by Karen Harper
The celebrant began reading a prayer from the book he held. The final words in the ceremony that had legally joined her and Nick rang out as he addressed Ames and his staff who stood in a half circle around them. “Will you, friends of Nicholas and Claire, support and uphold them in their marriage now and in the years to come?”
“We will!” everyone—strangers and enemies all—declared. Did this intelligent-looking judge not at least sense this was all a fake? But if he was Ames’s puppet, it hardly mattered.
“I therefore proclaim that they are husband and wife till death do them part,” he announced with a big smile. “Nicholas, you may kiss your bride.”
He kissed her cheek lightly and whispered for her ears only, “Later.” People applauded. The deed was done. Now they faced a reception, in a place she’d never seen before a few hours ago here in the devil’s lair with his minions. She glanced down at the wedding ring on her finger, a large, emerald-cut diamond with smaller diamonds on the band. It looked more like an engagement ring than a wedding band.
Someone behind her called out, “Happy honeymoon!”
Insane! She was terrified. And she knew there would be no real honeymoon, and certainly no happily-ever-after.
* * *
With his motorbike, Jace waited in the darkness of South Sound beach for a car to emerge from Nightshade. Surely, Nick had met Clayton Ames’s price by now and Claire and Lexi would be sent home. If he could intercept them safely somewhere, he’d fly them home himself. Jace hoped Nick wasn’t hurt by all this, but Claire and Lexi were his first concern. If he could help—yeah, even rescue Nick—he would.
As different as this was, he remembered a night near Ramadi in 2006 when he’d had to bail out of his fighter jet over pitch-black terrain, real die-in-the-desert Iraqi territory. But thank God for his comrades’ motto to leave no man behind, because a Black Hawk chopper saw his flare before the enemy did.
He wished he had a sort of flare as backup now. The hair stood up on the nape of his neck, and he shivered. However this tropical place was different from the desert, the odds were great: no way he’d leave Claire and Lexi behind in enemy hands. But just who was the enemy? This cloak-and-dagger Clayton Ames or Nick himself? Had he set this up to scare and seduce Claire?
He jolted when the driveway gates opened and a car came out; its headlights sliced across the sand near him. But it was driven by an older gray-haired man who appeared to be alone. Praying Claire and Lexi weren’t hidden in the backseat—or even the trunk—he hunkered down and waited, watching the car’s taillights. The vehicle drove only a couple of houses toward George Town, then turned in. Jace toyed with the idea of going after the driver and questioning him. He had to be an ally of Ames’s, but Jace figured he’d better just camp out here.
Some sort of party was going on up on the second-floor balcony, but the chatter wasn’t loud enough to decipher. The noise seemed stilted—jerky at times, a silence followed by forced conversation. At this angle, he couldn’t see people unless they walked right up to the edge of the balcony. He’d seen Nick once, since he was so tall, but he couldn’t spot Claire or certainly Lexi, so were they still inside? Not knowing what was happening was driving him nuts. Could that be a celebration for Lexi’s reunion with Claire? But who were the guests?
Finally, one of the women who had been with Lexi earlier on the beach emerged from the downstairs driveway gate and started to walk back toward town. She was the older woman of the two, the one with silvery hair in a bouncing braid halfway down her back. If she was just a worker at Nightshade, maybe he could pretend to be a passerby and ask her what the party was for. He couldn’t risk alarming her, but he’d love to question her.
He lifted his bike from the sand and, walking it along to keep from making noise, followed her.
6
After the ceremony, Nick stuck tight to Claire and Lexi as the guests mingled, enjoying champagne and food. Lexi was already working on a bowl of strawberry ice cream. He stood with a drink in one hand and his arm around Claire’s waist. She leaned slightly into him. She looked as shell-shocked as he felt.
Silver trays of hot and cold seafood and a decorated two-layer cake adorned the buffet table. He thought the reception was elegant but as bogus as the anti-aging claims of Fresh Dew and Youth Do. As far as he was concerned, this was a party for Ames’s extensive local and permanent staff, mostly, as far as he could tell, bodyguards, accountants and domestics.
He knew none of the guests except Ames. Their celebrant had hit-and-run, so to speak. Just as well, although Nick had been hoping to ferret out from him whether it was easy to live in grand style on Grand Cayman under a phony name. If Ames thought he’d broken Nick’s spirit and made him into a robot who would forget his father’s murder and how Ames toyed with the lives of others, he was dead wrong.
Nick stuck to wine instead of the martinis Ames was drinking at a steady pace. His brain was already on overdrive. He not only had to protect Claire and Lexi, but he wanted to be part of their lives. He always kept an eye on Ames, so last year he’d researched Ames High, Inc.’s products that used the supposed fountain of youth. He’d also done some work on what reputable doctors—not the ones making millions from phony claims—said about the water from the well on a small piece of Marco Island land that Haze had inherited. The site had actually been mentioned in Ponce de León’s sailing log from the sixteenth century. But the water was anti-aging only in that it was fresh and great-tasting from a deep aquifer, and water was good for people. Truth in advertising? No way.
Somehow, some way, he was going to defend Haze, keep his new little family safe, but beat Ames at his own game.
“A toast to the bride and groom,” Ames said, lifting his martini glass. Guests raised crystal goblets of champagne and cut-glass tumblers of stiffer stuff. Nick forced a smile while Claire nodded and stooped to whisper something to Lexi. He wished he could whisper to Claire without all these ears and eyes.
When Claire stood, he put his arm around her waist again and steered her over to look at the cake as an excuse to get away from Ames. He wanted to assure her that, from now on, he was making decisions—he was going to change their hotel room, get tickets to fly them home, assert himself with Ames, even though he’d promised to do his bidding. He wanted to tell her that he valued her, that they would make key choices together. But, you might know, Ames was right behind them.
“That’s a local wedding cake, so it’s a bit different,” he told them, pointing. “It’s more like the consistency of a fruitcake. Well, we all have to learn to like new things, right? It’s called heavy cake here, quite an island delicacy. What’s in it again, Ginger?” he asked the beautiful, chocolate-skinned woman overseeing the buffet table.
“Coconut, sugar, breadfruit, spices. No flour or eggs,” she told them with a slight smile, “but cassava instead to hold it all together. Mr. Kilcorse,” she addressed Ames, “Eleanor felt funny, so she went to her car, at the other house where she works, to get her medicine.”
“Felt funny? She’s not sick, is she?”
Ginger shrugged. “I can cut the cake instead of her.”
“Actually, Mr. Kilcorse,” Nick said, “as nice as this all is, I’d like to take Claire and Lexi back to our hotel to get some rest. I have new responsibilities now, as you know, so we’re going home tomorrow. I’m sure your staff will enjoy the evening even more than we have.”
“Ah, but Lexi’s been having such a good time. And haven’t we all?”
Nick and Ames stared at each other. Claire, God bless her, stood steady by his side, though she’d been trembling earlier. In the heels she wore, she was slightly taller than Ames, and Nick towered over the man. For one moment, he was sure that bothered the bastard, but what a tiny victory.
“Well,” Ames said, as if he’d blinked first in a staring contest, “of course, I understand how hectic this
has all been. And it is your wedding night. Nick, I send you out to take no risks, but to do your duty, as they say. I’m pleased I could stand in for your father tonight. He would have been proud of you too and of your lovely wife and stepdaughter.”
That was almost the last straw. Nick wanted to deck his father’s murderer, the murderer he now worked for and had to find a way to outsmart and stop.
* * *
Jace began to whistle, because he didn’t want to startle the woman from Ames’s mansion who walked ahead of him. When she evidently heard his fast footsteps and turned to look at him in the moonlight, he said, “Hi! Sorry if I startled you. Wow, that’s some party goin’ on up there, isn’t it? How’s a guy going to sleep on the beach with all that noise and those lights?”
“Oh, ya,” she said, starting to walk again. “Mr. Kilcorse’s house.”
Her accent made her sound German. But Mr. Kilcorse’s house? Could he have been watching the wrong mansion? He thought he’d seen which driveway the cab that delivered Claire and Nick had come out of. No, he’d seen Nick up on the balcony so either Ames was using someone else’s house or a different name.
“I thought that was Clayton Ames’s place,” he told her, pushing the motorbike faster to keep up. “I know a guy who works for him,” he added, making things up as he went. “I thought maybe I could get a job too.” He could tell she looked confused, nervous. He didn’t want a scene here or her running back to the house. What if she screamed and people rushed out?
“And I saw a friend of mine up on the balcony too, from the old days, Nick Markwood, so could you just tell me...”
It all happened so fast. She turned and started to run back toward the mansion. He dropped the motorbike and grabbed her arm. Couldn’t let her tell on him but he needed her to tell him what was going on. He was so worried and frustrated, he’d just exploded.
She opened her mouth to scream, but Jace clapped a hard hand over it. He lifted her and pulled her back into the dark space between two buildings about four doors down from the lighted mansion.
“Look, I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her. “Nothing like that. I just want to know what’s going on at Nightshade.”
Her eyes were white and wide in fright. He realized he’d really blown it, but he had to know if Claire and Lexi were all right. If they could leave, he wanted to be waiting back at their hotel to fly them home.
“Mmmph,” she said against his hand, which he loosened and lowered. “I tell you, you let me go. I show you pictures on my phone from the party, you let me go now.”
“All right,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I have to know. I—like I said, I have a friend there.”
He saw for the first time she had a cell phone in her hand. He was lucky she hadn’t called for help. She touched the screen a couple of times, held it up and thrust it at him. The picture was so bright at first it hurt his eyes. He blinked, blinked again.
Claire and Nick stood holding hands under a flowered trellis with Lexi next to Claire. All dressed up. Exchanging rings and vows, it looked like. Till death do us part stuff.
He felt like someone had kicked him in the gut. He had a gun on him. He felt like shooting his way into that balcony party at Nightshade. He might as well be dead. Had they been tricked or had he?
The woman flipped to another picture, another. Same scene. An exchange of rings. Reality. A wedding. Surely, Claire hadn’t known, but at least she had Lexi back. Or was Markwood really behind all this? He knew she felt for the guy.
He heard a man’s voice, close, call “Eleanor? Where are you?”
Jace turned to run for his motorbike out in the street, but someone big tackled him from the darkness. He hit the grass, got a mouthful of it, went for his gun, but couldn’t reach it when another big man stepped on his arm.
“I think he’s a spy,” the woman’s voice said. “Danke, you got my distress call. He was watching the party from the beach, says he knows Nick Markwood, ya.”
The two burly men hauled Jace to his feet. One punched him in the stomach so hard he doubled over and retched. They dragged him to his feet, holding one arm bent painfully up behind his back, and walked him down the street between them.
“Bring his bike,” one man called to the woman. “And don’t go off alone like that. You know the rules and consequences.”
Jace had wanted desperately to get into Ames’s Nightshade, but not this way. Damn, but he was probably going to be the one to suffer consequences for breaking the rules.
* * *
Even though one of Ames’s guards drove the car, Claire was grateful to get away from Nightshade. She still wore her silk wedding dress and the pair of Manolo high heels, no less, outrageously expensive ones, of course. It spooked her that every item of clothing had been her and Lexi’s correct sizes. Had one of Ames’s spies who planted listening devices been in their closets and drawers at home?
“Mommy, I’m tired and my tummy hurts.”
“You didn’t eat anything from the garden with the fountain, did you?”
“No. I don’t eat flowers, but I think they were pretty.”
Claire shuddered. She was grateful to escape Ames’s Nightshade with its weird fish and poison plants. She recalled again the research she had done on deadly nightshade and the mistake she’d made of bringing some in when she presented her paper. She had learned the hard way that merely rubbing against the plant raised pustules on the skin.
“Just too much ice cream and excitement for your tummy then,” she told the child, who was cuddled up between her and Nick on the backseat of the car. “You’ll sleep tonight, and we’ll go home tomorrow.”
“Mr. Nick, will you live with us now? I don’t want to move too far from Aunt Darcy and Jilly.”
“We’ll work everything out, Lexi, promise,” he told her. “We’ll have to explain some things to your family.”
Some things, Claire thought. How much? What could they say? What would Jace say and do when he heard? She could hardly explain all about Ames or that could endanger Darcy’s family. He’d evidently already been spying on them too.
When they got back to the Sand and Sea Club and Ames’s driver left them with a “Best Wishes,” as if they hadn’t heard that enough from strangers tonight, Nick went up to the desk to see if they could change rooms. Claire wasn’t sure what he was going to tell them as they waited for him in the lobby by the Line Up Here for Cemetery Reef Scuba Trip sign. She felt she was underwater right now, looking through a mask, swimming against the current—with Ames’s hungry fish surrounding them. No way was she going into their earlier room with Lexi. Who knew what other surprises awaited them?
Nick, looking a bit relieved for the first time in two days, came over and told them, “I got one just down the hall, a smaller room with one bed, but Lexi can sleep between us or I’ll sleep on the sofa. Anything to get away from hidden cameras and bugs.”
Lexi came alert at that. “Did you have bugs in your room? Ick.”
“Not those kind of bugs,” Nick assured her as he unlocked their first previous room, flicked the light switch and looked around, then gestured to Claire. “Looks the same,” he said.
They scooped up their things and carried the small brown-and-black checkered Vuitton suitcase that carried Lexi’s things—which Claire intended to go through thoroughly in case there was a bug planted there—and changed rooms.
She and Lexi took showers first, then joined Nick out in the room. He was on his laptop. “Leaving orders for a couple of junior lawyers,” he told her. “Some wedding night, huh?” he added, crossing his arms over his chest as Claire hustled Lexi into bed. The child was still holding on to the green stuffed turtle. “I’ll sleep on that couch daybed thing tonight,” he said, gesturing at the navy blue folding sofa along the wall.
Although Claire had thought Lexi was
almost comatose, she piped up, “You know when I said Mr. Ames who is really Mr. Kilcorse or something like that was like a Disney movie, Mommy? Then you said tell you later. Is this later?”
“Yes,” Claire said, darting a look at Nick, who came over to stand by her at the side of the bed. Somehow Lexi had picked up on both names. Claire needed to question her about other things she could have overheard. She intended to help Nick—her husband—somehow defy and defeat Ames. “I guess this is later,” she told Lexi.
“I’d like to hear about that too,” Nick said. “Anything you can remember about things you saw or thought when you were at Nightshade, you just tell us.”
“Okay. I think Mr. Ames has two names like in that Disney movie. Did you see Mulan?”
“No,” Nick said. “Sorry I didn’t, but tell us both anyway.”
“Okay. Mommy saw it. Mulan was just a girl like me, but when men had to go to war and her daddy couldn’t fight, she dressed up like a boy and learned to fight. She took his place. She fought the bad people, but she had a little dragon named Mushu to help her. I have this turtle, so he’s like my dragon. Mommy, if you and Mr. Nick have to fight bad people, I will help you. I think you are both afraid of something, and I will help you even if I have to change my name and what I look like—even where I live—I will help you.”
Claire collapsed to her knees in tears, bending over the bed and hugging her daughter. Nick knelt too and put his arms around them both, and all three of them held tight.
In that double embrace, for the first time since she’d seen the ransom note, Claire felt, not calm or in control, but courageous. She prayed Jace would understand that this was the way things had to be for now. And her heart skipped a beat to think she really was Mrs. Nicholas Markwood, come hell or high water, and she was praying she wouldn’t have to face either of those.