She cleared her throat, swallowed, said, “Nothing.” Because the cottage was elevated above ground level. No one could stand on the ground and look in unless they were ten feet tall.
“A light?” Nils walked over and looked out into the winter darkness. “Are the smugglers out there tonight?”
“No. Just…an overactive imagination. Mine.” She pressed her hand to her forehead over the scar and worked to bring her heart rate down to acceptable levels. Ever since the Army had discharged her, she’d been afraid something like this would happen: optical illusions, madness, another year lost and no idea where it went, what happened, what she had done.
“We don’t need to imagine anything bad.” The big, strong man was chiding her.
But right now, she was glad of the company of this patronizing, mansplaining jerk. She was glad she wasn’t alone.
In a businesslike tone, he said, “It’s all happening here. I don’t exult in the disappearance of a law officer, but you and I both know the loss of Lloyd Magnuson and Priscilla’s body means the Librarian is here and taking steps to conceal his crimes. We are so close.” His eyes gleamed with radical fervor.
When he looked like that, he made her uneasy. “Nils, you’re rocking the boat, and rocking this particular boat will result in someone going overboard. That someone could be you.”
He half turned his head, and his profile was sharply etched against the shiny dark of the window. “I’m remarkably well-balanced.”
She got to her feet. “Let me be clear. You should be careful, because I won’t go over the side with you. I didn’t survive Afghanistan to recover a penis statue.” She donned her oversize coat, walked to the door, opened it, looked behind her and saw him watching her, his beautiful brown eyes avid, his face speculative.
She stepped out onto the porch and firmly shut the door behind her. Alone and aloud, she said, “I didn’t survive Gregory Lykke to take a second lover I don’t trust.”
She looked around, saw no smuggling lights and no disembodied heads.
She found that comforting. But she’d run to Nils’s cottage to avoid being seen as a target. Now…now she was more spooked by the phantom she’d imagined than the killer she knew was out there. So she sprinted to the resort, keeping to the lighted paths, taking her chances with smugglers and knowing in the corner of her mind that she was trying to outrun the ghost of her long-dead and viciously brutal husband.
*
“Mara. Mara! Did you see?” Destiny Longacre peered out the blinds in Mara’s cottage. “That’s Kellen Adams, and she’s sneaking out of that guest cottage!”
“Really?” Ellen leaped up from the coffee table, where Mara was filing her nails, and ran to the window.
“Wait. Wait! I want to see, too!” Daisy hobbled over, her newly painted toes separated by cotton balls. “Whose cottage is that?”
Xander lifted his hands from Mara’s shoulders—he had been massaging her and urging a regime of stress-relieving yoga breathing—and wandered over to look. “That’s Nils Brooks’s cottage. The author. Nice-looking man and I spoke to him today. Intelligent, insightful and curious about how the resort works.”
Mara was hosting a spa worker evening to get their minds off the past two days, and they had been fixing hair, massaging tense knots of muscle and snacking on caramel corn while waiting for the pizza to bake.
Now Mara went over and slapped the blinds out of Destiny’s hands. The blinds fell with a clatter and everyone turned to find Mara with her hands on her hips. “It’s nobody’s business.”
“You’re right,” Ellen agreed. “But he’s got good hair.”
“How does she have time for this while Annie is away?” Destiny shook her hands as if she had hurt them. “She’s been working all day.”
Daisy chortled. “But not all night!”
A short burst of laughter. Groans.
When the merriment died down, Xander said, “She has superpowers.”
He was so calm, so Zen, everyone stared at him trying to decide if he was serious.
“Frances is dating Mitch, and Mitch said while overseas she saved them more than once from impossible situations. They found out—”
“They who?” Mara asked.
“Her team, the people in maintenance, found out that her parents were spies, bred by the government to have superhero powers.”
“Wow,” Destiny said in an awed voice.
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Daisy said.
Mara sighed and used the corkscrew to noisily crank the cork out of another bottle of wine.
The oven timer dinged. Xander swooped in and removed the margherita pizza, sliced it and put it in the middle of the coffee table.
Everyone settled down to food, drink and speculation about Kellen Adams, who she really was and where she had come from.
25
“Mr. Gilfilen, please. Priscilla Carter is dead. Lloyd Magnuson has disappeared. Someone out there is smuggling something they’re willing to kill for. Won’t you let the government agencies handle this rather than putting your life at risk?” Kellen stood with her hands clasped at her chest, watching Mr. Gilfilen make himself a cup of oolong tea.
He had returned to his suite mere moments before, dressed in military camouflage, frozen to the bone and calm in the face of tonight’s failure. “Miss Adams, I appreciate your concern. But I am not without resources. Like you, I’ve served in the military, and unlike you, I promptly went into security as a way to utilize my training. If these smugglers are bringing in illegal and lethal drugs to distribute to our young people, or munitions that they plan to assemble in an act of terrorism, would I be satisfied to tell myself, At least I kept myself safe?” He lifted the tea bag out of his cup and looked inquiringly at her. Politely.
“No, of course you wouldn’t.” Kellen understood that cutting the umbilical cord of funding to the terrorists would benefit the United States, but Mr. Gilfilen clearly believed he was taking direct action against the evils that threatened society, not stopping the illegal import of ancient artifacts. “Sometimes what comes in isn’t lethal in and of itself.”
He sugared his tea and took a sip.
She tried again. “I’ve been doing research.” Which was a kind of truth. “The head of this smuggling operation is without scruples, compassion, the slightest shred of humanity.”
“Miss Adams, please don’t tell me you think someone who would kill a young woman and cut off her hands is not a good person.” His humor was so dry it could flake paint off the wall.
Right. She wasn’t going to win this argument—the argument with Mr. Gilfilen, or with herself. If Nils Brooks and Mr. Gilfilen worked together, they could possibly find and disable the Librarian sooner. But she had never completely trusted Brooks, so if she told him about Mr. Gilfilen and Nils was a bad guy, she had betrayed a man of honor. She wanted to tell Mr. Gilfilen about Nils Brooks and the MFAA, but did she dare gamble her trust on such an important issue?
She couldn’t see a way out of this moral dilemma, so she said, “Please be careful, and please know—if you need help, I will be there for you.”
“Miss Adams, I do know that, and I promise, I depend on you.”
She couldn’t force the man to take care, not without explaining everything she knew, and she suspected even then he would do what he thought best, regardless of his own safety. With a nod, she left him alone with his tea and headed toward maintenance to talk to someone sensible, well-balanced and with two X chromosomes. Birdie.