Shadow Lover (31 page)

"I'm not hungry."

"If you tell me that one more time I'll strangle you," he said calmly. "I don't give a shit whether you're hungry or not. I'm not hungry either. Our lives happen to be in danger. It would make sense if we managed to eat something."

"Wouldn't it make more sense if we didn't go to
Martha's Vineyard
? Assuming you're right and someone wants to kill us, wouldn't Edgartown be one of the first places they'd look? They're bound to find us."

"I want them to find us. I want to flush him out. I want to see the face of the person who shot me eighteen years ago. I want to look into his eyes."

"His?"

"Or hers. Get in the car, Carolyn, or we'll miss the ferry."

"Maybe I want to miss the ferry."

"Then whoever's trying to kill you will simply find us in Woods Hole."

She climbed in the car, maintaining a stony silence until they were safely on the ferry.

He half-hoped she'd continue to ignore him. He didn't want to deal with questions when he wasn't sure of the answers. And a wrong guess would be fatal.

The moment they were parked she left the car. He let her go. There was no way she could get away from him on the ferry, and for the time being they weren't in any danger. If she needed half an hour away from him he was willing to grant it.

The last thing he expected was to see her reappear at the car with a carrier holding two cardboard cups of coffee and a couple of muffins.

She climbed back into the passenger seat and held out the cardboard tray. He glanced at it warily.

"Any shrimp in the coffee?" he asked.

"I could spill it on your lap," she replied. "I'm trying to make a peaceful gesture. At least you could meet me halfway."

He looked at her pale mouth, set and determined. She was even stronger than he'd realized. She sat beside him, calm, composed, and shattered inside. And for some reason he found her dignity even more devastating than her vulnerability.

He took the cup of coffee. It was overpoweringly sweet, just the way he liked it. "So we've got a truce?"

"For the time being. Have a cyanide muffin."

He managed a smile. She was bundled in several layers of sweaters, including one of his, and her long blonde hair was still damp from her morning shower, hanging in a windswept tangle down her back. She was still wearing the faded jeans, and he'd never seen anyone look less like a
MacDowell
. And it was all he could do not to jump on her.

"Are you going to tell me who you think it is?" Her prosaic question made only a slight dent in his erotic fantasies.

He took another gulp of his coffee. It was too hot and he didn't give a damn. "I don't know."

"But you must have some suspicions."

"It could be almost any of them. Patsy, Warren, Ruben or
Constanza
. Hell, even George and Tessa might have something to do with it."

"Tessa was fourteen when you left."

"And you were almost fourteen. If you'd had a gun, don't you think you could have shot me?" he countered.

"Easily. But why would she care?"

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know why anyone would want to kill me."

"I don't know why anyone
wouldn't
have wanted to kill you back then," Carolyn replied. "The question
is,
how does that tie in with now? And what makes you so sure someone wants to kill you? Or me, for that matter? I might have been wrong about the gunshots. It might have been some idiot hunter. And brakes do fail."

"Brakes do fail," he agreed. "But seldom with such exquisite timing. You want to go back to the bosom of your family and give them a chance to try again? Just to make certain someone really is murderous?"

"Isn't that what we're doing by coming to the Vineyard? You're trying to lure them, to get them to try again. I don't know why we bothered to come here. We didn't have to drive two hundred and fifty miles just to get someone to attempt murder—we could have stayed home and saved a lot of time. Why waste the gas?"

"Because here we have the upper hand."

"Do we?" She wasn't bothering to hide her cynicism.

"He'll be coming. And we'll be ready for him," Alex said calmly.

'There's that 'he' again. You think
it's
Warren
, don't you? Dear,
doting
Uncle Warren, out to kill his nephew and his daughter." Her voice was brittle. "How very …
MacDowell
of him."

"I don't know who it is. He's the obvious choice. He knows you're a threat to the inheritance. He doesn't think I am. That's why you've been the target up to now."

"And now?"

"Now I think he'll want to hedge his bets. I don't know what they're thinking up in
Vermont
. Probably that we've gone off for a few days of hot, unbridled sex. Except the murderer will know better. He'll know why we've run."

"And what if they don't guess where we are? Maybe it's not as obvious as we think."

"Then I'll call and tell them where we are," Alex said. "Just to help things along."

Carolyn was silent for a moment, surveying the crumbled remains of her muffin. "All right," she said finally. "But just one thing."

"Yeah?"

"We're not having hot, unbridled sex on the Vineyard." She sounded very certain.

He wasn't about to disabuse her of the notion. One battle at a time. "Whatever you say."

Chapter 20

«
^
»

T
he house on

"Phone working?" Alex stood in the hallway, holding their suitcases.

"Yes."

"Don't answer it if it rings."

"I thought you wanted them to know we were here."

"I do," he said. "But I don't want to have a cozy conversation with them." He started toward the stairs.

"I can carry my own suitcase," she said. "I'll be sleeping in my old room."

"No, you won't," he said flatly. "I'm tired of you playing Cinderella."

"Fine," she snapped. "Then I'll sleep downstairs in Sally's room and wallow in luxury."

"Sorry," he said, sounding not the slightest bit repentant. "You're sleeping with me."

She glared at him. "I told you, I'm not about to sleep with you ever again."

He was unimpressed. "You look just like my mother did when she was being haughty. I'm amazed I never noticed the resemblance before."

"I thought you told me she wasn't your mother."

"She didn't give birth to me. But she was my mother, nonetheless."

"I'm still not sharing a bed with you."

"You don't have to. You just have to share a room with me. Haven't you gotten it through your stubborn head that you're in danger? Someone wants to kill you. Someone who thinks you stand in the way of a tidy inheritance. This old house is too big for you to be wandering about without someone looking out for you."

"You really think Uncle Warren is going to show up here with a gun?" She couldn't think of him by any other name. "I don't see the point. Why would he think I'd be a threat? Up until last night I didn't know I had any connection to him, and now that I do, I'd just as soon put as much distance between us as possible. He doesn't need to kill me. He's repudiated me all my life—I'm not about to go asking for anything now."

"Maybe you want revenge for his rejecting you."

"I'm not the revenge kind of person," she said flatly.

"I know that. I'm not sure
Warren
is as observant. He doesn't look much past the nose on his face. His abiding interest is the
MacDowell
money, and he can't comprehend why someone else wouldn't be equally obsessed. Anyway, we don't know that it's
Warren
. He's the logical choice, but there's no proof. Maybe Patsy isn't as big a space cadet as she seems."

"Maybe not," Carolyn said in a quiet voice.

"We'll be sleeping in the front room—"

"The hell we will. There's only one bed there."

"At least it's a double. Don't worry, angel, I'll drag a mattress in and sleep on the floor. It's got the best location. We can hear anyone coming up the stairs, we have a view of

"What about the back stairs?"

"The floor in the hallway creaks. So does the double bed in the front room, for that matter. If you change your mind we'd better do it on the mattress and not on the bed."

She just stared at him. "You're awfully cheerful for someone who just lost his mother and is convinced someone is trying to kill him. Or is it the thought of all that nice money you've just become heir to?"

She'd pushed him too far. "Why, it's the thought of all that money, of course. Why else would I have been hanging around for the last eighteen years, living off the fat of the land? Isn't it obvious?"

"Sorry," she muttered.

"And frankly, I'll be damned glad to get the answers to questions that have been haunting me for almost two decades. I want this over with, and I want to know what's behind it. We're going to find out, and then I'll be out of your life and you can go back to being the perfect little
MacDowell
, secure in the knowledge that you really are one."

She stared at him. He'd paused on the landing, and his voice was cool and bitter. "Where will you go?" she asked, unable to keep the wistful note out of her voice.

If he heard it he ignored it. "Wherever my nice fat millions will take me, babe," he said, and disappeared up the stairs.

It was a sunny day, with a cool spring breeze blowing across the island. Carolyn opened the windows, letting the wind blow through the old house, following her as she walked from room to room, looking at it all with fresh eyes.

More than any other residence, including the
Park Avenue
apartment and the compound in southern
Vermont
, this house was the
MacDowell
house. It was filled with family treasures, portraits of
MacDowells
, furniture handed down for generations. This house of ancient lineage, where she'd never really belonged, should have changed. Now that she knew she had a right to be here, she should have had a sense of homecoming.

She didn't. She looked up into the painted eyes of the man who was, in fact, her grandfather, and felt no kinship. Commodore
MacDowell
had been a ruthless, formidable old man, and his oldest daughter Sally had taken after him in many ways. Carolyn looked into his eyes and felt nothing.

She sat in the Stuyvesant chair, one that had belonged to her ancestors, one that she'd never dared sit in before. It was just an old wooden chair, rickety and uncomfortable.

She'd been given exactly what she'd always wanted, a real family, just as the one person she'd loved had been taken away. And the damnable thing was, once she'd gotten it, it meant nothing. She didn't need to be a
MacDowell
. After all these years she didn't need to be anyone but herself.

The phone rang, and she started to reach for it automatically,
then
stopped herself. It should have been Sally on the other end, but Sally was dead. Was it Patsy, her voice slurred and faintly anxious? Or
Warren
, pretending concern or not even bothering. What would he do if she called him "daddy"? He'd probably react with utter horror.

Whoever was on the other end of the phone line wasn't about to give up easily. It stopped ringing, then started again two minutes later. The phone had a particularly shrill tone, one that would reach clearly through the rambling old house, and Carolyn stared at it with acute dislike, willing it to be still. They tried a third time, and then the phone was mercifully silent.

She heard him come clattering down the back stairs, but she made no move to find him. She could see the bay from the windows, and more than anything she wished it were twenty years ago, before Alex had died and been reborn, before she found out too many secrets.

She heard the slam of drawers, the rifling of papers, but she still didn't move. Maybe if she closed her eyes she could will herself back in time. Or at least pretend, for a short, peaceful while.

Except that it hadn't been that peaceful on the island all those years ago, she knew that full well. Patsy and her latest lover had been there, and both Warren and Sally had disapproved. Apparently he had criminal connections, but Patsy had been radiant, completely smitten, and unwilling to listen to anyone's warnings.