Twist of Fate (32 page)

Beyond that issue lay another, more personal one. Hannah fingered the necklace and thought about the woman who had worn it before her. Elizabeth Nord had been a very powerful woman. Hannah wondered if she could ever have that much power. It took guts to boldly create a myth and live it for a lifetime. Hannah looked back at the house and thought of her aunt living there in splendid isolation.

It would take guts to write the book that would compromise her aunt's reputation. It occurred to Hannah that her aunt wouldn't have minded in the least. She would have found the whole thing amusing. There was no question of protecting Elizabeth Nord. Nord didn't need or want protection. She hadn't needed it when she was alive and she needed it even less now. In a flash of insight, Hannah knew that if her aunt had been there she would have encouraged her to write the book. The warmth of the necklace seemed to emphasize the truth of that conclusion. None of the women who had worn it had worried about the past. None of them had cared about the opinions of their contemporaries. They were too serenely secure in themselves, too magnificently aloof from the rest of the world.

No, it wasn't the prospect of writing the book that made Hannah uneasy. It was the thought of what would happen afterward. Nothing would ever be the same. She knew that with a deep certainty.

Writing the book wasn't going to be a single, isolated event. It was an act that would change the course of Hannah's life. She would be committed after that. It would be an act of will that would forever alter her path. Hannah knew the truth of that with deep intuition. Once started down that road, she would keep going, seeking power and success with the same driving intensity with which others around her sought it. Writing the book would not satisfy her, Hannah knew. She would have to continue, proving to herself and to Vicky Armitage that she was as formidable as her aunt had been.

The book was nothing in and of itself. But it was the first step down a glittering road that could lead to real power. She wouldn't be able to stop. There would be no room in her life for a man except for fleeting physical affairs. She would need all her emotional energy for herself. No longer would she waste compassion or empathy on others. Guidance counseling would not interest her as a career. It was too “other” oriented.

Hannah touched the necklace again. By the time she had finished the book, she would be concerned with no one but herself. She would be like Vicky Armitage in some ways and like Elizabeth Nord in others. She would be a young Amazon.

Hannah turned to walk along the water's edge, her bare feet finding firm purchase in the wet, packed sand. The lures lay stretched out ahead of her, beckoning with shining, mesmerizing power. She would be rich, Hannah decided. Making money would be high on her list of priorities because money was a source of power. There was money to be made from the Elizabeth Nord journals if she played her cards right. Wealthy collectors or a rich research foundation would pay considerable sums to obtain the valuable library Nord had left. The book Hannah would write before she sold the library should bring in a healthy sum on its own.

No, she decided, there was a better way to play it. She would not sell the library for cash, but would exchange it for a director's position on the board of an important research foundation, the kind that provided money to the Victoria Armitages of the world. From there she could wield influence over the kind of research that received funds. She could begin to control people such as Vicky Armitage. If they wanted foundation grants they would be forced to deal with Hannah Jessett. If the sale of the Nord biography brought in sufficient money, Hannah realized, she would be able to set up her own foundation. All things were possible if you were thoroughly committed to the end result.

The people who controlled money were the ones who controlled research. Yes, Hannah thought, that was the route to take. She would use her aunt's legacy to buy her way into a position of power and from there she could climb as high as she wished. She would ultimately have more control over the field of anthropology than any single professor with a Ph.D. could hope to have. Ph.D.s were a dime a dozen. The people who controlled research money were a far more important group. She would join that group.

Everything started with writing the book.

The sun climbed higher in the brilliant blue sky as Hannah continued to contemplate the future that lay before her. As the day wore on, things began to fall quickly into place. The haze of uncertainty that had masked her future was clearing with breathtaking rapidity. She had been right to come back to the island. Things were so much more obvious here, so self-evident. How could she have wasted so many years of her life floundering? Where had this stark, sharply etched vision of her future been hiding all this time? She felt as if she saw clearly for the first time in her life.

Hannah was suddenly consumed with energy. It burned in her, simmering in her veins. She wanted to run, but the first tentative attempt almost ended in disaster. She managed to steady herself in time with the cane and then laughed at her own exuberance. Glancing back at the cottage, she imagined Elizabeth Nord standing on the porch, smiling at her.

“Look at me, Elizabeth. You were right. All those times you told me to follow my own instincts, you were right. It just took me a while to figure out what I wanted. But now I know, Elizabeth Nord. I want what you had. And I'm going to get it. In my own way, I'm going to get it. My God, but you had guts, Aunt. You lied your way to fame and fortune. You lied your way into power. And now I'm going to use the myth you created to find my own way to power. You'll be proud of me, Aunt Elizabeth. And so will all those other women who once wore this necklace.”

She shut up abruptly, realizing how foolish she would look to anyone who might see her. But there was no one around to watch. Hannah was free to talk to her aunt if she chose. Grinning, Hannah started back toward the cottage. Nothing could get in her way. All she had to do was follow the path that had opened up ahead of her. It stretched endlessly toward the horizon, narrow and sure and full of brilliant promise. The heat of the rising sun had warmed the necklace around Hannah's throat until it almost burned against her skin.

She had been right to return to the island.

It wasn't until the evening of the following day that Hannah began to come down from the euphoric high she had been experiencing as her future crystallized. Perhaps it was the advent of darkness that quieted her overexcited spirit. Or perhaps she was just tired from trying to contain such energy.
Tired from too much energy.
That was a paradox, she told herself, but somehow it made sense. She poured herself a glass of wine and decided to take another walk along the edge of the cove. Then she would go back to work on Elizabeth Nord's journals.

Feeling quite decadent walking barefoot along the water's edge with a glass of wine in one hand, Hannah drank in the balmy, scented air and let her mind skip from one thought to another. It was going to rain this evening. The usual afternoon thunderstorms seemed to have been postponed by a couple of hours. Or maybe this was a major storm approaching. Whatever the reasons, the dark clouds were filling up the sky and obscuring the moon's light.

There were things to be done soon. She would have to make some contacts to determine the best way to go about selling the idea of her book to a publisher. An agent would undoubtedly be necessary.

She was wondering how to go about finding an agent when another stray thought drifted into her head. To her surprise, Hannah found herself thinking about what Gideon Cage was doing that evening.

Making a firm effort to push the thought aside, Hannah tried to concentrate on the business aspects of bringing out her book. But the word “business” meant Gideon Cage. A few weeks ago when she had walked along this beach he had been with her. It was Gideon who had pulled her from the clutches of the diver who had tried to drown her.

Hannah stopped walking and took a long sip of wine. She didn't like thinking about either the diver with the blue eyes or Gideon. Both were too disturbing. But it was easier to dismiss memories of the diver than of Gideon. The assault was in the past. Gideon was still very much in her present.

“Damn you, Gideon. Go away. I'm not going to let you interfere any longer. You chose your path, now let me choose mine.”

But the uneasiness wouldn't fade. Maybe she was just getting spooked by being out here alone at night, Hannah told herself. She finished the wine and decided to head back to the house. It wasn't really late but the isolation of her aunt's cottage was suddenly very evident. She would feel better back inside with the doors locked.

Irritated with her jumpy mood but unable to talk herself out of it, Hannah started toward the front steps of the cottage. She was still some distance away when she thought she caught a shadowy movement in the stand of palms. Her jumpiness shifted into outright alarm. Hannah quickened her pace toward the house.

It was ridiculous. There was no one hiding in the palm grove. Her imagination, fueled by memories of the near fatal incident in the cove, was working overtime. She began to wish that the cottage contained a phone, though. It would be soothing to know that she could reach help in an emergency. She would have one installed when she moved in on a permanent basis, Hannah thought as she started up the veranda steps.

The tap of her cane on the bottom step almost but not quite concealed the small scuffling noise that came from the palm grove. Hannah froze. It took an effort to turn and search the shadows. She was acting like a child who felt safer hiding under the covers than looking for trouble in the darkness. Taking a deep breath, Hannah forced herself to calmly watch the palm grove until she was certain there was no one there.

She wished she had a gun in the house or stashed in the jeep. But of course she didn't. Innocuous, insipid, sweetly earnest guidance counselors didn't own guns. She wouldn't know how to use one even if she had it put in her hand.

That would change, Hannah thought. She would buy a gun and learn how to use it. If she were going to live out here alone she would need to have some protection. But the prospect of protection lay in the future. Tonight she would have to think of something else.

Because there was someone out there.

Hannah had operated on her instincts often enough in the past when it came to offering advice to others. She decided that she would be a fool to ignore those instincts now. The house was not a safe refuge. The louvered windows could be pried open easily and the lock on the front door was a joke to someone who lived in the city. The lock on her apartment door in Seattle was three times stronger than the one Elizabeth Nord had placed on her cottage door.

Hannah hesitated no longer. She hauled herself up the steps with the aid of her cane, slipped into the front door and found her purse. It contained the keys to the jeep. Before she stepped back out onto the porch she switched off the light. There was no reason to silhouette herself.

The jeep seemed very far away even though in reality it waited just at the bottom of the steps. Hannah climbed inside with a sigh of relief and shoved the key in the ignition. She would spend the night in a hotel. In the morning she could come back and have a look around. Then she would see about getting a local locksmith in to put some decent protection on the doors and windows.

The engine caught immediately and Hannah turned the wheel. The pink fringe swayed playfully in the darkness above her as she sent the jeep out of the driveway and toward the main road into town. The rocky cliffs above the sea were mercifully concealed in shadows as Hannah drove along their upper edges. She would not look to the side or down. She would concentrate on the road ahead.

There were no lights in the rearview mirror until the car behind her was almost on top of her. Then they flashed on with blinding brilliance.

Hannah had an instant of startled terror that mingled with an old horror left over from her accident. Flashes of memory came back to her.
This was the way it had been.
A car surging out of the darkness behind her, blinding her with headlights, and then sideswiping her car viciously before roaring off into the night.

Perhaps it was the rush of memory that saved her life. Perhaps it was sheer luck. Whatever the reason, Hannah shoved the brake peddle to the floor instead of giving in to the impulse to swing the wheel and swerve to the side.

The car jerked out from behind her and shot past, managing to catch the hood of the jeep with a rough, savage scraping sound. The little pink jeep rocked with the force of the impact and jolted toward the edge of the cliff in spite of Hannah's fierce war with the brakes. There was a timeless moment of utter silence as the vehicle shuddered on the edge of the cliff. Hannah felt her fate being decided by careless gods.

Then she was clawing at the seat belt. She shoved open the door and threw herself out onto the road as the finger of one of the island gods reached out and casually flipped the jeep off the cliff.

Hannah lay on the pavement, gasping with pain and clutching her left leg. She'd landed on the injured knee when she'd thrown herself out of the jeep. In that moment of shock and agony she knew a rage that was unlike anything she had ever experienced in her life. Fury roared through her.

Above her the skies opened, spilling a torrent of rain onto the narrow road where Hannah lay. The crashing sound of thunder faded into the distance to be replaced by the angry throb of a car's engine.