Legacy of Fear

by Ryshia Kennie

  “Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked once they were inside. She pulled two small bottles from the bar fridge. “Possibly a toast to Le is more appropriate than a celebration of solving the mystery.”

  “You’re right. As you said, he died for M.J.,” Max said softly as she twisted off the tops and poured wine into water glasses. She handed him a glass.

  “He did,” she said solemnly. They clinked glasses. “To Le.”

  “And to Fu.”

  She looked up at him. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? I mean, we did it, didn’t we—tracked down the secrets to an empire?”

  He chuckled. “Of course, if you hadn’t known a rock star or two . . .”

  She smiled rather whimsically. “I suppose you’ll go home. Continue your studies.”

  “Apply for a research grant for the study of Nushu,” he agreed. “Eventually, I hope to come back—interview the women.”

  “Will they have you?”

  “I don’t know. Anything and everything could change when and if M.J. gets involved. But I suspect many things may stay the same. Would you consider working with me should I receive a grant?”

  She walked to the window and lifted the curtain. She stood there for a long moment.

  “I’ll miss you, Max.” She dropped the curtain and turned around. “I know eventually you’ll get your chance to study the language in even more depth, and maybe even the village.”

  “Is that no?”

  “I don’t know what it is. I’m sorry, Max. Right now it’s all too soon, and too much.”

  “How many ways and in how many languages can I say I was an idiot?”

  “What do you mean, Max?”

  “The orphanage changed how I think of children.”

  “You mean Xiang?”

  “She was a revelation.”

  He turned his back to her and walked to the window she’d only just left. With his hand pressed against the glass he began to talk as if he were alone in the room. “It was the sorrow in her eyes that I saw that first day. The memory of her pain woke me in the middle of the night.” He pushed with one hip away from the window and turned around to face her. “There’s only one other person I have met with eyes like that.” He turned and his eyes met Andra’s and something sparked between them.

  “Xiang changed everything. Everything I believed about children, about myself . . . It all changed when I saw the pain in her eyes. She stepped into my heart before I knew what had happened.”

  “Children do that to one,” Andra said.

  “So you’ve said before, and I never believed you.” He looked rather sheepish. “Xiang asked me to adopt her.”

  “I heard, but you didn’t take it seriously—did you?”

  “Not then but . . . I know this is rather a complete shift of thought but . . .” His finger drew a line on the glass before turning slowly to face Andra. “Until the arrival of that doll in the mail, I had lived my life too carefully.” He paused. “Foolishly.”

  “There’s no need to don a hair shirt.” She laughed, and despite a slight uncertainty, it was a balm in the tension-filled room.

  “I want to give Xiang what I never had. The child deserves it. She’s been alone and overlooked for every one of her nine years.”

  Outside a siren flared, shrill despite the distance that lay between them and the street.

  “I don’t understand. Why now?”

  “Xiang found me.” He paused. She deserved the truth and so much more. “I don’t regret the vasectomy,” he said in a quiet undertone. “The planet is a crowded place.”

  “What changed?”

  “You did, Andra. You changed everything.”

  “I?”

  “Your devotion and belief that children were your destiny. You might be brilliant at deciphering a code but your passion is children. Working with them, having them, adopting them, whatever. That’s your path. You are one of the most focused people I know.”

  “Will you adopt Xiang?”

  He interlaced his hands and cracked his knuckles. “That’s up to you.”

  “Me?”

  “You. I can’t believe that at the end of this journey I found you. A woman I could share my life with.”

  “Max? What are you saying?”

  “I’ll adopt any number of children you want. I just can’t have any of my own.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Max. I don’t need my own. Like you said, there’s too many children in the world needing a home. I’d prefer to concentrate on them.”

  “I love you. Marry me.”

  Silence pulsed between them. His proposal was completely unexpected and yet it wasn’t. The minutes that had led to it seemed like a lifetime of revelations stretched between them. It was all she had hoped for—everything she wanted.

  “Yes.” The word breathed in a whisper between them.

  “It’s not going to be easy, is it?” he said with a smile. “We haven’t ironed out logistics, jobs, money—any of it.”

  “Max, no one will ever accuse you of being a romantic. I suspect this will be the most logical marriage proposal I’ll ever receive.”

  “Considering it’s the only marriage proposal you’ll ever receive.” His laugh was dry and short-lived. “I hope so.”

  “You know you don’t need that grant. That’s another benefit of money. You can be unemployed if you want, stay here, study Nushu.”

  “No, Andra.” He held up his hand. “I don’t know if I can ever go there. Possibly a sabbatical.”

  “A long sabbatical,” she said in a flirty whisper.

  “One other thing—will you be Xiang’s mother?”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  And this time it was she that kissed him, long, deep and forever.

  Excerpt from Intent to Kill

  Keep reading for an excerpt from

  Intent to Kill,

  available now!

  A ruthless band of smugglers will stop at nothing to strip Cambodia of its priceless artifacts, even if it means using and killing female tourists. Journalist Claire Linton knows she’s on to the story of a lifetime. But for Claire, it’s personal too: long before her “Uncle Jack” came to the U.S., he was held captive in the nightmarish killing fields of Cambodia, and Claire senses there might be a connection between that long-ago bloody history and the dark crimes plaguing the country today.

  Simon Trent is a burnt-out Interpol agent who quit the service and was forced to disappear after his last case turned fatal. But with the resurgence in smuggling and all signs pointing to the man who once escaped his grasp, he comes out of hiding to finish the job that’s haunted him for years. What he doesn’t see coming is Claire, the beautiful and headstrong reporter who may be a threat to his case—and to his heart.

  As Claire and Simon reluctantly join forces to unravel a mystery that reaches deep into her family history and may be his only chance at redemption, they must fight to stay one step ahead of a brutal killer—and one step away from the dangerous feelings building between them.

  Chapter One

  Near Siem Reap, Cambodia

  He wanted to kill him as brutally as others had been killed.

  He wanted to watch him bleed, hear him scream.

  Simon Trent stilled his thoughts by sheer willpower. Revenge wouldn’t change any of it. No one lived because someone else died. He had to focus on what was real and on the danger they might face tonight.

  He crouched near the fragile ruins where the land first began a long and leisurely sprawl toward the lake. He took a breath and then another. The hot Cambodian night closed around him. Ahead the vast expanse of Lake Tonle glistened as the moon slipped from behind a cloud and temporarily cleared the darkness. To his right, in the distance, he knew that the shadowed spires of Angkor Wat loomed and beckoned in the darkness as they had so many nights before. A cricket grated. Its rough-edged call was loud in the deceptive silence, where only the distant lapping of the lake reminded him of why they
were here. And as much as he didn’t want to be here, as much as he was ready to hang it all up, he’d toughed out over a year in isolation for this moment. It was the most difficult assignment of his life, but he’d see it through and then it was over.

  He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. It came away damp. The air was slightly dank and reminded him of how close they were to the shoreline. There was nothing but sun-bronzed soil and patches of ground-hugging brush between here and there. He could see the area clearly in his mind as he remembered the last time he’d been here, in daylight, over a year ago. It didn’t seem like much time had passed since he’d last stood on this flat, slightly sloped patch of land that fronted the lake. He could visualize the dock about seventy-five feet away. And he could see what he didn’t want to, the tragedy that had begun here.

  He pinched his eyes closed and opened them, bringing him back to reality. He squinted and could only see a patch of dark, where he knew the lake would be. The lake—where all their problems seemed to begin and end.

  “What do you think, Trent?” Arun whispered as they crawled through the rock-strewn remains of a temple long crumpled into ruins. An ancient wall was all that remained intact. Ahead, a flashlight flickered in the darkness.

  “I’m not sure.” Simon’s voice was low. He pulled himself into a half crouch before rising. Ahead he could see the bob of lights near the water’s edge. The sound of voices was faint and so distant as to be indistinguishable, but they seemed to be coming from near the dock.

  “Damn, I should have brought the night goggles,” Arun said.

  “Night goggles,” Simon muttered, shaking his head. “Are you serious? Who do you think you are, 007?”

  “I wish. No, I bought them in the night market in Bangkok last year. A toy. Men and their toys. You know . . .” His sentence dropped off, as was his tendency.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Simon said, only half listening. There was danger stirring in the ancient rocks. He could feel it on the stale, dust-filled midnight breeze that wafted up occasionally as silence filled in the spaces. They weren’t armed, and as much as he disliked firearms he knew the lack of a weapon placed them at a serious disadvantage. But as far as Interpol was concerned, they were on an under-the-table assignment, not officially here—not officially anything.

  “Why now? Interpol gave us no warning. When did they call you?” Simon tensed as they inched forward. It was still safe to talk. They were too far from the shore for there to be danger, and it was clear that there was no one near—yet.

  “Yesterday. Where the Sam Hill have you been these last few days?”

  “Why?”

  “There’s been a rash of deaths. Samnang again . . .” Arun sighed heavily.

  Samnang, the antiquity smuggler who had gotten away. None of it was good. But if he had to return after more than a year in Laos as part of an Interpol Incident Response Team, there was no better partner than Arun, a native Cambodian who was fluent in more Asian languages than Simon had realized existed, and better than that, a friend.

  “I don’t know how the hell being a silent observer will help anything,” Simon growled. “Monitor the situation,” he said in a sarcasm-laced whisper. “They didn’t even bother to arm us.” What if they didn’t come out alive? What if only he lived? He couldn’t live with that. He couldn’t live with another death of someone close.

  “It’s Cambodia. We can resolve that little shortcoming fairly easily,” Arun replied with a soft chuckle.

  “A rocket launcher or possibly another weapon of war, yeah. Those are easy enough to come by. Seriously, Arun, I just want a handgun, a revolver, something simple.” He shook his head.

  “This isn’t easy for me either, Simon. Akara meant something to both of us. In different ways but . . .”

  This time Arun’s unfinished sentence hung between them. Around them the night seemed thicker, more humid. They moved forward slowly, jumping from cover to cover, one broken ruin to another, reluctant to get too close. Even their breathing required thought and every footstep screamed that they might be revealed. So far, the cloud cover was working to their advantage.

  “I want to get as close as we can,” Simon said. “Find out if Samnang is still employing the Brit.” But even as his whispered words faded away, they both knew that there was a limit to how close they could get by using the cover of this unassuming and forgotten ruin.

  “The grapevine says he is.”

  “So I’ve heard, and the others . . .” This time it was Simon who let his sentence drop midstream.

  The night closed in thick and hot and yet a finger of icy premonition went through him. Had this been a mistake?

  The voices ahead were coming closer, getting louder in the shadows.

  They hugged the remains of the low-riding wall as the light flickered and gained strength. The night sounds merged and amplified, blurring as they strained to hear something that might be different from the lap of the waves or the occasional calls of the insects. A grating crunch, like gravel underfoot, had them pinned against the wall, holding their breaths and claiming the darkness as their advantage. The air seemed fraught with tension.

  “It’s too early.” A man’s tenor came from somewhere in front of them.

  “They’ve made great progress though.”

  The voice was muffled, female, and familiar. Simon flattened even tighter to the wall as he now strained to hear every nuance. He glanced back at Arun and saw sweat on his brow, and he could feel the same on his.

  “The buyer’s poised.”

  Again it was the woman’s voice. And something in that voice sent another chill through Simon. He breathed in slowly, the hot air so humid it was almost choking.

  “Quiet.” The man spoke in a rough-edged whisper that carried in the cloistered darkness. The light skipped along the rocks. Neither Simon nor Arun dared move. The lake glistened darkly as the sound of a boat engine echoed in the distance.

  “They’re coming.” The man’s voice was rushed as he turned his attention to the water and the light danced over the rocks and away from them.

  “Over there.” The woman’s cultured voice was distinctly loud, the British accent clear in the dead calm, and so close that Simon was sure that he could have walked over and touched her with ten good strides. In the dark it was hard to judge distance with only the sound of their voices and the odd change in the air that their movements made.

  “Give me it,” the man demanded, and his voice had an odd slur to it, as if English was not his first language.

  “No,” the woman said. “Do you have any idea how old it is?” Their voices were less distinct as the couple moved farther away.

  Simon stiffened. Now he placed the woman’s voice and an unwanted familiarity crawled across his skin. English, it could only be . . . no . . . and even though he’d expected it, he was appalled. He glanced at Arun, indicating with a jerk of his head that they needed to get closer.

  The quarter moon slipped from behind a cloud, lighting the area, and Simon stopped breathing. His ribs tightened uncomfortably and behind him Arun’s breath hitched. The sound was so loud that for a minute he thought they’d been discovered. His back molars ached as his teeth clenched together and he willed his body to stillness. He leaned forward as the bit of moonlight disappeared. He held back the breath of relief that was almost instinctive and immediately tensed.

  “What is it?” the woman asked again. Her voice was more breathy than muffled now.

  “Vishnu, possibly one of the earliest. They have more work to do.” The man spoke confidently, as if he were sure that they were alone.

  Simon pressed his palms against the cracked and fractured wall and willed his body into an almost meditative stillness. He bit the inside of his lip to take his attention away from the possibility of involuntary movement.

  “Maybe. Let’s get moving.”

  Torches lit the dark as the shadowy figures moved toward the water.

  “Saturday. Three weeks from now.” T
he man’s voice rolled gently back to them.

  “Saturday,” Arun whispered. “A shipment . . .”

  “Saturday,” the man replied as if he had heard Arun’s whisper. He kicked a clot of clay and dust wafted over Simon and Arun.

  Arun raised his hand to his nose to suppress a sneeze.

  “What was that?” The woman’s voice was louder and the accent was sharp against the night’s silent backdrop.

  “Did you hear it?” the man asked.

  On the water boat lights reflected across the lake’s still surface. Voices floated ashore, rough voices that were jumbled and too distant to make out. The couple moved toward shore and away from Simon and Arun.

  “Where’s the Brit?” Arun hissed. “If the damn moon would cooperate . . . I’ve lost sight of her.”

  “I don’t know,” Simon whispered through gritted teeth. His fists clenched at his sides at the thought of her.

  They inched forward, leaving the ruin behind and now using brush and shore flotsam for cover. Before long they could make out figures framed in the boat’s bow light that reflected faintly on the water. The shadowy figures were by the dock, carrying crates to the boat. The words were still indistinguishable but something in the guttural sounds was clear.

  “Burmese. Shit!” Simon whispered. The Burmese worked according to laws of their own. The voices came closer.

  “Look!” Arun pointed farther up the shore, where another boat had slid in. Two more men dropped to the sand as the first group continued an intense discussion just off the beach, their shadows blending into the darkness.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Simon commanded. The urge to retreat was almost overwhelming, not because of anything he’d seen but because of a tension that seemed to pulse through the air.

  They ran hunched over away from the beach and back to the wall they had so recently left. They were uncomfortably pressed against the rock but they couldn’t move, for now another voice had left the beach and was too near.