The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 3

by Nora Roberts

  “Yes. New York.”

  Her mouth turned down in a sulk. “Seems everybody’s going or coming from New York these days.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing.” She gave a little shrug. “My brother just left for New York this morning.”

  Well, hell, Jack thought but kept his expression neutral. “He’s having a holiday?”

  “It’s business. But he’ll see it all, won’t he? Again. And I’ve never.” She pulled off her sunglasses, hooked them on her sweater while she measured the tea.

  Now he got a good, close look at her face. It was better, he decided, even better than he’d anticipated. Her eyes were a cool and misty green against skin as white and pure as marble. And she smelled, since he was close enough to catch her scent, like peaches and honey.

  “It’s very exciting, isn’t it, New York City? All the people and the buildings. Shops and restaurants and theaters, and just everything and more all jammed into one place. I’d like a look at it myself. Excuse me, the others are starting to queue up on the dock. I need to check them in.”

  He stayed back at the stern, but he turned, slowly, to watch her.

  She felt him watching her as she checked in the passengers, made them welcome. When they were settled, she introduced herself, made the standard safety announcements. Just as the cathedral bells began to ring the noon hour, she cast off.

  “Thanks, Jimmy!” She waved to the dockhand who secured her line, then eased the boat out of the slip and into Cork Harbor. Piloting one-handed, she took up a microphone.

  “It’s my mother, Eileen, who’s going to be entertaining you for the next little while. She was born here in Cobh, though we’re forbidden to discuss the year of that happy event. Her parents were born here as well, as theirs before them. So she’s in the way of knowing the area and the history. It happens I know a bit about it all myself, so if you’ve any questions when she’s finished talking to you, just shout them out. We’ve a good, clear day, so your trip should be smooth and pleasant. I hope you enjoy it.”

  She reached up, flipped on the lecture her mother had recorded, then settled in to enjoy the trip herself. With her mother’s voice speaking of Cobh’s fine natural harbor, or its long vitality as a port that had once been the assembly point for ships during the Napoleonic Wars, as well as a major departure point in the country for its emigrants, she piloted the boat so its passengers could have the pleasure of seeing the town from the water, and appreciate the charm of it, the way it was held in its cup of land, its streets rising sharply to the great neo-Gothic cathedral that cast its shadow over all.

  It was a clever, even a slick operation, Jack decided. All the while with the charm of simplicity. The daughter knew how to handle the boat, and the mother knew how to deliver a lecture and make it seem like storytelling.

  He wasn’t learning anything he didn’t already know. He’d studied the area carefully. But the friendly voice over the mike made it all seem more intimate. That was a gift.

  The ride was smooth, as promised, and there was no faulting the scenery. As Eileen Sullivan began to speak of May seventh, he could almost see it. A shimmering spring day, the great liner plowing majestically through the sea with many of its passengers standing at the rail, looking—as he was—at the Irish coast.

  Then that thin stream of white foam from the torpedo streaking toward the starboard bow. The first explosion under the bridge. The shock, the confusion. The terror. And fast on its heels, the second explosion in the forward.

  The wreckage that had rained down on the innocent; the tumble of the helpless as the ship listed. And, in the twenty horrible minutes that followed, the cowardice and heroism, the miracles and the tragedies.

  Some of his fellow passengers snapped cameras or ran video recorders. He noted that a few of the women blinked at tears. Jack studied the smooth plate of the sea.

  Out of death and tragedy, Eileen continued, came life and hope. My own great-grandfather was on the Lusitania and by grace of God survived. He was taken to Cobh and nursed back to health by a pretty young girl who became his wife. He never returned to America, or went on to England, as he had planned. Instead he settled in Cobh, which was then Queenstown. Because of that terrible day I’m here to tell you of it. While we grieve for the dead, we learn to celebrate the living, and to respect the hand of fate.

  Interesting, Jack thought, and gave his attention to Rebecca for the rest of the tour.

  She answered questions, joked with the passengers, invited the children to come up and help steer the boat. It had to be routine for her, Jack reflected. Even monotonous. But she made it all seem fresh and fun.

  Another gift, he decided. It seemed the Sullivans were full of them.

  He asked a question or two himself because he wanted to keep her aware of him. When she maneuvered the boat into its slip again, he calculated he’d gotten his money’s worth.

  He waited while she talked to disembarking passengers, posed for pictures with them.

  He made sure he was the last off.

  “That was a great tour,” he told her.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

  “Your mother has a way of bringing it all into focus.”

  “She does.” Pleased, Rebecca tipped back the brim of her cap. “Ma writes the copy for the brochures, and the ads and such. She’s a gift with words.”

  “Are you going out again today?”

  “No, I’m done with it till tomorrow.”

  “I was planning to head up to the cemetery. It seems the way to round out the tour. I could use a guide.”

  Her brows went up. “You don’t need a guide for that, Mr. Burdett. It’s signposted, and there are markers giving the history as well.”

  “You’d know more than the markers. I’d like the company.”

  She pursed her lips as she studied him. “Tell me, do you want a guide or do you want a girl?”

  “If I get you, I get both.”

  She laughed and went with impulse. “All right, then, I’ll go with you. But I’ll need to make a stop first.”

  She bought flowers, enough that he felt obliged to offer to carry at least some of them. As they walked, she’d call out a greeting, or answer one.

  She might have looked slight in the oversized sweater, but she strode up the steep hills effortlessly and, during the two-mile hike, kept up a running conversation without any hitches in breath.

  “Since you’re flirting with me, Mr. Burdett—”

  “Jack.”

  “Since you’re flirting with me, Jack, I’m going to assume you’re not a married man.”

  “I’m not married. Since you ask, I’m going to assume that matters to you.”

  “It does, of course. I don’t have flirtations with married men.” She cocked her head as she studied his face. “I don’t generally have them with strange men, either, but I’m making an exception because I liked the look of you.”

  “I liked the look of you, too.”

  “I thought you must, as you stared at me more than the scenery during the tour. I can’t say I minded. How’d you happen by the scar here?” she asked and tapped a finger to the side of her own mouth.

  “A disagreement.”

  “And do you have many?”

  “Scars or disagreements?”

  She laughed up at him. “Disagreements that lead to scars.”

  “Not so far.”

  “What is it you do back in America?”

  “I run my own security company.”

  “Do you? Like, bodyguards?”

  “That’s an aspect. We’re primarily electronic security.”

  “I love electronics.” She narrowed her eyes when he glanced down at her. “Don’t give me that indulgent look. Being a woman doesn’t mean I don’t understand gadgetry. Do you do private homes or places like banks and museums?”

  “Both. All. We’re worldwide.” He didn’t brag about his company as a rule. But he wanted to tell her. The way, he realized w
ith some chagrin, a high-school quarterback wanted to impress the head cheerleader. “And we’re the best. In twelve years, we’ve expanded from one branch in New York to twenty internationally. Give me another five and when people think security, they’ll think Burdett, the way they think Kleenex for tissues.”

  She didn’t consider it bragging, she considered it pride. And she was one to appreciate and respect a person’s pride for his own accomplishments. “It’s a good feeling, to make your own. We’ve done that as well, on a smaller scale, of course. But it suits us.”

  “Your family?” he asked, reminding himself to stick to the point.

  “Yes. We’ve always made our living from the water, but it was fishing only. Then we tinkered our way into a tour boat. One, to start. We lost my da a few years back, and that was hard. But as my mother’s fond of saying, you have to find the right in the wrong. So I started thinking. We had the insurance money. We had strong backs and good brains. Tourism helped turn Ireland around, economically speaking. So what could we do to cash in on that.”

  “Harbor tours.”

  “Exactly. The one boat we ran was doing a reasonable business. But if we used the money and bought two more, well then. I ran the figures and calculated the potential outlay and income and such. So now Sullivan Tours runs the three for touring, and the fishing boat as well. And I’m thinking it’s time to add another package that would include just what we’re doing now. A guided walk along the funeral route and to the cemetery where the Lusitania dead are buried.”

  “You run the business end of it?”

  “Well, Mal, he does the people part—the promotion and glad-handing, as he’s best at it. Gideon keeps the books because we make him, but he prefers overseeing the maintenance and repairs, as he’s the organized sort and can’t stand anything not perfectly shipshape, so to speak. My mother handles the copy and correspondence and keeps us all from killing each other. As for me, I have the ideas.”

  She paused, nodded toward the stones and high grass of the graveyard. “Do you want to wander a bit on your own? Most do. The mass graves are up ahead with those yew trees. There were elms there first, but the yews replaced them. The graves are marked with three limestone rocks and bronze plaques, and there are others—twenty-eight others—individual graves for those who died. Some are empty as they never recovered the bodies.”

  “Are these for them?”

  “These,” she said and took the flowers from him, “are for my own dead.”

  Thirteen

  THE cemetery stood on a hill surrounded by green valleys. Gravestones were stained with lichen, and some were so old that wind and rain had blurred their carvings. Some stood straight as soldiers, and others tipped like drunks.

  The fact that they did both, that there was no static order to it all, Jack thought, made the hill all the more poignant, all the more powerful.

  The grass, still thick with summer, rose in wild hillocks and lifted the scent of living, growing things as it waved in the breeze. And on countless graves, flowers grew or were laid. Some wreaths were sheltered in clear plastic boxes, and others held little vials of holy water taken from some shrine.

  He found the sentiment oddly touching even as it puzzled him. What possible help could holy water offer to the occupants of a graveyard?

  He saw fresh flowers spread beneath stones that had stood for ninety years and more. Who, he wondered, brought daisies to the old, old dead?

  Because there was no way he could reasonably refuse Rebecca’s obvious desire for some time alone, he walked through the cemetery to the brilliant green carpet of smooth and tended grass sheltered by the yews. He saw the stones with their brass plaques. Read the words.

  A heart would have had to be stone not to be moved. While his was, he believed, contained, it wasn’t hard. There was a connection here, even for him, and he wondered why he’d waited so long to come to this place, to stand on this ground.

  Fate, he thought. He supposed it was fate, once again, that had chosen his time.

  He looked back, over the stones, over the grass, and saw Rebecca laying another bouquet on another grave. Her cap was off now, out of respect, he assumed, and stuffed in her back pocket. Her hair, that delicate reddish gold, danced in the breeze that stirred the grass at her feet. Her lips were curved in a quiet and private smile as she looked down at a headstone.

  And looking at her across the waving grass, the somber stones, he felt his contained heart give a single hard lurch. Though he was shaken by it, he wasn’t a man to ignore trouble, whatever its form. He walked toward her.

  Her head came up, and though her mouth stayed gently curved, he sensed a watchfulness in her now. Did she feel it, too? he wondered. This strange tug and pull, almost—if he believed in such things—a kind of recognition.

  When he reached her, she shifted the last two bouquets to her other hand. “Holy ground is powerful ground.”

  He nodded. Yes, he realized. She’d felt it, too. “Hard to disagree with that right now.”

  She studied his face as she spoke, the hard, strong lines of it that fit together made something less than handsome, and something more. And his eyes, his smoky, secret eyes.

  He knew things, she was sure of it. And some of them were marvels.

  “Do you believe in power, Jack? Not the kind that comes from muscle or position. The kind that comes from somewhere outside a person, and inside him as well.”

  “I guess I do.”

  This time she nodded. “And so do I. My father’s there.” She gestured to a black granite marker bearing the name Patrick Sullivan. “His parents are living yet, and in Cobh, as are my mother’s. And there are my great-grandparents, John and Margaret Sullivan, Declan and Katherine Curry. And their parents are here as well, a ways over there for my father’s side.”

  “You bring them all flowers?”

  “When I walk this way, yes. I stop here last. My great-great-grandparents, on my mother’s side.” She crouched to lay the flowers at the base of each stone.

  Jack looked over her head, read the names.

  Fate, he thought again. Sneaky bitch.

  “Felix Greenfield?”

  “Don’t see many names like Greenfield in Irish grave-yards, do you?” She laughed a little as she straightened. “He was the one my mother spoke about on the tour, who survived the Lusitania and settled here. So I stop here last, as if he hadn’t lived through that day, I wouldn’t be here to bring him flowers. Have you seen what you wanted to see?”

  “So far.”

  “Well then, you’d best come home with me and have some tea.”

  “Rebecca.” He touched her arm as she turned. “I came here looking for you.”

  “For me?” She scooped back her hair and schooled her voice to stay smooth despite the sudden trip of her heart. “That’s a fine romantic sort of thing to say, Jack.”

  “I should’ve said I came looking for Malachi Sullivan.”

  The laughter in her eyes vanished. “For Mal? Why is that?”

  “Fate.”

  He saw the flash of fear run across her face, then with admiration, he watched it harden and chill. “You can go back to New York City and tell Anita Gaye she can kiss my ass on the way to hell.”

  “I’d be happy to, but I’m not here because of Anita. I’m a collector, and I have a . . . personal interest in the Fates. I’ll match whatever Anita’s paying your family and add ten percent.”

  “Paying us? Paying?” Her cheeks went hot with fury. Oh, when she thought of how everything inside her body had softened and hummed just with looking at him! “That thieving bitch. Now look! Look, you’ve got me standing over my own dead ancestor and swearing. Since I am, I’ll finish by telling you to go to hell as well.”

  He sighed a bit as she loped around graves and toward the road.

  “You’re a businesswoman,” he reminded her when he caught up. “So let’s try to have a discussion. Failing that, I’ll point out I’m bigger and stronger than you are. Don’t
make me prove it.”

  “So that’s the way of it?” She whipped around on him. “You’re going to threaten and bully me? Well, try it and see if you don’t end up with another scar or two for your trouble.”

  “I just asked you not to make me bully you,” he pointed out. “Why did your brother go back to New York this morning?”

  “That’s none of your flaming business.”

  “Since I’ve just traveled three thousand miles to see him, it is my flaming business.” Rather than fight fire with fire, he kept his tone quiet and reasonable. “And I can tell you, if he’s gone to see Tia Marsh, he’s not going to get a very warm reception.”

  “A lot you know about it, as she’s paying his fare. As a loan,” she added with a sniff. “We’re not leeches or money-grubbers. And he’s been half sick since Gideon called to tell him about the murder.”

  “What?” This time his hand clamped like steel on her arm. “What murder?”

  She was mad as a hornet and because of it wanted to spit and kick at him. The bastard had stirred up something in her, had started stirring it from that first careless ahoy. But she saw something else in him now, something cold and determined. And that something else was hearing of murder for the first time.

  “I’m not telling you a bloody thing until I know who you are and what you’re about.”

  “I’m Jack Burdett.” He took out his wallet, flipped out his driver’s license. “New York City. Burdett Security and Electronics. You got a computer, you can do a Net search.”

  She took the wallet, studied the identification.

  “I’m a collector, just like I said. I’ve done some security work for Morningside Antiquities, and I’ve been a client. Anita dangled the Three Fates in front of me like bait because she knows it’s the sort of thing I’m interested in, and that I have a tendency to find things out.”

  As she continued to flip through his wallet, he struggled for patience. Then just nipped it out of her fingers, shoved it back in his pocket.

  “Anita’s mistake was in assuming I’d find them for her, or that she could break through my own security measures and keep track of my movements. Who the hell is dead?”