Blood of His Fathers (Sinners and Saints)

by Michelle Chambers

  Drew stepped from the plane onto the tarmac. He’d been told Congo Town was fifteen minutes by boat. He looked about him. First things were first. He needed to clear customs.

  * * * *

  Antonio’s eighteen-foot fiberglass flats boat skimmed over the water. It was roomy, comfortable and fast. Jess stared across the catamaran-like hull onto the sunlit aquamarine sea. She clasped her fingers even tighter about the small handrail and glanced at Antonio sitting behind her at the wheel. He looked capable enough. His boat was equipped for every eventuality, but she’d never felt comfortable on the water. Ever since she was a child she’d had disturbing premonitions about dying in or near water. Often it was the rain that filled her with a paralyzing dread, but sometimes, like now, it was the sea.

  Antonio flashed her a reassuring smile and gave a slight nod of his head as if he’d read her angst. He lifted a hand and pointed a finger into the distance. Jess turned her gaze back onto the open water where pale blue met deep blue.

  “Do you see where the water suddenly darkens?” he shouted above the acoustic sound of the outboard motor.

  “Yes,” she shouted back.

  “That’s the other side of the Andros Barrier Reef. The ocean side. There’s a vertical drop down to a depth of more than six thousand feet to what’s known as the Tongue of the Ocean. It runs the entire length of the island,” Antonio added. “We’re still very close to the shore so there’s nothing to worry about. Okay? We’re almost there.”

  The skiff rounded the tiny isthmus protruding into the water and Jess was hit with the strangest feeling of déjà vu. She removed her sunglasses and peered at the sprawling acres of dense pine forest bordering the white sandy beach as familiarity tugged at her senses. Antonio maneuvered the craft to the simple wooden dock jutting from the mangrove studded shore. Her mind scrambled for clues.

  The engine stilled and the boat lapped against the pier.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come ashore with you?” Antonio asked.

  She licked her lips and swallowed thickly, shrugging off the intense feeling of return tightening her stomach and swelling her heart.

  “Yes,” she murmured in awe of the immense beauty and sense of calm surrounding her. “I’ll be fine.”

  “The house is—”

  “I know. There’s a path leading through the trees.”

  Jess gasped softly. How could she possibly have known that? She glanced at Antonio, her eyes wide in surprise. “I don’t know how I knew that,” she said. She turned her gaze back toward the beach. “It’s odd, but it’s like I know this place.”

  “Perhaps you’ve visited the plantation before, when you were a child. You were born in the Islands, right?”

  “In Nassau.” She frowned. “Then, why wouldn’t I remember coming here?”

  “It was a long time ago,” Antonio said. “Childhood memories fade.”

  “I suppose,” Jess said, although she wasn’t wholly convinced.

  She stepped from the boat onto the dock.

  “I don’t think you should go up to the old house alone,” Antonio said.

  “Why?”

  “You don’t know what you’ll find. Perhaps a chickcharnie.”

  She laughed at that. “Maybe, but I’m not easily spooked. Besides, I’ll work a lot quicker if I’m on my own. No offense.”

  Antonio feigned indignation. “I can take a hint. You have my number?”

  Jess nodded.

  “Call me when you’re ready.”

  “I will.”

  Chapter Nine

  Jess headed toward the line of trees casting long shadows along the pristine strip of white sand. She frowned as she approached the overgrown path. She shouldn’t know this place—or have any thought or memory or feeling—yet intuition and unfaltering steps took her further and deeper through the pine forest.

  The dense surroundings pricked with relentless familiarity at her senses, sending elusive ghosts of recognition through her mind like ephemeral wisps of smoke. She frowned again as yet another snippet of déjà vu teased her mind. She glanced about her, turning this way and that, shaking her head, partly with disbelief and partly in denial. How could she know this place? Perhaps Antonio was right and she’d visited her grandmother’s home as a child with her father—John. But that still didn’t explain the lack of memory. It bothered her that she couldn’t remember a single part of her life shared with her true father.

  Dappled sunlight filtered through the thick, fertile canopy. Undergrowth and branches barred her way, yet she pressed on through the enclosed, humid and heat-drenched terrain until sweat covered her body and her clothes stuck uncomfortably to her skin.

  She finally stumbled with a grateful sigh into a wide clearing and stopped dead in her tracks as she gazed upon the derelict limestone house basking in the heat of the mid-day sun.

  The house was by no means as grand or resplendent as any of the colonial Georgian or Adams-style architecture found in Nassau, but it wasn’t disappointment that kept her riveted to the spot and her eyes glued to the crumbling façade.

  It’d been necessity that had brought her to her grandmother’s home, but now something else, something far deeper, had taken its place. It was a feeling that was strangely frightening and comforting at the same time. She forced herself closer to the abandoned house frowning as she tried to make sense of the vague images crouched at the back of her mind. She climbed the flaking stone steps leading up to the porch, skimming her fingers lightly over the handrail.

  Her life had been colored by an emptiness she’d attributed to her father’s shocking death and her mother’s subsequent emotional detachment. But she’d also grown up haunted by an indescribable feeling of loss. It’d never been any one thing she could put her finger on, until the evening her mother spoke about John Thomas. Only then had she realized the emptiness she’d felt all these years had nothing to do with Graham’s death, and everything to do with what had been missing in her life. The very essence of her existence. Her past.

  She reached the rot-riddled door hanging from its hinges and then blinked back the sudden gnawing pain behind her eyes. She placed a steadying hand against the door and closed her eyes. The door swung abruptly open and she stumbled forward into the empty house.

  She froze—listening intently—her eyes and ears taking in every heave and sigh of the old house. Her heartbeat slowed and she released the breath she didn’t know she was holding. She had every right to be here, didn’t she? The property was hers, wasn’t it? She could enter the house if she wanted to.

  She wrinkled her nose up at the damp, musty smell permeating the air and then squaring her shoulders edged forward down the narrow passageway. Sunlight streamed past her shoulders, although it barely illuminated the dark path in front of her. Her fingers trailed the cold wall and her eyes widened with each tentative step—absorbing, sensing, knowing.

  She reached the end of the passage and stopped, her eyes drawn to the high ceiling and central staircase silhouetted in soft, gray dappled light. Her heart raced and her breathing quickened. She searched her mind for another logical reason for her strong affinity to the house—and not the one she was starting to believe. She flicked her gaze up the stairs to the upper hallway cloaked in mottled darkness and released a frustrated breath. Every fiber of her being told her she belonged here, and yet she had no memories to explain her emotions or help correlate her thoughts.

  She picked her way through the rubble beneath her feet and moved across the hallway toward the first of the two large downstairs rooms. She paused in the doorway and cast a disappointed gaze about the bare, shuttered, dust-filled space. She’d hoped to find a forgotten item, picture or book among the ruins. Some hollow reminder to help her cement suspicions and rekindle lost memories. But there was nothing but shadows, and yet deep down she knew that once upon a time this had been her home. And her mother had kept silent about it all these years.

  She rubbed her temple in an attempt to soften th
e pounding in her head and retraced her steps to the bottom of the stairs. She wanted more than this. Not feeling, or intuition. She wanted memories and somewhere in the recesses of her mind she had them of this place. She wanted those memories to rise to the surface.

  She started up the stairs, cautiously testing each tread while dodging the cobwebs dangling from the ceiling and clinging to the walls. The feeling of belonging burgeoned through her and intensified in her brain. She stepped onto the landing and lifted her gaze to the closed door at the end of the hall. Her eyes widened as she hastened forward. No longer cautious. No longer in doubt.

  My room.

  She didn’t just sense it. She remembered it. She reached for the doorknob and turned it, and felt the force of a connection as soon as she crossed the threshold. She squinted against the intense sunlight and dragged her leaden gaze around the room, forcing herself to study what lay around her.

  Her toys, her clothes fallen on the floor and lying across her bed, untouched and rotting where they’d been left as if in anticipation of her return. She dropped to her knees as she struggled to fight the sudden flow of childhood images rushing to her brain. Memories belonging to a five-year-old girl who’d watched the drunken woman she’d called mother argue with her husband and pick up the heavy Bakelite telephone and bludgeoned him to death with it. The voices, the shouts, the screams. There’d been so much blood. Jess gripped her head between her hands. The pain of remembrance becoming unbearable.

  * * * *

  Drew Mahon watched the thick smoke spiral above the distant treetops and gripped the handrail on Antonio’s flats boat, wishing it would go faster.

  He’d known the best way to find Jess was to start at the airport. Apart from the chartered flight from Nassau, he’d discovered there’d only been two private flights from Florida that morning, yet none of the personnel could recall a young woman fitting Jess’ description. He’d even struck out among the chauffeurs he’d spoken to who were hard-pressed to remember her face among the groups of passengers they’d taxied to the resorts and lodges in and around the island.

  He’d been at a loss until a driver suggested he waited to speak with Marcus Lloyd. Marcus, the man said, had picked up the only single female fare that morning. He’d only remembered the woman because she’d insisted on going to an out of the way place that wasn’t noted on any tourist map. But she didn’t have long, dark hair as Drew described. The woman’s hair had been short.

  There was no way Drew could’ve been sure this woman was Jessica McCormack, but considering it’d been his only lead he’d waited under a palm tree outside the airport for Marcus to return.

  The spark of hope he’d been given leapt into life after he’d spoken with Marcus. And by the time he’d been introduced to Antonio and learned the woman’s name, he’d had no more doubt. He didn’t like coincidences and this was too much of one to be ignored. What were the odds that both women would have the same name, similar height and similar build? The woman who’d gone to High Rock had to be Jessica McCormack.

  Drew glanced behind him at the two men standing at the boat wheel, their faces etched with a look of concern mirroring his own. He would’ve never have found Jess so quickly without their help. But were they too late? Had Jason gotten to her before him?

  “I shouldn’t have left her alone,” Antonio said.

  “You weren’t to know anything like this was going to happen,” Marcus replied.

  It seemed like forever before Antonio finally maneuvered his boat around the tiny isthmus and moored it alongside the dock. Drew sprang from the skiff onto the wooden pier and gazed helplessly upward toward the distant but ferocious light flickering through the dense forest of tall pine trees.

  Marcus hurried past him, pointing toward the beach and the line of trees. “This way,” he yelled. “There’s a path over there leading up to the house.”

  It was a hot day made even hotter by the intense heat bearing down on them and sucking the air dry. Sweat drenched their faces and bodies as they finally emerged from the forest onto the clearing. Drew’s stomach tightened in alarm. The fire hadn’t quite taken hold, but it would only be a matter of moments before the flames reached the upper rooms and engulfed the entire house.

  “I have to get in there.”

  Antonio grabbed his arm.

  Drew’s voice pitched higher. “She could still be inside. I have to look.”

  The flames licked higher and heat blasted through the air.

  “There must be a well somewhere around here,” Marcus said, rushing out of sight. “Antonio, call for help! Hurry!”

  Antonio released Drew’s arm. “Be careful. You don’t know how fast it’ll spread.”

  With a quick nod, Drew raced to the back of the house. He was relieved to find the fire was confined to the main, front part of the structure. With a single kick, he shattered a fragile shuttered window and climbed through.

  Heat and thick smoke immediately overwhelmed him, stinging his eyes and charring his lungs. He reeled from the contact but gritted his teeth and kicked through two more shuttered windows. Bright sunlight flooded the abandoned house and the dense smoke billowed free, easing the constriction in his throat. His thoughts returned quickly to Jess.

  He rushed through the crumbling downstairs rooms first, calling her name, and then headed up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time.

  He found her collapsed on the floor at the end of the upper hall.

  “Jess!”

  Drew quickly gathered her in his arms. She stirred slightly, but didn’t open her eyes.

  * * * *

  The slow, powerful sound of his heartbeat dispersed the haunting images flashing through her mind, bringing her into awareness.

  Jason?

  Her eyes fluttered open to the gentle feel of strong arms about her. She pulled back and raised her gaze to familiar green eyes staring down at her. Her eyes widened further in recognition. Surprise kept them locked with his gaze and her lips parted hesitantly.

  “Looked like you were having a bad dream,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  His voice was smooth and mellow like she remembered, and his touch was not unlike Jason’s. Strong, protective, caressing, and she’d responded to it. Not with the same intensity as with Jason, but there was a reaction all the same and it unnerved her. Jess lowered her gaze from his and consciously pushed herself from within his embrace, putting distance between them on the king-sized bed.

  “Where am I?”

  “Still on Andros. At the Tiamo Resort.”

  She ignored him for a moment and concentrated on getting her bearings. She looked about the pale driftwood colored room and then out the open screened doors onto lush vegetation, white sand and dazzling sunlight bouncing off the clear aqua-blue sea.

  A light breeze whispered over the thin white robe she wore and she shivered. Where were her clothes?

  She hugged her legs up to her chest and kept her eyes on the vase with fresh flowers standing on a table in the corner of the room.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “A few hours.”

  She drew in a deep breath and tightened her hold about her legs. “What are you doing here, Detective Inspector?”

  “Wondering why someone would want you dead,” he murmured.

  There was no mistaking the seriousness of his tone and her eyes flicked sharply to meet his gaze.

  “And if I hadn’t followed you to that old house, you would be.”

  Her eyes widened in shock. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you remember the fire?”

  “F-Fire?” she repeated. “There was a fire?”

  That’s why she smelled of smoke.

  She swung her legs from the bed. They felt weak and unsure. She settled her bare feet on the high gloss painted wood floor. The last thing she remembered was being confronted with painful memories connecting her to that house—A telephone ringing, her grandmother’s smiling face, the shadowy body of a
man lying dead on the floor next to her bed, laughter, flashing lights, crying, dancing in the moonlight—

  It was too much. Too fast. Her fingers grasped the bright orange comforter and she forced herself to stay calm.

  “I remember having a migraine attack and passing out. And then waking up here with you in this room.”

  She leveled her gaze on his, twisting her body so she could do so. “You brought me here?”

  He nodded. “It was Marcus’ idea.”

  She raised her brows in surprise. “You met Marcus?”

  “Without him I wouldn’t have found you so quickly.”

  She stilled, realizing the implications of his words. A fire? She’d almost died without seeing her son again. If the Inspector hadn’t followed her…

  She swallowed nervously. “Thank you for saving my life, Detective Inspector.”

  “Drew. Call me Drew. And you’re welcome, Mrs. McCormack.”

  She gave him a faint smile. “Call me Jess.”

  An uneasy silence settled between them and she looked away.

  “I could order room service, if you like,” Drew proffered.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. “That would be great.”

  She rose from the bed. Her legs were like jelly but she managed to stand, feeling the strength return to them. “I need to get some air.”

  She crossed the room and stepped outside onto the private decking leading down to the water’s edge. She wrapped her arms about her body and stared out at the rippling ocean.

  Someone had tried to kill her.

  Except for Carolyn, no one knew she would be at the old house. She frowned. Could Carolyn…? No. Impossible.

  She didn’t turn at the sound of Drew’s footsteps closing in behind her. “Do the police know who started the fire?”

  “They think pieces of glass intensified the strong sunlight and set the wild sisal growing close to the house alight. A natural occurrence.”

  “But you don’t agree,” she said, keeping her eyes on the water.