by JoAnn Ross
“He knew too much,” the man answered reasonably, as if he were discussing the weather or the Seattle Seahawks’ chances for a winning season, rather than cold-blooded murder. “We scuttled our boat when we learned that the authorities were searching for it. Your uncle stumbled across it in his treasure hunt and unfortunately for him, he proved too nosy for his own good.”
Claren didn’t have the faintest idea what Dash was going to do to extricate them from this situation, but she had no doubt that he would. Trusting him implicitly, she decided to try to buy as much time as she could while hopefully distracting her uncle’s killers.
“What was on the boat?” she asked. “Drugs?”
“Emeralds,” the man who appeared to be the spokesman for the unholy trio answered. “They were on their way to Miami, where they’d be handed over to a local businessman whose expertise is dealing in hot gemstones.”
Claren suspected that he wouldn’t be telling her all this if he planned to keep his word and let her live. But she also knew that Dash would never let these men kill her.
“So you killed Darcy for money?”
“Money’s simply a tool. A tool used to buy revolution,” he told her. “Those emeralds are going to pay for a lot of sophisticated weaponry on the arms black market. Which is why,” he said, an impatient tone creeping into his voice, “we must insist you give them back.”
“But I don’t have any emeralds.”
“Don’t try to lie. We know you received a package from your late uncle. The emeralds are inside the smaller of the two fertility goddesses. We put it inside the larger one to double our protection in case something happened to prevent our man in Miami from pulling the shipment before it went through customs. So, I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is she?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The man made a clucking sound with his tongue. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that nice little girls don’t lie?” he murmured in a low, deadly tone. “Perhaps you need a little persuasion.” He nodded at her captor. Claren felt the knife blade nick her skin, drawing blood.
At that moment, an elderly woman stumbled into their midst. “Excuse me, but is this the ferry pier? Gracious,” she gasped, putting a white-gloved hand to her mouth. “I seem to have interrupted something.”
“Get the hell out of here, you old bag,” the man ground out. “Before you end up feeding the fish in the bay.”
“Feeding the fish,” the old woman repeated. “Why, isn’t that a delightfully colorful phrase. A bit clichéd, perhaps, but…”
Instead of finishing her sentence, she lowered her curly gray head and plowed into the man’s midriff. Caught off guard, he crumpled to the wooden deck. At that same instant Dash kicked out, knocking the knife from Claren’s assailant’s hand. It went skittering across the planks and beyond, sinking into the cold dark water. Dash’s fist sent the man sprawling to the deck beside his companion.
The third man in the deadly trio grabbed hold of Claren and held her in front of him as a shield.
“Back off,” he warned Dash, “and she won’t get hurt.”
Fed up with the way these horrid men were ruining what should have been the most romantic evening of her life, Claren shifted her weight and took a deep breath. An instant later there was a surprised shout as the man holding her landed on his back on the pier with a thud.
“Good God,” Dash muttered, staring down at Claren’s supine victim. “You really do know judo.”
“I told you I did,” Claren reminded him. “You should know by now that I never lie.”
“Speaking of lies—” Dash began.
“Excellent.” A deep voice cut off his planned confession. Claren spun around to stare at the newcomer. “You haven’t lost your timing MacKenzie,” he said. “And I confess that I’m quite impressed with your martial-arts skills, Ms. Wainwright,” he added to Claren.
“As for you—” he strode up to the elderly lady and yanked her silvered hair “—I’d say it’s about time to rejoin the living.”
“Uncle Darcy?” Claren stared at her uncle, who was dressed in a print dress with a lace collar, heavy support stockings and white orthopedic shoes. “You’re alive!”
“No thanks to these hooligans,” Darcy said, glaring down at the three men sprawled on the ground. “They did their best to kill me, but they didn’t know old Darcy O’Neill’s like a cat. I’ve got nine lives.” Appearing undaunted by Claren’s obvious shock, he turned to Dash. “I knew you’d take care of my girl.”
“What?” Claren’s shocked gaze went from her resurrected uncle to Dash. “Did you know about this?”
“I honestly believed Darcy was dead.”
But now, faced with the elderly man’s disguise, he realized he’d seen Claren’s uncle before. The first time had been in the Pelican’s Roost, the first night he’d arrived on the peninsula with Claren. The second occasion had been at the Timberline; at the time he hadn’t paid proper attention to the elderly woman engaged in conversation with the bartender. Darcy had obviously been in Port Vancouver the entire time.
“Damn,” he muttered. “I should have figured it out.”
“You weren’t looking for an old woman,” Darcy pointed out. “It was a perfect disguise. Those thugs even walked right past me at the jazz festival and didn’t look twice.”
“It’s my job to see things others don’t,” Dash said.
Comprehension slowly dawned. A cold black shadow moved across Claren’s heart. “You knew about the goddess all along, didn’t you, Dash?”
He dragged his hand down his face. “Yes.”
“And that’s why you came to Port Vancouver. To get her.”
“It was more than that,” the man who’d applauded Dash on his fighting skills answered. “Peter St. John, at your service, Ms. Wainwright.” He waved his arm, and a quartet of beefy men suddenly appeared to whisk Claren’s attackers away with an air of efficiency that suggested foiling murder attempts were all in a day’s work.
“After Darcy was seen diving near where the smuggler’s boat had gone down,” St. John continued, “we thought he might be part of the terrorist cell we’d been keeping under surveillance for the past year.”
“That was a damn coincidence,” Darcy interrupted hotly. “I was looking for the Maria Theresa when I came across the scuttled boat. I was going to write her off as just another hurricane victim when these gangsters started threatening me, warning me that I’d be a dead man if I went anywhere near her. Well, naturally that piqued my interest.”
“Of course,” Claren muttered. There were times—and this was definitely one of them—when she thought that her uncle’s emotional and mental growth had ceased at the age of twelve. “So, unable to resist the lure of smuggled treasure, you dove down again. And that’s when you found the goddess.”
“Located her during a night dive,” Darcy agreed with remarkable cheerfulness. “I boxed her up along with some other knickknacks and sent her to you, wrote out a will and had Dash witness it, then went back down. Those hoodlums had vandalized my oxygen tank, leaving me with only ten minutes of air.”
He grinned. “What they didn’t know was that I’d already stashed a spare tank near their boat.”
“But why?” Claren asked. “Why did you feel you had to fake your death? Do you have any idea how horrible I felt? I cried for you, Darcy. Buckets and buckets of tears. I honestly thought I’d lost the only person who loved me. How could you do such a terrible thing to me?”
“I was truly sorry about that, darlin’ Claren,” Darcy insisted. “But it wasn’t as if I had much of a choice. After all, it was as clear as the nose on this old Irish face that those cutthroats had marked me for death as soon as I ran across their treasure. I had to throw them off the track, don’t you see?”
He gave her a conciliatory smile. “But I was worried that they’d come after you, so I fixed things so that Dash would watch out for you, even if he did think you and I were in cahoo
ts with the terrorists.”
Claren spun toward Dash, her eyes filled with anguish. “You thought I was a criminal?”
“No. Never.” Dash raked his hands through his hair and decided he’d told his last lie. “All right, in the beginning I thought that there was an outside chance that Darcy had involved you in something illegal. But after I met you, I realized that you definitely weren’t terrorist material.”
“Actually that’s the truth,” St. John confirmed. “Soon after he arrived here on the peninsula, Dash began insisting that you weren’t involved in the scheme.”
“You’ve no idea how that relieves me,” Claren said dryly. Her head was aching and her heart felt as if it had an enormous hole in it. “Who are you, really?” she demanded of Dash. “And what are you?”
Dash felt like reminding her that he was the man who loved her. But from the look on her face, he knew that she wouldn’t buy that. Not now. Not after all that had happened.
“My name really is Dashiell MacKenzie,” he said. “And I used to work for NIS. But I retired nearly four years ago.”
“NIS?”
“Naval Investigative Service,” St. John answered for Dash. “Our jurisdiction is to investigate crimes on naval bases, along with those committed on the high seas. We also get involved in counterintelligence, which was Dash’s area of expertise. He was one of our top agents.”
“Was?” Claren asked.
“I told you,” Dash insisted, “I retired.”
“I can vouch for that,” Darcy said. “When I first met Dash, he was the head of security for his father-in-law’s international construction company.”
“What are you talking about?” Dash demanded, clearly surprised by the statement. “I never laid eyes on you until you showed up on the island.”
“That’s true enough,” Darcy agreed. “But I certainly laid eyes on you. Your wife had dragged you to a gallery opening in Soho. As luck would have it, a friend of mine, Colin Kavanaugh, owned that gallery, and since I happened to be in New York at the time, I dropped in for a bit of champagne and some conversation about art. That’s when I saw you, leaning against a far wall, arms crossed over your massive chest, looking frightfully bored.
“Well, of course I wanted to know right away who that glowering giant was,” Darcy continued. “I had it in my mind to paint you, you see. Do you know that you have the most marvelous face? It’s the face of the quintessential warrior. And those savage cheekbones—”
“Why don’t you just get on with the story?” Dash growled.
“Well, Colin filled me in on both your marriage and your job. Along with the interesting tidbit of gossip that you’d been rumored to have done some not very nice things during your time at NIS.”
“So,” Darcy said with a bold leprechaun’s grin, “when I got in my little difficulty on the island, I knew you were the man for the job. And this proves I was right, too,” he said. “Isn’t fate a marvelous thing? To think that we both ended up on the same island at the same time. Remarkable.”
Fate, Claren thought. She’d once thought that fate had brought Dash into her life. Her destiny, she’d called him. She dragged a trembling hand through her hair.
“You came here to spy on me.”
Dash felt as if the sky had fallen on him. “Maybe I did. In the beginning. But once I got to know you, I knew there was no way you could be guilty, Claren,” he insisted. “You have to believe that.”
“Why should I believe anything you say?” she asked heatedly. “When so much of what you told me, from the beginning, was nothing but lies.”
“Not all of it.”
He moved toward her, but she backed away, holding her hands up in front of her as if to ward off contamination. “I’m going back to the dance,” she said. “And I’m asking Maxine to take me home with her. When I return to the house tomorrow, I expect to find every trace of you gone.
“As for you,” she said, turning toward her uncle, “we’re going to have a long talk.”
“If it’s about the house,” Darcy said, “I want you to keep it, darlin’. I heard you, back at the dance, talking about your plans for turning it into an inn and I think that’s a splendid idea. So long as you keep my studio vacant,” he added as an afterthought.
“I don’t believe any of this,” Claren muttered.
She turned and walked away with an amazing amount of dignity for someone whose life had just been destroyed.
She’d almost reached the hall when a hand reached out of the shadows and snagged her arm, hauling her against a hard, rigid body.
“Dammit, Dash!” Her struggles were useless; he was much stronger and, it appeared, even more determined than she. “Let me go!”
“Not until we talk.” Throwing her over his shoulder the way he had the night of the vandalism, he strode down the street, mindless of the crowd that had come out of the hall to watch.
“You’re creating a scene. People will think you’re a bully. And a brute.”
“You should know by now that I don’t give a damn about what people think about me.” Except for Claren, Dash amended silently. About her feelings, he cared a great deal.
“I’ll scream,” she warned heatedly.
“Go ahead and scream that gorgeous red head off,” he invited. “But it won’t stop me.”
Instead of turning toward the parking lot as she’d thought he would, Dash began walking along the waterfront. “Where are you going?”
“Somewhere we can talk undisturbed.”
“If you think there’s anything you can say that will make me forgive you, you’re sorely mistaken, Dashiell MacKenzie. It would be easier for a herd of camels to spit through the eye of a needle!”
Appearing unperturbed by her threats, Dash walked into the sheriff’s office as if he owned it. If the woman behind the desk was surprised to see him carrying Claren over his shoulder like a sack of flour, she didn’t reveal it. When Dash pulled out his wallet and displayed his NIS identification, she swiftly snapped to attention.
“If you wouldn’t mind, Sheriff,” Dash said politely, “I’d like to commandeer your facilities. To interrogate my prisoner.”
“Of course.” She stood up from behind the desk, took her hat from a peg on the wall and walked to the door.
“Molly,” Claren protested, “how can you leave me alone with this man? I insist you arrest him for kidnapping. Right now.”
“Sorry, Claren,” the sheriff said, “but federal authority supercedes local jurisdiction. Good luck,” she said, winking at Dash.
“Oh, Claren,” she said, turning in the doorway, “I heard about your engagement. Congratulations. I know Dash will make a much better husband than that lily-livered Byrd fella. I’ll be back in the morning. If you’re still here, we’ll have breakfast.”
“It is absolutely disgusting,” Claren said through clenched teeth, “the way women fall all over themselves to oblige you.”
“Not all women,” he pointed out. “You’ve driven me crazy from the moment we met.”
“And you’ve lied to me from the moment we met,” Claren countered hotly. “So I guess that makes us even.”
“Not yet.” He reached into a desk drawer, found the ring of keys, then, shifting her to the other shoulder, carried her into the back of the building.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Claren yelled as she viewed the barred cells.
“We need to talk. Somewhere we won’t be interrupted and some place you won’t be able to run away.” Dash opened the door to the first cell, carried her inside, then closed the barred door behind him.
“You were right about me being a throwback to another time,” he informed her mildly. “I’m a hell of a lot more possessive about my woman than modern guys like Byrd. If you think I’m going to let you hightail it out of here, the way you ran away from your wedding, you have a great deal to learn about me, Irish.”
After making certain the door was secured, he tossed the key through the bars. It bounced again
st the wall and landed a good five feet from the cell.
“I can’t believe you did that.”
“Believe it.” Dash tossed her lightly on the cot, then sat down beside her. “Now, you can go ahead and get it out of your system.”
“Get what out of my system?”
“All that bottled-up anger. I probably deserve it.”
“Probably?” Her voice and her temper rose. “You lied to me, Dash.”
“Would you have let me stay with you if I’d told you the truth? That I’d come to Port Vancouver because certain highly placed individuals in the government thought that your uncle might have joined a bunch of terrorists in his old age? And that those same individuals considered you a suspect, too?”
“I don’t know. Probably not,” Claren admitted. “But the ends don’t justify the means.”
“I was going to tell you.”
“Oh?” She arched an argumentative brow. “When?”
“Tomorrow.” It was the truth. After having his recently discovered conscience keep him awake too many nights in a row, he’d decided to disregard his orders and tell Claren everything. At least all that he’d known.
“Tomorrow. How convenient. And why am I supposed to believe you?”
“Because it’s the truth. Dammit, it is,” he insisted furiously at her challenging look. “I’ve been wanting to tell you everything, but St. John didn’t want to play it that way.”
“And St. John is your boss?”
“Former boss,” Dash corrected. “He and I go back a long way. Remember me telling you how I used to get in a lot of trouble when I was a kid?”
“I remember.” Claren folded her arms over the front of her sundress. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that was another lie?”
“It was the truth. After I ran away from the home, I bummed around a lot, hitchhiking from state to state. When I was fifteen, I stole a Corvette in D.C. It turned out that the car belonged to St. John. He was navy brass, assigned to the Pentagon at the time.
“For some reason I’ll never understand, instead of having the cops throw the book at me, he took me into his home, made me go back to school, arranged for me to go to the naval academy, then brought me into NIS.
