by Davis Bunn
Taylor restarted the motor and pulled into the night.
“So now I am supposed to trust you with information I have refused to give her own family. Which is not much, I hasten to add. But what I have was shared in confidence.”
Taylor raised his voice against the wind. “You saw the gunfire. I don’t need to tell you the danger she may be facing.”
When the priest did not respond, Taylor shot him a glance. The man watched him intently. Waiting.
“I’m going to find her and make it right.”
“Are you.”
He caught the tone. “I can fix things between us.”
“Can you.”
“We broke up. It happens. We can get back together. She needs me.”
But the father merely observed him, his gaze holding all the answer Taylor needed. Or deserved. He slowed down to where the motor was merely a constant rumble. “If I were in your place, I wouldn’t trust me either.”
The father visibly relaxed. “Honesty. Excellent. After what we have just been through, I can think of nothing more welcome. Do you have any idea who might have been behind the attack on the Revell house?”
“No. Not why, not who. All I can say for certain is that it wasn’t the first.” He related what had happened to him at the Spanish fortress. “Amanda thinks it could be a competitor wanting to take her eye off the work at hand.”
“You disagree?”
“Kirra ran away from something. She chose not to tell her family where she was headed. That sounds like more than a competitor’s scare tactics at work.”
“I agree.” Pellecier scrunched into his seat, pondering the dark night. “You sound to me like a man who is still in love.” He gave Taylor a moment to respond, then finished the thought. “Yet you broke her heart.”
“It isn’t as straightforward as you probably heard.”
“You argued over her faith and your lack.” It was not a question. “She has talked of you quite a lot, you see. I suppose it was her way of ridding herself of what was no longer, of preparing for life with another. But sometimes I wondered.”
The internal pressure made Taylor fight for the breath to say, “Wondered about what?”
“Whether it was her way of keeping your memory alive. She seemed to be searching for some way to forgive the unforgivable.”
“What did you tell her?”
The priest was a long time in replying. “Very little of any use, I am afraid.”
It no longer mattered that he spoke to a total stranger. Or that the words scalded his throat as they emerged. “You know how I became certain her faith was real? Kirra found a desire to do what didn’t come easy. Or naturally. She wanted to be more than she was. She wanted to be better. A better person, a better lover . . .”
Father Pellecier had turned slightly in his seat so that he could study Taylor fully. The man seemed to radiate an intensity, one so great Taylor found himself able to speak thoughts he had scarcely formed inside himself. Taylor continued. “My father ran around. I’ve known it all my life. But I never thought about it until this trip. I remember how he used to slip in the back door sometimes, like an old tomcat who wanted to pretend he hadn’t just vanished on us for a night or a weekend. Once he was gone for a whole week. Then he’d slip back in, and he’d pretend hard as he could that nothing was wrong. He was good looking and he had a great smile and everybody liked him. That’s really all I know about him. Even now people smile when they talk about him. They smile at me and they say I’m just like him. And they wait for me to smile back.”
Father Pellecier responded with the voice of a professional listener, void of judgment, focused both on what was said and on what could never be spoken aloud. “You loved him very much.”
“Yeah. He was a great dad. When he was around.” Up ahead glimmered the lights of Vilano Beach. Taylor released his grip on the wheel long enough to swipe at his face. “The thing is, I am just like him. I wanted the easy times with Kirra. I wanted the goodness she brought to me, but I didn’t want to change. I wanted to be just exactly what I wanted to be, and have that be enough.” He knew he was babbling. He was talking secrets he had never really confessed to himself, and he didn’t care. “Then things got bad. She wanted what I wasn’t able to give her. I wanted . . .”
“You wanted a woman of the world.” He offered the words so calmly Taylor was able to accept them. “You wanted her on your terms.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s . . . anyway, she wouldn’t, you know. So I figured, what the hey, we’re in love, she’s as good as anybody I’ll ever meet, better than I deserve, that’s for sure. So let’s get married. I thought, what more could I do?”
Pellecier gripped the dash as Taylor took the turn and started across the bridge toward the mainland. The lights overhead flashed across them, illuminating far more than the interior of Amanda’s car. “And she turned you down,” the priest said.
“Flat. Wouldn’t even talk about it.”
“Of course. How could she agree to marry someone who refused to share the most important thing in her life?”
“Funny. I thought I was the most important thing.”
“Was she that to you?”
“Sure. Absolutely.”
“So why was it, I wonder, that you could not accept change? You yourself have said you loved this woman. She was vital to your existence. Is that not what you said?” Pellecier leaned in close. “Yet you would not change. That is interesting, yes? Could it perhaps be that something else was more important? Something you did not want to admit even to yourself?”
Tourists taking advantage of night’s relative cool filled the walks up ahead. Taylor spun the car in a tight corner, pulling into the lot behind the fortress. He cut the motor and focused upon the priest. He said the words, but even before they were spoken he recognized how he used them as a shield. What was worse, he knew he had done it many times before. “I loved Kirra.”
“Of course you did. No one is doubting that. But it was a flawed love.”
He tried for scorn but could not quite swing it. “You’re saying there’s perfection in this world?”
The priest was clearly disappointed with his response. “In this world, yes. Of this world, no.” Then he waited.
Taylor saw in the man’s eyes that he was being offered a last chance to justify the gift of trust. “Sir, I don’t know what it is you want me to say. But I can tell you this. The longer I work on this, the more certain I become that I’m not doing this for myself. Not anymore.”
Father Pellecier climbed from the car. He inspected Taylor so long he feared the man would deny him any hope of a lead, simply turn and walk away. Instead the priest said, “I became friends with Kirra during her search of our earliest records. The first settlers were by and large a wealthy lot, granted land titles by the Spanish royalty. The Minorcans arrived about a century later, indentured slaves originally brought to the area around what is now New Smyrna. Ah, I see you did not know that. Yes. But that settlement failed, and the survivors migrated north. They were lured by offers of freedom and land in return for years of bonded servitude. For most it was the best chance they had ever known.
“Were it not for a band of my brethren, the lore of these earliest Europeans would have long been lost. What little we have has survived a multitude of wars, pestilence, starvation, and three hundred years of callous indifference. Only in the past few years have we received funding to begin the research and translation.”
“Which came from the Revell family’s foundation,” Taylor guessed. “Which is why you agreed to see them tonight.”
Father Pellecier fanned vaguely at the night. He would give Taylor only what he chose. “Kirra volunteered to aid in the cataloging process, in return for unrestricted access to all the newly translated documents. I cannot tell you precisely what she was looking for, because I did not choose to ask her myself.”
“I know it had to do with early American herbal remedies and their relationship to medications use
d in Europe.”
“Kirra discovered the existence of a foundation in Europe studying such early remedies. They have become a gathering point for documents long forgotten and thought lost forever.” Then the priest stopped.
The night was too filled with the rawness of Taylor’s heart’s exposure to do more than beg. “A name, Father. Give me a name.”
The priest stared down at Taylor, his gaze as shimmering and unreadable as star-dashed waters. “She turned to faith because of you, my son.”
The notion was so preposterous Taylor shouted his rejection. “That is totally absurd!”
“It is the absolute truth.”
“It can’t be. Didn’t you hear a thing I just said?”
“I have heard everything you spoke and more.”
“Kirra’s religion drove us apart!”
“Perhaps.” The priest only grew more placid in the face of Taylor’s ire. More certain of his course. “But it was a risk she chose to take out of her love for you.”
“That’s insane!”
“No, my son. It was love at its most revealing. Kirra saw into your heart of hearts. She recognized the pain and the rage you carry. And she realized she could not heal these wounds on her own.”
Father Pellecier leaned upon the Porsche’s door and clubbed Taylor with his whispers. “She took the step into faith not for herself. She was too strong and willful to ever admit to such a need. She did it for you. She wanted so much to see you truly healed. She came to the Cross, made broken and alone by her love. Then she tried to show you the way. And how did you respond?”
Taylor’s mouth worked. But the sounds would not come.
“Go to Iona,” Father Pellecier continued, spelling out the name. “Iona is an island off the western coast of Scotland. On it you will find an ecumenical monastery. That word is new to you, yes? Ecumenical means that it holds to no particular denomination. All seekers are welcome, so long as their purpose is true. Ask for Brother Jonah.”
The priest stepped away from the car and signed the cross into the night between them. “Go with God, my son. I will pray that you are successful in all your quests, and for all the right reasons. And when you find her, I pray that she says we both took the proper course this night.”
chapter 8
IN AN EARLIER AND MORE LIGHTHEARTED AGE, Taylor might have described the gift of a new Porsche Cabrio and a hundred thousand dollars as his idea of heaven.
But this particular night he felt a billion years old, petrified to emotionless and laughterless stone. He kept the top down as he raced for Orlando. He tried several radio stations, but neither rock nor jazz nor tunes from somebody else’s past could dispel the interior fog. So he made do with the wind and his own tumbling thoughts.
At two in the morning he stopped for gas and an energy drink. He blasted out of the station and hit 120 on the interstate entrance ramp. Then he slowed, finally accepting that he could not outrun his thoughts any more than he could flee his own skin.
The issue was pure, unfettered, male-driven pride.
The thought shouted at him from all sides. The motor’s roar and the wind’s rush were reformed to echo what he could not escape. He had refused to change, just as the priest had said. Oh yes. Every time Kirra had spoken or pleaded or argued, seeking for him to do what he would rather avoid, this had been his answer: He had raised the shield of arrogance and refused to budge. As though being a man was enough answer. As though he had been born perfect. As though he had the answer to anything. Taylor arrived at Orlando’s international airport an hour before dawn. He took an early breakfast at an all-night Denny’s, then bought a round-trip first-class ticket for the first flight to London, later that morning. The British Airways ticket agent had never heard of Iona. But anyone purchasing a first-class ticket deserved special service. The agent found Iona on a map, then arranged a connecting flight to Glasgow.
Taylor stopped at the rental car counter and announced that he had abandoned their vehicle at a shopping center in Sawgrass. The woman took pity on his tattered state and was mild in both her condemnation and her warning of charges to come. He then called the Hotel Casa Monica, checked out, and ordered them to store his luggage. Afterward Taylor meandered into the airport’s central food court and tanked up on coffee. His entire body felt grainy from the previous two days. Even so, he did not feel a need to sleep as much as a desire to put even more miles between himself and all he had just been forced to confront.
At nine he called the office and was less than pleased to hear Allison’s voice answer the phone. “What are you doing here?”
“Just a second.” She set down the phone, then returned. “Where are you?”
“Allison, shutting the door won’t do us any good if they’ve bugged your office.”
“They’re gone. I told you that. The phone number they gave me was disconnected.”
“They’re not gone. Believe me. They’ve just relocated.”
“Taylor, I’ve got a thousand better ways to spend money than on a vacation I can’t afford.”
He stared at the airport world sweeping by his phone. “I need to ask you something.”
“So ask.”
“When exactly did the goon drop by your office and ask you to spy on me?”
Her guarded tone answered his question before the words were fully formed. “Exactly, oh, six days ago.”
“So it was before you invited me to dinner.”
Allison had a special edge she showed any man who pestered. It had the feel of a blade honed from dry ice. She had never turned it on him. Until now. “That’s what you think?”
“I’m asking because I have to, Allison. They’ve tried to kill me.”
“Who has?”
“Most likely the same team who popped into your office.” When she remained silent, he added, “I’ve always been completely aboveboard with you. That’s what I’m trying to do now.”
“I didn’t invite you over because of them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the guy showing up when it happened?”
“Because I needed the money. You don’t know . . . never mind.”
He looked at the silver case nestled between his feet. “I understand.”
“You can’t possibly.”
“You’ve got a daughter; you’ve got emergencies. I’ve been where you are. Lower. And without a kid. I know what it’s like to be tempted.”
She released a cold torrent of words. “I didn’t want to do it. But I had to. So I said yes. Then I couldn’t. Which made it even worse. I’d never thought of you like that before. I mean, you’re my boss. I spent two days and nights arguing with myself. Then I realized I couldn’t fight it. So I invited you over for dinner. And you were so nice.”
He took a long breath. “I believe you.”
There was a silence, then, “You’ve been attacked?”
“Twice.”
“But why?”
“I can’t say for certain. I’m working on something for the Revell family. I’ll tell you about it when I’m back.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m a little tired.”
The thaw was only partial. “You sound exhausted.”
“Is anything going on I should know about?”
“Gowers has been down here every single day.”
“What?”
“Sometimes twice. Asking about you. Most days he shows up here alone. He pops in, takes a quick look around, asks for you, then whoosh, he’s gone again.”
The company president never entered any lab without his aides, for fear of being cornered and hounded over funding. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Then yesterday he showed up in a real rage. We’re talking one inch from detonation. He said something about the merger being put on hold. He made it sound like it was your fault. Like Revell was only going through with the deal if you delivered.”
“I’m missing something here.”
“What do you want me to d
o?”
He rubbed around the bandaged spot on his head. Taylor had no choice but to trust her. At least for now. “I need you to check out Revell. Try and discover what new products they’re working on. Can you do that and not have it be traced back?”
“I suppose so.” Thinking as she spoke. “I’ll get our resident techies to check for me.”
“Perfect.” The lab rats would cross burning coals in their bare feet if she asked.
“What should I tell them to look for?”
“I need to know what’s new in the corporate pipeline.”
“That’s not much to go on.”
“That’s all I have.” If he rubbed his face any harder, he’d take off skin. But the fatigue refused to relinquish its hold. “I’ll call you when I arrive.”
“Where are you going?”
“I better not say.”
“Taylor—”
“It’ll be a day or so before I make contact. Take care, Allison. And thanks.”
TAYLOR FIRST STOPPED BY THE AIRPORT SHOPS AND bought himself two changes of clothes in garish tourist colors and a nylon duffel. He went back to the Porsche and drove to the first bank whose sign he spotted. He went straight to the duty manager and said he wanted to open an account with cash. The contents of his briefcase was good for a couple of slow blinks. The manager then announced that any cash deposit of more than ten thousand dollars had to be registered with the FDIC. Taylor gave his address care of Amanda Revell, CEO of the Revell Corporation, laying a clear paper trail. The banker accepted this stamp of legality with relief and helped him stack the bills.
Taylor said he was going to England on business for the company and asked how much he could safely carry with him. The banker was too busy keeping score to even look up. England had no limits on cash imports, he replied. So Taylor decided to keep five thousand in cash and fifteen in traveler’s checks. Why so much, he could not say. Maybe because he’d never had that sort of the ready before. He put another ten thousand into a FedEx envelope and addressed it to Allison. He accepted the banker’s handshake and headed back to the airport.