A Rare Chance (23 page)

Seeing that she didn't have much leverage in the argument—and the whole issue was moot anyway—Gabriella abandoned it. Cam, having the sense not to come between Scagliotti father and daughter, headed up to the roof to fetch Scag's copy. If he'd come along and found Scag first, the two of them might never have told Gabriella about the copy. She'd have been shut out.

“Did you read any of it?” she asked her father.

“Nope. Hardly even touched the thing. I don't want to know any of Lizzie Fairfax's deepest secrets if I can help it.”

Gabriella wasn't sure she did either. A journal. Of all things to put in her safekeeping. “Look, Scag, I want you out of here. The orchids will be fine without you for a few days. You can go to the Cape and stay with some of Mother's friends. They'll put you up if I ask. You can take the bus—”

“What would I do on Cape Cod?” He shook his head, adamant. The effort must have caused him some pain because his entire body seemed to shudder. But he rallied. “I don't want you starting to think I can't take care of myself and plan to make myself a burden to you. I'll just lay low for a while and recuperate. My place's safe.”

“You should see a doctor.”

“Nah, I've been hurt a lot worse than this.”

“You were a lot younger too.”

He grunted, dismissing her concern. Cam returned with a large manila clasp envelope haphazardly stuffed with the copied pages of Lizzie's diary or journal or whatever it was Scag had found.

To Gabriella's surprise, Cam handed it over to her. “Here, she's your friend.” His gaze dropped to Scag. “You going to be all right or should we take you to Mass General?”

“It'll take more than a knock on the head to kill me.”

Cam nodded, grim. “Hardheadedness is another Scagliotti trait. Well, Darrow won't be back now that he has what he wants, but we shouldn't take any chances. It's obvious he has a key. I can drop Gabriella off at my place and you off at yours, Scag, and then go see what I can find out. Then we can figure out what to do.”

Gabriella bristled at his take-charge attitude, never mind that what he said made a certain sense. But knowing that she was at least partially responsible for Darrow's attack on her father had badly shaken her, and having Cam there to absorb some of her frustration and self-doubt helped.

“I suppose I can take a look at Lizzie's journal while you're gone,” she said.

Cam gave her a knowing smile. “Just making sure I know you're not letting me get away with telling you what to do, are you?”

“She's stubborn that way,” Scag said, staggering to his feet. “But you wouldn't want a woman who didn't have a mind of her own, would you?”

Trying to explain the finer points of independence and self-reliance to either of them, Gabriella decided, would be an exercise in futility. Hugging the copy of Lizzie's journal tightly to her chest, she led the way out.

New locks for her door would be a high priority—one thing she didn't need either Cam Yeager or Tony Scagliotti to tell her.

 

Cam dropped Gabriella and the copy of Lizzie's journal off at his place on lower Pinckney, leaving her with the key and instructions to lay low, getting a scowl for his trouble. Then he drove Scag over to Cambridge. Despite the obvious pain from his knock on the head, the old man seemed to take a perverse pleasure in his day's adventure. He told Cam not to worry, that he'd hit up the Chinese students with whom he shared his rooming house for some non-Western cures. “To think I came to Boston to rest up,” he said.

Cam could see how Tony Scagliotti got on people's nerves.

From Cambridge, he headed straight to the North Shore and out to Reading Point. At the unmanned security gate, he told whoever was on the other end of the intercom that he was looking for Pete Darrow and he was coming in, one way or another. The gate opened. When he got up the driveway, Darrow was waiting for him. “Figured I didn't want to chase you down on the rocks,” he said languidly as Cam jumped out of the car.

“I know what you did, Darrow, and I know why.”

He didn't seem too concerned. “The old man wants to press charges, I'll say he mistook me for an intruder, overreacted, and I defended myself.”

“You
were
an intruder.”

“Prove it. I had a key.”

“That you stole.”

“Prove that too.”

Cam reined in his anger, his muscles tensed with the urge to throttle the bastard. He'd hurt an old man. He could have killed him. “Gabriella's having her locks changed. Don't try it again.”

Darrow waved him off. “You're making mountains out of mole hills, Cam. Nothing's going on. I'm just trying to sort out why Lizzie left and where she is.”

“And covering your own ass.”

Darrow's hard eyes reached Cam, reminding him of the friendship that was slipping away from them. “Think whatever you want to think, Cam. I don't have the time or the patience to wait for people to cooperate, so I just do what I have to do. I suggest you just stay the fuck out of my way.”

Before Cam could respond, Joshua Reading trotted down the steps from the deck. His gaze fell on Cam. “Pete—who's this?”

“Cam Yeager, my ex-partner. He was just leaving.”

Cam walked right up to Reading, who was taller, leaner, a hell of a lot better-looking in an aristocratic, clean-cut sort of way. Even haggard from his canceled engagement, he had a presence that suggested privilege, self-assurance, a sense of his place in the world. Cam was unimpressed. Joshua's big brother had made him a fortune and he was happy to pretend he'd had a hand in it when, in fact, if it'd been up to him, he'd have pissed away every nickel his father had left him. Cam knew the type.

He got right in his face, his anger just barely under control. “I don't know what your game is, Reading, but if you put Darrow up to following Gabriella Starr and searching her apartment, beating up on an old man, you'll answer for it.”

Joshua gave him a scathing look. “You'd better leave, Mr. Yeager. Right now. Mr. Darrow?”

Darrow eased forward, but Cam had already backed off. He'd served notice, said what he'd wanted to say. He had nothing to prove. He climbed back into his car. Nobody, he noticed, said goodbye.

A few minutes later, he stopped at the scenic turnaround outside Reading Point. He sat in his car a minute, listening to the waves crashing on the rocks, listening to what his instincts were saying. He'd learned to pay attention to them. Right now they were telling him the rumors weren't just rumors: Joshua Reading had put together his own private arsenal. This time, where there was smoke, there
was
fire. If Cam could find the bastard's stash, he could take him in.

He started onto the rocks. Let Darrow come after him.

A few yards onto Reading Point, Darrow did just that. He came around a massive boulder, a .38 Smith & Wesson leveled at Cam's gut. “You really piss me off, Yeager.”

Cam shrugged. “So what else is new?”

Darrow lowered his gun a few inches. “I ought to shoot you in the kneecap, just to teach you a goddamned lesson.”

“Where does Reading keep his arsenal, Pete?”

“Go to hell.”

The breeze was cool off the water, the tide coming in. Cam repressed an urge to jump Darrow, wrestle him into the tide, hold his head under the icy saltwater until he came to his senses. But he'd just end up giving Darrow an excuse to shoot him.

“Hey!”

Cam swore, and he and Darrow both looked up just as Gabriella scrambled over a waist-high boulder up above them on the embankment. She charged down toward them, sure-footed on the loose rocks, as much in her element now as behind her desk at TJR Associates.

“What are you guys doing?” she yelled.

Darrow grimaced. His gun didn't move. He glanced at Cam. “The woman's a pain in the ass, you know?”

“She has her moments,” Cam said. “She doesn't know you won't shoot me.”

“You're the only one who thinks I won't shoot you.”

“You wouldn't risk it, Pete. And you'd miss me too much.”

“The hell,” Darrow muttered.

“You're just calculating the best and easiest way you can get what you want out of this happy mess we're all in. Killing or maiming me won't get you anything but a prison sentence.”

He grunted. “And some peace and quiet.”

Not unless he got rid of Gabriella Starr too. She hadn't slackened her pace. Possibly, Cam thought, she hadn't seen the gun.

Possibly she had.

“You should probably put the gun away before she gets here,” he said.

“Why? You worried it won't scare her or it will?”

Gabriella approached them, still moving fast. “I couldn't stay put in your apartment. I knew you'd come up here. Figured you might need my help. For ex-partners, you two sure don't trust each other—”

She stopped, her eyes widening as she came up alongside Cam and Darrow and saw the gun. Her cheeks turned pale as she narrowed her eyes on the Smith & Wesson. She wasn't even out of breath.

And she wasn't scared. She glared at Darrow. “Good God, are you crazy?”

Darrow glanced at Cam. “She does have a way about her.” He turned his attention back to Gabriella, his expression impassive. “Stand next to him.”

“Or what? You'll shoot me?”

“Gabriella,” Cam said.

“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, but she complied with Darrow's order. “Pure thuggery.”

Cam could believe that she and her father had spent one or two nights in jail just because some judge wanted to teach them a little respect for authority, for men with guns. Only her slight loss of color and increased rate of respiration told him she might be nervous, even slightly scared.

“Tide's going out,” Darrow said. “Be easy to get rid of two bodies.”

“What about our cars?” Gabriella countered. “They'd lead the police right to your doorstep.”

Darrow, who up until a few weeks ago had been the police, appealed to Cam. “Tell her to shut up.”

“As I told you, she doesn't know you won't shoot us,” Cam said.

Gabriella frowned. “Why wouldn't he shoot us?”

“Because it's not to his advantage, and it's not in him. Right, Pete?”

But Darrow didn't lower his gun. Cam supposed he'd have to wave it around a little longer, make sure they knew he had control of the situation. “It's my job to deal with trespassers. I could say you were armed, you threatened me, the Readings. I wouldn't shoot without sufficient provocation.”

Gabriella groaned in disbelief. “That's a lame excuse for killing
two
people. One maybe, but not two.”

“Jesus,” Darrow breathed, but he tucked the gun into the waistband of his canvas pants.

Now that the crisis had passed, Gabriella gulped in air, held it, and exhaled slowly, probably in an effort to keep from hyperventilating. Cam stifled an urge to go to her. But he understood she had her pride and would need to pull herself together in her own way. Just below them, the tide was rolling out, the rhythm of the water soothing, a kind of relief in its steadiness. Sea gulls called overhead. The sun was bright, warm, glistening on Gabriella's dark hair. She rallied quickly, as he'd known she would.

After a few seconds to let some of the tension defuse out of the situation, Cam turned to Darrow. “You open Lizzie's package yet?”

It would be Darrow's first impulse to lie—to deny he'd stolen anything. But even he could see there was no point. “Maybe I threw it in the ocean.”

“Joshua know you have it?”

Darrow ignored him, eyeing Gabriella. “What are you doing here?”

“You, assaulted my father.”

“Yeah, I've been through that with Yeager.” Darrow rocked back on his heels, rapidly losing patience. “Go on, you two. If you know where Lizzie is, tell her she can trust me. I know what's going on. I can help.”

Gabriella flew around at him. “Go to hell, Darrow. I'm not telling you anything. Even if I knew anything, I wouldn't tell you. You hit Scag.”

Cam gritted his teeth, waiting for the gun to come out again, but Pete Darrow just laughed and started back over the rocks, toward the house. Gabriella made a move to go after him, but Cam touched her arm. “It won't do any good. We need to concentrate on Lizzie.”

Gabriella turned to him, her eyes warm, wide, filled with a fear that hadn't been there a few moments ago when she'd seen Darrow's gun. “You don't think she's in Paris, do you?”

“Do you?”

She shook her head. “No, I don't.”

Cam agreed. They had no reason beyond gut instinct not to believe Lizzie Fairfax, but Gabriella didn't, and neither did he. “Have you read any of her journal?”