by Nora Roberts
His face was a grim mask now. Cold. “I detest her.” He spit the words out as if they were poison. “Her death would be nothing but a blessing to everyone who loves her.”
***
When Alex, Liz, and Dorian were gone, Morgan left the villa. She needed to walk—needed the air. This time she avoided her habit of heading for the beach. She was far from ready for that. Instead, she struck out for the cliffs, drawn to their jagged, daring beauty.
How clean the air was! Morgan wanted no floral scents now, just the crisp tang of the sea. She walked without destination. Up, only up, as if she could escape from everything if she could only get higher. If the gods had walked here, she thought, they would have come to the cliffs, to hear the water beat against rock, to breathe the thin, pure air.
She saw, to her pleasure, a scruffy, straggly goat with sharp black eyes. He stared at her a moment as he gnawed on a bit of wild grass he’d managed to find growing in between the rocks. But when she tried to get closer, he scrambled up, lightly, and disappeared over the other side of the cliff.
With a sigh, Morgan sat down on a rock perched high above the water. With some surprise, she saw tiny blue-headed flowers struggling toward the sun out of a crevice hardly wider than a thumbnail. She touched them, but couldn’t bring herself to pluck any. Life’s everywhere, she realized, if you only know where to look.
“Morgan.”
Her hand closed over the blooms convulsively at the sound of his voice. She opened it slowly and turned her head. Nick was standing only a short distance away, his hair caught by the breeze that just stirred the air. In jeans and a T-shirt, his face unshaven, he looked more like the man she had first encountered. Undisciplined. Unprincipled. Her heart gave a quick, bounding leap before she controlled it.
Without a word, Morgan rose and started down the slope.
“Morgan.” He caught her quickly, then turned her around with a gentleness she hadn’t expected from him. Her eyes were cool, but beneath the frost, he saw they were troubled. “I heard about Iona.”
“Yes, you once told me there was little that happened on the island you didn’t know.”
Her toneless voice slashed at him, but he kept his hands easy on her arms. “You found her.”
She wouldn’t let that uncharacteristic caring tone cut through her defenses. She could be—would be—as hard and cold as he had been. “You’re well informed, Nicholas.”
Her face was unyielding, and he didn’t know how to begin. If she would come into his arms, he could show her. But the woman who faced him would lean on no one. “It must have been very difficult for you.”
She lifted a brow, as though she were almost amused. “It was easier to find someone alive than to find someone dead.”
He winced at that—a quick jerk of facial muscles, then dropped his hands. She’d asked him for comfort once, and now that he wanted to give it, needed to give it, it was too late. “Will you sit down?”
“No, it’s not as peaceful here as it was.”
“Stop slashing at me!” he exploded, grabbing her arms again.
“Let me go.”
But the faint quaver in her voice told him something her words hadn’t. She was closer to her own threshold than perhaps even she knew. “Very well, if you’ll come back to the house with me.”
“No.”
“Yes.” Keeping a hand on her arm, Nick started up the rough path. “We’ll talk.”
Morgan jerked her arm but his grip was firm. He propelled her up the rough path without looking at her. “What do you want, Nicholas? More details?”
His mouth thinned as he pulled her along beside him. “All right. You can tell me about Iona if you like.”
“I don’t like,” she tossed back. They were already approaching the steps to his house. Morgan hadn’t realized they were so close. What devil had prompted her to walk that way? “I don’t want to go with you.”
“Since when have I cared what you want?” he asked bitterly and propelled her through the front door. “Coffee,” he demanded as Stephanos appeared in the hall.
“All right, I’ll give you the details,” Morgan raged as she whirled inside the door of the salon. “And then, by God, you’ll leave me be! I found Iona unconscious, hardly alive. There was a syringe in bed with her. It seems she was an addict.” She paused, unaware that her breath was starting to heave. “But you knew that, didn’t you, Nicholas? You know all manner of things.”
She’d lost all color, just as she had when she’d run across the beach and into his arms. He felt a twinge, an ache, and reached out for her.
“Don’t touch me!” Nick’s head jerked back as if she’d slapped him. Morgan pressed her hands against her mouth and turned away. “Don’t touch me.”
“I won’t put my hands on you,” Nick managed as they balled into fists. “Sit down, Morgan, before you keel over.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Her voice quavered, and she detested it. Making herself turn back, she faced him again. “You have no right to tell me what to do.”
Stephanos entered, silent, watchful. As he set the coffee tray down, he glanced over at Morgan. He saw, as Nick couldn’t, her heart in her eyes. “You’ll have coffee, miss,” he said in a soft voice.
“No, I—”
“You should sit.” Before Morgan could protest, Stephanos nudged her into a chair. “The coffee’s strong.”
Nick stood, raging at his impotence as Stephanos clucked around her like a mother hen.
“You’ll have it black,” he told her. “It puts color in your cheeks.”
Morgan accepted the cup, then stared at it. “Thank you.”
Stephanos gave Nick one long, enigmatic look, then left them.
“Well, drink it,” Nick ordered, furious that the old man had been able to hack through her defenses when he felt useless. “It won’t do you any good in the cup.”
Because she needed to find strength somewhere, Morgan drank it down quickly. “What else do you want?”
“Damn it, Morgan, I didn’t bring you here to grill you about Iona.”
“No? You surprise me.” Steadier, she set the cup aside and rose again. “Though why anything you do should surprise me, I don’t know.”
“There’s nothing too vile you wouldn’t attribute to me, is there?” Ignoring the coffee, Nick strode to the bar. “Perhaps you think I killed Stevos and left the body for you to find.”
“No,” she said calmly, because she could speak with perfect truth. “He was stabbed in the back.”
“So?”
“You’d face a man when you killed him.”
Nick turned away from the bar, the glass still empty in his hand. His eyes were black now, as black as she’d ever seen them. There was passion in them barely, just barely, suppressed. “Morgan, last night—”
“I won’t discuss last night with you.” Her voice was cold and final, cutting through him more accurately than any blade.
“All right, we’ll forget it.” This time he filled the glass. He’d known there would be a price to pay; somehow he hadn’t thought it would be quite so high. “Would you like an apology?”
“For what?”
He gave a short laugh as his hand tightened on the glass. He tossed back the liquor. “God, woman, you’ve a streak of ice through you I hadn’t seen.”
“Don’t talk to me of ice, Nicholas.” Her voice rose with a passion she’d promised herself she wouldn’t feel. “You sit here in your ancestral home, playing your dirty chess games with lives. I won’t be one of your pawns. There’s a woman barely alive in an Athens hospital. You make your money feeding her illness. Do you think you’re remote from the blame because you cross the strait in the dead of night like some swashbuckling pirate?”
Very carefully, he set down the glass and turned. “I know what I am.”
She stared at him until her eyes began to fill again. “So do I,” she whispered. “God help me.”
Turning, she fled. He didn’t go after her.
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Moments later, Stephanos came back into the room. “The lady’s upset,” he said mildly.
Nick turned his back to fill his glass again. “I know what the lady is.”
“The past two days have been difficult for her.” He clucked his tongue. “She came to you for comfort?”
Nick whirled but managed to bite back the words. Stephanos watched calmly. “No, she didn’t come to me. She’d go to the devil himself before she came to me again.” With an effort, he controlled the rage and his tone. “And it’s for the best, I can’t let her interfere now. As things stand, she’ll be in the way.”
Stephanos caressed his outrageous moustache and whistled through his teeth. “Perhaps she’ll go back to America.”
“The sooner the better,” Nick muttered and drained his glass. At the knock on the door, he swore. “See who the hell it is and get rid of them if you can.”
“Captain Tripolos,” Stephanos announced a few moments later. There was a gleam in his eye as he melted out of sight.
“Captain.” Nick fought off the need to swear again. “You’ll join me for coffee?”
“Thank you.” Tripolos settled into a chair with a few wheezes and sighs. “Was that Miss James I just saw going down the cliff path?”
“Yes.” With some effort, Nick prevented his knuckles from whitening against the handle of the pot. “She was just here.”
Both men watched each other with what seemed casual interest. One was Morgan’s panther—the other a crafty bear.
“Then she told you about Miss Theoharis.”
“Yes.” Nick offered the cream. “A nasty business, Captain. I intend to call Athens later this morning to see what news there is. Is Iona’s condition why you’re here?”
“Yes. It’s kind of you to see me, Mr. Gregoras. I know you are a very busy man.”
“It’s my duty to cooperate with the police, Captain,” Nick countered as he sat back with his coffee. “But I don’t know how I can help you in this case.”
“As you were with Miss Theoharis all of yesterday afternoon, I hoped you could shed some light on her frame of mind.”
“Oh, I see.” Nick sipped his coffee while his mind raced with possibilities. “Captain, I don’t know if I can help you. Naturally, Iona was distressed that the man’s murder was practically on her doorstep? She was edgy—but then, she often is. I can’t say I saw anything different in her.”
“Perhaps you could tell me what you did on your boat trip?” Tripolos suggested. “If Miss Theoharis said anything which seemed to indicate she was thinking of suicide?”
Nick lifted a brow. “We weren’t overly engaged in conversation.”
“Of course.”
Nick wondered how long they could continue to fence. He decided to execute a few flourishes of his own. “I will say that Iona seemed a trifle nervous. That is, as I said, however, a habitual trait. You’ll find that the people who know her will describe Iona as a . . . restive woman. I can say with complete honesty that it never entered my mind that she was contemplating suicide. Even now, to be candid, I find the idea impossible.”
Tripolos settled back comfortably. “Why?”
Generalities, Nick concluded, would suffice. “Iona’s too fond of herself to seek death. A beautiful woman, Captain, and one greedy for life’s pleasures. It’s merely an opinion, you understand. You know much more about this sort of thing.” He shrugged. “My opinion is that it was an accident.”
“An accident, Mr. Gregoras, is unlikely.” He was fishing for a reaction, and Nick gave him another curious lift of brow. “There was too much heroin in her system for any but an amateur to take by mistake. And Miss Theoharis is no stranger to heroin. The marks of the needle tell a sad story.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Were you aware that Miss Theoharis was an addict?”
“I didn’t know Iona very well, Captain. Socially, of course, but basically, she’s a cousin of a friend—a beautiful woman who isn’t always comfortable to be around.”
“Yet you spent the day with her yesterday.”
“A beautiful woman,” Nick said again, and smiled. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
“Perhaps you’d be interested in a theory of mine.”
Nick didn’t trust those bland eyes but continued to smile. “Of course.”
“You see, Mr. Gregoras,” Tripolos went on. “If it was an accident, and if your instincts are correct, there is only one answer.”
“One answer?” Nick repeated then allowed his expression to change slowly. “Do you mean you think someone attempted to . . . murder Iona?”
“I’m a simple policeman, Mr. Gregoras.” Tripolos looked plumply humble. “It is my nature to look at such matters from a suspicious point of view. May I be frank?”
“By all means,” Nick told him, admiring the captain’s plodding shrewdness. Frank be damned, Nick mused, he’s going to try to give me enough rope to hang myself.
“I am puzzled, and as a man who knows the Theoharis family well, I would like your opinion.”
“Whatever I can do.”
Tripolos nodded. “I will tell you first—and of course, you understand this cannot leave this room?”
Nick merely inclined his head and sipped his coffee.
“I will tell you Anthony Stevos was part of a smuggling ring operating on Lesbos.”
“I must admit, the thought had crossed my mind.” Amused, Nick took out a box of cigarettes, offering one to Tripolos.
“It’s no secret that a group has been using this island’s nearness to Turkey to smuggle opium across the strait.” Tripolos admired the thin wisp of elegant tobacco before he bent closer to Nick for a light.
“You think this Stevos was murdered by one of his cohorts?”
“That is my theory.” Tripolos drew in the expensive smoke appreciatively. “It is the leader of this group that is my main concern. A brilliant man, I am forced to admit.” Reluctant respect crossed his face. “He is very clever and has so far eluded any nets spread for his capture. It is rumored he rarely joins in the boat trips. When he does, he is masked.”
“I’ve heard the rumors, naturally,” Nick mused behind a mist of smoke. “I put a great deal of it down to village gossip and romance. A masked man, smuggling—the stuff of fiction.”
“He is real, Mr. Gregoras, and there is nothing romantic about back-stabbing.”
“No, you’re quite right.”
“Stevos was not a smart man. He was being watched in hopes he would lead us to the one we want. But . . .” As was his habit, Tripolos let the sentence trail off.
“I might ask, Captain, why you’re telling me what must be police business.”
“As an important man in our community,” Tripolos said smoothly, “I feel I can take you into my confidence.”
The old fox, Nick thought, and smiled. “I appreciate that. Do you think this masked smuggler is a local man?”
“I believe he is a man who knows the island.” Tripolos gave a grim smile in return. “But I do not believe he is a fisherman.”
“One of my olive pickers?” Nick suggested blandly, blowing out a stream of smoke. “No, I suppose not.”
“I believe,” Tripolos continued, “from the reports I have received on Miss Theoharis’s activities in Athens, that she is aware of the identity of the man we seek.”
Nick came to attention. “Iona?”
“I am of the opinion that Miss Theoharis is very involved in the smuggling operation. Too involved for her own safety. If . . . When,” he amended, “she comes out of her coma, she’ll be questioned.”
“It’s hard for me to believe that Alex’s cousin would be a part of something like that.” He’s getting entirely too close, Nick realized, and swore silently at the lack of time. “Iona’s a bit untamed,” he went on, “but smuggling and murder. I can’t believe it.”
“I am very much afraid someone tried to murder Miss Theoharis because she knew too much. I will ask you, Mr. Gregoras, as one w
ho is acquainted with her, how far would Miss Theoharis have gone for love—or for money?”
Nick paused as if considering carefully while his mind raced at readjustments to plans already formed. “For love, Captain, I think Iona would do little. But for money”—he looked up—“for money, Iona could justify anything.”
“You are frank,” Tripolos nodded. “I am grateful. Perhaps you