Twist of Fate

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Where did she go, Nick?”

  “Left yesterday morning for Santa Inez Island. I’m sorry, Gideon. I thought you knew. I guess it was a sudden decision on her part. She’s been acting a little strange lately.”

  “I just talked to her two days ago. She didn’t mention leaving town.”

  “I think she was upset,” Nick offered. “All I got was a phone call asking me to be sure and water her plants if she didn’t get back within a few days.”

  “A few days. Jesus. How long is she going to stay down there?”

  “Beats me. You know her well enough by now to realize that she’s got a mind of her own.”

  “I’m beginning to think that whoever first decided to let women have minds of their own made a big mistake.”

  “I’ll go along with that.” Nick made a clear effort to change the subject. “These academic types sure have it soft in the summer. Here’s Hannah flitting off to the Caribbean for a second vacation and when I mentioned it to Vicky Armitage yesterday in the club she tells me she and Drake are heading for Hawaii this week. A few weeks ago they went to Mexico. It’s unfair. Maybe I chose the wrong field. I should have researched careers that provide extensive time off.”

  “Well, don’t plan on any time off in the near future. Decker will be keeping you busy,” Gideon said absently.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for him. Want me to make hotel reservations at this end for him and his wife?”

  “Don’t worry about it. My secretary will handle it. You say Hannah took off yesterday morning?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll get back to you, Nick.” Gideon hung up the phone. For an instant he didn’t move. Then he was on his feet, grabbing his jacket and heading for the door.

  “Going home early today, Mr. Cage?” Mary Ann asked brightly.

  “It’s five o’clock,” he growled.

  “For you that’s early.” She reached for the cover of her typewriter. Gideon was gone before she had finished covering the machine.

  Behind the wheel of the Porsche Gideon sat glowering at the road. His hand was swift and savage on the gearshift as he sent the car surging up into the hills toward home. She had gone back to Santa Inez without even telling him she was leaving.

  There was only one explanation. Hannah had made her choices for the future and they didn’t include him. She was going to follow in Elizabeth Nord’s footsteps and in the footsteps of those other women who had once worn that goddamned ugly necklace.

  He couldn’t let her do it, Gideon realized with stark clarity. He couldn’t allow her to just walk out of his life this way. She had no right. He needed her and she belonged to him. She had no business trying to turn herself into the kind of cold, aloof Amazon queen her aunt had been.

  Hannah had no right to turn herself into the kind of remote, untouchable, one-dimensional human being Gideon Cage knew he had allowed himself to become during the past nine years. This time around it was Hannah who needed saving.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IT WAS THE MAP that bothered him. Gideon found himself glancing at it again and again that evening as he made the airline reservations for the following day. Every time he looked at the tourist version of Santa Inez Island he remembered the narrow, winding roads that followed the cliffs above the sea. Then he thought of Hannah driving those roads to her aunt’s house.

  She would get one of those silly pink-fringed jeeps, he was sure. But he wondered how much good the frivolous-looking vehicle would be when it came to making her feel secure about her driving. He hadn’t forgotten her quiet tension when he’d skimmed around a curve or dodged an oncoming taxi. When she’d driven him to the airport he’d sensed how uncomfortable she still was behind the wheel of a car. Traces of the terror she had experienced the night of her accident lingered in her mind. Perhaps they always would. Gideon didn’t like the idea of Hannah driving the Santa Inez roads alone.

  He didn’t like the idea of her being anywhere alone. The raw truth was that it panicked him. She could so easily put him out of her mind and out of her life. All those other women on her family tree who had succeeded on their own terms had somehow passed along their genes to Hannah, together with that damned necklace. Gideon felt like breaking something. He dialed another airline instead.

  She wasn’t cut out to become the hard, remote, coldly brilliant creature her aunt had been. Nord had been capable of sustaining an academic myth for a lifetime. Hannah was different. Hannah was softer, gentler, and compassionate. More honest. And there was a passion in her that Gideon couldn’t believe had existed in Elizabeth Nord. If it had, it had been totally channeled into her work.

  The frightening part was that Gideon knew what it was like to channel passion and every other emotion into work. It could be done. Nord had probably done it. He, himself, had done it. Maybe all those fierce Amazons on Hannah’s family tree had done it.

  But Hannah was wrong to think such people were whole and complete within themselves. He knew better now. Such isolation had its advantages, but they were bought at a high price. Nothing came for free in this world. Lately Gideon had become well aware of what his power had cost him. He couldn’t allow Hannah to pay the same price. There was no altruism in his decision. The simple truth was that he needed her, wanted her too badly to watch her turn into an Amazon who would leave him behind.

  Gideon sat impatiently on hold, waiting for the airline ticket agent to answer, and wished he could get the image of Hannah weaving around Santa Inez’s road in a pink-fringed jeep out of his mind.

  It wasn’t as though she couldn’t drive, he reminded himself. She had driven him to the airport, hadn’t she? True, she was overly cautious and wary on the freeway, but she’d handled herself all right. He had known she wasn’t comfortable or relaxed behind the wheel then, but she hadn’t been panicked by driving.

  But it wasn’t a freeway on which she’d had that accident a couple of months ago. It was a narrow, crooked mountain road. A road not unlike the roads on Santa Inez. The ticket agent came on the line just as Gideon’s mind began to play with the notion of the similarity between mountain roads and island roads.

  “Early tomorrow evening? Is that the earliest you can get me to Santa Inez? Hell, it’ll be getting dark. No, no, I’ll take it. Go ahead and book the seat. Are you absolutely positive you haven’t got an earlier connection out of Miami?”

  “I’m sorry sir. There’s no way to shorten the layover in Miami. All our other flights are full. We’re the only airline with afternoon flights from Miami to Santa Inez. If you’d care to stay over in Miami and leave the next morning, we could—”

  “Forget it. Wait list me on your earlier flights and go ahead and book this one,” Gideon said grimly.

  “Fine, sir.”

  It wasn’t fine but Gideon couldn’t think of any reasonable way around the problem. He might as well be calm about this. Hannah wasn’t going anywhere. She’d drive from the airport to her aunt’s house, pick up some groceries along the way, and then sit on the beach and think.

  The beach. Something else to worry about. Memories of the beach brought back too many details of the morning he’d awakened to hear her crying for help as some bastard played water games. Gideon had long since decided that morning ranked as the worst of his life. Far worse than the morning he’d awakened to find himself surrounded by the results of Cyrus Ballantine’s treachery. He had survived treachery. He wasn’t sure what he would have done if he’d allowed Hannah to be killed.

  Logically, the guy in the diving outfit had to be long gone. He wouldn’t have hung around Santa Inez after nearly getting caught trying to drown or rape a tourist. He had been white with blue eyes, not one of the locals. He couldn’t have expected to blend in with any crowd except the tourist crowd.

  Just one more thing to worry about, Gideon decided. As if he didn’t have enough. He should forget the bizarre stuff such as jeep accidents and marauding rapists. The thing he really needed to worry about was what Hannah was thinking
, planning, and deciding about her future.

  Damn Elizabeth Nord. Damn the necklace and damn the journals. If it wasn’t for them, perhaps Hannah would have accepted her relationship with him more readily, Gideon thought as he stared broodingly at the map. Damn Victoria Armitage while he was at it. Her presence had been a major factor in all this.

  Actually, all things considered, Vicky Armitage’s presence had been the largest single factor. Hannah had been disturbed by the other woman for a couple of months before Gideon had even come on the scene. Since about the time of the accident, in fact.

  Gideon felt the first tendrils of an uneasy thought that he pushed at once to the back of his mind. He had to pack.

  He was up at dawn the next day after a restless night. It was going to be a long trip, what with airport layovers and awkward connections. The initial flight out of Tucson left shortly before eight. Gideon was standing at his black slate dressing table, checking his pockets for keys and wallet when he finally decided to put a call through to Seattle. He might as well make it and put his mind at ease about something. It was a cinch he wasn’t going to find much else to ease his mind today.

  Finding Nick Jessett’s phone number took a while, but Gideon eventually located it on a business card he’d picked up in the other man’s office. Nick’s home number was scrawled on the back. Gideon dialed with a sense of urgency that was accompanied by a feeling of idiocy.

  “Nick?”

  “What in the hell?” Jessett sounded half asleep. “Gideon? Is that you?”

  “Sorry to get you out of bed.”

  “You’d be sorrier if you could see what’s still in the bed.”

  “Your sister says you haven’t had time lately for that sort of thing thanks to Cage & Associates.”

  “Younger brothers don’t always confide everything to their big sisters. What do you want, Cage?”

  “Just some dates. I know this is going to sound stupid, but you said something yesterday about the Armitages having taken another vacation this summer. A few weeks ago, you said. Can you remember exactly when?”

  “Jesus, Gideon. It’s six o’clock in the morning.”

  “Try, Nick.”

  “All right, all right, I’m thinking. It must have been about the same time Hannah went down to Santa Inez. We all missed Vicky’s pecs at the club for a few days right about then. Does that help?”

  Gideon took a deep breath and told himself he was being an ass. “Yeah. It helps. Thanks, Nick.”

  “Hey, Gideon? What’s going on?” The sleepiness vanished from Nick’s voice.

  “Nothing. I’m heading for Santa Inez myself in a few minutes.”

  “Is that right? What a surprise.” Nick sounded anything but surprised. “If you’re going down there to use sweet reason on my sister, I think I should warn you that she’s been acting a little strange lately. Not entirely sweet or reasonable. Something’s bothering her about those damn journals.”

  “I’m going to try to convince her that she should be more bothered by me than Nord’s journals.”

  “Good luck. Why did you want to know about the Armitages’ vacation?”

  Gideon wondered how much to tell him and then decided not to inflict his own irrational fears onto anyone else. There was nothing Nick could do anyway. “It’s not important, Nick. I knew Hannah was upset about the journals and I wondered how long Vicky had been pestering her, that’s all.”

  “But what’s the trip to Mexico got to do with it?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get back from Santa Inez. Go back to bed, Nick.”

  “That’s the most intelligent thing you’ve said so far this morning. By the way, when you see my sister tell her she’d better hurry back if she wants those plants of hers to live.”

  “You’re supposed to water them.”

  “I know but I realized yesterday that I’ve lost her key off my ring. I can’t get into the apartment unless I break the lock. Say, Gideon, about my sister and those journals…”

  Gideon hung up the phone before Jessett could launch into any more questions. Nick could be tenacious when the mood took him. Rather like his sister.

  Two hours later, sitting in his plane seat, Gideon mulled over breakfast as he mulled over the information Nick had given him. Neither breakfast nor information was very palatable. He prodded the scrambled eggs and thought about the motivational power of revenge. It was strong, even stronger than most forms of ambition or desire. No one knew better than Gideon Cage just how far a thirst for revenge could drive a man. There was no reason to think it couldn’t drive a woman just as far.

  He was being fanciful, looking for ghosts where there were none. No, that wasn’t strictly true. There were a couple of ghosts involved in this mess. There was the one of Elizabeth Nord, for instance. And then there was the one of Dear Roddy. Each ghost had a current champion. Vicky and Hannah were both being manipulated by the past.

  The part that put Gideon’s nerves on edge was that Hannah probably wouldn’t understand just how badly Vicky might want to avenge her father. For that matter, Gideon didn’t know himself. But the possibility existed and that alone was enough to fill him with a restless uncertainty. He wouldn’t relax on that score until he was with Hannah. The fact that the Armitages were taking their vacations right about the time Hannah was slipping off to the Caribbean probably meant nothing, but he couldn’t seem to convince his instincts of that.

  Gideon thought again about the island’s crooked roads and Hannah’s tension when she drove. The one thing he tried very hard not to think about was how Hannah’s accident might have occurred a couple of months before.

  In another few hours he would be with her. Then he could stop worrying about her safety and start working on the task of making her understand that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  SHE HAD NEVER driven a jeep before in her life. Hannah had chosen the pink-fringed vehicle without considering that fact. There had been no question in her mind about which rental car to select, though. She had known from the start that she wanted the frivolous-looking jeep. She tossed her luggage and the carefully wrapped Nord journals onto the passenger seat and climbed in. She was determined to master the intricacies of the clutch and gearshift by the time she reached her aunt’s cottage.

  The cliff roads were a different matter. She admitted unashamedly that she missed being a passenger while Gideon fielded the wild taxis and negotiated the narrow roads. There was a cool competence about Gideon that could be very reassuring at times.

  She had no real problems on the way to the beach cottage, however, and by the time she’d parked the jeep Hannah was feeling more confident. She carried her luggage, a sack of groceries, and the journals into the house, making two trips because of her cane. In another couple of weeks she would be able to do without the cane entirely. Her knee felt infinitely better.

  The first night she thought about Gideon a great deal, far more than she’d intended. She knew she associated the cottage with their brief affair and probably always would. Time had stood still for a while there on the island. She might never know that kind of passionate peace again.

  At dawn the next morning, Hannah forced herself to take stock of her situation. She was there to make some crucial decisions, not to relive her fleeting time with Gideon.

  Ahead of her lay the task of making up her mind about what to do with the bomb that had been dropped in her lap. Hannah walked down to the cove thinking about the information locked in the journals she had brought with her. Once the journals were made public they would cause a sensation. The truth this time could not be dismissed as minor carping or the opinions of hostile professionals. Elizabeth Nord had deliberately lied and she, herself, had admitted it.

  But what good would it do to make the information public, Hannah asked herself as she came to a halt on the beach and stood gazing out at the multifaceted water. Scholars would enjoy themselves tearing apart her aunt’s reputation, but would anything really be changed? The myth of the Am
azons was old history now. Debunking it might prove interesting to the academic community, but the real damage would be to her aunt’s stature in the profession. It was up to Hannah to decide whether to allow her aunt’s name to be dragged in the mud. No one else had ever been powerful enough to do it. People such as Roderick Hamilton had tried and failed. It was ironic that Elizabeth Nord was so strong that only she herself could jeopardize her reputation.

  Beyond that issue lay another, more personal one. Hannah fingered the necklace and thought about the woman who had worn it before her. Elizabeth Nord had been a very powerful woman. Hannah wondered if she could ever have that much power. It took guts to boldly create a myth and live it for a lifetime. Hannah looked back at the house and thought of her aunt living there in splendid isolation.

  It would take guts to write the book that would compromise her aunt’s reputation. It occurred to Hannah that her aunt wouldn’t have minded in the least. She would have found the whole thing amusing. There was no question of protecting Elizabeth Nord. Nord didn’t need or want protection. She hadn’t needed it when she was alive and she needed it even less now. In a flash of insight, Hannah knew that if her aunt had been there she would have encouraged her to write the book. The warmth of the necklace seemed to emphasize the truth of that conclusion. None of the women who had worn it had worried about the past. None of them had cared about the opinions of their contemporaries. They were too serenely secure in themselves, too magnificently aloof from the rest of the world.

  No, it wasn’t the prospect of writing the book that made Hannah uneasy. It was the thought of what would happen afterward. Nothing would ever be the same. She knew that with a deep certainty.

  Writing the book wasn’t going to be a single, isolated event. It was an act that would change the course of Hannah’s life. She would be committed after that. It would be an act of will that would forever alter her path. Hannah knew the truth of that with deep intuition. Once started down that road, she would keep going, seeking power and success with the same driving intensity with which others around her sought it. Writing the book would not satisfy her, Hannah knew. She would have to continue, proving to herself and to Vicky Armitage that she was as formidable as her aunt had been.