Blood of His Fathers (Sinners and Saints)

by Michelle Chambers

  Inspector Forbes drew in a deep breath. “There have been three attempts on your wife’s life since her arrival in the Islands.”

  He picked up a file and threw it across the table toward him. “Fire, pirates and now she’s been shot. Is your wife in danger because of who you are, Mr. McCormack?”

  “Don’t you think I want to find the answers as much as you do?”

  “This is a matter for the police. Let us handle this.”

  Jason pulled his lips to a thin line and then jumped to his feet. “She’s my wife.”

  “And it’s my investigation.”

  “You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

  “And you do?” Inspector Forbes countered. “Your wife has been lucky so far, Mr. McCormack. If you can tell me anything that could help me catch—”

  “I’m sorry, Inspector. I can’t help you.”

  * * * *

  Jason spent the next two days at Jess’ bedside, watching and waiting for some sign she would be all right.

  The doctors had told him the operation had been a success, so why wouldn’t she wake up? The bullet had grazed a rib, and had been removed along with splinters of bone from the impact. But they’d had to revive her twice, bringing her back from the jaws of death. And back to him. It shook him knowing how lucky she’d been. A few inches higher and the bullet would’ve pierced her heart.

  He held her hand in his and stroked her ring finger. The nurse had removed Jess’ wedding ring in case of swelling. He pressed his fingers to his eyes to staunch his tears.

  “Why don’t you find a hotel and go get some rest.”

  Jason looked up at the nurse who’d entered the room.

  “Sleep is an underestimated but vital part of the healing process. And your wife may sleep for a while yet.”

  She gave him a reassuring look.

  “It was touch and go for a while, but she’ll be fine. Bruised for a week or two maybe, but she’ll recover quickly now.”

  Eva had almost succeeded because he’d underestimated his father’s determination and misjudged his own ability. How could he think he could ever outwit his father? He looked at Jess’ sleeping face. He couldn’t let his father win, not this time.

  “At least, go and get some coffee,” the nurse urged. “If there’s any change I’ll call you on your cell phone.”

  Jason relented and allowed the nurse’s attempt at reassurance to persuade him. He’d never suspected he had a romantic bone in his body, but with Jess he wanted the happy ever after. He leaned forward, kissed her and then headed out the door. He crossed the hall to the vending machine. His name cracked through the quiet emptiness and he turned sharply, narrowing his gaze as Drew Mahon stepped from the shadows into the light.

  “What are you doing here?” Jason snapped.

  “Inspector Forbes told me about Jess. How is she?”

  Jason relaxed a little, although he kept his eyes fixed on Drew. “She was lucky. A week or two and she’ll be okay.”

  “Will she?” Drew questioned. “I doubt it with your father doing his best to kill her.”

  “My father has nothing to do with this,” Jason shot back.

  “Give me some credit, McCormack,” Drew sneered. “You may not have told Inspector Forbes the whole truth, but I know your father is behind this. Your wife is sole owner of that plantation at High Rock, and Sean Wright’s half-sister.”

  Jason opened his mouth to respond, but Drew was already moving backward through the empty corridor toward the elevator. A smug smile tugged at his lips as he clearly enjoyed the effect of his tantalizing snippet of knowledge. He tossed a coin which Jason easily caught with one hand.

  “Coffee’s on me, McCormack.”

  Jason followed Drew outside to the hospital’s forecourt. There were plenty of stars in the clear, moonlit sky, but the dazzling neon lamps lining the hospital’s short driveway overshadowed their otherwise natural brilliance. He stared at the brightly lit letters spelling out the hospital’s name.

  “Okay,” he said, turning to Drew. “You’ve got my attention.”

  Drew’s eyes flashed his irritation. “You know what I didn’t understand?” he said. “Your reason for marrying Jess. I mean she hardly fits into your world, does she?”

  “Maybe not in my father’s world, but she fits mine perfectly,” Jason said.

  “But now I do understand,” Drew continued. “I’ve just returned from Cat Island. I met with John Thomas and he had an interesting story to tell about the High Rock legacy. But I guess you already know about that.”

  “I know John Thomas is Jessica’s father. But she won’t accept that, yet. And every McCormack worth his salt knows about High Rock.” He remembered his own father’s scathing words.

  “Does that piece of land mean so much to you that you would resort to using her just to get it back?”

  Jason stiffened and glared at Drew. “I intend nothing of the sort. I want to see the land returned to Jessica and her son. As a matter-of-fact I was the one who told her about her inheritance in the first place. As a favor to Sean.”

  “How magnanimous of you,” Drew retorted. “Although there’s still the fact you married Jess, so you’ll hardly be losing a thing, will you?”

  “If I wanted Jessica to suffer the same fate as her brother I wouldn’t have married her at all.”

  “So, you’re telling me you married Jess to protect her?”

  “Yes, and I’m protecting her now because she is my wife.” Jason felt the stab of satisfaction at the fleeting look of consternation on Drew’s face.

  “And you did this noble deed because—”

  “My father is a man who shuns any kind of publicity and he wouldn’t risk killing Jessica, especially now, since she’s married to me. There would be too many questions, too many coincidences to explain, Certainly if it ever came to light that Jessica is Sean’s sister.”

  “But that’s the irony, isn’t it?” Drew retorted cynically. “Sean fitted into your father’s world and did quite well for himself, yet Jess is a threat to it.”

  Jason shrugged. “I can’t explain that.”

  Drew raked a hand angrily through his hair. “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “You know,” Jason said. “If you forgot your jealousy for a moment you’d see I’m not the enemy here.”

  “Really. And why in hell should I be jealous of you?”

  “Because Jessica is married to me,” he snapped. “And you want her for yourself.”

  Drew snorted derisively. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? Why else would you turn her against me?”

  “Because I don’t like coincidences, Mr. McCormack. And Tom Addison is too much of one to ignore. Especially now since Jess is conveniently married to you—the son of the man under my investigation. And no, I don’t believe in kismet, or fate, or any of that crap.”

  “You knew about Tom,” Jason accused. “And told Jessica.”

  “Yes. She had a right to know about the family she’d married into.”

  “I’m not my father, Detective Inspector Mahon. Is that what you’d have her believe? Is that why you kissed my wife?”

  Both men looked at each other for the longest time, their dislike thinly veiled.

  “She deserves better than you,” Drew said at length.

  “I’ve not lied to her.”

  “But you haven’t told her the truth either. Half-truths to substantiate your lies.”

  “But it’s you who drove her from me and straight into danger, Detective Inspector, with your insinuations and assumptions about me.”

  Jason released a long breath and gazed up at the hospital windows—some lit, some not. “I can’t protect her here.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Drew countered. “You seemed to do a hell of a job with that stiletto.” He shrugged casually under Jason’s questioning gaze. “Inspector Forbes told me—professional courtesy,” he added.

  “Of course he did. What else did Inspector Forbes te
ll you?”

  “That he’s planning to re-open the file on the fire at High Rock. After the attempt on Jess’ life he’s willing to concede that fire may have been started deliberately. Actually, that’s the reason I went to see him tonight. He wanted to check my statement. See whether or not I could tell him anything else that may be of importance.”

  “About me, for example,” Jason suggested.

  “Don’t worry. I kept my suspicions about you to myself.”

  “Now, who’s being magnanimous? Does this mean you no longer suspect me of trying to kill my wife?”

  “It means I reserve judgment until I find out what this is all about. I’m not sure if you’re really protecting Jess or if your father’s using you to get to her. I know he’s a man who moves in the shadows, pulling the strings. The hardest part, however, is proving the hands working the puppets, are his.”

  “Your prejudice is blinding you to something much bigger, Mahon.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know yet, but the week before Sean died he did come to see me. He accused me of stealing Jessica’s inheritance. He even showed me a title deed substantiating it. It’d been signed and attested by my mother—”

  “But?” Drew queried, anticipating the telling conjunction.

  “But the date on the title deed proved my mother couldn’t have signed it.” Jason breathed deeply. “She’d been dead almost a month before.”

  “And—” Drew prompted. “You think your father forged your mother’s signature?”

  “I don’t think, I know.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I’ve been doing a little digging myself, Inspector. Jessica had a step-father, Graham Wright—”

  “I know,” Drew said. “John Thomas told me. Jess’ mother married him after they moved to England.”

  “Graham died on May first, nineteen ninety-six, the same date on the title deed Sean showed me. A month after my mother committed suicide.”

  “You’re telling me your father killed Graham Wright?”

  “Yes.”

  “I read the file. His death was ruled a suicide.”

  “My father’s a man who moves in the shadows, remember?”

  “This doesn’t make any sense. Why kill Graham Wright? What has he got to do with any of this?”

  “Sean found a letter from John Thomas among my father’s papers. It’d been addressed to Jessica’s mother. In the letter John expressed his fear for Jessica’s safety if my father should ever discover Jessica held the power of attorney over the Thomas estate and not him.”

  “John Thomas did mention his half-sister had forged his name on the title deed to High Rock and sold it to your father for a tidy sum. But that would mean whatever transaction took place between your father and Carolyn Roberts back in nineteen ninety would’ve been null and void because she’d forged the wrong name.”

  “The only person able to sign away the rights to the land is Jessica. I believe Graham Wright read the letter and confronted my father with its content,” Jason said.

  “He waited six years to do so.”

  Jason nodded. “I don’t know why.”

  “Does Jess know her stepfather was murdered?”

  “I had to tell her to make her understand the danger she was in,” Jason said.

  “I see.”

  “You see, what?”

  Drew shifted uneasily, shrugging his shoulders. “Jess is a grown woman, and I guess she knows what she’s doing.”

  “She didn’t come to me lightly, if that’s your insinuation. But she wants to find out the truth, as I do.”

  “By placing herself in danger?”

  “What do you want her to do, Detective Inspector?” Jason sneered. “Come to you?”

  It was a loaded question and Jason knew it. It irked him beyond rationale that Drew Mahon had kissed his wife. Jessica had admitted it’d meant nothing, so why couldn’t he just let it go?

  “Just remember,” Drew retorted, jabbing a finger at the gray exterior. “She’s lying in there because of you, not me—”

  Jason expelled a slow breath.

  “And for what?” Drew rushed on. “I’ve been to the plantation at High Rock and its nothing but wilderness. What I don’t understand is why your father is so hell-bent on killing Jess over a piece of land he hasn’t even bothered to cultivate these past twenty years.”

  “It’s not the land he wants.”

  “If not the land, then what? The satisfaction of knowing the land no longer belongs to the descendants of slaves,” Drew derided.

  Jason shot Drew a stunned look. “That’s partly it,” he murmured. “The other part is this.”

  Jason reached into his wallet and pulled out a small plastic bag containing a gold coin.

  It was Drew’s turn to look stunned. “Where did you get that?”

  “It’s something else Sean found among my father’s private things,” Jason said. “Eighteenth century Spanish gold.”

  He turned the coin around in his hand. “Whatever my father wants has little to do with the land at High Rock itself and more to do with an English vessel lying somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”

  Jason paused. “I grew up listening to my father’s stories about the McCormack’s lost heritage. He told me how my great-great-grandfather sullied the McCormack name by falling in love with one of his slaves. But there was also talk of a McCormack ship, the Lady Helen, which was thought to have sunk amid heavy storms on a return journey from South America.”

  Drew’s brow furrowed. “You think your father found that ship?”

  “I do. Only, in the last twenty years there hasn’t been a registration of the find so, to all intents and purposes, the ship is yet to be found.”

  Jason drew a tight breath in. “My father’s deliberately covering his tracks as he goes, which means there has to be a great deal more at stake than just a money trail.”

  “I knew Sean must have stumbled onto something, but this isn’t what I expected,” Drew murmured.

  “Did you cut him a deal, Detective Inspector and ask him to spy on my father. In exchange for what? A plea bargain?”

  “No, nothing like that. This was Sean’s call, although it probably didn’t help matters that I told him he was being ousted out of his own organization.”

  Drew shoved his hands in his jeans pockets.

  “The Football Intelligence Unit was investigating your father because of the increase in violence in an around his new club. Surveillance photos had emerged of an organized fight in East London between Finsbury Town and Southampton after a particular Saturday game. There were a lot of new faces in Sean’s firm. The F.I.U checked them all out and found they were members of the right-wing BNP. Sean’s skin color had suddenly made him vulnerable, an outsider in his own organization. He needed to be told what was going on.”

  “Why is my father under investigation? What do the police know?”

  “Not much. That’s the problem. Your father never courts publicity, so whatever has been happening up and around London can’t be directly linked to him. But considering your father’s withdrawal from public life under dubious circumstances, his re-emergence in London and the spate of violence associated with his football club we had enough reason to file for a routine intelligence report. Sean’s suspicious death, and now Tom’s, means your father’s tying up loose ends.”

  “Two and a half weeks ago,” he said, “I was called to take a look at an interesting John Doe. He was approximately eighty-five, victim of a traffic accident. Close examination revealed the man had undergone extensive plastic surgery to his face, ultimately changing his appearance.”

  Jason frowned his bewilderment, and interest.

  “Apart from a shattered pair of glasses, the man had a small coin in his possession. Eighteenth century Spanish gold,” Drew murmured, pulling a small plastic bag containing an identical coin from the pouch.

  He held the bag up into the light. “Fingerprint
analysis identifies him as a Romanian ex-general by the name of Nicolae Nastase. He has been wanted by Interpol for murdering seventy-two people and wounding another two-hundred and fifty-three during protests in Timisoara in western Romania during the popular revolt there.”

  Jason looked from Drew’s coin to the one in his own palm, and then to Drew’s face.

  “That incident was purported to have started the Romanian revolution and sparked the then president Nicolae Ceaucescu’s downfall.”

  Drew nodded. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t want Jess involved any further in this,” he said.

  “That makes two of us.”

  Both men regarded each other, their dislike set aside and their judgments suspended. There was a truth waiting to be uncovered, the implications of which were forcing them to become allies for Jessica’s’ sake.

  “We’ll have to take her somewhere safe where your father can’t get to her.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Actually, I do. Do you think Jess can be moved?”

  “The nurse reassures me she just needs rest. The surgery was a success.”

  “And she can do that anywhere, right?”

  “Do you have a place in mind? And if you do, would you mind sharing?”

  “Cat Island. We can take her to her father,” Drew said. “I know someone who will help us. I’ll talk to him in the morning.”

  “Are you sure he can be trusted?”

  “Yes. Then, we’ll go fishing.”

  “Fishing?”

  “Yeah, fishing.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  John Thomas had stayed on the beach until the early hours thinking about the phone call he’d received from Zip the night before. It’d unnerved him, excited him and frightened him all at the same time. He stared back out to sea. His daughter, Zip had said.

  Jess? Injured? How badly? Where were they? What was he supposed to say to his daughter after twenty-five years? Would she want to know him?

  He jumped to his feet and paced the beach.

  The first rays of dawn lit the far horizon before the Sea Conch sailed into view. Anxiety made him edgy and curiosity made him impatient. He hastened to the dock, keeping his eyes firmly focused on the bobbing vessel.