“Mardi Gras Pete’s on Magazine Street. I’ll e-mail you the rest.”
“Right. I’m on my way.” He paused. “Do you want me to tell Eve, or are you going to do it?”
“I’ll do it later. She phoned me last night and told me from where she was calling. Needless to say, I’m not pleased. And I’d just as soon she doesn’t try to tag along with you while you’re doing hunting and gathering. I don’t like the idea of her being with Kaskov, but she’s safer there than running around the French Quarter. I’m catching the next flight to New Orleans. I should be there by this afternoon.” He added dryly, “Tell Kaskov I’ll bunk with my wife. He won’t need to provide me with a room, too.” He hung up.
It was clear that Joe was as irritated with the situation as he was, Jock thought. Well they’d both have to live with it for the time being and just get on with business at hand.
And his particular business was to track down Norwalk’s men and the reason that they’d purchased all those building materials. He headed for the front door.
But his phone rang before he reached it.
Joe, again?
No, Jim Stanton. New York.
He accessed it. “I’m in a hurry. What do you have, Stanton?”
CHAPTER
14
“I’m here.” Darcy was sweeping gracefully down the grand staircase of the main house fifteen minutes later. “I feel as if I should be wearing hoops and corset, but I wasn’t prepared.” She stopped before Jock. “So why am I here? I know I’m irresistible, but I haven’t had breakfast, so the allure is fading away as we speak.”
“Come for a drive with me. I’m heading for New Orleans to do some checking on some purchases made by Macvey, but I’ll circle around and drop you back here.” He was heading for the door. “Ten minutes, Darcy.”
She hurried to catch up with him. “Why? And you told me not to tell Cara. I don’t like keeping things from Cara.”
“You can tell Cara when you get back. I just didn’t want you to have to keep up the wisecracks or stiff upper lip until you came to terms.” He opened the passenger door of the Mercedes rental car he’d parked in the driveway. “You’ll probably want to tell her since it concerns both of you.”
“Now I know I’m not going to like it. And I thought stiff upper lip was a British term, not a Scot’s.” She was silent as he drove down the driveway and out onto the road. “Bad, Jock?”
“You’ve gone through worse. It may be a relief. It’s just something you have to know.” He looked away from her. “I got a call from Jim Stanton this morning, the guard I hired to watch over Cara. You were told about him.”
She nodded. “You were furious that he didn’t stop that attack on Cara.”
“But he was still a good operative. So I told him to dig up as much as he could about everything concerning the circumstances of the attack and try to find who had done it. I’d already found out most of what I needed to know about the attack from Benoit and Kaskov by the time he called me this morning, but he fed me some additional info. He’d thought it was odd that Norwalk told Eve that he needed a twin, and Cara just happened to be rooming with one. I’ve always thought coincidences are very rare in this world, and so does Stanton.”
“No coincidence.” Darcy moistened her lips. “A setup?”
Jock nodded. “It was true there was a shortage in living accommodations, but there was a bribe put in place to the housing director to put you with Cara.”
“Why?” she whispered.
“Part of his master plan. He knew you were at the school in New York. He just made the next move.”
“How did he know I was at Carnegie Tech? How did he know anything about me?”
He was silent. “He had a very personal contact.”
“What the hell do you mean? Tell me.”
“Your mother and he were lovers.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “What?”
“For at least six months before his twin was killed, Rory Norwalk spent several nights with Felicity whenever he visited his brother in Nice.”
“My mother?” she whispered. “He slept with my mother.”
“From what you told Cara, it wasn’t unusual for her to sleep around.”
“But not him. He’s a monster. Why would she—” She closed her eyes. “But I can see it happening. She always got bored easily.” She shuddered. “He would be … different.” She opened her eyes. “And she wouldn’t even see what made him that way.”
“Stanton said that it was probably Sean Norwalk who introduced them. He knew how obsessed his brother was about the twin concept. Raoul Napier and Sean both worked for Manard, and Napier might have mentioned that his wife had twins by a former marriage. So it amused Sean to give Rory something he knew would please him. A beautiful woman who was also the mother of twins.”
“And my mother told him all about me … and Sylvie.”
He nodded. “They were lovers. He must have been very persuasive.”
She still couldn’t believe it. “She gave him Sylvie.”
“Napier might have had something to do with it. Yes, Felicity must have told Rory Norwalk details about both of you. But Napier was scared to death of Manard and probably didn’t even know the orders were actually coming from Norwalk. Everything changed when Norwalk started pulling the strings after Sean had been murdered.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Darcy said bitterly. “And my mother was one of those strings. They must have had a fine time together until Kaskov took out his brother, and he decided that he needed a twin to complete his plan.” She could see it unfolding. “He knew about me and Sylvie, and we were so very convenient. He threw me and Cara together, then went about getting Sylvie’s skull to give to Eve.”
Jock nodded. “That’s what probably happened.”
“Not probably. I can see him doing it. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly.” She was shaking, her voice hoarse. “And wasn’t it a plus that Cara and I became so close, and she took me into her family? What a great setup that Eve and Cara were there to have to deal with me when I fell apart when I saw Norwalk’s handiwork. Maximum pain all around.”
“As much as he could inflict.” He pulled over to the side of the road and turned to gaze at her. “He wanted to break you and have Cara see it. But he didn’t succeed. You might have fallen apart, but you put yourself back together, and the bond between you and Cara just strengthened.”
“Bullshit.” The tears were suddenly running down her cheeks. “I might have put myself back together, but I have scars, and I resent every one of them.”
“Shh.” He pulled her into his arms. “We all have scars. Accept them and let them heal. They won’t fade away, but in time you’ll be able to bear them more easily.”
She didn’t speak for a moment, her face buried in his chest. Then she lifted her head and stared up at him. “At least you didn’t give me any of that soothing, comforting nonsense,” she said unsteadily. “No lies about everything going to be fine and back to normal someday.” She wiped her eyes, then straightened away from him. “I would have socked you if you had.”
“I thought I was being comforting.” He was smiling down at her. “Truth is comfort to someone like you, Darcy.”
“Yeah.” She drew a deep breath. “And you’re very smart to realize that, Jock. And you were very smart to realize that my stiff upper lip might dissolve a little when you told me to what lengths Norwalk went to destroy Sylvie and me. And I thought that my mother couldn’t hurt me anymore, but she managed to reach out and do it. It does … hurt. You had to get me away because you knew what it would do to Cara to see me like this.”
He went still. “Not entirely. I knew it would hurt you, too.”
She nodded. “And I appreciate it. But we both know that Cara is the center, and the rest of us just revolve around her.”
“Is she?”
“Of course.” She gestured impatiently. “And I’m not going to dive into this and invade your privacy. I’m too grateful that you let me cry on your shoulder and made me feel as if I wasn’t too much of a wimp.”