Blood Kin (28 page)

“Joe Marshall was into some stuff overseas where I was stationed.”

“Something he shouldn't have been doing? There's a
surprise. Anybody whose fortunes rose as quick as Joe's had to be doing something crooked.”

“I didn't say that.”

“Didn't have to. Question is, what was Joe selling?” The amusement vanished, and steel flickered behind the older man's eyes. “Somebody tried to poison my dogs last night. I found a chunk of store-bought meat on the trail that leads to Elizabeth's place. Not far away lay a dead raccoon. It died quick, and it died hurting. Lucky for Blue and the rest, they've been trained not to take food from strangers.”

“Bailey was with me in the boat. The bullet passed between us. She could have been killed.”

Will shook his head. “She should have stayed away. She'll only break her heart on Tawes.”

“I don't think wild horses could drag her away now. She's determined to find out what happened to her mother, and why.”

Will applied the glue sparingly to the back of the second glass eye. “This piece is going to Tokyo. Can you believe that? Something of mine on display in Japan. Man paid top dollar too. Not that I met him face-to-face. His agent contacted me just after the Boston show two years ago.”

“Bailey's your flesh and blood. She's as much a Tawes as your sister was. Don't you care that she came so close to harm?”

“Funny, isn't it, that McCready's taking so long to work the kinks out of that deed to the farm? It's been in the family since the eighteen hundreds,” he mused. He pulled several dog biscuits from his jean pocket and tossed them to the dogs. “I don't see what anybody could find wrong with the title.”

“I told her that it didn't matter to you that Elizabeth left the place to her.”

“That much is true.” He rubbed his hands on his pant legs. “I got as much here as I need. I've got a lot of faults, but greed isn't one of them.” He gathered up his tools. “Don't let me keep you from whatever you were hunting.”

“Will. Damn it, Will. This has got to tie in with how the senator died.”

“It just might. Or it might be something altogether different. Can't tell until it plays itself out. One thing for sure—anybody poking around here after dark had best be careful. These dogs mean a lot to me, and I'll not stand by and see them—”

“More than Bailey?”

“Don't put words into my mouth, boy.”

“I'm going to find out the truth one way or another.”

“Hope you do.” Will ran a finger over one wing of the carving, almost as if he were smoothing a feather into place. “There's nothing lower than a dog poisoner, nothing lower under the sun.”

It took Daniel nearly an hour to reach the high ground overlooking Tilghman's Sandbar. Once there he proceeded to map out an imaginary grid over the two acres of woodland, picturing where a sniper could have stood and waited for Emma's boat to pass by. He walked back and forth, searching the ground for any trace of the shooter.

When he was a boy, this had been farmland. Cows and horses had grazed here; now it was overgrown with a mixture of cedar, pine, and maple, wild rose and sassafras. Once there had been a house and outbuildings, but lightning had taken the house and wild grapevines, and time had left the barn and sheds in ruin.

As long as he'd been back on Tawes, Daniel hadn't gotten over the sheer joy of smelling home . . . of the salt bay air, the earthy scent of the freshly turned soil, or the sweet odor of clover crushed under his feet. It was so familiar and comforting on a primal level, so different from the high country of Afghanistan and the Far East as to be another planet. He'd known instinctively
that if there were anywhere on earth where he could become whole again, it would be here on this island. And day by day he'd felt himself healing . . . until cracks began to open in the fragile eggshell of security and the horror began to seep in, drop by drop.

He had closed the door on Mallalai, sealing her grave, burying it beneath a mountain of regret and grief. He wouldn't allow himself to dwell on the memory of her small hand in his, her soft voice, or the brush of her lips against his skin. She was dead, and she'd stay dead, because once he allowed the stones to crumble beneath the onslaught of why and what-if, he'd begin to relive the senselessness of the ensuing carnage.

The breeze was coming off the water, and not a single mosquito buzzed around his head. It would have been a good place for a man to think, to make plans for his future. At least, it would have been a perfect spot if he weren't hunting a would-be assassin.

If he hadn't come close to losing the second woman he'd let inside his heart . . .

He could almost hear the groans and cries of the dying, smell the splattered mud and spilled coffee . . . taste death in the air. There'd been little left of Mallalai to identify as human, let alone recognize. He might not have believed the body was hers if it weren't for the gold bracelet he'd bought her in the bazaar only days before. One hand remained, small, slender, and bloodless, and on the macabre wrist, his last and only gift, now twisted and blood-soaked.

He couldn't think about Mallalai now. It was Bailey he had to think about, Bailey he had to protect at any cost.

It took the better part of two hours of careful searching before Daniel found the place where the shooter
had stood, and less than five minutes to pick the spent shell out of the undergrowth. He swore as he grasped the brass between thumb and forefinger. This was no .22-caliber, no careless kid out squirreling. The shooting had been deliberate.

Unconsciously Daniel clenched his jaw as he turned the casing to catch the last rays of the setting sun. The head stamp on the shell was plain enough: Remington .308. Not military issue, as he'd expected, but civilian, a weapon used primarily for hunting, and it should be easy enough to match bullet to rifle. Trouble was, there were probably a hundred Winchesters on Tawes that could have fired this bullet.

“Clever bastard.” Leaving the brass where it could be found had been sloppy, but so had the attempt on his life. For the first time he wondered if maybe the shooter hadn't meant to kill him, but to frighten him. If so, the plan had worked . . . maybe too well.

Still cradling the shell casing in his hand, Daniel hunched down in the grass. He had a clear view of Tilghman's Sandbar from this spot. Not that he could see how shallow the water was, but the eddies around it showed him the sandbar as plainly as if it had been outlined in fluorescent orange paint.

Daniel knew what damage a .308 could do to a two hundred-pound buck. The bullet would enter, leaving a small, neat entrance hole, then continue, exploding through muscle, bone, and vitals to exit in a gaping wound of total devastation. He could easily imagine how close Bailey had come to dying. He hadn't thought the agency—if it was the agency that had done this—would go so far. His carelessness had nearly cost her life. Or his . . . He couldn't afford a second mistake in judgment, not after Mallalai.

 

Emma eased back on the throttle and slowed the engine to fifteen knots. Downing the last drops of the McCallan, she dropped the empty bottle into the bait well. She'd never been a particularly brave person, and she hoped that the Scotch had given her enough courage to do what had to be done. She was through running, through hiding secrets that should have been exposed decades before. Better dead than living scared night after night, jumping at every footstep, and lying awake these last few weeks listening to the haunting refrain outside her bedroom window.

Emma slowed the skiff and prepared to nose up against Will Tawes's dock. Her heart was leaping in her chest, and her hands felt numb. She expected that Will would kill her once he heard what she had to say, and it was no more than she deserved. Thirty-six years, and she'd never found the stones to tell the truth for Beth, but now, for Bailey, it had to come out and be finished.

Emma cut the engine, and the boat glided almost soundlessly into the slip. She knew there'd be no reprieve this time. She looped a mooring rope around a post and climbed up onto the dock. By the time she had the skiff secured, Will's dogs were running toward her in full cry. Behind, tall and menacing, she saw him striding to the dock.

“You're not welcome here. And well you know it, Emma Parks.”

She stood her ground, knotting her hands into fists to keep them from trembling. “Few are, from what I hear.”

“With good reason, I'd say.”

The dogs rushed at her, and she had the sudden urge to empty her bladder. The big male Chesapeake
hesitated, hackles raised, teeth bared, while the female circled and the shaggy shepherd snarled a warning. Will dropped them to earth with a single command.

“What do you want?”

Emma's throat tightened. “I need to tell you something I should have said a long time ago,” she said in a strangled croak. “About your Beth . . . about what happened to her.”

Will was on her before she had the chance to defend herself. A big hand closed on her shirtfront. A kick drove her legs out from under her. She slammed hard onto the ground. Stunned, gasping for breath, she lay prone with Will's knee pressing into her chest and his fist inches from her face.

“Say your piece while you still can draw breath!”

Once more they were trying to send her away from the island. Why? And had the shooting been an accident, as Daniel had said? Was his explanation as simple as a foolish boy playing with a gun, or was it something more? And why had Emma rushed out of the house as through her hair were on fire? His hair?

Bailey shook her head. It was all a maze of maybes, and she needed to think things out for herself. Could she trust Daniel? Should she? Running might help clear her head, but so would any kind of hard physical labor. Hadn't the weeds in the garden behind the school been getting out of hand since the shower the other night? Weeding was as good a way to distract herself as any.

She raced upstairs, changed into her oldest pair of shorts and shoes, and pedaled the bike through town to the summer-school garden. She had the rows of vegetables
to herself, and for the next few hours she crawled up and down, making neat piles of the weeds and watering the pepper and tomato plants. Already, green tomatoes were starting to turn color, and with any luck, in a week or two they'd get to taste the results of all their work.

Finally, when her back was aching and the worst of her agitation had worn off, Bailey gathered the lettuce, green beans, and radishes she'd salvaged and carried them to Emma's mother's house. The elderly woman wasn't at home, but Bailey left them in the basket attached to the windowsill beside the front door and returned to Emma's. She still hadn't found answers to any of her questions, but she knew what she wanted to do next: get clean.

At the house—Emma's house—Bailey undressed and got into the shower. She turned the water hot enough to steam up the bathroom and leaned her head against one wall of the stall as doubts rushed back to plague her. Why hadn't she listened to reason? she thought as she used a long-handled brush to scrub every inch of her body. Why hadn't she left when everyone warned her to? Why hadn't she been content with childish fantasies about the tragic death of her beautiful young mother? Will had warned her; Emma had warned her.

Daniel had warned her:“Are you certain you want to know?”

Now she was sorry she had persisted. What if Matthew Catlin was her biological father? Daniel's brother. She felt as though she needed to vomit. The thought was too disgusting to imagine. If Matthew had fathered her, then she'd just fallen hard for her own uncle. Worse, she'd committed incest.

She rubbed shampoo through her hair, scrubbing at her scalp with her fingertips. She'd lost her mind, going to pieces because of a wild guess on Emma's part. Emma or Emery, or whoever she was. Someone had told her that, too—nothing was ever as simple on Tawes as it seemed. She turned off the hot and shivered in the hard stream of icy water.

Stepping out, she dried herself and wrapped a clean towel around her wet hair. The blotchy face that stared back at her might have belonged to a deranged woman. She was as crazy as all the rest of them on this godforsaken island. Or as inbred. By morning she'd probably be walking on all fours and devouring raw squirrels.

She returned to the bedroom, suddenly aware that she hadn't had enough sleep in the last twenty-four hours to think clearly. Crawling between the sheets, she laid her head on the pillow, intending to rest for just a few minutes. She woke nearly three hours later feeling like a new woman.

Impulsively, she ran a comb through her hair and pulled on a clean T-shirt and matching shorts. She felt empty inside, numb as if she'd been injected with massive doses of Novocain. But she had to know whether she was panicking over an unsubstantiated rumor or if she'd committed the worst mistake of her life when she slept with Daniel Catlin. She had to find Matthew and demand that he tell her the truth.

The hushed street was strangely empty as Bailey hurried past the store in the shadowy twilight. No one, not even a dog, was in sight. She went first to the parsonage, but her repeated knocking went unanswered and she saw no lights on inside. After a few minutes she gave up and crossed through the cemetery to the
church office. There was no sign of anyone there either, but she called Matthew's name several times before circling the building to the sanctuary. The interior was as dark and silent as the graveyard.

She didn't want to go back to Emma's without getting answers, and the only other person she could think to ask was Forest. As Bailey approached his house, she saw someone on the porch speaking to the attorney. The two golden retrievers sat by the men, but readily abandoned their master and came to greet her.

Forest broke off his conversation with the stranger. “Bailey. What a pleasant surprise.”