Blood Kin

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by Judith E. French




  RAVE REVIEWS FOR JUDITH E. FRENCH!

  AT RISK

  RITA Finalist for Best Romantic Suspense of 2005

  “At Risk is a taut, edgy and outstanding psychologically suspenseful thriller that keeps you rapidly turning the pages.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “The gritty drama and intense characters definitely make an impact. This is one thriller that will have you looking over your shoulder.”

  —RT BOOKreviews

  “With At Risk, Ms. French has made a strong and promising beginning in the romantic suspense genre.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “The suspense in At Risk is top notch. . . . a real page-turner.”

  —Romance Reader at Heart

  “At Risk is so compelling and suspenseful you can’t put it down once started. . . . A top-notch suspense by a superlative writer!"

  —Reader To Reader Reviews

  THE WARRIOR

  “The highly unusual setting and smoothly flowing prose help make this a superior novel of historical romance.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This tale takes you on a magical, action-packed journey into the heart of a great and powerful man and into a time and place like no other.”

  —RT BOOKreviews

  “Realistic dialogue and excellent research along with amazing characters who leap off the pages . . . For a wild ride through ancient times, The Warrior is a terrific journey.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  MORE PRAISE FOR JUDITH E. FRENCH!

  THE BARBARIAN

  “Combining strong, fully developed characters, colorful descriptive locales, and a beautifully haunting romance, The Barbarian is a must-read.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  “The Barbarian is an exhilarating ride through the deserts of Egypt as a woman and a man fight for all they believe in against the might of a king.”

  —A Romance Review

  “This sequel to The Conqueror is packed full of vivid historical details that will transport the reader back to mystical Egypt. A great read!”

  —The Best Reviews

  THE CONQUEROR

  “Historical fiction fans will have a feast!”

  —Romantic Times

  “Judith E. French has skillfully crafted not only a top-notch romance but an excellent work of historical fiction.”

  —A Romance Review

  “Don’t miss The Conqueror.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Extremely compelling . . . [this book is] a difficult one to put down.”

  —LikesBooks.com

  “The Conqueror is a strong historical tale . . . action packed.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  MIDNIGHT RAIN

  “I heard it again—I mean I saw someone. Outside. In the rain, under the big oak. He was whistling. I thought. . .”

  “It was me?” He gave a snort of amusement as he stripped off his wet denim jacket. His black Jimmy Buffet T-shirt was as soaked as his jeans. “Do you mind?” He motioned to his shirt. “Emma will kill me if I leave a trail of water from here to the laundry room.”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d seen Daniel without a shirt, but tonight his hard-muscled chest and the thin scar that ran from one nipple down across his ribs seemed more ominous. “No.” Bailey tried to make a joke of it as she attempted to slide the pepper spray into her pocket without being seen.

  She failed.

  “Were you planning to use that on me?”

  Other books by Judith E. French:

  THE WARRIOR

  AT RISK

  THE BARBARIAN

  THE CONQUEROR

  BLOOD

  KIN

  JUDITH E.

  FRENCH

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  For Sorcha Gobnait Ni Scanaill,

  with all my love. Erin go braugh!

  DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

  Published by

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 2006 by Judith E. French

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-4285-1673-1

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-0143-0

  First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: September 2006

  The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Visit us online at www.dorchesterpub.com.

  BLOOD

  KIN

  PROLOGUE

  Tawes Island, Valentine’s Day

  Frowning at the slash of orange that had caught his attention, Daniel eased off the marshy bank and out onto the surface of the frozen gut. Ice splintered ominously under his right boot, and he swore. The water here was at least chest-deep, with a good yard or two of black silt beneath—not a spot he wanted to claw his way out of in twenty-degree weather with a fifteen-knot wind. The Chesapeake Bay country was beautiful, but it could kill a man if he wasn’t careful.

  Like the senator . . . ?

  Senator Joseph Marshall’s disappearance while duck hunting on New Year’s Day had launched a three-week rescue attempt that had drawn worldwide media attention. The coast guard, volunteer fire companies, and the national guard from three states had unsuccessfully searched the bay and every square inch of shoreline of the island and neighboring mainland, to no avail.

  Daniel took another step toward the flash of color beneath the ice. Nausea rose in his throat. He exhaled slowly through clenched teeth and swallowed. Joseph Marshall’s face was pressed grotesquely against the underside of two inches of ice. Those shrewd blue eyes were open wide; his mouth gaped in a silent scream. The thick, dark hair he’d worn so fashionably cut and styled streamed out on both sides of flaccid, fish-belly-white cheeks and a ragged protruding tongue.

  Daniel let his gaze travel down the senator’s submerged body. His guess was that Joe Marshall’s political ambitions had been cut short by a single blast from a twelve-gauge shotgun.

  Some might call it island justice.

  CHAPTER ONE

  June

  Bailey clutched at the side of the boat and watched as the dark line on the horizon grew to a vivid patchw
ork of green and brown. “Is that Tawes?” She raised her voice to be heard above the chug-chug-chug of the smoking motor.

  “That’s her.” The only other occupant of the shabby wooden skiff squinted into the sunshine from the shelter of a worn baseball cap, tucked a dab of snuff under his lip, and nodded. “Tawes Island. No other.”

  The stubble-chinned skipper’s reply came out as “Nother,” but Bailey was beginning to understand his quaint speech patterns. He’d identified himself as “Cap’n Creed Somers, but Creed’ll do,” back at the Crisfield Dock where she’d left her car.

  “Not what she was,” the garrulous waterman continued. “Ursters and cray’abs about played out. Not like the old days, when my daddy could make a decent living fer his family. You shoulda seen Tawes then. Real ferryboat run ever’ day but the Sabbath, hauling groceries, tray’ctor parts . . .”

  Bailey nodded noncommittally as Creed rattled on, his words nearly drowned by the slap of waves and the chug of the noisy motor. She thought she’d smelled alcohol on Creed’s breath and never would have boarded his boat if she’d known that she’d be the only passenger. The trip from Crisfield had taken the better part of an hour, but the aging skiff, which had seemed disreputable back at the dock, had performed faultlessly.

  Being out on the water was a novelty for Bailey, and she’d been captivated by the feel of the salt breeze on her face and the haunting cries of laughing gulls. Of all she’d expected to do on summer break, spending a few days on an isolated island in the Chesapeake was definitely at the bottom of the list; but now that Tawes was a reality and not just a name on the evening news, she felt her excitement rising.

  Was it possible that she had been born and put up for adoption here on this tiny island? After years of intense curiosity about her birth family, receiving the letter from Attorney Forest McCready informing her of an inheritance seemed like the plot of a made-for-TV movie. Was it going to be this easy to find the answers she’d been seeking all her life? And how had McCready located her if her adoption records were sealed?

  Bailey hoped this wouldn’t prove a case of mistaken identity. She wasn’t getting her hopes up. If the house this unknown great-aunt had supposedly left her was a falling-down shack in a disreputable part of town, she’d simply refuse the bequest, have a good laugh, and go home with a great story to tell Elliott.

  “I expect you heard about the excitement here last February,” Creed said, breaking into her thoughts. “That hunting accident? The senator that got shot?”

  Bailey nodded. “Yes. I did. On the evening news. And the papers.” How could she not have seen it? When the senior senator from Maryland and the chair of House Appropriations went missing for weeks and then turned up riddled with bullet holes, the media had a field day. “A real tragedy,” she said. “Senator Marshall was a native of Tawes, wasn’t he?”

  “Born and bred. Knew old Joe pretty well, I did. Should know him. He’s a second cousin on my mama’s side. Course, that was long afore he went off to Harvard and made himself a big name in politics.” Creed spit over the side of the boat. “Ain’t buried here, though. Missus had what was left of him cremated. Set him on her chimney mantel in a fancy jar, I suppose.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “For your loss.”

  Creed shrugged. “No need. Joe and me wasn’t what you’d call friends. Like they say, you can’t pick your kin.”

  “No, I suppose not.” A buoy bobbed just ahead. Two gulls balanced on the top while a third circled overhead.

  “Never voted for him.” Creed slowed the boat to half speed. “Don’t want to throw up a wake coming into the docks.”

  Bailey turned her attention to the houses, docks, and boats directly ahead of them. The picturesque harbor looked like a painted scene on a calendar, too pretty to be real. She wished she’d thought to bring her camera. If she’d gotten some good shots, she could have had them blown up and framed to give Elliott for Christmas. The white walls in his Rehoboth Beach apartment were in desperate need of something besides the faded Parrothead poster and the menu of the nearest Chinese takeout restaurant.

  “Pretty, ain’t she?” Creed asked. “Gives me the chills ever’ time I come in.”

  Two little boys crabbing off the first dock looked up and waved.

  Creed waved back. “Make sure them jimmies is legal size!” he shouted. “Don’t want the law on you.”

  The smallest child, a freckled redhead, reached into a bushel basket and held up a huge wiggling blue claw. “Got half a basket already, Cap’n Creed!”

  Creed grinned and touched the bill of his cap in mock salute. “Time was only poor folks bothered with hard crabs,” he said. “Soft crabs, now, there’s a different story. Finest eatin’to be had. Dust your crab in flour, fry it up golden brown . . .” He rubbed his thumb and fore-finger together. “Add some salt and pepper, a little ’mater and lettuce if you got it, and slap it between two pieces of homemade bread.”

  “Oh, look,” Bailey exclaimed. A brown duck paddled out from under a dock with a string of fuzzy yellow and brown babies in her wake. “There must be a dozen of them.”

  “Hey!” A barefoot girl in denim cutoffs and a green John Deere T-shirt lowered her net and waved from the shallows.

  “Hey, yourself, Maggie!” Creed replied.

  She laughed, revealing a missing front tooth. Water dripped from her net, and Bailey could see a mass of wiggling creatures inside.

  “Grass shrimp,” Creed said. “Maggie’s planning on going fishing.”

  Bailey glanced around for an adult but saw no one except a man unloading crab pots from a boat a few hundred feet away. “Those children really should be wearing life vests,” she said. “This water looks deep.”

  “Deep enough,” Creed agreed, “but they’re island young’uns. Swim afore they can walk, most of’m. They look out for one another.” He cut his engine and let the boat drift slowly against a weathered post. “This is it, far as I can take you.”

  Pigtails flying behind her, Maggie ran out on the dock to catch Creed’s bowline, pulled it taut, and wrapped it around a cleat.

  “Obliged,” the skipper said. “Tell your mama I said thanks for that mess of green beans she sent over.” He set Bailey’s overnight bag on the dock. “Be a good girl and show the lady where Miss Emma’s house is.”

  “That’s her, ain’t it?” The laughing innocence vanished, replaced by a hostile wariness.

  “Mind your manners,” Creed admonished. “Ma’am, she’ll show you to the boardinghouse.” He stepped up onto the dock and offered Bailey a calloused hand. “I usually make a run two, three times a week to Crisfield, but if you need a ride sooner, get Miss Emma to let me know.”

  Bailey thanked him and smiled at the frowning child. “I’m Miss Bailey Elliott. I’m pleased to meet you, Maggie.”

  Silence.

  Bailey tried again. Nine years of teaching fourth grade had taught her how to break the ice with shy children. “Are you having fun on your summer vacation?”

  Maggie spun and retreated down the dock. Bailey glanced over her shoulder at Creed, but his back was to them, so she picked up her case and followed her reluctant guide. Maggie trotted down three steps to a grassy path between two crumbling frame structures with boarded-up windows. Behind the buildings, a wider path led across an open lot to a narrow oystershell street lined with trees and modest Victorian-style homes. Clapboard two-storied farmhouses with wide porches, white picket fences, and yards bursting with flowers, small garden plots, and grapevine trellises added to the picturesque charm and atmosphere of the village.

  Bailey stopped and stared in astonishment at a brown-and-white Shetland pony and yellow, two-wheeled cart standing in front of a tiny brick house with a steep roof and smoke drifting from a wide chimney. Horse-drawn wagons? Was this a town or a movie set?

  In her brief telephone conversation with Attorney McCready, he’d warned her that Tawes had no automobiles, no hotels, restaurants, not even a police force, but what tha
t meant really hadn’t sunk in. How was it possible that such isolation existed so close to Baltimore, Washington, and the increasingly populated Eastern Shore? “Do people really use horses to get around on the island?” Bailey asked.

  Maggie pouted and marched on. A flop-eared hound, tail wagging, materialized from a boxwood hedge and barked at them.

  A front door opened and a shrill voice called, “Belle! Come back here!” Obediently, the dog turned back toward the house. Bailey smiled and waved, but the gray-haired woman in the flowered housedress and apron only stared, folded her arms over her ample bosom, and slammed the door.

  “You must not have a lot of tourists here,” Bailey said.

  Maggie kept walking without saying a word.

  The yards grew wider, and the simple homes gave way to more substantial ones of brick. One eighteenth-century house with shutters, a sweeping lawn, and massive oak trees was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. A small bronze nameplate on the gate read, FOREST MCCREADY, ESQUIRE. The only sign of life was a boy cutting the side lawn with an old-fashioned push mower.

  Bailey glanced curiously at the elegant stone steps and white pillared porch. She was tempted to go up and knock at the door, but her appointment with the lawyer wasn’t until three o’clock. He might be with another client or still at lunch, and besides, she really needed to freshen up after her boat ride. She didn’t want to appear rude by arriving an hour and a half early.

  The thought of lunch made her realize how empty she felt. She hadn’t had anything to eat since she’d grabbed a cup of coffee and a muffin at the Wawa in Dover, and she was starving. “I’ve come to see Mr. McCready,” she said. Maggie might have been deaf for all the reaction she offered.

  They passed several more homes that could easily have been on the National Register of Historic Places, one that had obviously been uninhabited for years. Another, a Greek Revival, had a large sailboat on blocks in the backyard.

  The street meandered along the shoreline so that the homes on Bailey’s right now faced the water. A wide side street opened on the left, but the houses along that way were smaller, less imposing, and set back from the road. They hurried past a lovely old redbrick church and enclosed cemetery, another row of frame houses, and a grove of cedars that ran down to the beach. The street forked, with one branch narrowing and spanning a wooden bridge over a creek on her left, while the main thoroughfare continued on past a hard-packed dirt parking lot and a square two-story brick building with a weathered sign that proclaimed:

 

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