Death is Forever

by Elizabeth Lowell

  The savage irony beneath the surface of Cole’s words made Erin uneasy. She sensed he was lumping her with her grandmother and Lai and Eve, women who had betrayed the men who loved them.

  But Cole doesn’t love me, so the comparison doesn’t apply. Besides, I wasn’t the one who was stirring through old ashes looking for sparks.

  He made a sound of surprise, slanted the photo to catch the light better, and peered at a corner through the loupe.

  “Find something?” she asked.

  “They were camping. There’s a pack saddle and dry goods in the shade of one of the distant trees. Can’t see a waterhole or anything like the kind of plants a waterhole would support.”

  “Maybe they carried their own water.”

  “Doubt it. Water is heavy and horses need a lot. You reach the point of diminishing returns real fast.”

  She watched him study the photo with an intensity that was almost tangible. It tempted her to grab a camera and take a portrait of him.

  Instead, she reached for the coffee and scones he’d brought from the kitchen. As she ate, she thumbed idly through the pages of “Chunder from Down Under.” When she remembered what the title meant, she grimaced. “Vomit from Australia.” Then she thought how diamonds came to the surface in a violent rush of magma from the depths of the earth.

  “Did Abe have a sense of humor?” she asked.

  “After a fashion. Why?”

  “Would it have amused him to think of diamonds as a kind of cosmic vomit?”

  Black eyebrows went up. He turned the full force of his attention on her, making her feel like she’d just been pinned by a megawatt searchlight.

  “Yes,” Cole said. “Any other thoughts?”

  She hesitated, then pointed to the photo where Bridget McQueen stood on the windy rise. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but those rocks look kind of like black swans to me.”

  For an instant he was motionless. Then he picked up the photo and his loupe.

  “No,” she said. “Not that way. Put down the loupe and let your eyes kind of go unfocused.”

  “Like I was drunk?” he asked dryly.

  “Why not? Abe seemed to spend most of his time soused to his widow’s peak.”

  After a few moments Cole said, “It’s possible those are swans, but the same probably could be said of any ridge capped by lumps of eroded limestone that had turned dark.”

  “But this isn’t just any ridge. This is the ridge where Bridget McQueen stood and smiled at the man who was to become her husband, while Abe stood to one side, thinking she was his.”

  “McQueen…Queen of Lies.” Cole frowned. “It fits, but Abe didn’t know diamonds from quartz in those days.”

  “Would you say he was obsessed with my grandmother?”

  “Probably. For revenge, if nothing else. A man who’s been used like that wants his pound of flesh and then some.”

  Erin looked at the picture but it was Lai she saw, Lai of the flawless features and feline body.

  Revenge could easily be an extension of betrayed love.

  She glanced up quickly, wanting to ask Cole if it was revenge and hatred that bound him to Lai rather than love. But that would have been the kind of personal question Erin had declared off limits.

  “Isn’t it possible,” she said carefully, looking only at the photos, “that Abe went back to this place many times, as a kind of perverse shrine?”

  “It’s more than possible. It would have been just like him to go there, drink, remember, and rage away the days until he was too spent to care about anything.”

  She barely kept herself from asking Cole if he had his own private shrine of betrayal and rage.

  “How many brothers and sisters does your father have?” Cole asked absently.

  She blinked. “None. He’s an only child.”

  “If we’re right about Bridget and Abe, you realize what it means, don’t you?” Before Erin could speak, Cole quoted from the verses that had accompanied the diamonds. “‘Then come to my land/Grandchild of deceit/Blood of my blood/Bone of my bone….’” Colelooked straight at her. “You’re Abe’s granddaughter, not his great-niece. You’re the ‘Descendant of deceit.’”

  “Charming,” she said, but her tone said the opposite. “Just what I always wanted, an ancestor who was certifiable.”

  Cole smiled crookedly. “Don’t worry. If there were any bad genes, they gave your father a pass. He’s as hardheaded and tightly wrapped as they come.”

  She started searching through the poem once more. “‘Find it if you can,/If you dare to go/Where the dark swan floats/Over a dead sea’s bones….’ Well, that’s clearenough,” she muttered. “But the next part is beyond me.”

  “Want me to explain it again?” he offered.

  “Pass,” she said quickly. “I learned enough yesterday about Aussie sexual slang to last a lifetime.”

  “You asked.”

  “And you answered.” She grimaced. “Talk about reducing something to its logical absurdity…. On the other hand, I have to admit that the man had a knack for double and triple meanings. Look at the title. It can be read as a comment on the poetry, as a comment on how diamonds are formed, and as a comment on diamonds themselves. Not bad. Not pretty, mind you, but not stupid.”

  Cole waited, watching her long, slender fingers tracing over the poetry. But she wasn’t reading. Her eyes were unfocused. He sensed the same intense concentration in her that she normally reserved for photography—or making love.

  “Are you sure there aren’t any caves on the station or the mineral claims?” she asked finally.

  “None that I know of.”

  She sighed. “Well, it was a nice idea.”

  “What was?”

  “If there were caves or passages through the dead sea’s bones, and if you had Abe’s warped view of life, you might see a man’s penetration of a cave in sexual terms. As for seeing the cave in feminine terms, Mother Earth is a common metaphor.”

  Cole shot her a surprised look.

  “I was an English major in college,” she said. “Words were my passion. Then I discovered photography. Anyway, Abe was supposed to be some kind of literary scholar, wasn’t he?”

  “A good one, when he was sober. He used to recite Milton and Pope to me while we drank.”

  “Poor baby.”

  “Would you believe I liked it? He had an amazing voice.”

  Erin looked at Cole and realized that she did believe it. He was a man of unpredictable interests.

  “But there’s a problem with your interpretation of the poetry,” he continued. “Several, actually.”

  “What?”

  “No caves.”

  “We just have to find one.”

  “Right,” he said dryly. “That leaves Abe.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “‘Crazy bloke/Drank holy’ pretty well describes him.”

  “Wasn’t he ever sober?”

  “Yes. That’s what I’m worried about. Remember the last lines of the poetry in the will?”

  Erin shook her head and started searching through the papers in front of her.

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “‘Goodbye, my Queen of Lies./And I am the King.’ This whole thing could be Abe’s gigantic joke on the world.”

  “But the diamonds are real.”

  “As real as death. ‘Secrets blacker than death/And truth it’s death to speak./But I will speak to you…child of rue.’” Cole’s mouth turned down. “It’s you he’s speaking to, Erin. ‘Child of deceit/Cleave unto me./My grave, my bones,/Hear them moan.’ It’s you he’s offering death.”

  “You should have been an English major. You’re reading more into the lines than I am.” She looked at the watch on his wrist. “How much time before we go prospecting again?”

  There was an electric silence before Cole accepted the change of subject. “I’ll go run up the chopper.”

  He turned and went toward the helicopter without another word about de
ath and poetry.

  34

  Abe’s station

  Cole checked out the helicopter and started it up. The engine ripped to life and settled down to running steadily. He waited, listening to the engine.

  It missed a beat, picked up again.

  He checked the gauges. Nothing unusual. He ran the revs up and down and waited.

  Again, the engine missed a beat, then resumed smoothly.

  He sat and listened to the engine’s beat—and the times when it missed. After several minutes he shut down the helicopter and jumped out.

  Erin, who was working on her second cup of coffee, looked up from the photos and poetry in time to see Cole open a panel on the chopper and probe the engine’s innards.

  It wasn’t long before he was coming toward her, holding a round metal cylinder in one big hand. She could tell by his walk and the line of his shoulders that he was angry.

  “This shoots one day all to hell, and probably two,” he said to Erin, holding up the cylinder.

  He looked at the sky, hazed by heat. In a few areas clouds were already forming. It was early for the wet to settle in, but the signs were there. Rain could come at any time, shutting down the possibility of finding Crazy Abe’s mine until the dry returned.

  “Lai,” he snarled.

  She appeared in response to his summons with a speed that told Erin the Chinese woman had been standing just inside the door, waiting or listening or both.

  And Cole had known it.

  “Yes?” Lai asked, looking only at him.

  “Tell Wing to send down three complete sets of fuel filters for the helicopter. I’ll keep the spares with me at all times.”

  Lai nodded and added a phrase in Chinese.

  “Speak English,” he said.

  “But you understand Chinese very well,” she murmured.

  “Erin doesn’t.”

  “Why don’t you teach her as I taught you?”

  The question was simple, but Lai’s voice evoked an image of two lovers endlessly intertwined, teaching and learning things that had nothing to do with language. The same vivid sexuality ran through Lai’s graceful hand, the fingers slightly curled as though to plead or to hold a man’s sex in her palm.

  The implied intimacy of the gesture was so great that Erin looked away.

  “Call your brother,” Cole said in a clipped voice.

  Expressionless, Lai nodded and withdrew into the house.

  “What happened?” Erin asked.

  “Dirty fuel.”

  “What?”

  He unscrewed one end of the filter assembly and pulled out a paper cone. “Feel it.”

  She ran her fingertip over the cone, then rubbed her fingers together. At first she felt nothing but the fuel. Gradually she became aware of a vague, almost gritty texture. She looked into his eyes, silently questioning.

  “You expect some dirt to get into the fuel,” he said. “That’s why you have filters. But it looks like half the grit in the Oscar Range ran through the system.”

  “How did the fuel get that dirty?”

  “I could have left the cap off,” he said neutrally.

  “Not bloody likely.”

  “Thank you.”

  She shrugged. “It’s the truth. You’ve watched that helicopter like a mother hen with one chick.”

  “It was our best chance of finding the mine before the wet. Somebody else knew it and buggered the fuel.”

  “Sabotage?”

  “It’s what I’d do if I was trying to slow somebody down.”

  “Or kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  She shivered at the certainty she saw in his eyes.

  “They’ll try again,” he said flatly. “Walk away from it, Erin. From the mine, from the station, from Australia. Nothing is worth dying for, not even God’s own diamond strike.”

  “The arctic taught me that walking away is another way of dying. I came here to find a new way of being alive. I’m staying.”

  He didn’t hear any doubt in her voice. There wasn’t any in her eyes. Arguing with her would be worse than useless—it would increase the distance between them, making her even more vulnerable to an assassin.

  “Who did it?” Erin asked with a calm she didn’t feel.

  “It could have happened before the fuel was delivered to the station. More likely, somebody did it right here.”

  Without thinking, she turned and looked at the door where Lai had retreated.

  “Possible, but I doubt it,” he said. “Not that Lai wouldn’t kill for her family. She would. Hell, she did. But we’re the Chen family’s best hope of getting a piece of the diamond tiger, and she’ll do whatever her family tells her to do.”

  “Lai killed someone?”

  “She was seven months pregnant when Uncle Li ordered her to abort my child and marry another man, a Chinese man who would solidify the Chen family’s position in Kowloon. She did it and never looked back.”

  Erin opened her mouth, but no words came. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Why? It wasn’t your doing.”

  She simply shook her head, unable to explain why Cole’s past pain was hurting her now. Before she could find words, Lai appeared in the doorway.

  “Wing wishes to speak with you.”

  Cole looked at Erin. “I can’t see you from the radio room. Come with me.”

  Although her eyes widened, without a word she stood and followed him into the stifling rooms of the station house.

  “What else has gone wrong?” Cole asked Wing as soon as he picked up the phone.

  “Jason Street is on his way to the station.”

  Cole raked his fingers through his black hair and made a sound of disgust. “What happened?”

  “We suspect the Americans threw the Australians a bone.”

  “Not good. Street was a lucky prospector before he took up running a mine security business.”

  “There is one welcome factor. Satellite photos don’t show any break in the weather. The monsoons have not materialized yet.”

  “Damn good thing. Prospecting by Rover is a hell of a lot slower than by chopper. Anything else?”

  “No,” Wing said.

  “Think hard, because I won’t be checking in with you tonight,” Cole said. “In fact, I won’t be checking in at all until we find Abe’s mine or until the wet begins, whichever comes first. Erin had an idea I want to follow.”

  “The diamond mine?” Wing said instantly. “Are you close?”

  “Not as close as we were before the fuel was buggered. Go over the files on your men, Wing. At least one of them is cashing two paychecks.”

  “I will look, but it is doubtful. The men were vetted with exquisite care before they were sent. Is it wise for you to be out of contact so long?”

  “Erin won’t abandon the hunt, so I don’t have any choice. We’re going to ground.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t send anyone after us you care about,” Cole cut in. “Understand?”

  He hung up before Wing could answer.

  35

  Kimberley Plateau A day later

  Sunlight and humidity turned the Rover into a four-wheel-drive sauna. Erin and Cole had camped the night before on a nameless patch of land beneath an acacia tree. They had awakened to heat and silence, because they were too far from water for any birds to be about. The Rover had consumed the silence. Now the vehicle was being consumed by the searing day.

  On the flats some speed was possible. Dog Four had been the most productive of Abe’s mines, so there was a road of sorts. Other than slamming on the brakes shortly after dawn to avoid a handful of cows, the ride had been uneventful.

  “After Dog Four, where are we going?” she asked.

  He flicked a sideways glance at her before he returned to watching the road—it had a tendency to vanish among termite mounds and spinifex.

  “Twenty miles beyond Dog Four there’s a place where the station land is joined by a mosaic of Abe’s m
ineral claims,” Cole said. “I’ve never been there. From the looks of the map, nobody else has either. But the satellite photo showed a highlands and what could be a karst drainage pattern. Maybe Bridget’s Hill is there.”

  “What’s a karst drainage pattern?”

  “Water flows underground rather than aboveground. It’s common in heavily eroded limestone areas.”

  “Does that mean caves?”

  “Sometimes.”

  While he spoke, his eyes checked the gauges on the dusty dashboard of the Rover. The electrical system showed a steady charge. The oversized fuel tank was above three-quarters. He wasn’t worried about petrol. With the extra cans he had lashed on the Rover, he had ample fuel to check out the most likely spots for a steep limestone outcropping, with enough gas left over to reach a neighboring station before the wet made the country impassable.

  Right now he was more worried about keeping Erin alive until the wet than about finding a diamond mine. Jason Street’s arrival meant that the Americans were divided about how to handle her legacy, or the rest of the cartel had ganged up and forced Street down Faulkner’s throat, or both. No matter what the reason, it left Erin exposed in a way she was too inexperienced to understand.

  It had been her American government connections that had prevented an outright assassination.

  United we stand, divided we fall.

  They were falling.

  “It’s running a little hot, isn’t it?” Erin asked, seeing Cole’s frown.

  “Not surprising. It’s about a hundred and ten in the sun. Close to the ground, where the engine is, the air is even hotter.” He looked at her. “Don’t worry. The Rover was built to take worse in Africa.”

  “But I wasn’t.” She plucked at her cotton tank top in a gesture that had become as automatic as brushing away the outback’s relentless hordes of flies.

  “I like the way you’re built,” he said. “Sleek, soft, and sweet. How much longer are you going to punish me for something that happened years before I met you?”

  For a moment she didn’t believe what she’d heard. Then she did. The flush on her cheeks deepened even as her heartbeat increased. She was aware of Cole with an intensity that had only increased since she’d refused to share his bed.