Tasting Fear

by Shannon McKenna

  That would comfort everyone. Which would earn Duncan big points. He’d take every opportunity to do that. No matter who he inconvenienced.

  Vivi’s shrug was casual, but he read signs of stress in her face, in the nervous movement of her hands, her mouth. The shadow in her eyes. She looked pinched. Like Nell’s face had been, just a couple of days ago. But Nell was looking better now. Rosier, eyes sparkling.

  So pretty. Jesus. It knocked him back. In fact, she was giving him a look of such shining, unmixed approval, he was almost disoriented.

  She grabbed his hand under the table, and his brain went haywire at the contact. His fingers curled around hers, and for a moment, he completely lost the thread of the conversation.

  “…told us about the secret drawer,” Nancy was saying when he tuned in again. “Like the many other things Lucia never told us about.”

  “Secret drawer?” Duncan asked. “In what?”

  Nancy glanced at Nell, Nell gave her an eloquent nod, and Nancy proceeded. “Lucia had a priceless intaglio Renaissance writing table,” she said. “It belonged to her family for the past four hundred years. It was smashed in the second B&E. You do know about our mother, Lucia? What happened? The burglaries, and all the rest of it?” she probed delicately.

  “Yes, Nell told me the story,” he said. “So what’s with the table?”

  “Liam’s been restoring it,” she said. “And he found a secret drawer. You push one of the flowers carved into the back, and a drawer pops out. And it had a letter in it.”

  He waited for the punch line. “And? So? What’s in the letter?”

  Nancy smiled at his impatience. “We don’t know,” she said. “It’s in Italian, and Nell’s the only one of us who speaks Italian.”

  He looked at Nell. “You speak Italian?”

  “And Spanish. And French. And Latin. And ancient Greek,” Vivi piped up, intense pride in her voice. “Our Nell, the linguist.”

  Nell looked embarrassed. “My birth mother was Italian,” she explained. “I learned it from her. And I was in a foster home for a while with a couple of Venezuelan girls. I learned their Spanish before they had a chance to learn English. French was an easy step after that. So it’s not like it’s any big accomplishment.”

  He grunted. “And the Latin and ancient Greek? Sure. No biggie.”

  “Can I see the letter please?” she asked primly.

  Nancy pulled a sheet of lightweight airmail paper out of her purse and passed it to Nell, who scanned it briefly.

  “It’s dated three months ago,” she said, and began to translate.

  Dearest Lucia,

  Perhaps you will refuse even to read this letter. It would be no more than I deserve. Be aware that my silence was not due to lack of sentiment. On the contrary.

  I have given up the search. I accept that I will never find what I seek, and yet possession of the map is still a torment to me. I have no right to destroy it, as it is not mine, and your father paid the highest price a man could pay to keep the hiding place a secret. I wish only to be free of it now. It gives me no peace, and after fifty years of fruitless searching, peace is all I can hope for. Perhaps even that is too much to hope.

  I wish to bring the map back to you. You are the rightful owner. Dispose of it as you think best. I beg you, take this burden from me. Your pure heart and lack of avidity make you its perfect guardian.

  I have a flight reservation that will bring me to JFK Airport on May the 16th, if you will receive me. If you do not wish to see me, or you do not wish to take custody of the map, I will respect your wishes, and you will not hear from me again. I await news from you.

  Marco Barbieri

  Nell put her hand over her mouth. “May sixteenth. The day she died.”

  They all stared down at the letter, chilled. “So he brought this map that day,” Liam said slowly. “And led them straight to Lucia. But they still didn’t find what they were looking for.”

  “But Marco didn’t bring Lucia the treasure itself. Just a map,” Nell said. “The treasure’s still lost. Marco couldn’t find it, and it sounds like he looked really hard. And then he came here, and gets murdered, still unsatisfied. Poor guy.”

  Duncan looked at Liam. “Did you go over that whole table?”

  “Centimeter by centimeter,” the other man replied. “No other secret drawers that I could find. But there’s still the safe. It’s a big question mark. The bad guys haven’t seen it. It was never found or forced, in either of the burglaries. I pulled the safe out and took it to my house.”

  Nancy held her hand up to her throat. “But we can’t open it without all three of the necklaces, according to Lucia’s letter. And the filthy rat-bastard Fiend took mine.”

  “Can’t you force the safe?” Duncan asked.

  Nancy and Liam shook their heads. “It’s a trick design,” Nancy said. “God knows where Lucia found the thing. There’s a warning printed on the top. If you try to open the safe in any way other than the numerical combination, a tiny minibomb explodes and destroys whatever’s inside. Damn good safeguard. Keeps everybody honest.”

  “So we’ll go at it from another direction,” Nell said briskly. “We find out more about Marco Barbieri and whatever he’s been looking for these past fifty years. Maybe someone in Castiglione Sant’Angelo can tell us.”

  “So let’s go to Italy. You can ask them,” Duncan said, impulsively.

  Everyone stared at him, mouths agape.

  “Um, Duncan?” Nell began. “You’re going off the deep end.”

  “No, I’m not.” The fantastic idea was taking hold in his mind, driving everything else out. Castles, frescos, fields of sunflowers, great pasta, thick slabs of Florentine steak, liters of kick-ass red wine. Walking with Nell on his arm through winding cobblestone streets. Her, dressed in a skimpy little sundress with lots of cleavage, getting a tan, eating gelato, getting relaxed. Having fun. Nell, naked in their rumpled hotel room bed, her eyes sultry, satiated. Yeah.

  Nell snorted. “Please. Be reasonable. What about the game? And my summer school students? And your business?”

  “The game will wait,” he said. “The students will live. And I haven’t taken a vacation since I started the business. It’s hard to justify vacations when you’re running your own operation.”

  “Tell me about it,” Vivi said wearily.

  “I cannot afford a trip to Italy,” Nell said, her voice sharpening.

  “So we’ll divide the labor,” he offered. “You do all the ordering in the restaurants, and I wave my credit card around. Sounds fair to me.”

  Vivi laughed with delight. “Sweet. I like your style, Duncan.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a perfect way to get you out of their sights.”

  “Not really,” Liam said quietly. “It’s the first place they’d expect her to go. She’d be noticed there and watched.”

  Duncan was somewhat deflated by that acute observation, but even so, he couldn’t let it go. He tracked with part of his mind, taking in data while they brainstormed about the letter, the safe, Marco, the attackers, the map. The rest of him played with the Italy fantasy, like a dog with a bone. Gnawing it, licking it, loving it.

  Nell began rubbing her eyes at about one-thirty in the morning, and Duncan took her hand. “We should get back, get some sleep,” he told her. “We promised Bruce you’d be at the office tomorrow.”

  She stifled a yawn and smiled her agreement.

  “Give them your new cell phone number,” he reminded her.

  Nancy and Vivi looked at each other, mouths theatrically agape. “A cell phone? Nell? Do our ears deceive us?” Vivi breathed. “No!”

  “Oh, shut up, Viv,” Nell grumbled. “He bullied me into it.”

  “We’ve been trying to bully you for years!” Nancy said, aggrieved.

  Nell scribbled the number twice on a cocktail napkin and ripped it into two pieces, handing one to each sister. Hugs and giggles, jokes and teasing admonitions followed among the three sisters, while
Duncan and Liam eyed each other. Liam’s face was grim.

  “Stay sharp,” he said. “Those fuckers are motivated.”

  Duncan nodded. “I’m on it.”

  “Good.” Liam looked cautiously relieved. “Let us know what your friend in Oregon says. When Vivi’s on the road, we don’t sleep nights.”

  “I hear you.” They shook hands and made their way out.

  Duncan and Nell were silent on the way home. He was so heavy into his Italian-vacation-with-Nell fantasy, it took him by surprise him when she spoke.

  “They liked you,” she said.

  That gave him a rush of pleasure. “How do you figure?”

  “They said so,” she said. “But even if they hadn’t, I could tell, the way they talked about our private problems. Like it was a given that you were part of it. They would never have done that if they didn’t like you.”

  “So I don’t have to worry about being disemboweled?”

  Nell stifled a giggle. “Not for the moment,” she said. “You sure did throw your weight around, though. Your bank account, too.”

  He glanced at her profile. “I’m sorry if that was offensive to you.”

  “It seemed like you were trying to communicate to them that you’ve got money. I think they got the message loud and clear.”

  He took a few seconds to breathe down the surge of anger and frustration. “You’re hung up on the money thing, Nell,” he said. “I was communicating to them that I’m willing and able to protect you. Money is protection, too, whether you like it or not. And they know it. In fact, I didn’t hear anyone objecting to it but you.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Sorry if I’m oversensitive,” she said finally, her voice subdued. “And thanks for making that offer to Vivi, about your friend in Oregon. I hope that works out. She needs a break.”

  “I got that sense, too,” he said. “I’ll get right on it.”

  The silence that followed was an invisible wall between them. She was lost in her thoughts behind it, hidden from him. It made him anxious and lonely. He wanted to break through, get inside.

  He needed more info. More intel. She was so complex, so goddamn much going on in her head. He wanted her exact specs, a manual of her operating systems. He wanted to study her, absorb her. Master her, as if she were a math problem, an insanely complicated puzzle. And she’d have his ass barbecued if he ever said anything like that to her. He had to watch his metaphors with this woman.

  “Talk to me,” he blurted.

  She looked at him, startled out of her reverie. “About what?”

  “About yourself. I want to know more. You’re incredible. Unique.”

  She harrumphed. “Yeah. I’m so unique, I’m practically extinct.”

  He ignored that. “Tell me about your childhood, your mother, your sisters,” he urged. “Tell me anything. I don’t care what.”

  Her big eyes were wary of the need she felt emanating from him, a vibration he could do nothing to hide. “Duncan…”

  “You make me feel so alive. Just…please, Nell. Just tell me how it is to be the way you are.”

  His appeal touched her, and she gave him a tremulous smile. Something relaxed inside him. Excellent. By sheer chance he’d hit upon the exact trick to calm her down. Some judicious pity mongering, a small, tasteful glimpse of desperation, and she’d melted. He hadn’t calculated that strategy, either. It had simply come to him. Instinct.

  Maybe this convoluted emotional shit could be learned, after all.

  Chapter

  9

  The look on his face, that note in his voice, it released the floodgates. Nell talked so much, she embarrassed herself. She told him things she hadn’t let herself think about in years, things she’d pretended to forget. The lonely boarding schools, the bad foster homes. Her mother’s death. And that solitary afternoon in the funeral home, alone with her mother’s coffin.

  The endless, terrible afternoon that still haunted her.

  She had no idea there was so much to say about her childhood, but it tumbled out, charged with raw emotion. She told him about Lucia finding her. About Nancy and Vivi, and discovering that she could have a family after all. She talked about stories, poetry. Her magical refuge.

  Duncan had listened intently. His rapt attention was flattering, but the car clock said it was after three a.m., and she looked up at the street numbers and realized that he’d been driving in big, aimless circles around his neighborhood for the better part of an hour.

  “Why aren’t you going home?” she asked.

  “I wanted to hear you talk.”

  “We could talk at your apartment,” she pointed out.

  “What I want when we get home doesn’t involve much talking.”

  She crossed her legs with a shiver at the sensual promise in his voice. “Well. Be that as it may. I’m about talked out for now.”

  He turned the car at the next block and started back toward his condo. “This morning you told me that you’ve got plans for your life,” he said. “Ambitions. Do those include a man? Or any room for one?”

  She hesitated. There was a peculiar tone in his voice when he asked the loaded question. Something that made her vaguely nervous.

  “You know, Duncan, I’ve babbled for over an hour, but you haven’t volunteered one single thing about your own life,” she said.

  “You’re evading my question.”

  “Why, what a coincidence. You’re evading mine, too.”

  “I asked first,” he said stubbornly. “And? So?”

  She twisted her hands together. “Well, my plan is to finish my thesis, get my doctorate, and find a teaching job. At which point, I guess I will attempt to have a normal life. The Fiend permitting, and all that.”

  “Let me rephrase,” he said softly. “By normal life, do you mean marriage, kids?”

  Nell stared at him. Her heart had started to thud quickly, and her palms felt damp.

  He simply waited.

  Nell stared at the streetlights swooping by. “Of course I dream about love,” she said quietly. “After all those novels and all that poetry, how could I not? But I know better than to take anything for granted. There are no guarantees. I’ll do the best I can. Try to get over my baggage. Hope that I get lucky.” With you was the real ending of that phrase, but her lips and throat trembled too much to say it.

  He was quiet as he pulled into his parking garage and drove down two ramps to his own slot. He parked, killed the engine, and stared at the concrete wall in front of them.

  “You’re special, Nell,” he said. “You should ask for more.”

  Warmth softened her chest. She touched his face with the palm of her hand, and stroked his cheek gently. “So should you, Duncan,” she whispered. “So should you.”

  This was the moment. It could make or break them, if he said the right thing. He looked like he was poised to say it. He covered her hand with his own. She was poised to hear it. She couldn’t move, or breathe.

  Seconds ticked by, stretched to a minute. More. He didn’t say it.

  She turned her gaze away, blushing madly, feeling like an idiot. Here she went again, projecting her silly romantic fantasies onto the unsuspecting man. And him, just bumbling along. No freaking clue.

  She tried to cover her embarrassment. “So? I answered your question. It’s your turn to bare your soul. Let’s hear it.”

  He looked alarmed. “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “You just saw me do it,” she said. “Watch and learn, Duncan.”

  “That’s different.” His voice was defensive. “You’re…you’re you.”

  “Right, and you’re Duncan, and that’s what I’m interested in. Why don’t you start with parents? They’re usually at the bottom of things.”

  He let out an impatient sigh, as if humoring a child. “My mom’s great. She taught elementary school for thirty-five years before she retired. She raised us on her own. She’s a general. Tries to run our lives, and mostly fails, but she’s a pr
etty good sport about it. Usually.”

  “How did she feel about you being a spy?”

  He grunted. “Hated it. She nagged and schemed.”

  “Is that why you quit?”

  His grin flashed. “No. I know how to block and fake. I suit myself.”

  “I’ve noticed,” she murmured. “And your father?”

  His face changed, like a door slamming shut in her face. “I have nothing to say about him.”

  She flinched, took a deep breath, and tried again. “So tell me what there isn’t, instead of what there is,” she suggested.

  He looked baffled. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Silence is as revealing as words,” she said softly. “But you already know that. I can see it in your photos.”

  “Don’t go all poetic on me, Nell,” he warned. “Or I’ll devolve on you. Start to grunt and snort, and scratch my tufts.”

  “Stop being ridiculous, and just tell me about him,” she snapped. “It can’t be worse than my father story. At least you know his name.”

  He looked hunted, scowling down at the steering column. Finally started to speak, but his voice was very flat.

  “He fell in love with a woman who worked for him,” he said. “His accounts manager. Sylvia. She was younger than him and my mother. I was thirteen. Bruce was nine, and Ellie was a newborn. Ellie was Mom’s last-ditch effort to tie Dad to her. Bad idea. Didn’t work.” He shook the memory away with a sharp wave of his hand.

  “I’m sorry, Duncan,” she whispered.

  “He tried to explain it to me before he left. How love was this great force he couldn’t resist. It was just his dick that he couldn’t resist. But his family paid the price.” Duncan shook his head. “He divorced Sylvia seven years later. Traded her in for a younger model. There you go. There’s the power of love for you.”

  The bitter contempt in his voice chilled her. “That’s not love,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not love.”