by Gwyn Cready
She pulled out her phone. Thirteen messages. Great. She realized she’d left her wallet at the office, which meant she’d have to run to the USX Tower before grabbing a cab.
She broke into trot and dialed Di. Di answered in half a ring.
“Where are you?”
“I’m . . . back.”
“And?”
The ground was still shaking, and Joss could tell she was about to pass through the dome. “And I had my adventure.” Mountains of guilt lay piled on her shoulders. She hated lying to a friend. She hated lying about this.
“You slept with him?”
She stepped through the dome and the images flashed by. One, however, caught her eye, and she stopped.
“Joss?”
“What? No. We kissed.” The snippets of conversations and faces went by faster and faster. Hugh, Fiona, her.
“You were gone all night and all day.”
“We did a lot of talking.” Hugh again, then sparks and two men—no, three men on the islet with their backs to her, with a woman and her child nearby. The men were conspiring. That was the only word for the low tones and shifting eyes and—
“The way you said that sounds serious,” Di said. “Do you mean about the wedding? Are you thinking of calling off the wedding?”
“Yes—I mean, no.” Now, why would she have said yes? “I don’t know. No.”
“That’s a lot of answers.”
“I don’t know what I’m feeling.” One of the men in the vision turned. She gasped and nearly dropped the phone. It was her father!
“Joss? What? What happened?”
“I-I have to call you back.”
Unthinking, she slid the phone into her pocket and let the images fly by. Good God! It came again and again, interspliced into dozens of other pictures, but there he was. Her father! Was the woman her mother? Was the baby her? Had they traveled back in time? Had he known of the alley passage? And how did Joss even know what she was seeing was the truth and not just part of someone or something else’s desires?
She jerked her head back to gain a moment to think, but the lure of the images was too strong. She saw her father again, this time in contemporary clothes. He walked past the alley on William Penn Place with her mother at his side. She cast a heartbreaking look down the little street as he urged her forward, oblivious to both the alley and the glance. Then Hugh replaced her father in the images, and Joss and her mother, and then Di appeared and the three of them were walking up the street after the ill-fated visit to his shop two nights ago!
If that part was true—and she knew it was—what did it mean for truth of the other parts?
The scene grew dark, and the images slowed and drenched themselves in sepia, their edges bending and curling like ancient daguerreotypes. Mr. Lytle appeared on the deck of Hugh’s ship, and Roark’s face paled again and he ran. Then a hazy figure appeared at the bottom of the alley, framed in shadows and holding a gun. Sparks flew, and the figure ran through them. She could see the empty eyes shaded by the stocking cap and the shoulders so like Rogan’s.
Take off the cap. Take it off.
The head drew nearer, like a zoom to a close-up in a movie, and a hand reached for the bottom of the cap.
Joss jerked out of the dome, too afraid to look.
She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to think it. It was ridiculous. The man who’d never done anything but treat her like a queen? Foolish vision. She cursed herself and started to run.
Rogan shooting Hugh? No. Why? For what purpose? She thought of those fevered ramblings and Roark’s worried face. No one but a madman could have shot someone on a busy thoroughfare and then abandoned him in a pool of blood.
God, she shouldn’t have left. She shouldn’t have left here, and she certainly shouldn’t have left Hugh. It seemed like the moment she decided to look for a Mr. Mistake, the world had come to pieces.
She exited the alley and stopped while a line of cars passed. She looked at her phone: 6:13. It was going to be tight making an eight-thirty flight. With an impatient huff, she pressed the Cross button and spotted a hand-lettered sign taped to the pole.
ARE YOU CURRENTLY TAKING PRESCRIPTION
ANTIBIOTICS? ADULT SUBJECTS, AGES 18–54, NEEDED
FOR RESEARCH STUDY ON SIDE EFFECTS
ONE HOUR. $75. CALL NOW.
She froze. The light turned. A woman passed by her and stepped into the street.
She could go back. She had to.
There was an early morning flight. Would she make it? It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if she missed the flight or her wedding or the buyer. A man’s life was at stake.
The light began to blink, warning her to cross before it was too late.
Instead she turned, pulled out her phone and pulled up the number of her dentist.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE NORTH ATLANTIC, THREE HUNDRED MILES OFF
THE COAST OF SCOTLAND, 1706
She waited on the islet, clutching a bottle of antibiotics for the “toothache” that had miraculously struck her on Grant Street. Thank God her dentist had evening hours.
It was almost dawn. She’d waited all night in the cold and crashing surf at the edge of the cave, huddled in her now considerably dirty white spring trench coat. The flashlight on her phone had raised nothing more than the lonely call of a far-off seabird.
Surely the ship would appear again. If it didn’t, she would return to the alley, but she refused to believe her sacrifice would be wasted. She would not make the dawn flight. She had tried Rogan’s cell from her office, only to remember she’d thrown it into the sea. Then she’d tried his home and office phones, missing him at both places. She knew he thought she was heading from Di’s place to Vegas, and had left a message saying she was sorry she’d missed him, that the stomach bug had been horrid and that she’d see him soon; but the fact that she missed connecting with him seemed somehow prophetic, and the messages he’d left on her phone, while concerned and warm, had an underlying hint of desperation to them that had made her shift uneasily as she listened.
She’d had a lot of time to think in the dark, sea-rocked night—about her mother, about her father, about Rogan and about Hugh. She had come to no conclusions. It would have been foolish, ahead of the facts, but she knew when she and Rogan met again, she would never look at him the same way. No matter what she learned or didn’t, there would always be a doubt tucked into the back of her mind.
A gray-pink glow had begun in the east—what she knew now was the east. Soon she would be able to see the horizon.
Please come. For Hugh. Please return.
There was no reason for the ship to return to the island. But still, she hoped.
The glow grew brighter. The world—her world—teetered on the edge of a new beginning. Somewhere in Las Vegas, a man sat in a chair in a hotel restaurant, sipping his coffee and reading the Wall Street Journal as he waited for Joss. The list of people to whom she owed apologies was growing longer and longer.
She wasn’t afraid, at least not for herself. Though if the wind picked up and waves reached the top of the islet, she would have to return. Then she would be afraid only for Hugh.
The first shining rays hit the sky and ran like liquid silver over the water. She stood and chivied herself up the seam to the tiny vertical opening at its peak, from which she gazed westward, northward, eastward, and at last she saw it—a tiny spot of white far to the south, growing larger with each passing minute.
Joss removed the coat and waved it back and forth and back and forth in the air.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Miss O’Malley, ’tis a surprise to see you again,” Roark said gravely as she was lifted from the seat onto the ship’s deck. “I’m sorry the news is not better.”
“Take me to him.”
“Mr. Lytle is with him.”
“I thought he didn’t want Mr. Lytle,” she said under her breath. “In case he spoke.”
Roark gave her a heart-wrench
ing look. “He hasn’t spoken since midnight.”
She was shocked at the change. Hugh’s skin was deathly white, and he hardly breathed.
“Oh my God.”
“He is very ill, m’um,” Lytle said. “There is little more we can do but wait.”
“Can he swallow?”
“I have been keeping him hydrated.”
“I need him to take some pills. Can we grind them into water for him?”
“We can, but what sort of pills are they?”
“You’ll have to trust me. They will help.” If anything will at this point, she thought.
Lytle looked to Roark. Roark met Joss’s eyes and gave Lytle a nod.
“This is very irregular,” Lytle said, but made the concoction, a triple dose. Joss was not going to take any chances.
Both men held Hugh upright as Joss dribbled the liquid into his mouth, trying to keep the tears of fear from clouding her sight as she worked.
She stood at his side long enough to ensure he didn’t throw it up, then asked for a bed, a clean set of clothes and requested to be awakened if anything happened.
Now there really isn’t anything else to do but wait.
When she opened her eyes, after a sleep that seemed as long and deep as a winter hibernation, the sun was low in the sky.
No one has come for me. That has to be good. Or at least not very bad.
Nonetheless, she threw on the coat and ran to the sickroom.
Roark was seated outside with his head in his hands, and Joss’s knees nearly buckled.
“What?”
His head jerked up and he waved away her immediate concern. “There is no change. I’m sorry. I was . . . I must have dozed off sitting here.”
“No change?” She felt like crying.
“No change is . . . better than I expected.”
“Let’s give him more.”
“More? Are you certain?”
She didn’t know what a dangerous level would be. She knew that they used to give a single shot of antibiotics instead of a course of treatment with pills, something they still did in less-developed countries, so she didn’t think overdosing was a risk, but she wasn’t certain. She wasn’t even sure this antibiotic was the sort that treated the kind of infection Hugh was suffering from, but it was all she had. “Yes.”
Joss mixed more pills with water, and Roark lifted him again while she dribbled the concoction into Hugh’s mouth. He seemed even more listless than before, and much of the liquid spilled down his chin.
“Come,” Roark said when they had their patient resting again. “Let us eat.”
She finished a slice of fish pie without tasting any of it and was clutching a mug of coffee when Lytle opened the door to the officers’ mess.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, and Joss felt her stomach drop a foot.
“The fever has broken.”
Joss was the first to the sickroom door. “He’s awake,” Lytle’s boy said, and turned the handle.
“Oh, Hugh—” She stopped.
He was smiling weakly, and Fiona held his hand.
“Oh.”
Joss was simultaneously relieved and immensely irritated, though she knew relief was the only feeling that mattered.
“I beg your pardon,” said Roark, who had appeared behind her. “I forgot to mention that Nathaniel and Miss McPherson were dropped off by the other ship earlier this afternoon, while you were sleeping.”
Hugh smiled. “Good to see you, Joss.”
“He’s still very weak,” Fiona said.
Had there been a note of accusation in her words?
“Are you hungry?” Roark asked, grinning. “The cook is making plum pudding.”
“There will be no plum pudding for my patient,” cried Lytle. “Do you wish to kill him, now that we’ve raised him from the dead? Broth, perhaps. Nothing more.”
“I must acquiesce to the surgeon,” Hugh said, “but please see that the cook puts it on the menu again for tomorrow.”
“We will see about that, sir. We will see about that. Now I want my sickroom to be emptied. You may return in the morning—one at a time, of course—if the patient continues to improve. Until then, be off.”
“You will continue to give him the pills as I’ve directed?” Joss said.
“I will,” said Lytle.
Joss exited, as did Roark, who patted her happily on the shoulder. Lytle followed with an empty basin in his hand, and the boy gave them all a good-bye nod and closed the door with a firm click.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Hugh shifted uncomfortably. He would have preferred that Joss stayed instead of Fiona. And he would have strongly preferred to avert the flash of fire he’d seen in Joss’s eyes when she’d arrived, despite the fact that that flash had given him permission to hope. Now he was afraid his hope would slip away if he didn’t act quickly.
“Get the boy,” he said to Fiona.
“We need to talk.”
“Get him.”
Fiona huffed but got up. In a moment, the boy was by Hugh’s side.
“Aye, sir?”
“Find Mr. Roark. He is to stop any further passages to the islet. It’s too dangerous at present. Do you understand?”
The boy’s eyes flickered toward the calm sea beyond the porthole, but his face remained unchanged. “Aye, sir,” he said, and exited.
That boy has a future, Hugh thought.
Fiona gave Hugh a long look. “Would you like to tell me what happened?” She pointed to his shoulder.
“No” was the honest answer, but there seemed no way to avoid it. “I was shot.”
“Aye, that is apparent. My interest lies in who did it.”
“Who do you think?” His shoulder was ablaze with pain. Please, God, he thought, don’t let Fiona turn this into another argument. There are certain women one should never take to one’s bed, though other than an increase in fractiousness, Fiona’s behavior toward him had not changed since that night and she never made reference to it again. Had she regretted it as much as he?
“I can think of two possible guilty parties.”
“Don’t be absurd. The girl knows nothing.”
“She lives a life denied my ancestors,” Fiona said, the anger as quick to flame as overdry gunpowder.
“Then she is guilty of being born into the wrong family. ’Tis all.” That, and being affianced to the wrong man.
Fiona glared, but let the subject pass. “How do you know it was Reynolds? Did you see him?”
“The person who attacked me wore a green stocking cap over his face—”
“Then it could have been her.”
“Allow me to finish. I was with Joss, and I had seen Reynolds only a few moments earlier with the same green o’erflowing his pocket.”
“Does he know you know it was him?”
“I don’t think so. He didn’t see that I’d spotted the cap.”
“Bloody bastard. Though there’s no denying this is the proof we needed. He is—was—in league with Brand. He has the map. I say we go to his house, use whatever means necessary to convince him to surrender it, then leave him with you for the happy prospect of avenging your brother. The people who profited from that map will pay dearly for their greed.”
Hugh winced. Fiona had a way of opening that wound as if she were wielding a cutlass. The shock of discovering Joss was Maggie Brand’s daughter had left Hugh fighting a storm of conflicting feelings. He resented Joss’s wealth as much as Fiona. Bart’s income had been reduced to a tenth of what it had been after he took the clerk position and made a home for Hugh, Maggie and little Jo. But even that situation had been far better than the one following Bart’s murder, when Hugh was sent to live with a cousin who had immediately apprenticed him to a blacksmith in a distant village to fend for himself. It was there, in the inferno of his employment, Hugh had hammered out plans to avenge Bart’s death, and it had taken him twenty long years of arduous work to bring them to fruition.
&nb
sp; So, aye, the courtly display of wealth at that party, the business empire, the fine clothes, the sense of entitlement that radiated from Joss like subtle perfume, grated on him. And, of course, that bloody diamond she wore was like a lightning rod for his resentment as well as for another emotion he was just discovering could be as potent.
The conundrum Joss presented was a hard one. He couldn’t avenge himself on her father. And as a man who had loved Maggie Brand as a mother, Hugh could neither avenge himself on Maggie’s daughter nor on the man Maggie’s daughter believed would bring her happiness. If he believed for an instant Reynolds would hurt her, he wouldn’t hesitate to destroy him. But he did not believe Reynolds would. So now Hugh would have to sit back and allow the man who held Brand’s nefarious secret—and who had just shown he was willing to kill to protect it—to possess the woman Hugh desired.
The anger that had been simmering in him for so long would explode soon in this infernal crucible. But who would be burned?
“No,” Hugh said. “We will find the map and return it to the past so that we may reverse what’s been done, but we won’t lay a finger on Reynolds.”
“What?”
“I shan’t touch him, nor shall you.”
Her cat eyes glowed with fire. “Did you know he’s having a special security system put in? Did you know that he’s already begun to turn the capital in Brand’s company into untold riches for himself?” Her voice grew louder. “Did you know that an attendant who was with Brand as he lay dying said she overheard Brand and Reynolds talking and that Brand mentioned a ‘sea captain’ and that he called for a curate before he died, no doubt to ask for forgiveness for the sin of murdering your brother?”
Hugh felt like he’d been slapped, and it must have shown on his face.
“That’s right,” she said. “While you’ve been trotting around after the girl like some sort of pathetic lapdog, I have been gathering information. Reynolds knows, Hugh! He knows everything!”