Twist of Fate (35 page)

Hannah managed to jerk her head aside and took the blow on her shoulder, which promptly went numb. But it was her left shoulder, and the sturdy leather belt with its dangling brass buckle was wrapped around her right wrist. Hannah flung out her hand.

The belt cut through the air with the force of a small whip. Vicky wasn't expecting any kind of weapon and the heavy buckle caught her by surprise, snapping across her cheek. She screamed in pain and rage and scrambled backward for the gun.

Panicked by the knowledge that the pistol lay only a yard away, Hannah vaulted herself to her knees. Agony laced through the left one. But her fear and fury enabled her to ignore the pain. She swung again with the heavy leather. The second blow lashed across Vicky's arm, not doing much damage but causing the other woman to jerk back out of range. Hannah decided to keep trying for Vicky's face. Any woman, especially one as good looking as Victoria Armitage, would instinctively try to protect her face and eyes.

The theory worked for one more swing of the belt. Then Vicky made a dive for the gun. Hannah threw herself onto her opponent and found long nails scratching at her eyes. Frantically she ducked her head and tried to wrap the leather around Vicky's throat.

Vicky realized what was happening and shoved heavily at Hannah. When Hannah's weight eased she made another grab for the gun.

But Hannah had rolled on top of it. The metal cut into her breast as she lay gasping on the soggy ground. Desperately she reached beneath her and grasped the handle.

“Stop it, Vicky. Stop right there or so help me God, I'll shoot. I swear it.”

Vicky halted abruptly as Hannah lifted the gun with both hands and pointed it at her. Savagely she looked from the weapon to Hannah's face. “You don't know how to use that thing.”

“Are you kidding? I'm Elizabeth Nord's niece, remember? She was a font of useful information for a young girl. A real role model.”

Vicky glared at Hannah in bitter frustration, but she didn't try to take the gun away from her. Just as well, Hannah realized. She was shaking so badly it would have been like taking candy from a baby.

Then another hand was reaching down to remove the gun from Hannah's grasp. A familiar, masculine hand that was accompanied by a familiar, laconic voice.

“I'll take over now, Hannah. You've been through enough for one night.” Gideon's fingers closed around the weapon. “So have I, come to think of it.”

For a few seconds Hannah lay staring up at Gideon's grimly set face, wondering if shock had made her hallucinate. But he seemed very solid and very real. She released her hold on the gun.

“The necklace,” Hannah whispered. “I have to find the necklace.”

“Y
OU SCARED
the living hell out of me, you know that, don't you?” Gideon ran savage fingers through his hair and stopped his pacing long enough to stare down at Hannah, who was ensconced on her aunt's sofa. “I can't even remember the last time I was that terrified.”

“Not even during some of your biggest business deals?”

“Take a little advice from a very short-tempered man, Hannah. Don't make jokes at this particular point. I'm still recovering. My sense of humor will probably be the last thing to return to normal.” Gideon began stalking back and forth across the floor in front of her. “When I heard that shot I thought I'd go crazy. I still can't believe you managed to get the gun away from Vicky.”

“I was angry at the time. Lots of adrenaline.”

“Uh-huh.” He halted again. “I know the feeling. Jesus, what a mess.” He shot her a curious glance. “Would you have used the gun?”

“Probably. If I could have figured out how to work it in time,” Hannah admitted.

“You didn't know?” He looked dumbfounded. “What was all that snappy chatter about having learned from your aunt?”

“I saw very little of my aunt when I was growing up, Gideon. When she did come to visit she didn't take the time to teach me how to use a gun. But I've seen a lot of television. The trick to holding a gun on someone is to look and sound like you're going to use it. You've got to have dramatic presence.”

He shook his head. “You're certainly in a good mood considering what you've been through.”

“I expect it's relief. Makes me bubbly.” Hannah gingerly massaged her left knee, which was stretched out in front of her and propped on a pillow. “The pain pills the doctor gave me may also be a contributing factor.”

Gideon walked restlessly over to the sofa and crouched down beside her. “How's the leg?”

“It hurts.”

“Did the doctor think you'd done any more serious damage?”

“No. He thinks it'll be all right in a couple of days. It's just going to be damn sore for a while.”

Gideon looked at the leg for a while and then at her. “You would have had to figure out how to use that gun, I think. Vicky was past being rational or easily intimidated. The way she was eyeing you gave me the impression that nothing short of a small cannon would have stopped her.”

“I know. She was crazy with anger.” Hannah leaned back as Gideon began to gently knead her knee. “But, then, I was very angry, myself.”

“What did you do to her face?”

“That gash? I wasn't fighting fair. I used my belt buckle on her. She was so strong, Gideon. And I wasn't exactly in my prime with this damn leg. I figured that, under the circumstances, I was allowed a few cheap shots.”

“Given the fact that she was the one with the gun, I'd hardly say you were wielding an undue advantage. Besides, when you're in that kind of fight, you don't worry about playing fair. You worry about winning.”

She smiled weakly. “Advice from an expert?”

“Damn right.” Gideon massaged the knee in silence for a while. “When I saw that jeep at the bottom of the cliff, I thought I'd lose my mind.”

“It was the same way it had been that night coming back to Seattle from my friend's home, Gideon.” Hannah gave up the attempt to maintain a bright, flippant attitude. It was wearing. “The lights coming on suddenly in the rearview mirror, startling me. The car so close behind mine. Then that quick swerve to sideswipe me. When the lights hit the mirror, nearly blinding me for an instant, I remembered. I still don't recall everything, but I remember those lights and then the car crowding me off the road. Last time I swung the wheel without thinking, I was so shocked. But this time I kept the wheel straight and used the brakes. Unfortunately it wasn't enough to keep the jeep on the road after it got swiped.”

“It bought you the time you needed to get out,” Gideon said. “Thank God for small favors.”

“What happens now?”

“You mean with Vicky and Drake? The island police seem to have no problems believing our side of the story this time. There's plenty of evidence, including Drake singing his fool head off to the arresting officers. His charm isn't going to work down here. These people have seen too many tourists. They aren't easily charmed by them. They just tolerate them. I don't know if we can make the other charge stick, though.”

“The one against Drake for trying to drown me?” Hannah grimaced. “Too bad he didn't mention that when he was busy trying to convince the cops he was just an innocent bystander.”

“If we can get him on this charge, I'll be satisfied. Vicky was so angry that she said a little too much to the cops, also. I just want both Armitages out of your life.”

“I suppose they were the ones who searched my apartment that night you and I went out to dinner. I wonder why they didn't take anything?”

“I doubt if they intended to take anything. Stealing the journals would have been too obvious. How could Vicky have popped up on the academic scene in a few months with all of Nord's private journals without raising a few questions? I imagine she just went into the apartment out of a burning curiosity to see what kind of data you'd brought back with you. Your brother says your key is missing from his ring. It would have been simple enough for Drake to have taken it sometime at the club.”

“What good would killing me have done?”

Gideon's mouth hardened. “Once you were out of the way your aunt's books would have wound up sooner or later in a library or a research foundation. Then Vicky would have had access to them. But she probably counted on being able to talk your brother into letting them handle the Nord papers after your death. They'd made a point of socializing with him and were on friendly terms. It wouldn't have been hard to convince Nick to let them have a bunch of books and notes he couldn't have cared less about.”

“Drake must have deliberately wangled those visiting professor jobs at the college where I work.”

“It wouldn't have been hard, given Vicky's reputation and his own political sense.”

Hannah nodded in agreement. “The Armitages were big time for my little college. I'm sure the faculty was thrilled when they offered to spend the fall quarter in Seattle. I suppose it's fortunate the Armitages never knew that Elizabeth Nord had retired to Santa Inez or else they might have hounded her down here. Aunt Elizabeth always guarded her privacy. No one except her family knew where she was for the past few years.”

“Vicky and Drake knew you were the key they needed when they saw her obituary and realized that everything had been left to a niece in Seattle.” Gideon showed his teeth in a silent snarl. “I want them out of your life.”

“Suits me. I've never been hated the way Vicky hates me. The ludicrous part is that I was envious of her. I thought I understood the power of the desire for revenge, but I've got to admit she carried it to new heights.”

“She blamed your aunt for her father's failure to become a luminary in the world of anthropology. The truth was, her father just didn't quite have what it takes. From what Nord says in her journals Dear Roddy was a competent man but not a brilliant one. She didn't do anything to actually hinder his career, she simply left him behind while she went to the top.”

“She went to the top with a lie, Gideon.”

He smiled. “But she did it on one hell of a grand scale, didn't she? You've got to admire that kind of nerve.”

“I know. The rest of her work in anthropology is legitimate research,” Hannah said. “I'm sure of it. She was a brilliant woman and she would have been a leading light in the academic world even without the Revelation Island book.”

“I don't doubt it for a moment.”

“I don't think she invented the myth of the Revelation Island Amazons just to further her own career. I think she did it because she wanted to shake up her fellow researchers. She wanted them to think twice about the kinds of conclusions they came to when they looked at women in various social groups. It's so easy to pigeonhole the sexes and so much damage is done because of those easy assumptions. In her day those assumptions were especially narrow. Who knows? Maybe we owe some of the current freedom women enjoy to that myth my aunt created.
Amazons
has been such an influential book over the years. It's hard to blame Nord for what she did.”

“Hard for you to blame her. Vicky Armitage had no problem.”

Hannah snorted. “If it hadn't been for my aunt, young women such as Victoria Armitage probably wouldn't even have thought of going into anthropology in the first place.”

Gideon's grin flashed briefly. “I guess that's one view.”

“You know what really bothered Vicky most?” Hannah went on thoughtfully.

“What?”

“Her father's weakness. She wanted to idolize him and couldn't. He simply didn't have the academic stature she wanted him to have. In the end he became an alcoholic, she said. She hated that.”

“So she turned her hatred against Elizabeth Nord for having made her father into the weak man he was? That's kind of complicated.”

“Makes sense, though,” Hannah said. “The sad part is that on the subject of Revelation Island, Vicky's father was right. Nord faked the research. It must have torn Hamilton apart when no one would listen to him.”

“Hannah, the reason no one would listen to Hamilton at that point was that his work was already failing to compare with Nord's. You've said yourself that by the early forties her papers were the ones being published and admired. His were pedantic and pedestrian by comparison. People were beginning to ignore him even then. If he hadn't begun to slip behind her in terms of the recognition and respect of his colleagues, he wouldn't have looked petty and vengeful when he attempted to discredit her work on Revelation Island.”

“She realized at one point why he offered to marry her,” Hannah said thoughtfully. “She suspected that he was just trying to use her. If she had married him and taken his name their work probably would have continued to be published jointly. It would have been the Hamilton name that carried the clout and because he was the man in the team, Vicky's father would probably have been respected as the senior researcher. In husband-and-wife teams it's often the husband who gets most of the credit.”

“That didn't stop Vicky from marrying Drake. Even I can tell that it's Vicky who has the brains.”

“But no sense of diplomacy. You need that to survive in the academic world, Gideon. Vicky needed Drake and she was smart enough to know it. Drake was the one who could talk people into giving her grants. Drake was the one who knew how to function at the faculty club parties, shake the right hands, talk to the right people. He would have paved the path for her and Vicky's own intelligence would have done the rest. The alliance would have lasted until Vicky figured she didn't need him any more. I'm not sure she would have realized that she'd probably always need him. Ultimately her ego would have made her dump him and that would have been a mistake.”

“Vicky on her own would be awesome,” Gideon decided.

“Yes.” Hannah thought about just what Vicky had been like on her own. “Very awesome.”

“On the other hand,” Gideon murmured, “you can be rather formidable, yourself.”

“You should talk. I saw what you did to Drake Armitage. You're a nasty street fighter, Gideon. But I suppose I already knew that. The military world doesn't know what it missed when you decided to go corporate. The leg feels better, thank you.”

“What about the rest of you?”

“I think the adrenaline is beginning to slow down. I don't feel so jumpy. God, that's a weird feeling. Is it always like that after a battle, do you suppose?”

Gideon rocked back on his heels, studying her. “It takes people different ways. But it's always rough afterward. A kind of shock, I guess.”

“You looked calm enough. Didn't holding a knife to Drake's throat leave you shaky?”

“What made me shaky,” Gideon said distinctly, “was hearing that gunshot. I lost a few years at that point. It was then I decided I was definitely getting too old for that kind of excitement. You want to know what really unhinged me, though?”

Hannah made a face. “I already know. You thought I'd gone crazy just because I wanted to find the necklace.”

“I came to the obvious conclusion that the experience with Vicky had definitely done some permanent damage to your brain.”

“That necklace is very important to me, Gideon.”

“I figured that. Anyone who could think only of finding a piece of cheap jewelry after just fighting for her life has got to have an odd set of priorities.”

“You don't understand.”

“No, I don't. But I'm not going to argue about it. Probably a function of shock. People do odd things when in shock. You've got your precious necklace and I've got you. All things considered, I'm willing to call it even.”