Luanne Rice (31 page)

Smart, playful, social conscience:
Patrick
checked them off, nodding. Well, maybe not so smart. He found himself wanting
to be the kind of person this woman with the brown velvet eyes would like.

“Besides
which, there’s a fair amount of trading of CDs and live concert recordings not
available anywhere else. I mean, well—I know you’re a police officer, so this isn’t
anything I do, but it is sometimes done on the board—bootlegs.”

Patrick
nodded, trying not to look too stern.

“Well,
recently I was reading the posts on the board, and I realized that someone has
been committing fraud.”

“Fraud?
How?”

“By
pretending his sister lost her home in a hurricane. He told everyone that
Hurricane Catherina swept through, wrecking her house and injuring her son very
badly. Spirit fans, well, they came out in droves. He calls himself Secret
Agent. I’ve printed out a few of his posts—” She handed them to Patrick and he
began to read through them.

He saw the
setup instantly—bait and hook. He shook his head. Years ago he had worked with
the FBI on a case of Internet fraud. Chat rooms and message boards were prime
opportunities for con men and predators. They were the perfect places for the
Dr. Jekylls of the world—no one could look through the screen and see that the
person they were chatting with was really Mr. Hyde.

“You can
see that many people responded. At one point, Secret Agent kept a running tally
of what people had sent. Right here, it’s up to seven thousand dollars. Just
like one of those fundraiser signs that looks like a thermometer—‘Help us meet
our goal.’ In this case, he wanted to get to ten thousand.”

“Look at
all the people who wrote in,” Patrick said, amazed at the goodwill and
innocence of strangers. He thought back to the FBI case he’d worked on—he and
Joe Holmes, an agent who had married a local Hubbard’s Point woman, Tara
O’Toole, had run down a couple who had gotten retirees to invest their life
savings in penny stocks. The couple had lived in a huge house overlooking
Silver Bay. The retirees had lost everything.

“We’re a
trusting bunch,” Marisa said.

“Spirit fans?”

“People in
general,” she said. “I trusted this man myself.”

“You sent
in money for his sister?”

She shook
her head, and angry tears appeared in her eyes. “I married him,” she said.

“Secret
Agent is your husband?” he asked.

“My
ex-husband,” she corrected. “I think so. I know he used to troll message
boards—I used to go on his computer sometimes, to find out if he was having an
affair. There’s something about the style of his posts here—earnest, funny—that
makes me think
it’s
Ted.”

“Why would
he choose the Spirit board?”

“He knows
I’m a fan. I think maybe he was hoping to find me online. ‘Secret Agent’ is the
title of the only Spirit song he really likes. The thing is
,
I never posted here until very recently—so he couldn’t find me.”

“That’s
good,” Patrick said. “That’s good.”

“Here are
my only posts,” she said. “My screen name is White Dawn.”

Patrick
read the first, about how the sister would be getting money from the government
if she was in a disaster area. Then he read the second, “Beware,” and smiled.
Then he read the third: “Hurricane Catherina didn’t hit Homestead. It tracked
north, dude. You can do a better job conning people if you first check out the
storm track on the NOAA website.”

“You wrote
that?” he asked, grinning.

“Yep.”

“Whoa,” he
said, reading the flurry of angry replies from the board. “And a shitstorm
ensued.”

“Yes, it
did. Did he commit fraud? Can you catch him for it?”

“Well,”
Patrick said, remembering back to the FBI investigation. “Whenever you go
online, you leave a trail. There’s always a signature left at the website, of
your IP number—which is really like a fingerprint.” He took out his cell
phone—to see whether he still had Joe Holmes programmed in. “I think it’s a
good possibility we can nail him,” he said.

“Who are
you going to call?” she asked.

“FBI,” he said.
“But first, do you mind if I try someone else?
Just to update
her on a different case?”

“Lily’s
grandmother?” Mara asked, smiling. “Go ahead.”

Patrick hit
redial, and the number rang, but again there was no answer. His stomach
knotted—it was now ten at night, and Maeve should definitely be there. Before
gathering his thoughts on her whereabouts, he needed to stay focused on this
Secret Agent guy. Scrolling through his stored phone numbers, he found Joe
Holmes’s. Just before dialing, he glanced over at Marisa. “What’s your
ex-husband’s real name?” he asked.

“Ted,” she
said. “Ted Hunter.”

Patrick
nearly dropped the phone. “What did you say?”

“Ted
Hunter.”

“As in—” It
couldn’t be possible. “What’s his whole name?
The one on his
driver’s license.”

“Edward
Hunter,” she said.

And then
Patrick had to sit down.

Chapter 26

L
iam had a family now. That was how it felt to
him, taking care of Lily and Rose. After the situation at the inn, he had felt
them too vulnerable to go back to their own house, so he had brought them up
the hill, to his home. Lily seemed relieved, as if she’d been on the run,
making decisions for so long, and tonight she just needed a rest.

Determined
to give that to her, Liam drove through the stone posts at the bottom of his property
and then up a long, curving drive. He lived in a spruce forest, in a large
stone house that had once belonged to a quarry owner. Because the house wasn’t
visible from the road, he knew that the local kids had turned it into a
mythological mansion—where Captain Hook lived. He glanced over at Rose and
hoped she wouldn’t be scared. But she was half-asleep, just smiling to be back
in Cape Hawk.

Liam
carried her, and together the three of them walked in his front door. Liam’s
heart was pounding with excitement and nervousness and pride. To have Rose and
Lily here meant everything to him.

“It’s been
a long time,” Lily said, smiling wearily.

“Do you
remember the first time you came here?” he asked.

“When Rose
was about three weeks old,” she said. “She had a fever, and there’d been a bad
storm, and the phones were out, and a big oak was blocking my road, so I
couldn’t get out. I hiked up here, to ask you to help.”

“Did he
help?” Rose asked.

“He always
helped,” Lily said softly.

Liam smiled
gratefully. He turned on lights, hoping his bachelor style wouldn’t turn them
away. He had stacks of oceanographic journals everywhere, alongside piles of
shark books, photos of shark attacks on marine mammals, tapes and videos of
eyewitness accounts of shark attacks on humans. He had solid oak furniture and
a bunch of red pillows, a big Tabriz rug Camille had given him from the family
collection, a lot of bookcases without space for even one more book, and a TV
in the corner, as if by afterthought.

“It’s cozy
here,” Rose said.

“Do you
think so?” he asked, crouching down beside her. “I’m glad.”

“I don’t
understand why we came here,” she said.
“Instead of our
regular house.”

Liam
exchanged a look with Lily, wanting her to answer.

“Is it
because of that man at the inn?” Rose pressed.

“Yes,
honey,” Lily said. “He’s someone … who knows a person I knew long ago. It’s not
important tonight. The only thing we have to do is get you to bed.”

Liam
carried Rose upstairs, to one of the spare bedrooms. Lily checked out the hallway
and saw a second empty bedroom next door. Liam pulled out clean sheets from the
linen closet in the
hall,
put them on the twin bed.
Rose seemed to be studying him more carefully than usual. Every time he glanced
over, he saw her gazing at him with complete intensity. Lily set Rose’s
medication out on the bureau and went to get a glass of water.

“What is
it, Rose?” he asked.

“This is
what I wished for,” she said.
“On my birthday.”

“Coming
here?” he asked.

But Rose
was either too tired to talk, or she had decided she’d said enough. Lily
returned with the water, and they went through the long process of giving Rose
all her medication. Then Liam and Lily tucked her into bed, and Lily told her
she’d be sleeping in the spare room just next door.

“Where will
Dr. Neill be?” Rose asked.

“My room’s
downstairs. But I’ll hear you if either of you needs anything.”

“Thank
you,” Rose said, putting her arms around his neck to kiss him good night.
Having this child in his house, knowing what she had just gone through, moved
Liam to the core.

After Rose
was settled, he and Lily went back downstairs. He put a kettle on the stove and
turned to look at her. She stood there, leaning on his kitchen counter. Her
sable hair gleamed in the lamplight. He went to her, tilted her face up, kissed
her the way he’d
been wanting
to kiss her all day.

They were
hungry for each other—in a way Liam had never experienced before. It was as if
they were separate from real life, completely swept up in whatever was
happening between them. But the reality was so deep and
great,
Liam knew he had to pull away.

“Are you
okay?” he asked.

“I think
so. I’m just not sure which end is up. Rose’s surgery went so miraculously
well, and then to come home to—my past.”

“How did he
find you?” Liam asked.

Lily
blinked and smiled, looking down at her feet. Liam had expected her to be
upset, even frantic, but she didn’t seem that way at all. “My grandmother,” she
said.

“She knew?”

Lily
nodded. “She didn’t know where I was going, but I couldn’t just run away
without telling her. I could never do that to her. You don’t know her, Liam,
but she is the smartest, most amazing woman in the world. She raised me to be
so strong. I thought I could go through anything.”

Liam
listened and watched, seeing sparks in the blue eyes he loved so much.

“But I
couldn’t. Not Edward—not when I was about to have a baby. I knew he’d never let
me get away, and there was no way I was ever going to subject my daughter to
him.”

“You knew
the baby was a girl,” Liam said. “I remember that, the night she was born. You
held out your arms and said, ‘Give her to me,’ even before I told you.”

“Yes, I
knew. I’d had a lot of ultrasounds. He used to knock me down—I told you. And
pretend it was my
fault,
try to convince me I was the
clumsiest person. A cow, he called me.”

“I’ll kill
him,” Liam said, and he meant it. He felt hatred and rage boiling
inside—something he’d never felt before. Even for the shark—when he was young,
before he’d understood shark behavior and predation, even then he’d never felt
this level of cold burning hatred.

“I couldn’t
let him be part of Rose’s life,” Lily said. “If I’d waited till after she was
born, there would have been custody issues. Not that he wanted her—he didn’t.
He made it really clear. But I just knew—he would have used her to get to me.
He would have tortured us both, and I don’t use that word by mistake. Edward
lived to cause pain.”

“What kind
of person would do that?”

“One
without conscience or empathy,” Lily said quietly. “And there’s more too.
Edward is a killer.”

“What do
you mean?”

“I’ll tell
you sometime,” she said. “Not tonight, but soon.”

“And your
grandmother knew it?”

Lily
nodded.
“Most of it.
Enough so she wanted to help me
get away.”

“Did she
help you find Cape Hawk?
As a place to run to?”

“No,” Lily
said. “I found it on my own. It turns out that I have a connection with
Camille, and that she has a connection with Edward.”

“My aunt?
Camille Neill?”

“Yes,” Lily
said. “My parents died in the same ferry disaster as her husband, Frederic. I
used to keep all the clippings about it, and once I came upon something about
how Camille donated the memorial stone. I felt so grateful to her for that.”

“She’d be
happy to know that,” Liam said.

Lily
smiled. “I’m glad. I know she’s scarred, just as I am. Losing someone that way
is terrible. It makes you vulnerable … I think it made me an easier mark for
Edward. I was an orphan—it didn’t matter that I was thirty years old. I was
still needy.”

“How is
Edward connected to Camille?” Liam asked, confused.

“He had
this old framed photograph hanging on the wall. It showed an old whaling ship
at the dock in winter. So beautiful, haunting—all the spars and shrouds covered
in ice. He would tell people that his great-grandfather was a whaling captain.
It was just a lie, like his story about going to Harvard, but he told it so
often, I think he almost believed it himself.”

“What was
the ship’s name?” Liam asked.

“The
Pinnacle
,” Lily said, her eyes shining.

“My
great-great-grandfather’s ship,” he said quietly.
“The first
Tecumseh Neill.”

“I know,”
Lily said. “I used to stare at the picture and feel as if the ice in my heart
was right there in the photo. My frozen veins—all the cold I felt inside from
living with Edward. All he cared about the picture was using it to convince
people he came from a sea captain background. But I felt haunted by the
scenery. The cliffs, the frozen fjord, and the depth of winter, were so
austere. They matched how extreme I felt inside.”

“How did
you find where the picture had been taken?”

“The
provenance was very easy to track. It was an original taken by a well-known
photographer.
Sepia-toned, silver gelatin print, fairly
valuable.
The gallery stamp was on the back, and I called to ask. You
see, it had once been owned by Camille.”

“She has a
fairly substantial collection of local maritime art,” Liam said, amazed by the
coincidence.

“I remember
seeing the receipt and being shocked, because that was the woman who had
donated the ferry memorial. And I remember thinking she had an odd name.
Camille Neill. I never thought I’d meet her.”

“So that’s
why you came here?” Liam asked.
“Those two reasons?”

“Partly,”
she said. “I liked the connection with my parents, and I thought I’d never seen
anyplace as beautiful as Cape Hawk. I felt a tiny, secret revenge, coming to a
place Edward actually looked at every day—the picture he used to support the
lies he told about his illustrious ancestor. He would tell people it was
Newfoundland, because he had no idea.”

“Good one,
Lily,” Liam said, hugging her.

“And also because it was so very far away.”

“From Edward.”

Lily
nodded. “
Which was wonderful.
But
also terrible, because it was so far from my grandmother.
She wanted me
to run far and disappear—she gave me money and helped me cover my tracks, lied
to the police, I’m sure.”

“Patrick
Murphy,” Liam said. When everyone else was busy greeting Rose and rallying
round Lily, Liam had noticed the cop’s eyes—happy, to see the woman he called
Mara, but also something else. Sad, betrayed. Liam had felt for him.

“Yes,” Lily
said. “Do you think it’s true, what he said? That my grandmother wanted him to
find me?”

“I thought
she knew where you were. Why didn’t she just call?”

“She didn’t
know where I ran to. We decided that was the only way to really protect me and
Rose. I sent her small, secret things.
The clipping, a
glasses case—making her an honorary Nanouk—a membership to a local aquarium.
I thought that if Nanny brought such happiness to me and Rose, then maybe her
relatives could somehow connect us with Maeve.”

“Why don’t
you call your grandmother?” Liam asked, reacting to Lily’s mention of Nanny,
but not wanting to show how worried he felt about her whereabouts and the
tracking data—she continued swimming south, and when he’d last checked, seemed
to be feeding in the waters off Block Island.

“I would,”
Lily said. “But I’m still not sure we’re safe. If Edward finds out I’m alive,
he’ll come after Rose for sure. And I may just have given him grounds for
custody—by disappearing. Liam, what if he tries to get Rose?”

“I meant
what I said before,” Liam said steadily, more seriously than he’d ever said
anything in his life. He knew for certain that if Edward Hunter—or anyone
else—ever tried to harm Lily or Rose, he would kill them without looking back.
After what the man had done to Lily, he would almost welcome the chance.

Lily leaned
into him, standing on tiptoes to rise up and kiss him. Liam felt a rush of heat
inside, flooding every part of his body. He had kept his feelings for Lily and
Rose secret for so long—because he’d known that she was too closed off, that
her defenses were too impenetrable. Maybe he knew that his had been as well.