Deadly Fate (29 page)

16

T
he following two days were, for Thor and Clara, a mass of reports, further investigations and dodging the press. Questions remained. Had Kimball been corresponding with Morley? When had Morley determined how, where and when Clara should be brought to him? Theories abounded on paper; they didn't have all the answers. They were still putting together puzzle pieces.

The state police found the ship's officer whose life and identification Tate Morley had stolen two days later deep in a forest that bordered the road to the state park.

It would have been his first voyage on the
Fate
, and therefore none of the other employees had known him to be anyone other than who he had presented himself to be.

Marc Kimball had simply booked passage for himself and Emmy Vincenzo, something that hadn't meant a thing to Emmy at the time—everyone knew that Kimball had a massive stage-crush on Clara.

Emmy was able to pull a number of strings for them, though, because of her position with Kimball. She had done bookings as usual. Of course, at the time, she'd had no idea of what was going on.

She'd cried copious tears at first, so finding out anything from her had been very difficult.

Thor wasn't a psychologist—and psychologists and psychiatrists would have a heyday with it all. He'd taken enough criminal behavior courses to speculate that it had been power both men had been after. For Kimball, money had given him tremendous clout, but it had never been that power over life and death that Morley had wielded. How and when the correspondence between the men had begun, Emmy had no idea. But she knew about secret drawers in Kimball's desk, and those drawers had led to a wealth of letters. They were coded, of course—they wouldn't have left the prison walls if they'd included instructions on how to come to Alaska. Cryptologists in the department would be given the task of deciphering just what the letters and phrases had meant.

They would never have all the answers, because both men were dead. Thor's shot had been a kill shot this time—he had no doubt that Morley would have stabbed Clara with an urgent desire for his last kill if he'd been given the least chance.

And sheer terror had seized Emmy, she had told them—between bouts of hysterical and copious tears—and she was both grateful to be alive and horrified that she had killed a man. She wouldn't be released from the hospital until this evening or tomorrow. There would be no charges against her—she had killed in self-defense. None of them knew if Kimball would have killed her in an ultimate defiant act or, with Morley, his puppet master, dead, if he would have just let her go.

“I have never been so terrified!” she'd told Thor, shaking in her hospital bed.

She'd been pretty roughed up. Apparently, Marc Kimball had been ordered by Morley to bring Clara Avery to him. She didn't know what the plan had been to escape the
Fate
once they'd gotten Clara. Maybe Kimball had been promised in on her—time to indulge in whatever sick fantasies he had, going along with what had appeared to be his absolute infatuation with her. Emmy didn't know that much. She only knew that Kimball had called her in, slammed her head against a door and put his knife to her throat to make her do what he wanted. He'd made her scream when he'd killed the officer on the ship—that way, they could disappear down to the cast cabins while law enforcement went to investigate the scream. He forced her to speak for him—work for him even through his deadly activities. He seemed to think, in a very malicious and sardonic way, that it was funny. And it would help show that his true intent was indeed lethal.

“What will I do now?” she asked, looking lost.

“Well, you'll get out of the hospital first,” he told her. She had a nervous habit of working her fingers on the sheets.

She was going to need a lot of therapy, he thought.

“You never had any inkling—I mean, you worked with him closely. You had no idea he might be homicidal himself? He never behaved strangely?” Jackson asked.

“That's just it—he always behaved strangely,” Emmy told him remorsefully.

“Strange, all right,” Mike Aqlak said. Thor wondered if his partner—there from the minute he could have been, dealing with red tape, the press, acting like a bulwark in many ways—meant Kimball himself, or the whole thing, or even the meek little woman who had managed to kill her boss in self-defense.

Oddly enough, Kimball had finally met his match in the little woman he'd treated so badly for so long.

“What is it?” Mike asked when they left.

“I don't know,” Thor told him.

Mike thumped him on the back. “You did it. You got Morley again, for good this time—and that bastard, Kimball. You called it with the caverns on the island—you found the damned boat he was using. Hell, my friend, you did what an agent is supposed to do!”

Thor thanked him for his support; Mike grinned and told him he knew that he would be leaving—and that it would be okay.

“Hey, partners meet up again, don't they?” Mike asked Jackson.

“It can happen,” Jackson said.

Thor wished he felt a little better—he should have been in on the somber celebrations and congratulating that went around among law enforcement. The murders had been brutal and horrible; those women still lay at the morgue, disfigured, disjointed, decapitated and bisected. A ship's officer had been killed, as well. What had happened had been terrible; but the killer and his accomplice were dead.

He should have been more relaxed. He just wasn't.

Maybe it was the fact that the manhunts, the searches through the snow, the speculation and the wondering had been so intense, it was impossible to just let it all go.

The media furor wasn't going to die down for a long time.

What few cabins hadn't been sold on the
Fate
went at a premium. Yes, there were areas on the ship that were a crime scene, but the crime scene units and specialized cleaning units would be finished before the set sailing date.

The
Fate
would keep her deadline—after all, she was the
Fate
!

Thor had a number of conversations with Clara about that. But she was determined she would sail on the ship. There was no reason she shouldn't.

“It's over, Thor. And this is what I do for a living. It's a good show. Tate Morley and Marc Kimball stole lives. Now they're dead. They can't keep stealing. We can't let them.”

For the next two nights, he had Clara staying with him at his family compound. He could easily reach the offices in Anchorage when he needed, the hospital in Seward and the state police. He was present at the press conference that Enfield gave, announcing that the FBI and state police were still piecing together the puzzle, but that they were satisfied that the Media Monster—aka Tate Morley and the Fairy Tale Killer—was now dead. The country was astounded that he seemed to have been aided by and worked in collusion with the multimillionaire Marc Kimball.

Thor tried not to watch the news.

Anyone who had been close to Kimball could seize the media and fifteen minutes of fame now, if they chose.

Thor was glad of the time he could take at the compound; glad to be there with Clara.

She was a natural at his home. The dogs loved her. They were somewhat insulted when they were locked out of the bedroom at night, but a couple of treats ended the problem of them scratching at the door.

It was a day and a night after the incident on the ship; he'd dealt with the tangle of the Bureau's investigation and had his first mandatory psychiatric appointment—necessary after the shooting. He'd had a long talk with Jackson, who'd warned him,
We can never be too careful with those we choose to love. Did I have to leave when I did—yes. Did Clara have to open that door—yes. That's who she is. It's why you're with her. Can you change that and make life safe? No. We do our best in every circumstance and have faith in those around us.

Thor was thinking about that conversation when he and Clara were alone together that second night, after they'd played with the dogs all day and learned to “mush,” and he knew that Jackson was right. Clara was capable of intelligent fear—the kind that went along with survival. But if she had a chance to put herself at risk to save a life, she would.

Now they were naked and damp and hot-skinned from the shower, sunken into the plush freshness of the sheets and the softness of the down. And all he could think then was that having her hair fall around him was like being wrapped up in gold silk. The taste of her flesh was the sweetest he had ever known. He kissed her and teased her, hands and lips upon her mouth, her throat, breasts, belly, thighs and in between, and she was like a wild nymph in turn, touching him as he was certain he'd never been touched before, doing things with the shimmery slide of her tongue that he'd never felt before and driving to him to a state of hunger and desire that seemed to defy the universe—much like the climax that ripped through him volcanically. He wondered if sex was that incredibly good just because they were both alive—but no, sex was that incredibly good because there was something there, deeper than human instinct, richer than perfection. He loved her smile when, gasping, she strode atop him, tossing her hair. He reached for her, drawing her down beside him. “I'm due time off.”

She tensed slightly and he worried, wondering if this was just great “I'm alive” sex for her, if what they'd shared before had simply been a result of all the tension and fear that had plagued them both.

He smoothed back her hair and continued, “I was thinking of a cruise.”

“Oh—an Alaskan cruise?”

“I wouldn't want any ordinary cruise. I'd want a historic ship. Something with a rich history. A ship that has survived war and trauma at sea—one that has carried thousands of immigrants. And, of course, been meticulously refitted.”

“Like a Celtic American cruise.”

“Hm, just like.”

“I hear you'll never get a cabin.”

“Ah, sometimes people are willing to share.”

She crawled atop him again, all smiles having faded, her eyes deep and bluer than the day and night together, beautiful. Touched with emotion.

“You can't give up anything for me, Thor. You need to be here, and right now...I can't have another show fall apart and—”

“I have time coming!” he assured her. And he hesitated. “I may be transferring. I get a transition period, too.”

“Transferring?”

He nodded, his hands running down her sides. “I was with Jackson and Mike today—two guys who are great, two super agents. But...”

“But?”

“But...you knew that Amelia led me to you?” he asked softly. She nodded; he'd told her that. They'd both been trying to think of a way to thank a ghost.

“Not that many people really get to speak with ghosts—especially people who have graduated from the academy and have had a good decade plus of work in the field. Jackson and I were especially good together because we could read one another's minds—not so much ESP, but knowing how we both thought. He's talked to me about his Krewe of Hunters.”

“Oh!” she said. “But you love Alaska!”

“It will always be home.”

She smiled at that and curled next to him. “I love New Orleans, too. Right now, though...”

“You know, the DC area has some of the finest theaters you'll ever find.”

“Does it mean that much to you—that we stay near one another? Not just now, but...”

He cradled her head and drew her close to kiss her lips. “Yeah,” he said softly.

“I know an actress who would be happy to share her cabin,” she whispered against his lips.

They made love again. Physically exhausted, still half-aroused, deeply comfortable in his own bed in his own home, Thor drifted toward sleep. Clara moved against him, murmuring, “Something isn't right.”

“What?”

He realized she'd been half-asleep when she roused and looked at him, puzzled.

“Something isn't right with me?” he asked.

She shook her head and grinned. “No. You're perfect.”

“Perfect?”

She smiled and lay sleepily against him again. “Okay, not perfect. But damned close.”

“You are perfect,” he whispered to her.

“Oh, so far from it!” she said. “No, it was something that Amelia said.”

“Amelia?”

“She was walking with me...and then she said ‘something isn't right' and went to find you, and bring you to me,” Clara said, and she rose again and kissed him, and he held her tight.

Eventually, they slept.

Life was good. The future loomed ahead.

A future that included...
Fate.

* * *

Clara slipped out of bed as silently as she could. She collected her things and smiled as she watched Thor still sleeping—he really was a perfect man, arms tossed about where she had been, limbs entangled in the wealth of the covers, profile striking against the sheets.

She hurried out lest she be tempted to stay.

In the shower she savored the hot water cascading around her, thinking that he might rise to join her. But he didn't. She dressed and went out and stood on the front porch first. The temperature was somewhere in the midfifties—cold for Louisiana standards! But so beautiful here.

She closed her eyes for a minute, incredibly grateful to be alive. So much adrenaline—fear? Fear for herself, for Emmy, for all of them? Anger, or a combination? A determination that she wouldn't go down without fighting?—had filled her first hours, she hadn't even really comprehended what had happened. The hours afterward had made it sink in. She'd faced a monster. And she'd come out of it okay.

Heading outside, she took a moment to really appreciate the compound. It was so handsomely arranged and filled with such beautiful creatures. Astrid and Colin kept massive and gentle draft horses as well as the dogs. The paddocks now were filled with the animals, running about, grazing, doing what horses did. She could see Astrid toward the main paddock, working with a group of puppies, and she walked over to her.