“About the article—” I started.
“Check the Weather Channel. When it’s fifty below in hell, you can proceed with the story,” she told me.
“She loved the idea,” I told Charlie.
Charlie gave me a dubious look. “You sure she approved this?” he asked again. He didn’t trust me, not when there was a woman involved.
“May lightning strike if I’m lying.”
Charlie took ten long steps away from me. “Just a precaution,” he said, glancing skyward.
“All you have to worry about is delivering her a story she’ll love.”
“Something she’ll love so much she won’t have us shot for ignoring her orders?” Charlie asked, lighting a cigarette.
I took the cigarette and pitched it before Charlie could light up. “Those things are gonna kill you, pal,” I warned him again.
Charlie took another from the pack and lit it. “Nope. You’re going to be the death of me,” he predicted.
To say the Duchess and her new husband were not happy to see us would be like saying World War II was a peace disturbance. It was the first time I'd seen O'Halloran since the divorce, and I thought he was going to beat the crap out of me…but they reluctantly agreed to cooperate on the story.
I spent the morning on my own, taking photographs around the excavation site, candid shots of the team at work. I’d never spent any time on an archaeological site before, not even when Lynne and I were married.
I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my brow. I’d never spent enough time with Lynne when she was my wife to have even visited one of her digs. Just one more reminder of my failures as a husband, I thought.
I had one shot left on the roll. I smiled to myself. In spite of Charlie’s and Alberta’s repeated insistence that I switch to the new digital cameras, I still preferred my old cameras and real film.
“You’re a dinosaur, Darcy,” Ally had told me more than once. “Come out of the Jurassic Era and join the rest of us in the twenty-first century.”
I always ignored her, knowing even as I did that she wasn’t going to go away. Unlike the other women in my life, Alberta Ashland was there to stay.
I raised my camera and focused on my real target: Connor, who was standing several yards away, talking to Tim. I adjusted my lens for the shot and took it. As I reloaded, I saw Connor glance in my direction and took aim for another shot. Connor stopped what he was doing and headed toward me.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded as he advanced on me, anger in his eyes.
“Lynne gave me permission to take some photos—”
He ripped the Nikon from my hands. “I didn’t agree to be photographed!” he snapped, yanking the back of the camera open. “I’ll thank you to respect my privacy in the future.”
“Hey!” I tried to stop him, but Connor pulled out the film, exposing it.
He slammed the camera to the ground, then turned and stalked away.
I stared after him for a moment, then reached for my battered camera. Interesting, I thought. Does he know what comes up on film when he’s photographed?
34
Connor
“I think it’s the bubonic plague.”
Lynne was on her knees in the bathroom, hugging the toilet after vomiting for the third time in an hour.
“There haven’t been any cases of bubonic plague in years,” I assured her, wiping her face with a damp cloth, “and you have no fever.”
“You cooked last night,” she remembered.
“What’s that to do with this?” I wanted to know.
“If I’d cooked, this wouldn’t be a surprise,” she said as I helped her back to the bed.
“My poor darling,” I said, kissing her forehead.
“Sure you want to kiss me?” she asked. “I could be contagious.”
“I doubt that, but I’m willing to risk it.” I brushed her hair back off her face. “When did it start?”
“This morning,” she answered. “I’ve been a little queasy for the past week, but no vomiting until now.”
“You’ve been unusually tired,” I remembered. “I’ve noticed you’re a bit tender when I touch you.”
She nodded. “A little, yeah.”
I paused for a moment, then went to the drawer in the nightstand. I took out her appointment calendar and flipped through the pages. “What are you looking for?” she asked.
I showed her a page in the calendar. “Is this your last?” he asked.
“Yes.” She looked up at me. “September? This is November.”
I smiled. “Darlin’, I think you’re pregnant.”
“No.” She didn’t dare hope.
“I told you I’d have you knocked up in no time,” I said, feeling rather pleased with myself. “You had your last period in September. The doctor gave me a clean bill of health in October—we had quite a celebration that night, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“As if I could,” she said with a weak laugh.
“I believe you’re now approximately seven weeks pregnant,” I said confidently.
“I can’t believe it could have happened so easily.”
“Remember with whom you’ve been sharing a bed,” I said with unabashed pride.
“Is it possible?” she wondered aloud.
“There’s one way to find out.” I went into the bathroom and returned with three home pregnancy test kits.
“If I can keep my head out of the toilet long enough to do this,” she said, pulling herself upright again.
I opened one of the packages and read the instructions. “We’ll do all three.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Best two out of three?”
I shrugged. “One could be defective.”
“Okay, let’s do it,” she agreed.
Ten minutes later, my suspicions were confirmed by all three kits.
Lynne was pregnant.
35
Darcy
“So tell me, Duchess—where did we go wrong?” I asked as I reloaded my camera. Lynne and I were walking across the site, Lynne providing explanations of everything I was photographing.
“Where didn’t we go wrong?” she asked in response. “You weren’t in love with me. I wasn’t in love with you. It took me a while to figure that out, but when the reality kicked in, I knew we didn’t have a chance.”
“I loved you,” I insisted. It was true. I loved her as much as I was able to love. “I just didn’t know how to be a husband.”
She looked unconvinced. “Darcy, you didn’t know how to love,” she maintained.
“That may have been true at one time, but—”
She turned to face me. “Let me guess. You’ve had some sort of epiphany and you came here for absolution. Am I right?”
“Partly,” I admitted. “I had a brush with death, Duchess. I was supposed to be on one of those hijacked planes on 9/11. The only reason I wasn’t was because the person making my travel arrangements goofed. I’m alive today because of a mistake.”
She managed a smile. “Still as agnostic as ever, I see.”
“If I was such a bastard, why did you marry me?” I asked then.
“My self-esteem had taken a beating. I’d been used by a man I believed loved me. I was young and foolish and I was rebelling against my father,” she answered frankly. “I needed to feel loved. I met you, and you were damn good at the art of the pursuit. You pushed all the right buttons. But we didn’t love each other, not really. We had no respect for each other’s needs or feelings. We didn’t communicate.”
“You women and your communication issues,” I grumbled, pushing my cap back on my head.
“There’s more to a relationship—and definitely more to a marriage—than just sex,” she reminded me. “Or there should be, anyway.”
“We’re not the same two people we were then,” I said. “We’re older, wiser. We’ve both changed.”
“I’ve changed,” she agreed. “I don’t plan to repeat the m
istakes of the past.”
I was silent for a moment. “Is your new husband the love of your life and all that BS?” I asked.
“Connor and I have a real partnership. We respect each other’s feelings and opinions. We want the same things.” She pulled off her baseball cap. Strands of her hair escaped from the elastic band that held it in a loose ponytail. “He makes me feel like I’m the most important thing in his world.”
I laughed. Actually, it was more a snort than a laugh. “He doesn’t have to work for a living,” I pointed out.
She shook her head. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
That was true. I didn’t. “Enlighten me,” I said, frustrated.
“My husband doesn’t have to be with me every moment of every day to show me he loves me,” she said. “He isn’t. But when we are together, I know I’m his priority, and he’s mine. Darcy, I’m glad we didn’t make a go of it. If we’d stayed together, I would never have met Connor. I wouldn’t have what I have now.” She hesitated for a moment. “We’re pregnant.”
I was dumbstruck. “Congratulations…I think,” I said. “Duchess, how well do you know him? Really?” There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but didn't know how to ask without sounding insane.
She looked at me. “What kind of question is that?”
“An honest one. You say you didn’t really know me when you married me,” I pointed out. “Do you know him?”
She was defensive. “I know all I need to know.”
I raised my camera for a shot of the cave where the papyri had been found. “You must be happy. He’s giving you the one thing you always wanted.”
“The one thing you didn’t want,” she said, watching me intently.
I lowered my camera and turned to face her again. “I already had two kids who hated me. They still do. I didn’t see any reason to go for the Bad Daddy Trifecta.” I adjusted my lens.
“Whose fault is that?” she asked.
“Mine,” I acknowledged. “I was a lousy father. Which is why I knew it would be a mistake to have any more kids.”
“What I wanted didn’t matter,” she concluded.
“Do you think it would be fair to have a child if one of the parents didn’t really want it?” I asked.
“No.”
“A kid deserves a better father than me.” I took another shot. “Think hubby number two is daddy material?”
“He’ll be a wonderful father.”
“I hope you’re right about him.” But I didn’t believe it for a minute.
“He’s hard to figure out, isn’t he?”
The blonde woman standing behind me had been coming on to me since I arrived at the site. “Who?” I asked, my attention on Connor, who was working on his motorcycle in front of the trailer. He was shirtless, lying on his back on an old blanket.
“The Black Knight, of course.”
I laughed. “Black Knight? I take it you’re not a fan.”
“You take it wrong,” Pam Hill said. “I’m a big fan, actually. I’d give my soul to get him into bed.”
“You’ve tried, then.” I turned my attention back to Connor.
“Definitely. And failed,” she confessed. “From the day he got here, he’s been all about Lynne. He’s never wanted anybody but her, and truth be told, she never wanted anybody but him.”
“How long have they been together?” I had the distinct feeling she wouldn’t have any problem discussing private matters, and I wasn't above taking advantage of that.
“She went to London on business at this time last year and he came back with her. He moved right in with her, and they’ve been together ever since.”
“They lived together?” I asked, surprised. She wouldn't even have sex with me until we were married.
“Surprised the rest of us, too,” Pam said. “Lynne comes off as kind of a prude—but then, I guess I don’t have to tell you that.”
I didn’t answer. I continued to watch Connor. Pam may have been willing to talk, but I was keeping what little I knew to myself. “What do you know about him?” I asked. “Where he’s from, what he did before he came here, you know?”
Pam thought about it. “Not much,” she said. “That’s how he came to be called the Black Knight. He’s our mysterious savior.”
“Savior?”
She nodded. “We’d lost our funding. Tim had prepared us for what he thought to be the inevitable,” she recalled. “We were about to pack it in. We all expected to be out of here by Christmas—then along comes the mysterious Connor Mackenzie with a guarantee of funding for the next five years. He dresses like a bum, but I hear his family owns half of Britain. The affluent half.”
“He’s paying the bills?”
“Yep,” Pam said. “From the day he came, everything changed.”
“How so?”
“He doesn’t socialize. We’d see him at the site a couple of days a week, but never socially, and he monopolized Lynne from the day he arrived.” She paused. “We used to all get together and go into Taba at least once a week for dinner or something. She stopped joining us. When she was done for the day, she’d go off to the trailer and none of us saw her again until the next morning. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out why. And now they’re married and having a baby.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“He doesn’t seem like father material to me, but he sure didn’t waste any time knocking her up,” Pam observed.
“Lynne’s always wanted kids,” I said, still watching Connor.
“Hey, why are we wasting time talking about them?” she asked, her tone suddenly upbeat. “I’ve got a place near Taba….
36
Connor
I had doubts.
I wanted to give Lynne the one thing she had always wanted. I wanted to have children with her. But I now found myself wondering if I was ready to be a father, if I was ready to share my wife with anyone, even my own child.
I’d been a loner for most of my life, unwilling to love for fear of being hurt, of losing that person as I’d lost my mother. Now that I had Lynne, I wanted to keep her to myself, at least for a while. I hadn’t expected her to get pregnant so quickly, and now that she was, I didn’t know how I really felt about it.
I lay beside her, watching her sleep, feeling emotions so powerful I couldn’t put it into words if I had to. And something else, something that made no sense—fear, a deep, bone-chilling fear.
“Take your child’s mother and go to Christ’s church.”
I closed my eyes tightly, as if by doing so I could shut out the voices. Leave me alone.
“Take her now. Go to Christ’s church, and you will find a man there who will provide sanctuary.”
This is crazy. What church? Where?
“Take her to Christ’s church. The dragon waits to devour the child as it emerges from the womb.”
Dragon? What kind of nonsense is this?
“The dragon knows she is with child. He lies in wait. You must take her to the sanctuary now, before it’s too late.”
I got out of bed and dressed as I hurried down the hallway to the door. I went outside and started walking without a clear destination in mind. I needed to get away, to think. I needed to take the voices into the desert so they—I—would not disturb my wife.
I didn’t realize at the time that I was being watched…
37
Darcy
While waiting for our flight to be called, I took the photographs from my portfolio and studied them. I still couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I’d followed Mackenzie into the desert, used high-speed film to photograph him in the darkness, and the effect had been even more startling than the photographs I’d taken in Israel. The Lord of the Geeks stood there in the desert, facing away from the camera, staring into the night…and there, at his side, two ghostly figures, sentinels, it seemed, guarding him.
“You’re becoming obsessed,” Charlie warned me. “What were you doing out there so late, anyway? We
re you by any chance looking for trouble?”
“I was looking for answers,” I said.
“Right.” Charlie attempted to turn his attention back to his newspaper, but I wouldn’t let it go. I was absolutely convinced I was onto something.
“It’s no film flaw, no double exposure,” I said, tracing the images with my fingertips. “It’s not a defect. There’s something going on with this guy that I can’t explain.”
“I can explain it,” Charlie said, checking his watch. “You’ve finally lost it.”
“Look at this, Charlie.” I pushed the photo at him. “Look at this and tell me you don’t see something strange here.”
Charlie pushed it back at me. “Yeah, I see something, pal,” I acknowledged. “Anybody who looks at it is going to see something there. The eye plays tricks on us when this shit happens. It’s like looking at clouds and seeing animals or whatever. We see what we want to see. You want to see ghosts, you see ghosts.”
“Have you ever known me to be irrational?” I asked.
Charlie thought about it. “No,” he said slowly.
“Have I ever been a believer in spooks?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Then why do you suppose I’m seeing this shit now?” I challenged.
“Jealousy?”
“Come on, Charlie—Duchess and I went our separate ways a long time ago,” I said, slipping the photos back into my portfolio when our flight was called. “If I’d wanted to get back with her, I would have gone after her when she left me.”
We got in line to board. “So what is this all about, if not to get your ex back?” Charlie asked.
“I’m worried about her safety,” I confessed.
Charlie’s laugh came out like a snort. “Worried about her?”
Chasing the Wind Page 14