Ben opened the door and climbed out. The dog jumped in. “So, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you’?”
Archer’s grin sharpened. “Could be worse—she could look like the back end of a bus.”
Ben remembered the glow of her skin as she’d stood half naked in front of the fire, the tangle of damp blond curls tumbling over her shoulders. “Might be easier if she did.”
“Watch your back, Foley,” Archer said, not unkindly. “Ewan will call you tomorrow.”
Ben closed the door and stood back to watch the taillights disappear. He hadn’t felt this isolated since he’d been a kid in his grandfather’s house. He thrust the thought aside and went back to his car. Drove home with the radio cranked all the way up.
***
The dead couldn’t hurt you. That’s what they said. Sorcha lay in bed with her hands wedged beneath her cheek and tried to believe it. The moon stole in and out of billowing clouds. The lighthouse beam circled the May Isle with incessant caution. A thin slice of shoreline was visible through her bedroom window, the sea calm now after its earlier spat. She tugged the duvet closer,
rolled over to stare at the ceiling. Her father’s ghost hadn’t shown up in their old cottage yet. It was a small blessing.
She’d painted the room cool blue, rather than the pastel pink she’d favored as a child. It smelled the same though, the resin of unfinished wood mixed with the taint of smoke from the fire downstairs. Funny how she remembered the inconsequential details, but nothing important.
Three months.
She’d been back three months and it already felt like a lifetime. Because no amount of fresh paint could wipe out the horror of how it had ended.
Since her grandmother’s death a year ago, Iain Logan had haunted her. Always walking away. Always leaving. Always compelling her to follow and never letting her catch up.
Madness whispered indecipherably in her head.
What do you want, Daddy? To punish me?
“Sorcha…”
Her name echoed in her brain and her fingers gripped the duvet so hard they cramped. She couldn’t confide in anyone—she’d made that mistake with Bruce and been paid back with heartbreak. She wanted to pretend she wasn’t being stalked by a dead man. She wanted to be left alone to live a normal life. Like everyone else.
“Sorcha…”
The voice was an admonishing angel swooping down on her. He’d never leave until she’d figured out what he wanted. Nobody knew what happened on that wild night so many years ago. Some whispered suicide, others that she’d cursed him in her childish rage. All anyone understood for sure was that a lifeboat rescue had gone disastrously wrong and Iain Logan had died in a cruel, unforgiving sea.
And ten-year-old Sorcha Logan had woken up on the beach to find her father dead at her feet.
The moonlight poured across the beach before fast-moving clouds cloaked it again. Her heartbeat stuttered. A man stood staring up at her window. Startled, she jumped. Squeezing her eyes shut, her mouth went dry and she held her breath.
She opened her eyes. The moon flashed, revealing a solitary figure who turned and walked away up the shore. Relief shot through her. It was a flesh-and-blood human being, a dark-haired man out for a midnight stroll.
The American?
With a grimace, Sorcha flopped back, closed her eyes and pulled the covers up to her nose. She didn’t know why Ben Foley irritated her so much. Or maybe she did. And that’s why she wanted to pretend he didn’t exist.
Sheep hopped over imaginary fences as she forcefully blocked out that lean, predatory visage. Men like him were trouble, and women like her knew it. Concentrating on shaggy ewes, she prayed for sleep, even though sleep brought nightmares.
***
They’d used the cover of darkness to bring in another shipment. Drug smuggling was easy in this parochial little town, but the death of the Colombians made him extra cautious. The earlier squall had blown itself out in a violent blast of fury. Now moonlight glittered off malefic rock, and hate coalesced like smoke. He could read minds and control thoughts, but not even he could manipulate the dead.
He’d killed McCabe because he’d known too much, but how had the corpse ended up in Sorcha Logan’s arms? Breath constricted in his chest. Stabbing darts of unease pricked his spine. Did she hold the powers of necromancy?
He frowned. Spat. No, Sorcha was pitiful. Blind. Gifted with powers and too stupid to use them. But the dead warded her, even the McCabe boy.
He despised her. Her frosted looks, her insipid blue eyes. He focused his anger, tried to keep it leashed so it didn’t give him away.
He
was powerful, not her. He knew things. He saw things.
With the ferocity of lightning, a vision flashed inside his head. The lash of a belt cut through the night, and his ribs stung in memory.
Slash! Slash!
I’ll beat the devil out of you, boy!
He doubled over, retching against the stones. Blindly, he groped for the protective amulet he kept in his pocket, clutched the topaz and rebuilt the barriers that kept the memories at bay. The stone grew hot in his hand as if physically absorbing his pain. It had been a long time since that particular nightmare had escaped.
Heat poured off his body as he regained his composure.
You couldn’t read minds of people who closed themselves off to you. He wished he could. And except for brief glimpses, Sorcha was a blank wall. Others…he drew in a sweet calming breath. Others were easy. You picked out their greatest fear, plucked it like a fiddle string and made them dance.
Sorcha’s turning up ruined everything and now he intended to pay her back. But first he needed those journals. Why hadn’t he known about them years ago?
The tendons in his neck stretched taut as he searched for Sorcha’s presence but came up blank. Iain Logan was shielding her.
Stupid bugger.
He laughed. Fifteen years ago, the fool had been too dull-witted to live. Now, in death, he’d found himself a crusade.
Poor little Sorcha. Pitiful little Sorcha.
Ghosts were powerless in this world. He fingered his knife, felt the razor edge burn his fingers. Nothing was going to get between him and the future he’d planned.
Nothing
.
The witch had to die.
“Damn.” Ben Foley stretched out his limbs, his fingers brushing the drapes behind him. He yawned until his jaw cracked. Sat forward, propped his elbows on his knees, and peered through the 90mm Altazimuth Refractor telescope. A small fishing boat bobbed on the waves, hauling in the day’s catch. The nets sparkled like a thousand tiny mirrors signaling for help.
He grunted and, slumping back, rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. He must have fallen asleep hours ago, after staring out at the Firth of Forth all last night and most of the day. His worst fucking nightmare.
Waves crept closer up the shoreline and his heart sped up, shaking away the last of his fatigue. Tremors took control of his hands and his mouth felt full of cotton.
Aversion therapy.
He was going through his own personal form of aversion therapy. Millions of gallons of seawater doing their twice daily dance up the shore to mess with his psyche.
“Get off your ass, Foley.” He stood abruptly, kept his head low to prevent bashing it on a three-hundred-year-old beam.
You’d think something so old wouldn’t hurt so much.
The tox report on the kid Sorcha Logan dragged out of the ocean wasn’t in yet, though he’d had more track lines than the Union Pacific.
Ben grabbed his jacket, checked for keys and felt the door brush his back on the way out. He paused on the front step and inhaled fresh air. Last night’s storm had blown away the clouds, left the sky thin and clear. He hunched his shoulders against the wind and headed west, down George Street, toward Anstruther’s main drag. Hordes of windows stared out of houses older than his homeland. Chicago’s South Side might not have the charm of this village, with its whitewashed cottages and red clay pan-tiled roofs, but he’d take it a million times over this quaint idyll. Especially with the crumbling seawall, mist-laden air, and the constant beat of waves in the background of every breath he took.
An old guy came out of the local bar, tipped his cap before moving on. Ben planned to check out the joint later, sample the beer and see what was happening in this small tight-lipped community.
The sea came unexpectedly into view through an alleyway that led to the beach, and his heart stuttered. Waves pounded the rocks. He braced a hand against a wall to steady himself. What the
hell
was he doing here?
A couple of street cleaners stared from across the bend in the road. He lifted his hand in salute, but they eyeballed him as if he didn’t belong.
Yeah, right.
He’d been in friendlier ghettos.
Straightening up, he dropped his smile and let his six feet three inches do the talking. They didn’t want to be friendly? Not a problem. He examined their faces, though neither man looked away. Maybe they were related to the Logans? One guy looked like Elvis’s shorter, fatter brother and the other, a walking advertisement for Hell’s Angels R Us.
Ben took out a cigarette and lit up, savoring the smoke he held in his lungs. He blew out a steady stream that curled up into the air and vanished. A police car drove down Burnside Terrace and headed into town, pumping the horn. The street cleaners raised their hands at Sergeant Davy Logan, who drove past without seeing Ben in the shadows.
Logans, Logans everywhere, and not a cop to trust.
He crushed out the cigarette.
Surf boomed against the rocks, unrelenting and angry. Nausea slipped through his stomach and he started walking. Fast. Blocking out the noise, concentrating on each contact his foot made with the sidewalk. Jacob had been killed by people who thought they were above the law. Ben wasn’t about to let a little fear of water stop him from disabusing them of that notion.
Cutting behind the Fisheries Museum, Ben avoided the last stretch of open water before the harbor. His pulse eased and the smell of deep-fried food made him realize he hadn’t eaten all day. Pushing into the turquoise-and-white-painted chip shop, he breathed in the hot, heavy air that filled him with hunger.
The line ran nearly to the door. He looked over the chrome divider and saw a free table. Squeezing past people waiting for takeout, he placed his order with a young girl who blushed at his smile. She brought him a soda, and he thanked her, noting her name badge said Kirsty. She was petite and pretty, with a cap full of short brown hair.
What would a little flirting hurt? Like any other single guy on vacation. Great cover and maybe he could pump her for information.
Sorcha Logan burst through the entrance with a laugh and a smile, held the door wide for another girl—her roommate. His hand froze in the act of lifting the soda to his lips. She didn’t see him and he took the opportunity to study her.
Today she was wrapped in a long black cardigan, a knit scarf that hung nearly to the floor, gray flannel slacks and high-heeled black boots. When she wasn’t jogging, she was well-dressed, an anomaly for a supposedly poor student.
The memory of her near-naked body flashed through his mind and stirred heat low in his groin. Jacob’s blood-drained face snapped him out of it. She was a suspect, not a pickup. He needed to get close to her without crossing the line, needed to gain her confidence without compromising himself or tipping her off.
Thick blond hair was tied in a loose ponytail and she looked sweet and innocent. But he didn’t think so. Too many circumstances tied her to the clandestine smuggling. Crushing the can slightly between clenched fingers, he took a swig.
Someone in this town ran enough cocaine to supply most of Scotland and northeast England. Scottish DEA suspected that traffickers used trawlers to bring the coke ashore, although nobody knew exactly who was involved or when the drugs were being unloaded.
He’d spoken to Detective Sergeant Ewan McKnight on the phone that morning. Last time they’d done a raid, the boat they’d searched had been clean. So clean they could have fed newborn babies off the bare wooden planks. And before him stood the owner of that boat, Sorcha Logan, a girl who regularly dragged dead bodies out of the sea.
There’d been a leak. Had to have been. And he was on his own.
Sorcha glanced up as his plate of fish and chips arrived. Eyes widening, she recognized him and her smile faltered.
His stare was a hard probe that chased her secrets. And there were secrets there; they scattered for cover in the depths of her eyes. She looked away, concentrated on her feet and then on her friend’s face.
Doubt made him frown. Was she a drug smuggler? Part of the cartel that had got Jacob killed in Magangue?
Sorcha didn’t look in his direction again, even as she left the building. But once she crossed the road, she turned and met his gaze with a scowl, tugging her friend away from the benches that overlooked the harbor.
His food sat cold and sour in his stomach. If he found proof, Sorcha Logan was going to jail for a very long time.
***
The American screamed danger.
Unease rippled along his senses He couldn’t read the man, but he trusted his intuition more than he trusted death.
Onshore winds buffeted the trailer as he nursed a glass of Guinness. The curtains were drawn against prying eyes on a dark night. This was his secret place. His haven. The one place in the world he could relax. He eased back against a foam cushion and drew out his amulet. Red topaz glowed brilliantly and the gem grew hot against his skin.
He pictured the black-eyed stranger.
Who is the American?
He concentrated on the question, focused all his energy and waited for the images to come. He held his breath in anticipation, but there was nothing. Anger boiled inside.
Who is he?
He tried harder.
Shadows whirled, but no pictures. No answers. The guy was a vacuum. He didn’t even have an aura. Rage flashed through him. He launched his glass across the room where it shattered against the cooker. A layer of perspiration made his shirt stick to his back, but his fury burned out as fast as it had come. A couple of long deep breaths helped.
He tried something different.
Is Sorcha ignorant?
A vision of her smiling appeared inside his mind. Her aura glimmered bright, light pink. Innocent, pure.
He laughed.
She was
glaikit.
Clueless. She’d blocked her abilities, and the best thing was she didn’t even know it. In his dreams they died together, but fate wasn’t a sure thing. One tweak and you could twist it on its ass. His guides had shown him that. And he wasn’t afraid to give it a damn good tweak to get what he wanted.
He wiped his brow on the cuff of his shirt, the smell of beer ripe and pungent in the enclosed space. Finally he asked the most important question.
Where are Iain Logan’s journals?
To disappear without fear that the cops would one day discover what he’d done, he needed to destroy those journals. Visions whirled frantically through his mind—as though watching fifteen different movies on fast-forward all at the same time.
He swore. Anger and frustration worked against him. He took another deep breath and cleared his mind, concentrated on his question.
Where are the journals?
He grabbed a pen and wrote the word
journals
on a piece of paper. Pressed the paper and amulet to his forehead and closed his eyes. It took a moment for the pictures to slow down. Finally they separated into distinct images.
Where are Iain Logan’s journals?
He focused all his energy. The image of Iain Logan cradling a sleepy kid entered his mind. At last he was getting somewhere. A sense of rightness calmed the thud of his heart; he relaxed his shoulders, settled his blood. But when Iain Logan looked up and winked, he threw back his head and roared.
***
Fog shrouded the crow-stepped gables and snared the glow of streetlights into discrete golden orbs. The atmosphere was dense and brooding, as if the darkness held its breath.
The day has eyes, the night has ears.
Her father had had a saying for every occasion. Sorcha blew out a misty breath. At least she finally remembered something about the man other than how he’d died.
A headache pounded her temples and she rubbed tired eyes, wishing she wasn’t quite so desperate for a drink. She tucked her chin into the scarf her mother had knitted while undergoing chemotherapy three and a half years ago. It was the only thing her mother ever made her and she absorbed its comfort.
Carolyn chatted as they walked along and, while it wasn’t helping Sorcha’s headache, at least it filled the evening with life and calmed her jitters. “We’re going to India! We’re going to travel around by train for three weeks and see the Taj Mahal.”
Concentrating on the echo of their footsteps along the street, Sorcha zoned out. Carolyn was planning a vacation with loverboy. Sorcha resisted telling her friend not to spend any money yet, in case Kevin screwed someone else in the meantime. For smart women, they were both really dumb about men.
Uncle Davy had phoned her today and told her they’d identified the boy she’d help pull out of the sea, confirming it was twenty-four year old Alec McCabe. The family had already scheduled the funeral for later this week and she hoped to attend. The thought depressed her.
Outside the pub Carolyn grabbed her arm and swung her around so they faced each other. “I’m going to meet his parents.” Little sparks of happiness danced in Carolyn’s eyes and she had
happily-ever-after
written all over her face. Sorcha wondered if her own eyes had ever burned that brightly.
Maybe. Once.
She gave Carolyn a quick hug, silently vowing to disembowel Kevin if he broke her friend’s heart. Alarm prickled her spine as Carolyn smiled at someone over Sorcha’s shoulder. Even before she turned she knew it was the American. She’d had a crappy day and it kept getting worse.
What was with the glare he’d given her earlier in the chip shop? As if he were a serial killer and she were his next victim?
She hadn’t done anything to him. She’d even returned his clothes, clean and ironed, to his doorstep that morning before heading to work. Twisting to face him, she gave him a glare of her own, only to jolt away from the force of his smile.
Bugger.
With a nod, he opened the door and indicated she and Carolyn go first. Then he followed them into the dingy pub, staring around with interest.
The Raven was a dive. A pokey, two-roomed bar with a scruffy pool table at one end and a dartboard at the other. Five black vinyl-covered barstools lined the bar, all filled with old men who turned to watch the incomers.
They relaxed when they spotted her. As if she belonged. As if they knew her. Maybe they did. More than she wanted them to. Iain Logan had been a regular in the pub and she’d often sat in the corner with a packet of Walker’s crisps and a bottle of pop.
“Aye, lass, what are you having?” asked the barman.
“I’ll get this.” Ben Foley leaned his tall frame across the bar, a twenty-pound note grasped between thumb and forefinger. “What will you have?” He directed the question to Carolyn, who blushed like a virgin on her wedding day.
Sorcha struggled to hide her exasperation.
“A half lager shandy, please.”
They both turned and looked at Sorcha expectantly.
Torn between not wanting anything from the moody Yank and not wanting to cause a scene, Sorcha hesitated. People were watching. She could sense them cataloguing her words, and scrutinizing her actions.
Reluctance to make a scene won out, and she slowly unwound the scarf from around her neck. “I’ll have a pint of 80 shilling. Please.”
Ben Something raised an eyebrow, his teeth flashing as he gave a nod of approval. “Make that two pints of 80 shilling.”
No doubt about it, there was something intriguing about the man. That dangerous quality counteracted by a sexy smile she didn’t trust.
She walked away.
It was rude, but after the day she’d had, she didn’t care. What was with the guy anyway? Glaring at her one minute, buying her a drink the next? No way was she going down that hot-and-cold emotional road again. Been there, done that. And had no intention of repeating her mistakes.