“Sam Fargo,” Olivia said, “is rash and reckless. Do you know he killed a man like it was just another day at the office? That’s why I think Remi needs to date someone like you.”
“Olivia, shut up,” Keith said, his gaze on Remi. “It’s not your decision to make.”
His words caught Remi by surprise. No doubt it was mere coincidence, but she couldn’t help but think about that old woman at the airport, and her parting words: You’ll make the right decision. “I’ll be . . .” Remi laughed. “She’s right.”
“See?” Olivia gave a catlike grin.
“Not you. Helena.” Remi smiled at Keith. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“I’m not really sure. Listening, maybe? And I need to go.”
“Go where?” Olivia asked.
“The Lighthouse Cafe.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Sam loaded the last of the things into the back of his Jeep, then realized he’d forgotten the package that Blake was holding. Nikos had sent it from Greece—the promised Smith & Wesson. He took the small box, tucking it into the cargo hold with the others. “I think that’s it.”
Blake stepped up onto the curb. “Hate to say it, Fargo, but it’s not going to be the same without you hogging half my office.”
“Enjoy your newfound desk space.”
“You sure you want to do this?” he asked as Sam rearranged a few of the boxes, then closed the tailgate.
“Positive.”
“Maybe you should give it a cooling-off period. Wait until tomorrow to sign everything like you said you were going to. Who knows? You might feel different in the morning.”
“Doubt it.” Sam looked back at Blake’s office building, mentally going over everything he’d packed. “If I forget anything, put it in the mail.”
“What about the party?” Blake asked.
“You really think anyone cares whether I’m there or not?”
“Of course they do. I do.”
“You might be the only one.” Sam opened the driver’s door, eyeing his friend, not surprised by his look of concern. Blake had spent the last few days trying to convince Sam to stay—all to no avail. “All they care about is the free food and booze.”
“Which begs the question, why bother having a party if you’re not going to be there?”
“Pass out a few business cards, tell them what a great real estate agent you are, then write it all off on your taxes.” He clapped Blake on his shoulder, giving him a grim smile. “Besides, you’re making a second whole commission off this deal. And I get to make my laser. Win-win.”
“Why does it feel like lose-lose?”
“All in the perspective, my friend.” As upbeat as he tried to sound, there was a hollowness about the words. It didn’t matter how many times he convinced himself that he was doing the right thing, he always came back to one thought. Everything felt empty without Remi. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”
“Look, I’ll be the first to admit I thought you were jumping off the deep end for someone you barely knew, but after hearing everything that happened, I think she deserves to know how you feel. She deserves a call at the very least.”
“Already did.”
“Did you actually explain things to her? In detail?”
“There’s nothing to explain. She’s moved on with her life. Time for me to do the same.” Sam smiled as he held out his hand.
They shook.
Blake stepped back, watching as Sam slid into the driver’s seat, turning the key in the ignition.
Apparently, the man wasn’t willing to let it go. He banged on the window, walking alongside the Jeep, keeping pace. “I’m kind of rethinking the whole wanting-my-space-back thing. I’ve gotten used to you working there.”
Sam, worried that Blake intended to follow him all the way out to the street, hit the brakes. He sat there a moment, both hands gripping the steering wheel.
As much as he appreciated everything his friend was trying to do, there was no way he could begin to describe the impossibility of reversing this course of action.
Remi had made her choice—and whatever her plans, they didn’t include him.
“I’m okay with this,” he said, seeing the concern etched on Blake’s face. “You should be, too. Besides, you’re making a ton of money.”
“You know I don’t care about the money.”
“Somehow I don’t think you’ll turn it down, either.”
“Well, it’d be stupid to let it go to waste.”
“Better hurry or you’ll be late to the party.” Sam waved, then drove off.
He stopped at the first gas station, filled the tank, then glanced at his phone sitting in the center console. He picked it up, tempted to call Remi’s number, when a car pulled up behind him, the driver honking the horn.
Sure, he could call Remi again, but he wasn’t sure what good that would do. She had his number. She could have called him back at any time, but she hadn’t.
He was fine with that.
Right.
As long as she was happy.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Remi walked into the Lighthouse, seeing Blake at the bar with a few of his friends, laughing at something. Sam was nowhere in sight. She approached, tapping him on the shoulder.
He turned, saw her, his smile fading. “Remi . . . What are you doing here?”
“Looking for Sam,” she said. “Do you happen to know where he is?”
“He took off about an hour ago for San Diego.”
“Oh . . . He told me he’d be here. The finally-getting-out-of-your-office party.”
“You have no idea, do you?”
Though it was a question, it seemed more of a statement. “No idea about what?”
“We should probably discuss this outside.” He set his beer on the bar, then led her to the exit. When the door fell shut behind them, he studied her a moment, his expression a mix of concern and curiosity. “How long has it been since you two have talked?”
“He called yesterday. To tell me Adrian Kyril pled guilty. Why?”
Blake took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m not sure how to tell you this.”
“Tell me what?” she asked, feeling her heart start a slow thud in her chest.
“He packed up. Leaving.”
“Leaving? To where?”
“He’s taking his old job with DARPA. They’re interested in giving him lab time to work on that laser. And . . . Well, you know how much he wants to finish that project.”
None of that made sense. That was the one thing Sam was sure about, finishing his argon laser on his own. He’d told her he’d lost the funding. But not that he was going back to DARPA.
This was all her fault. Had he not followed her halfway across the world, he wouldn’t have missed his investor meeting that Blake had set up for him.
Blake, apparently, must have guessed what she was thinking. “Look. Sam could’ve agreed to this other deal for the funding. Everything was lined up. The money was there. The timing was off, is all.”
“Because he was in Greece. Helping me.”
He gave a slight shrug. “C’est la vie.”
Maybe for someone else, but Remi was certain that Sam shared her feelings. Life was what you made it. If something happened, you made it work. Hadn’t they proved that over and over again in Fourni? “What’s he doing in San Diego?”
“Meeting with a notary to sign the papers for that empty lot.”
“He’s selling it?” A light breeze swept in from the ocean. Remi barely noticed the cold. “The cliff top? At Goldfish Point?”
Blake, wearing a short-sleeved shirt, shoved his hands in his pockets. “When you think about it, buying such an expensive piece of property without the funds to build was sort of a risk. Luckily the market�
��s on an upturn. The guy made a fortune off of it. So did I, for that matter.”
“But he loves that lot. I have to stop him.” She took out her cell phone and called Sam’s number. It went straight to voice mail. She looked at Blake. “You need to call him.”
“I doubt it’ll do any good,” he said, digging his phone from his pocket and trying himself. He held it out so Remi could hear. Voice mail. “I’m not sure what happened between you two, but ever since, he’s sort of dropped off the radar. I think the only reason he’s answered my calls was because I’m handling the sale.” He shrugged.
Remi looked at her watch. “La Jolla’s what, two hours from here?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Stop him.”
He gave her a sympathetic smile. “By the time you get there, it’ll be too late. As soon as he finishes up with the notary, he’s heading back east.”
“I have to try.” She hurried out to the parking lot, calling again as she rushed to her car. As before, it went straight to voice mail. “Sam. Remi. Call me.”
She made several more attempts on the drive down. The traffic was thick, but by the time she passed San Clemente it had cleared considerably, and she kept one eye on the mirror, watching for the highway patrol as she sped south.
Regardless of what Blake said, this was her fault. Sam had put his life on hold, given up his dream, because of her. But his financing for the laser was only a small part of it—no, not even part of it. She’d been so wrapped up in her own emotions, she’d failed to see the obvious. After everything she and Sam had been through together, how could she ever go back to her old life? How could she ever have a life without him? She gripped the steering wheel, trying to picture the gray void it had become since her return to California—and it had nothing to do with sitting in a cubicle, day after day.
The cubicle she could handle. Not having Sam in her life was unbearable.
Checking her rearview mirror, she saw a police car speeding up behind her, its red and blue lights flashing. “Not now . . .” She put on her signal, then moved over to the slow lane, hoping it would continue past.
It did not.
The uniformed officer approached. She rolled down her window.
“License and registration, please.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
Remi leaned over, opened her glove box, and pulled her registration out, handing that and her license to the officer.
“Do you know how fast you were going, Miss Longstreet?”
“Eighty-ish?”
“Eight-seven.”
“Guilty. I don’t suppose we can skip with the formalities and get to the ticket part? I’m in a hurry.”
He looked over the top of his sunglasses at her. “You realize your being in a hurry is exactly why you’re being stopped?”
“I know. And I do apologize. But the guy I love is in La Jolla. He’s leaving for a new job, and if I miss him, I may never see him again . . .” Remi saw no show of emotion from the man. She decided a different tack was in order. “No disrespect, but please, if we can hurry up with the ticket, I’ll promise to drive at a reasonable speed the moment you let me go.”
The officer walked back to his patrol car. Remi watched in her rearview mirror as he clipped her license to the top of his ticket book, then started writing. Two minutes later, he was back, giving her the narrow clipboard and a pen. She signed the ticket, and he ripped off the pink copy, handing it over. He did not, however, return her license right away.
Holding on to it, he looked her in the eye. “I’m going to be taking that next exit up there, which means there’s a very long stretch between here and San Diego without any patrol. Do me a favor? Drive careful.”
“Thank you.”
He returned her license.
Remi pulled out, then drove off, making sure she kept to the speed limit. A moment later, the patrol car passed her, and, true to his word, the officer took the next exit. She sped up, though not as fast as before. Twenty-five minutes later, she found the real estate office. It was closed, the doors locked.
Why she expected him to be there when he had at least an hour head start, she didn’t know.
She tried his number again, then tossed her phone onto the seat of her car. Finally, she called Blake. “He’s not here. Have you heard from him?”
“Sorry, no. They must have gotten through that paperwork fast.”
“Where would he go?”
There was a stretch of silence, then, “You know, he said something about staying in that hotel just down the street on the beach. You might try calling them.”
“Thanks.”
Sam’s car wasn’t at the hotel, and when she checked at the desk, he wasn’t registered as a guest.
She returned to her car. Frustrated, she stood at the door, holding the handle, at a complete loss at what to do. Looking back at the hotel and then the beach brought back the memory of their weekend and the afternoon he’d told her about his dream of building a house on the cliff top.
Their house, he’d said. Without thinking, she found herself on the beach, walking toward the bluff. The sun was dipping behind the clouds as it made its late-afternoon descent. She looked out over the Pacific as the rays of the setting sun broke through, shooting upward. The sky and clouds turned a brilliant orange, and her breath caught.
Not at the sunset, but at the distant silhouette of the man standing on the edge of the cliff.
Sam.
He stood there a moment, then reached down, picking up something from the ground. A rock, perhaps. A moment later, he threw it over the edge, the tension and frustration evident in the way he held himself.
Her heart constricted at the sight.
“Sam!” Her voice was lost as the offshore wind whipped in from the coast, drumming in her ears. Remi raced back to her car, knowing she had to get there before he left.
* * *
—
As she walked across the bluff, he stood stock-still, his back to her, the waves crashing below. When she reached his side, he simply held out his hand.
She clasped her fingers around his.
They stood there in companionable silence for a minute or so, until Sam finally turned to her. “I thought you had a party?”
“Changed my mind.” A few more seconds of quiet, then Remi saying, “I missed you at yours.”
“Trying to get an early start on a long trip.”
The wind swept across the bluff, the low shrubs and long, dry grass bending beneath it. “So, this was where we were going to build our house?”
“That was the plan.”
“Can we buy it back?”
His smile was bittersweet as his eyes met hers. “That would be difficult. Never got to the real estate office.”
“You didn’t sell?”
“How could I?” He looked back out over the water. “This is where we were going to build our home.”
“We don’t have to build anything. I’ve warmed to the idea of camping. Who needs hot and cold running water, carpeting, and electricity? The appeal of sleeping in a bag with zippers has grown on me.”
“I have a tent in the Jeep.”
Before she had a chance to comment, he took her in his arms.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
The present day
Sam, Remi, and St. Julien Perlmutter had long since finished dinner, retired to the library, and settled in front of the fire, each with a glass of port.
“Sorry,” Perlmutter said when they finished telling their story. “I seem to have gotten something in my eye.” He blinked a couple of times. “What an extraordinary tale. And then you married?”
“We did,” Remi said. “Though it was a bit of a compromise. My mother, firmly entrenched in Boston society, wanted at least a year a
nd a half to plan.”
“Whereas I,” Sam said, “wanted to get married the next day.”
Remi smiled at him. “We were married six months to the day after we met.”
“That’s astounding,” Perlmutter said, stroking the head of his dachshund, Fritz, who rested comfortably on his ample lap. “What about the Poseidon’s Trident treasure? Neither of you ever went back to look for it?”
“Not officially,” Sam said. “Although we did go back to visit our friends a few times over the years.”
“They haven’t given up the search,” Remi added. “Which is what has us worried.”
“I can well understand. And both of you are certain the coins you found at the bottom of that cave were counterfeit?”
“Positive.” Sam set his glass of port on the table. “We have to assume the gold was emptied from the amphorae before they ever made it into the cave. If that’s the case, then we think it was still on the pirate ship that carried it there.”
Remi nodded. “Selma, of course, has continued to research it over the years. Surprisingly, it was the rocks found with the counterfeit coins that actually brought us here. She arranged to have some of them sent out to historians, museum curators, geologists, basically anyone who might be able to give us insight. A throw-the-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks sort of a thing.”
“Apparently something stuck?”
“Definitely. First, the rocks found among the broken amphorae in the cave weren’t indigenous to Megalos Anthropofas, they were from Samos. More importantly, it was suggested that it might be ballast from the pirate ship. This offered one interesting possibility—” Remi glanced at Sam, then back at Perlmutter. “Someone switched out their ship’s ballast for the gold before they ever brought it to the islet.”
“You’re saying Pactyes double-crossed the pirates?”
“Or, he was in league with some of the pirates. Either way, someone double-crossed someone.”
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