Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) (28 page)

Ella took another
long swallow from the rum bottle and handed it to him. “And when you hand ‘the
judge’s daughter’ back? What’s to stop them from killing you then?”

“
That
is where the joint possession of
the single biggest uncut diamond you will ever see comes into play.”

Ella watched him
dig into his leather bag and pull out what looked like a piece of cloudy quartz
the size of a small duck egg.

“Now that I have
a wrecking license,” he said, holding the diamond up for her inspection, “riches
and respectability are virtually assured me. As a result, I have every
confidence I will be able to convince you to the advantages of a marriage with
me.”

“You have got to
be kidding.”

“In fact, I
suppose this is as good a time as any. Miss Adele Morton, would you would be so
kind as to receive my very sincere request for your hand in—”

“Stop! I don’t
even
believe you think you’re proposing
to me after yanking a burlap bag over my head, drugging me and then nearly raping
me. You’re certifiable.”

“And you, Miss
Morton, are a spinster getting older by the day.”

“I’m only
thirty-two!”

“Worse than I
thought. I would’ve said late twenties. Anyway, the fact is you are not in a
position to be choosy or you’ll end up the embodiment of pity in Key West
society. I’m told I am not physically revolting to behold. I
didn’t
, in fact, rape you when I had the
chance, did I?”

“Wow, what a
prince. I may swoon.”

 
“As I’ve explained, I expect very soon to
be a rich man. I will easily be able to sustain you in the comfort to which you
are accustomed. And if all that weren’t enough, did you see the size of my…er,
diamond?”

“A real comedian.”

“I should say,
however, that if you’re not immediately open to the idea, I’m prepared to keep
you with me however long it takes to convince you that I can be a good husband
to you.”

“You do know I’m
already married, right?”

“I know that you
are not.”

“But even ignoring
that fact, I think the single biggest hole in your plan is that when Morton
gets home tonight, he’s going to find his dear daughter happily playing the piano
forte in his own parlor—not cowering in some crappy pirate’s ship as I’m
sure you led him to believe—and he is going to know that you have nothing
on him. Nada.”

Sully narrowed
her eyes, trying to understand her words.

“Hello? Am I
connecting?” she said, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “I’m
not
the judge’s daughter.”

She wasn’t sure
why she admitted her identity. He could simply kill her now and not even bother
to bury the body. A sharp push into the rising waters outside their cave would
neatly do the trick.

Sully cleared his
throat and Ella saw that his right hand had begun tapping his knee nervously. “That’s
not possible,” he said. But from the way he said it, Ella could tell he believed
her. Somehow he must have begun to suspect she wasn’t Adele.

“
Scheisse
,” he said softly, gazing out in
the direction of Key West.

“You can say that
again,” Ella said, enjoying the look of nausea that crept over his face. “So
back to my question of what’s to stop him from having you killed the next time
you’re in town?”

Sully shook
himself like a waterlogged dog and rubbed his face. Ella watched him physically
address the new situation in his mind.

“Well, for one,
the man’s not a murderer.”

“Unlike you.”

“
Why
do you think you know me, Miss…?”

“Mrs.,” Ella
said. “Mrs. Ella Pierce.”

Sully stared at
her and then snapped his fingers, his eyes widening. “The
lighter
. You’re
Ella
from
the lighter.” He nodded his head. “You’re with the giant, am I right? That
fits. I knew he was a traveler.”

“And yet you held
him against his will, flogged him—tried to sell him into slavery!”

“I see where
you’re going with this, but you do know who I am, yes?” He grinned at her as if
he had just told a charmingly self-effacing joke. “I am not the social workers
union for displaced time travelers and fellow wayfarers. You know this? I admit
I found my suspicions of the giant mildly interesting, but I live
now
. I am the captain of a pirate ship. To
me he was just another crew member—and a fairly valuable one as it turned
out.” He looked at her with surprise as if he just thought of something. “He
signed back up to crew on the
Die Hard
.”

“You’re lying.”

“I saw him just this
morning, doing what he always does, mending and fixing shit on the ship.”

“That’s…that’s
not possible.” Ella was stunned.
Had
Rowan been onboard all along? Why did he go back to the ship?
She thought
of the lighter still in Sully’s cabin.

Of course.

“It doesn’t
matter,” she said. “The reason I think I know you is because of this.” She
pulled her necklace from her blouse and, without letting him touch it, held it
in front of his eyes.

He frowned.
“Where did you get that?”

“My mother, if
you must know. Her name was Freida Vogel.” She watched his face register her
words and blanch, and when it did her stomach began to churn. Up until that
moment she hadn’t been absolutely sure. She hated herself for how her lips
began to tremble as she spoke. “She…she got it from her mother, my grandmother.”

Sully looked at
her in stark amazement.

He hasn’t given it to Grandmother yet. Hell, he probably
hasn’t even met her yet, let alone married her.

“It…it is not an
uncommon design,” he said hesitantly.

“Bullshit. With
this big-ass V?” She shook the necklace at him and then shoved it back into her
blouse. “Are you going to tell me you didn’t create this insignia? I saw it in
your cabin on your journal.”

She watched him
trying to take in her words, to understand what she was telling him.

“You’re from
Germany,” she said, driving the knife in further.

He shook his head
as his eyes fixed on the long unmoving horizon of the sea. “No,” he said
softly.

“You’re
not
from Germany?”
 

He glanced at her.
“Austria.”

Close enough.

“I know how you
die.”

He appeared
startled but covered well. “How is that possible?”

“You really want
to know? Because I imagine most people wouldn’t. I read about your death.”

“So. I become famous,
do I? In what timeline?” He nodded to himself with what looked to Ella like pride.

“You are such a
piece of work,” she said with disgust. “It happens in the nineteen forties. And
really, it was the
trial
that was
famous. After you’re found guilty you’re hung with twenty-four other murdering
scumbags. And all your names sink into oblivion never to be remembered again.”

She saw something
flinch in his face but he recovered quickly. “May I ask how you were interested
enough to pluck my name from the ignominious oblivion of history’s annals?”

“I researched you
four years ago, in 2011 when I was living in Heidelberg, because I needed to
know why it was my mother would kill herself rather than live another day as
your daughter.”

Sully shook his
head as if it was finally getting to be too much for him to take in. “Your
mother…” he said in a daze.

“Turns out,” Ella
continued, her anger growing as the image of her son’s heart shaped birthmark
on the back of his neck superimposed in her mind over the one she had just seen
on Sully when he took his scarf off, “and you’ll excuse me if I vomit into my hankie
a little, but it turns out I may be related to you.”

Now she had his
attention. He studied her intently without speaking, but his eyes urged her on.

“Let me ask you,”
she said, “before you recreated yourself as the notorious Captain Erik Sully,
terror of the West Indies, were you by any chance born Rudolph Vogel?”

Ella watched his
face. He tried to hide his reaction but his eyes went to hers in the closest
thing to fear she’d yet seen on his face.

Bingo.

He looked out
over the horizon and shrugged. “Anyone with a little researching skill could
have unearthed background on Rudolph Vogel. I don’t suppose you have any palpable
evidence—beyond a piece of junk jewelry—to support this claim?”

“Not that I give
a damn what you think, but…” Ella lifted the drooping hair extensions from her
neck and turned her head. She heard his intake of breath when he saw the
birthmark on her neck. “My son has one like it, too,” she said.

When she turned
back at him, he was frowning but nodding. “You say I have a daughter. Do I not sire
any
sons
?”

“Really?
That’s
what’s important to you? Well,
yes, Herr dickbag, you do, but he goes by a different name now after his
sex-change operation.”

Sully stood and began
to pace in the small cave. He was clearly finding it difficult to sit still.

“I dunno, Sully,”
Ella said, wanting to drive the knife in, to hurt him.
He
was the reason why she had no mother.
This
man. “People seem willing to go to extreme lengths not to
share the same air as you. Maybe your son couldn’t stand being the same sex as
you.”

He stopped
fidgeting and examined her with a frown and she watched his face clear. “My
granddaughter,” he said with wonder, looking her over from head to foot. Then
he threw back his head and laughed until he couldn’t catch his breath.

“Certainly
explains why no sparks flew between us, eh?” he said, wiping away tears of
laughter from his eyes.

“You are a sick
and confusing sociopath.”

***

So it was all out
in the open.

Ella peeled off
her stockings and hung them next to Sully’s scarf. The wind continued to howl
but the rain seemed to be slowing. An hour earlier she’d left the cave to
relieve herself in the bushes and came back drenched. Sully had left twice to
find more wood and each time he shook off less and less water when he came
back.

She wasn’t sure
when she’d made the leap to realizing he was her grandfather, the infamous
Rudolph Vogel. At some level, she must have known it from the moment she met
him, seated opposite her in his cabin. There had been something about him then,
something indefinable that made so much sense now.

It was like she
knew
him.

Was there a
gesture, a tic, an unconscious affect? Or was it his laugh, the way his eyes
crinkled when he was amused? Had she heard or seen a female version of the same
thing from her mother all those many years ago? She studied his face, so dark
and open, always smiling, where her mother’s was fair and tormented. And yes,
there was something under the bone structure, under the smile, something reflected
in the eyes that was the same as hers.

From the moment Ella
laid eyes on him she had felt that connection, that he was a part of her.

A terrible,
festering, disgusting part.

One thing at
least—although it looked like sleep would be hard won tonight after
confirming her worst fears, she had very little appetite left. Leaning against
the rock wall of the cave, Ella stared into the small crackling fire. Sully
hadn’t spoken much since her revelation to him. He too spent a lot of time
staring into the fire. She assumed the fact she was likely his granddaughter
would prevent him from wanting to kill her for not being Adele Morton.

Or perhaps he’d
want to all the more.

“I can’t sleep,”
she said. He looked at her as if surprised she was still there.

“Are you cold?”
He reached for his coat as if to hand it to her, a gesture that surprised her.

“No, it’s because
I can’t stop thinking.”

He dropped his
hand from the coat and returned his gaze to the fire. “I know.”

“Can I ask where
you came from and how you got here? And why?”

Sully ran a hand
across his face as if trying to manually rearrange his thoughts. She heard him
sigh deeply before speaking.

 
“I was born in Salzburg in 1905. One day,
after an incident involving the crippling of my best friend—not my fault,
by the way—I was running through the woods and fell off a small cliff. I
must have lost consciousness, and when I awoke people were tending me. They
transported me to a nearby hospital where I remained some days. I was not yet
twenty years old. When I was well enough to leave the hospital, I was taken in
by one of the physicians and his wife. It was 1968—a marvelous time, I
must tell you. Have you been there?”

Ella shook her
head in wonder. “I was born in eighty-two.”