“You love her,” David said.
Zac shook his head again, but it wasn’t a denial.
“I had it backward. I thought she was waiting for you to settle down.”
This time the bark of a laugh came quietly, almost softly. “She does hate the fangirls. She hates every time I do a photo shoot, says I’m objectifying myself.”
“And yet?”
“It’s not just that. We … we don’t really work anymore. I respect the lines she’s drawn and don’t inconvenience her.” He swallowed hard. Something darkened behind his eyes, perhaps an old pain. “But I can’t be both. So we’re … this, now. Leftover care and jagged edges.”
Compared to the simplicity David had shared with Sarah until her death, with Ginny until her leaving, Zac and Moira’s dance felt like a soap opera. He shook his head.
“I’m just telling you how it is,” Zac said. “How she is. You have to pay attention if you hope to predict her.”
“Right now, I only want information from her.”
“And she may or may not give it to you. It depends on the buttons you push.”
“What buttons?” Sudden fatigue made the last word sound like nonsense. It was nearly two in the morning. Eight hours ago, he and Tiana had been closing the store, and his greatest concern had been whether the crepe restaurant would have a long wait.
Was she asleep? Had nightmares awakened her?
“Moira wants us reconciled, all of us,” Zac said. “Anything that would prevent that, she’ll try to prevent. Anything that will make it happen? She’ll help you.”
“How do I convince her I’m after reconciling?”
“Maybe I should call her.” Zac stood to pace.
“All right,” David said.
Zac stood still, studying the painting on the wall as if for answers or guarantees this would work. He shook his head. “If I call her, she’ll know we’re teaming up against him. If you call her, maybe you can convince her I don’t want anything to do with it.”
David dug his phone from his pocket and pulled up her number. He tapped CALL and raised the phone, holding Zac’s gaze as the phone rang. And rang.
“You have reached the voice mail of Moira Smith. If you’ll leave me a message, I’ll probably call you back.”
He hung up. “Smith?”
Zac’s quiet laugh splintered, the warmth in it seeping away. “That’s some joke with herself. Her last identity was Jones.”
Still in his hand, David’s phone began to ring. “It’s her.” He accepted the call. “We need to talk, Moira.”
“I don’t agree.”
“Then why call me back?”
Silence.
David paced, all his limbs craving motion, some task, any task. Perhaps it was the conversation with Tiana tonight that made his fingers twitch for piano keys to pound out everything inside him in minor block chords. Moira let him wait almost a full minute before she answered him.
“How is he?”
David glanced at Zac. “I have no idea.”
“You’re with him, aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Well?” An edge formed in her voice. “What’s he said?”
It was the slightest hunch, but … “Not a word, so far.”
Her breath caught. “Nothing?”
“I sat on the floor with him for a bit.”
Zac glared and mouthed something. David shrugged. It was working.
“Moira, listen.” He had to hit now, hard, while she was stunned and worried. It had worked before. “We need to talk about Colm. I’m ready to hear you out, but not over the phone.”
“I … I’ll meet you somewhere.”
“I’m not leaving Zac like this.”
Zac threw up his arms and glared, but then he huffed out a quiet breath and stood watching, understanding the play. He nodded, and David nodded back.
“No,” Moira said, “stay with him. I–I’ll come back to talk. But if you still aim to hurt Colm after that, I won’t help you.”
“I take it you’ve warned him?”
“I’ve spoken to Simon.”
Interesting. “And?”
“I wanted him to hear it from me. He said what I’ve done is unforgivable.”
In the silence, maybe Moira would read sympathy. Or whatever else she needed to read to step out from her defenses.
“I’ve turned the car around. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Good,” he said.
She hung up. As he lowered the phone and took a seat on the couch, Zac burst into a fury of pacing. His strides lengthened, up and down the room, until he seemed about to vault the couch. He was probably limber enough to do it. David leaned back and let weariness hold his limbs in place.
“She was afraid,” he said.
Zac stood still.
“For a few moments, and then she put it away. But it was there. You saw it.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“She could have warned Colm, but instead she called Simon. Instead, she’s coming back to you because she thinks something’s wrong.”
Zac held his eyes but offered no challenge. Let David pry. Maybe he shouldn’t. But something was going on here.
“Look,” David said. “You don’t owe me personal information.”
Zac looked up and down the length of the room, the path he’d just been pacing. He pushed a knuckle against his mouth then walked over and sat on the couch, settling this time, elbows on knees as he leaned forward.
“War broke me,” Zac said as if commenting on the weather. “The First War. You know how it was. When we came home.”
David nodded.
“I was one of those guys who looked fine on the outside. No war wounds. And I acted fine. A lot of the time, I was fine.”
The quiet remained until David gave him another nod. He seemed to need acknowledgment, despite the small-talk tone.
“We lived together for a while, after the war. So Moira knew.”
Nod.
“Well.” Zac shrugged. “A hundred years later, I’m still claustrophobic, and sometimes—I mean, every twenty years or so—something’ll happen, you know, something intense. Some sort of stressor kicks in, and I spend a few hours … blanked out. Never happened before that war.”
“That’s not what happened tonight.”
“Pretty sure anyone with a moral compass would be upset tonight.”
“But Moira thinks this is … that.”
“Good instincts, letting it play out like you did.” But his jaw was clenched hard.
“What now?”
“It’ll throw her to see me lucid. Which is what we want, I guess.” He rubbed his eyes. “I joined the air force in the second one. No more trenches for me.”
Images came to David, mutually held memories that needed no explanation. He had seen it in other men, but Zac had experienced it. Experienced something that could leave a man with claustrophobia and acute stress reaction one hundred years later.
“Colm went into the navy.” Zac shut his eyes a moment then focused on David. “What about you?”
“Army.”
“Every time?”
“Both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam.”
Zac shook his head. “I haven’t served since World War II. I …” He gave a long sigh. “I don’t know if I’d be fit, but I didn’t try.”
“I’m not,” David said. “Not anymore.”
“Vietnam?”
A nod.
“Broke you,” Zac said, again without gravity.
“No.” He’d processed through this enough to know that answer. “But another war would.”
“Stern stuff, man.” Zac grinned, but it faded. “I guess you might as well know. Don’t try to get me on an elevator or public transportation.”
“Planes?” Seemed no less confining, as a passenger.
“I do all right,” he said.
David swallowed what felt like a whole yard of concrete. “Fire.” He cleared his throat. “I
don’t do fire.”
Zac studied David with the kind of understanding that wouldn’t invade with words. They shared a nod, and then Zac stood.
“Wine?”
David cocked his head. “Whose house is this?”
“I was making a request.”
“Coffee would be smarter.”
“You be smart, then.”
They went to the kitchen. David brought out a bottle of red and went to start the coffeemaker, then shook his head and poured a second glass of the wine. Zac tried to smirk at him, but the expression twisted and fell away.
They sat at the table, and Zac nodded his approval at his first taste. Then a shroud of trouble fell over him, over the room, along with silence that was broken only by the clinking of empty glasses set aside.
They didn’t talk about Colm or Moira or anything else. Twenty minutes later, a knock came at the back door, where he’d let them in a few hours ago without an idea of what kind of news was entering his house. David rose and let her in.
Mascara smudged at the corners of her eyes; she’d rubbed them if not cried. David led her to the kitchen.
He poured a third glass of wine and handed it to her as she sat across from Zac, eyes fixed on him. Zac folded his arms on the table and stared back, and Moira drew a long breath.
“You’re … better?”
“I’m fine.” He bit the words. “I never wasn’t.”
“But David said …” She looked from one of them to the other, and then her voice grew small. “Oh.”
“If you’re planning to feign moral outrage over being lied to, just skip that part.”
“Zachary,” she whispered.
She seemed genuine. Maybe she was. Didn’t matter at this point. She was talking to Zac; his was the opinion that mattered to her. David stayed quiet and watched her face.
“Instead,” Zac said, “try explaining yourself.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Nothing?” Zac’s knee started jumping under the table. “Eleven human beings. Dead. And you have nothing to say.”
Her face crumpled like paper crushed in a fist. “That’s right.”
Zac pushed to his feet. His whole body seemed to vibrate with pent energy as he paced to the fridge and back, then stood next to his chair. Moira’s eyes didn’t stray from him. David might as well not have been in the room.
“If you need to do a few handsprings or something, go on, get it out,” she said.
Zac slammed his palm on the table and leaned over her. She didn’t cringe back an inch. “Stop it. Stop knowing me like that when—when—”
The light dimmed in his eyes. He sank into the chair.
“Moira,” David said. She didn’t seem to hear him. He shifted his chair into her line of vision, closer to Zac. “Moira.”
She found David as if she’d forgotten him. “It was necessary.”
“Their deaths were necessary?”
She flinched.
“Two hours ago you said you regretted nothing. Is that really true?”
She nodded. Her mouth firmed, but her gaze kept darting to Zac, who stared into the living room.
“Fine then. I don’t care about your remorse,” David said.
Her eyes widened for half a moment, a genuine start.
“You just tell me now, is he going to kill again tonight? Tomorrow? When did this start?”
Zac shifted in his chair and met her eyes. She spoke to him, not David. “In 1907.”
A furrow dug between Zac’s eyebrows. He nodded her on.
“Do you remember—of course you do—Rose Bennett, and …”
Zac covered his face with one hand.
She pushed her glass away, still half full, and addressed David now. “He’s always lived in Chicago. Rose was a neighbor, and he was … I think they would have married, in time. There was a … traffic accident, one night, two carriages collided against a curb. He and Rose were walking home from the theater. Colm was walking nearer the street, but he thinks she saw it coming. She tried to warn him, pull him out of the way.”
She looked away from both of them, a muscle pulling in her neck as she swallowed. She laced her fingers together on the table.
“She slipped and fell into the street.” Zac’s voice had flatlined. “Was run over by the horses.”
Moira addressed both of them now, voice steadying. “She died trying to save someone who couldn’t die.”
The weight of Colm’s burden constricted David’s chest. That level of guilt could warp the mind, no doubt. Moira watched him now as if waiting for his judgment of Colm—guilty or not guilty.
“Go on,” David said.
“It’s twisted inside him. He speaks of it rarely, but when he does now, it’s something that was unavoidable, even right. He says she had to die that night, and he was the appointed vehicle of her death.”
“And the others?” Zac’s voice rasped.
“He says his role as death’s instrument began the night she was killed because of him. Killed because she didn’t know what he is.”
“That doesn’t add up.”
“Of course it doesn’t.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “It’s twisted, I told you.”
They were straying from the mission parameters. David cleared his throat. “When will he do this again?”
“He … takes … one every ten years.”
“You’re sure about this?” If she was wrong, and he took another life tonight, wherever he was …
“It’s what he’s told me.”
“What he’s told you.” Zac curled his fist in his hair. “You said he confessed, but why would he, if he feels no remorse?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who were they? How does he choose?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know any of those ten other victims?”
“Please, Zac, I don’t.” Her shoulders heaved. “I only know it’s spring of the tenth year. Spring for when Rose died.”
“It’s October.”
“I don’t know why it’s different this time.”
“And is this the tenth year?”
“It’s the ninth. But if he decided Paul Tait was the best … target, then … then in the spring he won’t …”
“Or maybe he will,” David said, and she looked away.
“He could be killing someone every year,” Zac said. “Every month. Every week.”
Moira hunched in the chair, shoulders caving in, head bent, chin to her chest. She closed her eyes tight and clenched her folded hands in her lap.
Zac studied her then stood and went to her side. “Moira.”
She drew a sharp breath.
“When did he tell you?”
“In … in …” Her voice fell to a whisper. “In 1957.”
“And you just kept this for him. Without conscience. Mortals, why weep for them? They’re such brief sparks. We’re the fire.”
A strangled sound broke from her.
“Yeah.” He cupped the back of her head, and his thumb stroked her hair.
She drew a breath and looked up at him, her voice firm again. “I’ve told you all I know.”
“Except what he used to threaten you.”
“Wh–what?”
“Tell me how he threatened you.”
“He didn’t.”
“Moira. Tell me.” His voice lowered. “I know you too. Remember?”
She jerked away from his touch and jolted to her feet. “You know what I show you. You see what you want to see, and I let you, because that’s easier than disillusioning your ego.”
He blinked. “That’s not true.”
“He did nothing to me. Absolutely nothing.”
“You’re lying.”
Was she? David hardly knew her, but if this wasn’t the truth, she had mastered her tells to a disturbing degree, especially given three seconds ago she’d been curled into herself, quietly fragile. He didn’t know which woman was Moira, but they couldn’t both be
.
“I would never harm another immortal, one of our family. Stop trying to come up with an answer that doesn’t fracture your idealized little worldview.”
Zac stood staring at her. She didn’t look away. Her lips were pressed into a firm line of anger and conviction. At last Zac nodded.
“You know what? Your reasons don’t matter. If we hadn’t found out, you’d still be protecting a murderer. That’s what matters.” He turned to David. “So now we stop him.”
“You mean turn him over to the police?” Moira asked. “You can’t do that.”
“This isn’t about us, any of us. It’s about the lives of those victims, the lives of his future victims that can still be saved.”
Her lips pressed thin with determination.
“You have to help us stop him,” Zac said.
“Would you find a way to kill him?”
“Not if we don’t have to,” he said then scrubbed at his face.
Moira dropped into her chair as if her legs had been knocked from under her.
“Where is he?” Zac said.
She shook her head.
“Have you spoken to him? Is he still in town?” She flinched. “Of course not.”
Zac’s sigh was ragged. He looked to David as if for guidance to their next step. He hadn’t seen the flinch. Or he had and not interpreted it right, thought she was affronted by the question. He couldn’t see straight while the shock and betrayal still sat on him with the weight of eleven gravestones.
“Moira,” David said.
She looked up at him, unsuspecting.
“You have spoken to him. And he is here. In town somewhere.”
Color bled from her cheeks. Zac swore.
No more time for talk, and no more need for it. Colm was miles away, in a hotel somewhere. He might be a block from the bookstore, in that little family-run place with the in-ground pool that never got filled. He might be across town at the Best Western. Only two options in Harbor Vale.
Time to move. To act. To execute a mission. David went to the mudroom for shoes, keys, jacket.
“Give me your phone,” Zac said from the kitchen, his voice like shuffled shards of glass.
“Zac, please.”
“It’s that or you come with us.”
David zipped his jacket and sorted through the possibilities. Even if they took her phone … He called into the kitchen. “She has to come anyway. There are two hotels.”
No Less Days Page 19
