A Rare Chance

by Carla Neggers

  Cam reined in his anger, his muscles tensed with the urge to throttle the bastard. He’d hurt an old man. He could have killed him. “Gabriella’s having her locks changed. Don’t try it again.”

  Darrow waved him off. “You’re making mountains out of mole hills, Cam. Nothing’s going on. I’m just trying to sort out why Lizzie left and where she is.”

  “And covering your own ass.”

  Darrow’s hard eyes reached Cam, reminding him of the friendship that was slipping away from them. “Think whatever you want to think, Cam. I don’t have the time or the patience to wait for people to cooperate, so I just do what I have to do. I suggest you just stay the fuck out of my way.”

  Before Cam could respond, Joshua Reading trotted down the steps from the deck. His gaze fell on Cam. “Pete—who’s this?”

  “Cam Yeager, my ex-partner. He was just leaving.”

  Cam walked right up to Reading, who was taller, leaner, a hell of a lot better-looking in an aristocratic, clean-cut sort of way. Even haggard from his canceled engagement, he had a presence that suggested privilege, self-assurance, a sense of his place in the world. Cam was unimpressed. Joshua’s big brother had made him a fortune and he was happy to pretend he’d had a hand in it when, in fact, if it’d been up to him, he’d have pissed away every nickel his father had left him. Cam knew the type.

  He got right in his face, his anger just barely under control. “I don’t know what your game is, Reading, but if you put Darrow up to following Gabriella Starr and searching her apartment, beating up on an old man, you’ll answer for it.”

  Joshua gave him a scathing look. “You’d better leave, Mr. Yeager. Right now. Mr. Darrow?”

  Darrow eased forward, but Cam had already backed off. He’d served notice, said what he’d wanted to say. He had nothing to prove. He climbed back into his car. Nobody, he noticed, said goodbye.

  A few minutes later, he stopped at the scenic turnaround outside Reading Point. He sat in his car a minute, listening to the waves crashing on the rocks, listening to what his instincts were saying. He’d learned to pay attention to them. Right now they were telling him the rumors weren’t just rumors: Joshua Reading had put together his own private arsenal. This time, where there was smoke, there was fire. If Cam could find the bastard’s stash, he could take him in.

  He started onto the rocks. Let Darrow come after him.

  A few yards onto Reading Point, Darrow did just that. He came around a massive boulder, a .38 Smith & Wesson leveled at Cam’s gut. “You really piss me off, Yeager.”

  Cam shrugged. “So what else is new?”

  Darrow lowered his gun a few inches. “I ought to shoot you in the kneecap, just to teach you a goddamned lesson.”

  “Where does Reading keep his arsenal, Pete?”

  “Go to hell.”

  The breeze was cool off the water, the tide coming in. Cam repressed an urge to jump Darrow, wrestle him into the tide, hold his head under the icy saltwater until he came to his senses. But he’d just end up giving Darrow an excuse to shoot him.

  “Hey!”

  Cam swore, and he and Darrow both looked up just as Gabriella scrambled over a waist-high boulder up above them on the embankment. She charged down toward them, sure-footed on the loose rocks, as much in her element now as behind her desk at TJR Associates.

  “What are you guys doing?” she yelled.

  Darrow grimaced. His gun didn’t move. He glanced at Cam. “The woman’s a pain in the ass, you know?”

  “She has her moments,” Cam said. “She doesn’t know you won’t shoot me.”

  “You’re the only one who thinks I won’t shoot you.”

  “You wouldn’t risk it, Pete. And you’d miss me too much.”

  “The hell,” Darrow muttered.

  “You’re just calculating the best and easiest way you can get what you want out of this happy mess we’re all in. Killing or maiming me won’t get you anything but a prison sentence.”

  He grunted. “And some peace and quiet.”

  Not unless he got rid of Gabriella Starr too. She hadn’t slackened her pace. Possibly, Cam thought, she hadn’t seen the gun.

  Possibly she had.

  “You should probably put the gun away before she gets here,” he said.

  “Why? You worried it won’t scare her or it will?”

  Gabriella approached them, still moving fast. “I couldn’t stay put in your apartment. I knew you’d come up here. Figured you might need my help. For ex-partners, you two sure don’t trust each other—”

  She stopped, her eyes widening as she came up alongside Cam and Darrow and saw the gun. Her cheeks turned pale as she narrowed her eyes on the Smith & Wesson. She wasn’t even out of breath.

  And she wasn’t scared. She glared at Darrow. “Good God, are you crazy?”

  Darrow glanced at Cam. “She does have a way about her.” He turned his attention back to Gabriella, his expression impassive. “Stand next to him.”

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

  “Gabriella,” Cam said.

  “This is ridiculous,” she muttered, but she complied with Darrow’s order. “Pure thuggery.”

  Cam could believe that she and her father had spent one or two nights in jail just because some judge wanted to teach them a little respect for authority, for men with guns. Only her slight loss of color and increased rate of respiration told him she might be nervous, even slightly scared.

  “Tide’s going out,” Darrow said. “Be easy to get rid of two bodies.”

  “What about our cars?” Gabriella countered. “They’d lead the police right to your doorstep.”

  Darrow, who up until a few weeks ago had been the police, appealed to Cam. “Tell her to shut up.”

  “As I told you, she doesn’t know you won’t shoot us,” Cam said.

  Gabriella frowned. “Why wouldn’t he shoot us?”

  “Because it’s not to his advantage, and it’s not in him. Right, Pete?”

  But Darrow didn’t lower his gun. Cam supposed he’d have to wave it around a little longer, make sure they knew he had control of the situation. “It’s my job to deal with trespassers. I could say you were armed, you threatened me, the Readings. I wouldn’t shoot without sufficient provocation.”

  Gabriella groaned in disbelief. “That’s a lame excuse for killing two people. One maybe, but not two.”

  “Jesus,” Darrow breathed, but he tucked the gun into the waistband of his canvas pants.

  Now that the crisis had passed, Gabriella gulped in air, held it, and exhaled slowly, probably in an effort to keep from hyperventilating. Cam stifled an urge to go to her. But he understood she had her pride and would need to pull herself together in her own way. Just below them, the tide was rolling out, the rhythm of the water soothing, a kind of relief in its steadiness. Sea gulls called overhead. The sun was bright, warm, glistening on Gabriella’s dark hair. She rallied quickly, as he’d known she would.

  After a few seconds to let some of the tension defuse out of the situation, Cam turned to Darrow. “You open Lizzie’s package yet?”

  It would be Darrow’s first impulse to lie—to deny he’d stolen anything. But even he could see there was no point. “Maybe I threw it in the ocean.”

  “Joshua know you have it?”

  Darrow ignored him, eyeing Gabriella. “What are you doing here?”

  “You, assaulted my father.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been through that with Yeager.” Darrow rocked back on his heels, rapidly losing patience. “Go on, you two. If you know where Lizzie is, tell her she can trust me. I know what’s going on. I can help.”

  Gabriella flew around at him. “Go to hell, Darrow. I’m not telling you anything. Even if I knew anything, I wouldn’t tell you. You hit Scag.”

  Cam gritted his teeth, waiting for the gun to come out again, but Pete Darrow just laughed and started back over the rocks, toward the house. Gabriella made a move to go after him, but Cam touched her arm. “It won’t
do any good. We need to concentrate on Lizzie.”

  Gabriella turned to him, her eyes warm, wide, filled with a fear that hadn’t been there a few moments ago when she’d seen Darrow’s gun. “You don’t think she’s in Paris, do you?”

  “Do you?”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

  Cam agreed. They had no reason beyond gut instinct not to believe Lizzie Fairfax, but Gabriella didn’t, and neither did he. “Have you read any of her journal?”

  “I started it. It’s—” She shuddered, the wind catching the ends of her hair. “It’s not going to be easy. She started it the day she and Joshua met. She does that with a new relationship, as if starting a new journal gives her a fresh start.”

  “I’ll come back with you. I’ll stay with you while you read it.”

  “Thank you. I probably shouldn’t have come out here, but I knew you’d be here, and kept thinking something might happen.” She shrugged. “You know.”

  He grinned, holding her by the elbow. “Yeah, I know. Those Scagliotti genes at work.”

  She inhaled. “If Darrow had hurt him…it would have been my fault.”

  “You can’t think that way,” Cam said softly. “And your father’s all right. He’s probably got his housemates giving him acupuncture.”

  She rallied, smiling. “Yeah, I called. One of them does do acupuncture, but he says he’ll stick to food cures. They’re down in the kitchen concocting God knows what. You know, I think he kind of likes it there. He’s never needed much in the way of creature comforts.” She crossed her arms over her chest, as if hugging herself. “It’s cold out here.”

  Cam put an arm around her shoulder and drew her toward him, feeling the tension in her body. She wouldn’t want to need him. He understood. Needing her was no picnic either. Yet the feeling was there, in him, in her.

  “Come on,” he said, “we’ll head back to my place. I’ll make you dinner, and you can take a look at Lizzie’s journal.”

  “What about you?”

  “If there’s anything I need to know, you can tell me.”

  She leaned into him, letting him take her weight for a few seconds. For now it was enough. “Thank you.”

  Darrow figured not shooting Cam Yeager when he’d had the chance would go on his list of things he didn’t do that he later regretted. It was getting to be a goddamned long list.

  He cut open the used padded envelope that held Lizzie’s diary, wondering if Gabriella had been into it. Anything, he decided, was possible with her. Their friendship baffled him. But so did his own friendship with Cam. Saint Cameron, the man on the white horse. Darrow exhaled, suddenly feeling tired.

  The journal was one of those fancy blank books available in upscale bookstores, spiral-bound, with heavyweight, acid-free paper. The cover was of a huge sunflower. Opening it, Darrow saw that the first entry was dated a couple of weeks ago, when Lizzie had landed back in Boston with Tony Scagliotti and gone to dinner with the Readings. Her handwriting was graceful and feminine, easy to read.

  But first Darrow reached into the big envelope and felt around.

  There.

  He brought out a smaller envelope, a white business-sized envelope that was unsealed, the ends folded back over a series of Polaroid photographs. There were half a dozen in all. Darrow laid them out on his bed in his room above Joshua Reading’s garage. Joshua wanted to talk to him about Cam Yeager, but he’d have to wait.

  The photographs were numbered on the back in black marker. Darrow lined them up in order, giving a low whistle in appreciation of Lizzie Fairfax’s talents. The photographs together offered a panoramic view of the full array of weapons Joshua Reading had tucked away for his personal use. Grenades, a .50-caliber machine gun, M-60s, a rapid-fire submachine gun, even LAWS rockets and a light antitank weapon not readily available to ordinary citizens.

  Each weapon was lethal, each was highly illegal.

  Darrow pulled his lamp over, peering closely at the background in the photographs. But Lizzie had focused on identifying the weapons, not where they were stashed. He could make out some kind of wood paneling or perhaps a wall painted in a dark color, a framed picture or painting of some kind of birds hanging above a box of grenades. That was about it.

  Even without the arsenal’s location, the photographs were a coup. All Darrow had to do was shove them under Joshua’s nose and name his price.

  Or bring them downtown. Let the police figure out where Joshua Reading had his weapons stashed.

  Forget it, Darrow thought. You’re in way too deep for that kind of thinking.

  He returned the photographs to the envelope and set them on his nightstand. He was truly tired. Popping an old man hadn’t made him feel any better. Neither, when it came down to it, had pulling a gun on Cam Yeager. Pushing the image out of his mind, Darrow propped up a couple of pillows and lay down on his bed with Lizzie Fairfax’s journal.

  Outside, the waves were kicking up with the wind, slapping against the rocks in no rhythm that he could distinguish. He didn’t know where Joshua Reading was, never mind that keeping track of him was probably a smart thing to do. Darrow hoped the sick son of a bitch stumbled into the ocean and drowned. Maybe he could help him along. This way, Joshua, my man…. Whoops.

  He maneuvered his lamp so the bulb shone on the first page of Lizzie’s diary.

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  Stretched out on Cam’s leather couch, snuggled under a chenille throw, Gabriella read page after page of her photocopy of Lizzie Fairfax’s meandering journal. At first she had difficulty concentrating. When they’d arrived back on lower Pinckney and she had checked in with Scag, irritating him, Cam had sat her down with a roast turkey sandwich and a tall glass of iced tea and told her he’d heard rumors that Joshua Reading had put together his own private arsenal of illegal weapons.

  “What do you mean, illegal weapons?” Gabriella asked. “Unregistered revolvers, stuff like that?”

  Cam shook his head. “Not according to rumor. We’re talking more like grenades and fully automatic weapons.”

  “Machine guns?”

  “Possibly.”

  “When did these rumors start?”

  “They’ve been circulating for a while, apparently, but after the kidnap attempt they heated up.” His gaze rested on her, his sea-blue eyes softening a little. He was in his cop mode, alert, on edge. “This could all be pure nonsense.”

  With a small nod, Gabriella acknowledged that she understood. She would not get ahead of herself. One step at a time. She would be logical, methodical, thorough. “I know I’ve only been at TJR Associates a year, but Joshua’s never given any indication he knows anything about weapons or even cares about them. I would have guessed he doesn’t even own a revolver.”

  “What about Titus?”

  “The same. They’re just not your basic macho, gun-wielding types.”

  Cam gave a grim smile. “I know what you’re saying, but some of ‘your basic macho, gun-wielding types’ are also some of the most responsible gun owners. It’s dangerous to stereotype.”

  “I’m just saying guns of any description are not a big topic of discussion at TJR Associates. I haven’t heard any of these arsenal rumors about Joshua. Not even a whisper. But if they’re true,” she added thoughtfully, “do you really think Pete Darrow could be blackmailing him?”

  “What I think doesn’t matter.”

  So Cam asked her to stay alert for any mention of weapons in Lizzie’s journal. As Joshua’s fiancée, Lizzie might have heard something, seen something. Joshua might even have openly discussed a passion for weaponry. Or she could have discovered something that would point to the whole thing being a frame-up on Pete Darrow’s part. Plant the rumors, plant some evidence, and make Joshua Reading pay rather than risk the notoriety and uncertainties of trying to clear his name.

  Gabriella assured Cam she would keep her eyes open.

  Each entry was handwritten, legible if not always neat, meticulously d
ated. Some entries were just two or three sentences. One was just one word: Heaven! Others went on for pages.

  Gabriella couldn’t help feeling like a voyeur, poring over her best friend’s most secret thoughts, her most private activities. Many passages she skimmed. They were of no importance to anyone but Lizzie herself. But others she made herself read, knowing that Pete Darrow, with the original in his possession, would do the same.

  I hate what I’m becoming. I have to get out.

  Pete Darrow makes me nervous. I wonder if Joshua was too quick to hire him. I heard him tonight. I couldn’t sleep and I was walking the halls, and I heard Darrow skulking about. Was he spying on Joshua and me? But why? I can’t stand this!

  Her heart pounding, Gabriella was tempted to call Cam over. But she decided to read further first.

  I can’t believe it. I won’t! Why would Joshua have illegal weapons? It can’t be true. Joshua doesn’t care anything about guns. But I know what I saw. Maybe they’re Pete Darrow’s? Is he using Joshua?

  This last entry was toward the end of the journal. Gabriella marked the page and continued. Cam had cleaned up the kitchen, taken a shower, and now sat in a chair opposite her, drinking a beer. She wondered if he could sense her tension and despair, her deep concern, even fear, for her friend. Every page only further confirmed just how desperate Lizzie had become. Gabriella held her own reactions in check. If only she’d known. If only she’d pushed Lizzie harder to confide in her about the true nature of her relationship with Joshua Reading.

  The final entry mentioned nothing of her decision to cancel her engagement and offered no hint of where she’d gone.

  When she had finished, Gabriella dropped the copied pages onto the floor beside her and stared up at the ceiling, tears streaming down her temples and into her hair. Oh, Lizzie, she thought. Sweet, ever-hopeful Lizzie.

  “Are you all right?” Cam asked softly. He’d put some blues music on in the background, never once disturbing her while she’d read her friend’s diary.

  Gabriella nodded, willing herself up into a sitting position. She brushed away her tears. They were an indulgence, she decided. Crying wasn’t going to help Lizzie Fairfax. “I marked several passages you need to read. It seems Joshua’s into weaponry. Pete Darrow must be blackmailing him.”