by Amanda Quick
Nick stopped talking.
“Obviously you got out of his way,” Vivian finished quietly.
“At the last possible second. He went over the edge.”
Vivian took a deep breath. “That was not your fault.”
Nick was silent for a long moment. “Depends on how you look at it.”
“Is this where you tell me you knew he would probably go over the edge if you managed to make him charge you?”
“I was a matador waving a red cape at a bull,” Nick said, speaking very softly now.
“Wrong analogy,” Vivian said. “One can and should feel sorry for the bull. It’s just a beast that is following its instinct. I would hope you don’t feel any sympathy for Fulton Gage.”
“No. But like the matador I knew what I was doing. What does that make me?”
“A man who did what he had to do to save a woman’s life. Sounds to me like you used words—the only weapons you had—to defeat a man who was armed with a pistol and a knife.”
Nick did not respond. His hand rested on Rex’s back.
“But a man died because of your words,” Vivian continued.
“I still dream about it. And my dreams are . . . vivid.”
“Nightmares.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t get inside your nightmares to examine them, but do you think it’s possible the reason they haunt you isn’t because an evil, violent, obsessed man died but that you almost failed to save Patricia?”
Nick’s jaw tightened. He watched her through slightly narrowed eyes. “I miscalculated. And because I miscalculated she nearly died.”
“And what makes it even worse is that if she had died it would have been because she had been trying to save you.”
Nick’s smile was grim. “I told you it was complicated.”
Vivian felt as if she were walking across a very narrow bridge above deep and treacherous currents.
She cleared her throat. “I can’t help but notice that after Gage was dead, you and Patricia did not get married for real.”
“No,” Nick said. “We didn’t get married for real.”
It was obvious from the ice in his voice that the subject was closed. But Vivian suddenly understood.
“Whatever happened up on that roof scared the hell out of Patricia, didn’t it?” she said before she could stop herself. “Afterward she was frightened of you.”
Nick’s mouth curved in a faint, cold smile. “Terrified.”
“She married you because she sensed that you could protect her, but when you actually did save her life the violence unnerved her.”
“Something like that, yes. She was—is—very fragile. Delicate.”
“Got it. I’m not fragile or delicate. In the past month two people have tried to murder me. One is dead, which suits me just fine. And I can tell you right now that if you succeed in stopping the other guy, I’m not going to be the least bit frightened of you.”
Nick’s eyes warmed a little. “No?”
“No. In fact, I will buy you a drink.”
“Deal.”
She studied him for a long moment. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think a marriage between the two of you would have been a happy union. At least, not for long.”
That comment evidently caught him off guard. “What makes you say that?”
He did not seem offended or defensive. Simply interested.
“I have a feeling that, sooner or later, you both would have felt trapped in your roles. You would have become frustrated trying to keep your armor endlessly polished. Sooner or later the pressure to be the perfect princess, to always appear delicate and in need of being saved, would have made Patricia resentful. The parts you each chose to play would have made it difficult for the two of you to reveal your inner secrets to each other.”
“You may be right. I hadn’t considered things in that light. You are a rather frightening woman, Vivian.”
She sighed. “You are not the first man to inform me of that, although most of the others have put it somewhat more diplomatically.”
“Is that the real reason you’ve never married?” he asked.
“Apparently. My mother and my sister have both informed me on more than one occasion that I have a bad habit of scaring off any man who takes a serious personal interest in me. One of the reasons I liked dating Hamilton Merrick was because he wasn’t terribly curious about me. We had fun together and that was enough for both of us. And then Hamilton had to go and spoil things by asking me to marry him.”
“Maybe he cared more about you than you did about him.”
“Nope.”
Nick smiled. “Just to be clear, when I said you were a frightening woman I was making an objective observation. I was not stating my personal feelings.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“You don’t scare me, Vivian Brazier.”
“Give me time.”
Chapter 18
Last time I saw you, Uncle Pete, you were checking in to Dr. Presswood’s Health Spa for another try at treating the insomnia and the fever dreams,” Nick said. “How did it go?”
“About how you’d expect.” Pete Sundridge snorted and settled deeper into one of the wicker chairs. “Dr. Presswood turned out to be another fraud.”
“I told you that before you signed the check.”
Pete glared. “Don’t need you saying you told me so.”
Peter Sundridge had shown up at the front door of the villa a few minutes earlier. He had been dressed as a hotel gardener and escorted to the room by a hotel security guard.
It was easy to mistake Pete Sundridge for a shady character. He could have played a gunfighter in a Hollywood Western. Lean and tough, even in middle age, he had the eyes of a man who did battle with demons on a nightly basis. Each new dawn was a small, personal victory.
Nick understood. He and Pete were both direct descendants of Arden Sundridge, who had headed west in the late eighteen hundreds seeking escape from the fever dreams that constituted the family curse. Arden had started out prospecting for gold but quickly realized that the real money lay in the business of supplying the miners with the provisions they required to chase their fantasies. His next insight had been the understanding that, in the West, water would always be infinitely more valuable than gold. He had begun buying land that could support crops and livestock.
The Sundridges had never had serious problems when it came to making money. They had a talent for it, a true gift for taking calculated risks.
It was the nightmares that caused trouble.
All of the Sundridges experienced startlingly vivid dreams occasionally but, according to family lore and Nick’s own personal research, the curse of frequent, dramatic fever dreams struck hard only once or twice in each generation. He and Pete were the most recent examples.
Pete had chased quack cures for years. Nick had searched for answers in old books and the private journals of others who had suffered from similar afflictions.
The interesting thing, Nick concluded, was that it had been a long time since his uncle had appeared as cheerful and as enthusiastic as he did today. Going back to work for Luther Pell had been good for Pete.
“When it comes to frauds, it’s not like you’ve got any room to talk,” Pete continued. “Look at you, another fake marriage. That makes two in a row. You know, if you keep this up, it’s going to be impossible to keep a lid on the rumors.”
Nick glanced uneasily at the open doors of the villa. A short time ago Vivian had disappeared inside to get another pitcher of iced tea. She would return at any moment.
“What rumors?” he asked, careful to lower his voice.
“The ones about your annulment, of course.” Pete snorted again. “You know damn well there was talk. People wondered if maybe you hadn’t been able to be a real husban
d to Patricia. The fact that you haven’t shown much interest in women in the past year hasn’t helped matters.”
“Uncle Pete, we’ve had this conversation. I told you to stop worrying about my personal life.”
“What personal life? That’s the problem. You haven’t got one.” Pete paused. A speculative gleam appeared in his eyes. “At least not until now.”
“There was no wedding this time so there won’t be any legalities to untangle when it’s over. Miss Brazier and I are here under strictly false pretenses. Everything about our relationship is fake. In case you didn’t notice, there are two bedrooms in this particular villa. We are using both of them. I’m on a job.”
“Uh-huh.” Pete studied the entrance of the villa. “An interesting woman, your Miss Brazier. Nothing like your last fake wife.”
“She’s not my Miss Brazier,” Nick said. He was startled by the wistful sensation that whispered through him. “She’s a client. You’re the one who told Luther Pell that Vivian needs a bodyguard.”
Pete’s gunfighter eyes narrowed a little. “It’s true. Someone’s after her.”
“Given that someone tried to kill her last night, I’m inclined to believe you. Have you made any more progress decoding those poems?”
“Some. Nothing that points to the identity of the assassin or the person who hired him to kill Miss Brazier, though.”
“You’re sure the killer is a man?”
Pete shook his head. “I can’t even be certain of that.” He opened the briefcase at his feet and took out a notebook. “Take a look at some of the unencrypted poems, compare them to the encrypted version, and see what you think. Far as I can tell, the victims were all standing in the way of something someone else wanted—money, an inheritance, control of a company. About the only other thing I noticed is that, in addition to taking a month for each of what he calls his commissions, the Poet usually takes a break between murders. About three months.”
“The Poet?”
“That’s what Luther and I are calling him until we get a proper name.”
Nick opened the notebook and looked at the latest entries. “Huh.”
“What?”
“He targeted Vivian almost immediately after he completed the previous commission. He didn’t take the usual three months off.”
“Right.”
“So something made him change his pattern.”
“Luther and I agree but we can’t figure out what might have caused him to do that.”
Nick thought for a moment. “If the murders are more than just a business for him, if he truly likes the process of stalking and killing another human being—”
“He does.” Pete grunted. “Far as I can tell, he gets a real thrill out of his damned commissions. Gets depressed when they end.”
“He’s addicted to killing.”
“Yep.”
“In that case the change in the pattern may indicate that he’s losing control of the addiction. He needs more and more of the drug. Or maybe he suffered some sort of psychotic break.”
“He’s already broken,” Pete said. “Probably doesn’t pay to try to analyze him.”
“True.” Nick closed the notebook. “I’ll take a look at your transcript later and see if anything else stands out.”
“You do that. I’ve got a talent for code breaking but I’m not nearly as insightful as you are when it comes to figuring out how the bad guys think.”
Nick looked at him. “You’re getting a kick out of working with Pell again, aren’t you?”
“It’s been a while since I got to do the one thing I do best. The encryption business hasn’t been good since the government closed down the Black Chamber and then went after Luther Pell’s department and fired his team. Idiots.”
Nick raised a brow. “Pell’s team?”
“’Course not. I was talking about those damn bureaucrats back in D.C. After the War they figured that they didn’t need spies and encryption people anymore. What was it Henry Stimson said?”
“According to the legend it was something to the effect that gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.”
“What hogwash.” Pete heaved a heavy sigh. “Well, those fools back in Washington will soon be scrambling to rebuild their spy apparatus. Everyone can see what’s coming.”
“War.”
“Yep.” Pete stretched out his legs and contemplated the tips of his shoes. “Pell tells me he’s running his own private version of what he used to do when he handled the old Accounting Department. Calls it Failure Analysis, Incorporated. Does contract work.”
“Is that right? Thought he owned a nightclub.”
“Guess you could say Failure Analysis is a sideline of his. He doesn’t advertise it, that’s for damn sure.”
“How does he get his clients?”
“Same way you do,” Pete said. “Word of mouth. From what he told me it sounds like he’s doing occasional consulting work for some of the same people who fired him and his team. He also does jobs for the FBI. He handles investigations that are too sensitive or too damn hot for a government agency or the Bureau. You know how it is. That sort don’t like to get their hands dirty, especially if things go wrong and the cases blow up and land on the front pages.”
Nick smiled. “Sounds like Mr. Pell has created a nice little market for himself. Smart.”
Pete peered at him. “Pell appreciates people like us, Nick. People with certain talents.”
“In our family we don’t call what you and I have a talent. It’s a curse, remember? That’s why you’re still wasting money on every fraud and charlatan who promises a quick fix for the nightmares.”
“Haven’t had any nightmares since I went back to work for Pell. Just the fever dreams that I can control. Feels good.”
“About the fever dreams—” Nick paused and lowered his voice. “I may have found a book with some answers.”
Pete’s expression sharpened. “Yeah?”
“I came across it in an antiquarian bookshop. It’s the journal of a man named Caleb Jones. It was written in the late eighteen hundreds. He was a private investigator who lived in London. He evidently took the existence of what he called psychical talents as a given.”
“Psychical talents?”
“We’d call them paranormal abilities today.”
“Damn it, we’re not a couple of frauds pretending to have psychic powers.”
“What I’m getting at here is that his way of solving a case sounds like a version of the Sundridge family curse. But he figured out how to control the visions, at least to some extent.”
“Booze? Drugs?”
“No. Meditation.”
“Bah. I tried that. Spent good money on a quack who promised to teach me how to meditate. Every time I tried it the nightmares got worse.”
“I know—I’ve wasted some money that way, too. But this technique is a little different. Jones writes that our abilities are actually a kind of intuition. The trick is to control it.”
There was cautious interest in Pete’s eyes now. “You’re sure this Jones character wasn’t one of those charlatans who claims to be able to read minds and see the future?”
“All I can tell you is that it seems to be working for me.”
“But you still get the fever dreams?”
“Yes. The difference is that I have fairly good control over them. I can go into one and out at will.”
“Yeah?” Pete looked skeptical. “How’s that work?”
“I line up the things I want to analyze and then I go into a self-induced trance.”
“You hypnotize yourself?”
“Maybe. I think so. But I control the trance.”
Pete squinted, still dubious. He snapped his fingers. “The answers pop up just like that?”
“No, what pops up, assuming I have en
ough information going into the trance, is the right question, the one I should be asking.”
Pete nodded in a knowing way. “Ask the right question and the answer is a hell of a lot easier to figure out.”
“Yes.”
Pete studied the entrance of the villa. “How does Miss Brazier feel about your new way of dreaming?”
“She doesn’t know exactly what I do or how I do it.”
“Think she could handle it if she saw you coming out of a dream?”
“She’s not Patricia.”
“But you don’t know how she would react?”
“No,” Nick admitted.
“Best not put her to the test, then. Miss Brazier has reason enough to be worried at the moment. You don’t want to scare her, leastways not until after we figure out who’s trying to kill her.”
Vivian walked out onto the patio. “I heard something about scaring me. I assume you’re talking about the assassin?”
“Sort of,” Pete said. “But don’t you worry. Nick will take good care of you.”
“I know,” Vivian said. She sat down and crossed her legs. “When do I get to meet the mysterious Luther Pell?”
“Pell thinks it’s better if he isn’t seen with you and Nick until we have a better idea of what’s going on,” Pete said. “No one knows me. I’m just a gardener who came into the hotel through the service entrance.”
“So we sit here in this very nice gilded cage and wait for the killer to come around and introduce himself?” Vivian asked.
“Doubt if we’ll have to wait much longer,” Pete said. “The Poet’s on a tight schedule.”
Vivian shuddered. “Thanks for the reminder. I think we should mess up his precious schedule. We need to do something to make him show his hand.”
“We have done something to put him off balance,” Nick said. “We moved to Burning Cove. Trust me, that will throw him for a while. It’s going to take him a day or two to find us, assuming he knows what he’s doing. Meanwhile, I need the time to study his poems and you need to get those fire scene photos developed.”
“I’ll require a darkroom,” Vivian said. “The local newspaper will have one but I doubt if the editor would let me use it. I might be able to find a camera shop that would let me rent space and equipment.”