.”
“Perhaps your Mr. Knight should meet me right here.”
He eyed the plane. “Perhaps you’ll have to return to London without seeing him after all.”
Her phone still clutched in one hand, she wrapped her fingers around the handles of the bag hanging from her shoulder. So help her, she wanted to clobber him with it.
But somehow Mr. Knight knew about the Ricker family and perhaps the fact that she’d been researching them. Instead of a new story, this interview might be exactly what she needed for her current one.
She held out her phone, and Lucas slipped it into the pocket of his blazer. Then a gray-haired man wearing a black suit and tie stepped out of the Escalade, the buttons on his jacket straining to contain the bulge underneath.
“How are you, Jack?” Lucas asked.
“As good as the day I was born.” Jack clapped him on the back. “Mr. Knight’s been counting down the minutes until you arrived.”
“We had a bit of a delay—” Lucas glanced at Quenby.
“I hope all is well?”
Lucas shrugged. “Well enough.”
Quenby turned her attention to the chauffeur. “Could you please tell me where we are?”
“You must be Quenby Vaughn.” Jack extended his hand.
Reluctantly she shook it.
“My boss is anxious to meet you.”
Cool wind rustled the pine trees beside them, showering the asphalt with needles and cones. “I’m anxious to get my phone back,” she said. “And for someone to tell me the name of this island.”
“Solstice Isle,” Jack said with a smile. “I can’t help with your phone situation, though. Mr. Knight confiscates them for almost all of his meetings.”
“What is your boss trying to hide?”
“Not hide so much as protect.” Jack opened the rear passenger door. “And it’s more about the who than the what.”
“This woman he’s trying to find?”
“Perhaps.” Jack motioned for her to get inside the car and Lucas followed her. Seconds later the Escalade pulled away from the plane.
The car’s interior might have been plush, but there wasn’t nearly enough room for both her and Lucas inside this vehicle.
“Let me text my editor,” she said, edging as far away from him as possible. “And then I’ll hide my phone until after this meeting.”
Lucas eyed her as if he wasn’t certain he could trust her with her own phone. So she reached out and snatched his, clutching it at her left side.
He stuck out his hand. “Give that back.”
When she refused to return it, he tried to reach around her, but she elbowed him away.
Jack glanced in the rearview mirror. “Children?”
“Give me my mobile,” Lucas insisted.
“Not until I contact my editor.”
Lucas retracted his hand. “You are remarkably juvenile for a journalist.”
“And you’re remarkably arrogant, even for an attorney.”
Jack laughed. “Do I need to pull over?”
She sent her text to Chandler, then deleted it from Lucas’s phone and tossed the thing back to him. He immediately started working on it again.
“Are you exempt from the no-phone rule?” she asked.
He didn’t look up. “I don’t need an exemption.”
“I have to take notes during the meeting.”
“Mr. Knight is equipped with plenty of pens and even some paper,” he said, his gaze still focused on the screen.
She drummed her fingers together. “Maybe I don’t remember how to use a pen.”
“It’s like riding a bicycle, Miss Vaughn.” He stopped momentarily to glance at her. “You do know how to ride a bike, don’t you?”
“I don’t believe that’s any of your business, Lucas.”
His eyebrows climbed at the use of his first name, but he didn’t reprimand her. What was it about this man beside her that made her want to revert to those awful middle school years when she thought everyone was better than her?
They were from vastly different backgrounds, but no matter her own insecurities, she and Lucas Hough were indeed equals. Grammy Vaughn told her this often during those tumultuous years—every boy and girl was shaped in God’s image, equally loved as His creation. Unlike earthly parents, God didn’t reject His kids. Instead He offered them a way home.
In her freshman year of high school, with tears in her eyes, Quenby had accepted God’s gift of salvation, and His love began to strengthen her. In her junior year, she found theater—or rather, theater found her when the drama teacher asked her to try out for The Sound of Music. She’d liked slipping into character, both on and off the stage. God loved her—she knew that—but it was still much safer to mimic a character so others would like her too.
After two years of theater, Grammy encouraged her to pursue journalism, and she discovered that she could lose herself in other people’s stories on paper. Unlike roles in theater, there wer
e always more stories to read. More to write.
When she looked out the window, the evergreens reminded her of the dark forest of Fangorn in The Lord of the Rings, hundreds of Ents with arms linked together as one so no human could destroy them. Then the filter of sunlight through them turned into a flood as their vehicle emerged from the canopy of trees.
She leaned forward to talk with Jack. “How many people live on Solstice?”
He glanced in the mirror again. “Including Mr. Knight’s staff?”
She nodded. “The entire population.”
“There are eight of us.”
She leaned back. “So your boss doesn’t like people . . .”
Jack shrugged. “He has his reasons.”
They stopped beside a stone guardhouse, and Jack keyed a number into a pad. A pair of iron gates opened slowly in front of them, and there was the castle she’d seen etched into the cliff.
A stone tower pierced the sky, and a dozen oval windows were paned with leaded glass. On this side of the castle, a pedestrian drawbridge linked the front entrance to the driveway.
After he stopped the car, Jack opened the door for her. “Mr. Knight said he’d like to meet with Lucas first.”
“What should I do while I wait?” Quenby asked.
Jack grinned. “Let your imagination soar.”
CHAPTER 6
_____
Eerie. Cavernous. Cold.
The words ticked through Quenby’s mind as the housekeeper guided her through a dark-paneled passageway that smelled like vinegar and lemon oil.
Gothic.
That was the word she was searching for—the dark wood reminded her of the Brontë sisters’ descriptions of Thornfield Hall and Wuthering Heights.
Was Mr. Knight a hero or villain? More like Mr. Rochester or Heathcliff?
The housekeeper opened a door and ushered her out into a courtyard. In that moment, darkness evaporated in the light, and when her eyes adjusted, she saw a pristine pool in the center of the yard, filled with teal water that bubbled up from a spring. A portico made from creamy-hued rock circled the rim of the open space, wooden benches staggered between its columns.
The housekeeper directed Quenby toward an open doorway under the portico. “Mr. Knight will meet you in his office when he and Mr. Hough are finished,” the woman said. “Do you prefer tea or coffee?”
“Tea, please.”
She didn’t want to climb back down into a cave, but Mr. Knight’s office wasn’t dark like the passage. Nor did it resemble any office she’d ever seen.
Windows towered up two stories across the room, overlooking the bay, and at the base of the windows was a crescent-shaped desk made of stone, the glass top inlaid with colorful seashells and covered with faded leather binders, a collection of hand-carved fountain pens, and a vintage rotary telephone.
To the left of the windows were shelves of books stacked to the ceiling, a rolling ladder on hand to retrieve the higher ones. To the right were dozens of framed photographs of windmills—old wooden ones amid Holland’s tulip fields and new turbines set above river gorges and in the valleys between snowcapped mountain peaks. One picture displayed a brigade of wind turbines lined in perfect formation, water lapping against their foundations, white blades prepped to dance with the breeze.
No visible screens—computer or TV—distracted from the view. No power cords were strung across the wooden floor. No heart-drumming ringtones or honking horns. Just quiet and plenty of space, it seemed, to think. Or as Jack said—let her imagination grow wings and soar.
Her fingers ran across the stiff leather chair behind the desk. She could envision herself sitting right here.
“You should see the view in the wintertime.”
Quenby twirled around to see an elderly man stooped slightly over, leaning against a wooden cane. His face was mottled with dark spots, but age hadn’t stolen his hair. It was a wild, bushy white, giving him an eccentric Einstein look. Intelligent and absentminded.
His eyes were still on the placid bay. “The storms capture those waves and whip them into a fury.”
It was a curious thing to say. “Do you like fury?”
“Controlled chaos, I suppose.”
“And how exactly do you control chaos?” she asked.
“People try to fight chaos all the time, but you have to outsmart it instead.” He pointed toward an alcove with two chairs and a round table. “At least, the fighting never worked well for me.”
She sat in a chair that faced the windows. “You must be Mr. Knight.”
“For seventy-seven of my past ninety years.”
“And who were you in those first thirteen?”
“A boy who liked to fight.”
She crossed her legs. “You’ve brought me a long way, Mr. Knight.”
“Indeed,” he said. “Welcome to Solstice Isle.”
“I’m remarkably interested in knowing why I’m here.”
The door opened and the housekeeper backed into the room, a silver tray secured in her hands. After she set it on the table, she poured each of them a steaming cup of Darjeeling. Quenby added a cube of sugar to hers.
Mr. Knight sipped his tea in silence for a few moments before speaking again. “Has Lucas been a gentleman?”
She stirred the sugar into her black tea. “Define gentleman.”
“He’s a loyal soul, Miss Vaughn.”
Her eyebrows climbed. “He’s not the least bit loyal to me.”
“That’s because he sees you as a threat.”
“I haven’t done anything to threaten him.”
“Of course not, but he thinks what I’m asking of you is a threat.” His gaze wandered back toward the bay. “In the Middle Ages, knights used to wear heavy sheets of armor, but no matter how strong the armor, it couldn’t always keep them alive.”
Perhaps it was the long flight or her lack of sleep, but she didn’t understand why Mr. Knight was talking about the Middle Ages. Was he comparing Lucas to an armored knight? Or was his proposition one that would threaten her life?
“Centuries ago, the Germans figured out the weak places in plate armor. You can’t spear through an iron plate, but there are ways to go around it.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Knight, but what does this have to do with Lucas?”
“The man has spent the past seven years of his life trying to protect me.” Another sip of tea. “He thinks what I’m asking of you will pierce my weakest spot.”
She leaned forward in her seat. “What exactly are you asking me to do?”
On the shelf beside him was a simple wooden chest, not much bigger than a cigar box. He opened the lid, and she could see a toy figure of some sort nestled within a sheet of white. He lifted the toy gingerly from its bed of cloth and held it out to her as if it were a treasure, flecked with gold.
It was a wood carving of a girl, painted rather exquisitely at one time perhaps, but the yellow strands of her hair were chipped and her gown had faded into an indeterminate color. Quenby turned it over, searching for some sort of marking.
“What is this?” she asked.
His voice was sad when he answered. “It’s a princess. Princess Adler. But you should always address a princess as Your Royal Highness.”
She tucked Princess Adler back into the cloth. “I’m sure she was a good toy,” she said placidly, knowing her words sounded lame. What exactly did one say about a toy far past its prime?
He picked up the princess and cradled her in his stiff hands. “Toys aren’t real, Miss Vaughn.”
“I am fully aware of that.”
“But the girls who play with them are. Eventually these girls grow up into women.”
“I still don’t understand . . .”
“I’ve read a lot about you in the past month, ever since your article comparing the Kindertransport with the thousands of refugee children now coming into England. You have a passion to help lost children.”
“I have a passion for stories, Mr. Knight. Preferably ones w
ith happy endings.”
“Because your own story wasn’t so happy . . .”
Her gaze flicked up to meet his eyes. “You don’t know anything about me or my story.”
He tucked the princess back into her bed, then reached for a manila file folder beside the box. Opening it, he began to read. “You like classic British literature and your favorite color is cornflower blue except after a long season of rain—then you prefer pinks and yellows. Your last boyfriend, Brandon Wallace, was an accountant and—” he glanced up—“not a very good one, I might add.”
She bristled. Not even Chandler knew about her relationship with Brandon.
“In your free time, you enjoy piecing together jigsaw puzzles, running when you’re stressed, and like you’ve already noted, you’re passionate about unearthing stories, including your latest one about the Ricker family.”
She looked across the table, trying to glimpse his notes. “How did you find all that information?”
He returned to the file. “Your mother was originally from England, but she moved with her mother to the United States when she was twelve. Your father was half-German, but unfortunately he died when you were four, and then your mother left when you were seven. After your mother disappeared, you moved to your grandmother Vaughn’s house near Nashville, and she liked reading the German fairy tales to you. Sadly, she died the week after you left for college.”
Quenby stood up quickly, her nerves bristling. “You’ve certainly done your homework.”
He closed the folder. “Our lives are like the jigsaw puzzles you like to put together. All the pieces are out there, but we have to frame it before we complete the inside.”
Her heart raced as she stepped back from the table. “Did you hire someone to investigate me?”
He tapped on the file folder. “Just like you, Miss Vaughn, I always do my research.”
“Lucas said I was supposed to be investigating something for you!” Her voice escalated, but she didn’t care. It seemed these men were playing some sort of game around her, using her as a pawn.
Pawns, everyone knew, were disposable. Especially to knights.
Catching the Wind Page 4
