Blood Knot (13 page)

“
Basement?” Winter suggested.

“
Australian houses don’t have basements,” Nial returned in a normal voice. He moved back into the bedroom. “I’m turning on a light,” he warned and pressed the small rocker switch.

She blinked at the bright glare and realized that her vision had naturally adjusted to the dark to the point where it seemed quite light. Now, normal light was almost overpowering. She threw up her arm, protecting her eyes, until the light backed off. Finally, she felt it was safe to look around.

Nial was watching her. “Real light will give you some colors in the blue range and some depth perception that your night vision won’t,” he told her. “But your night vision will give you perception of movement far better than real light vision will. If you’re in danger, take out the lights. Humans—” He hesitated. “Normal humans can’t operate in the dark at all.”

Winter nodded. There were points in his brief lecture that could provoke hours of discussion, but now was not the time to open that conversation up. She resisted the need to argue or protest and instead looked around the small bedroom. “He certainly wasn’t living as well as he did in New York. Do we even have the right place?”

The bed was a tangle of sheets and blankets. The sheets were cheap cotton and the cover was a faded yellow chenille, with missing tufts and half the fringing gone.

The door to the small stand-alone wardrobe hung ajar—more evidence of hasty flight. There was a painted wood bureau in the corner, but no other furniture. The floor was linoleum, a dull grey speckle.

Winter opened the wardrobe door further. A shirt lay on the bottom of the unit and she caught her breath, for she recognized it.

“
It’s the right place,” she said and picked up the shirt. It was one she had seen Sebastian wear on numerous occasions when they weren’t working a job or role playing for some other reason. A down-time shirt. A favorite for comfort and ease.

She lifted it to her face and sniffed and was instantly immersed in his scent. Memories cascaded through her mind like rifling playing cards.

Waiting for the new partner to arrive for the job she had pulled in
Milan
. It had been a high stakes job needing two people and she had heard of Sebastian here and there a couple of times, but it had taken a lot of juice to track him down. It had taken surprisingly little talking after that, though, to get him to agree to the job. The talk had all been through representatives, as these things often were. So her first glimpse of the man himself had been at the seven-star Town House Galleria
in
downtown Milan itself, just before the job. She wore a couture gown to blend in.

Sebastian—she assumed it was Sebastian—wore snug jeans and a well-washed collarless shirt and slid over the arm of the chair next to her, onto the cushions, his arm flung over the other chair arm. “You have to be her,” he said simply, in a rich upper English accent, fixing her with green eyes that seemed limpid.

Then, after the first job, another two-man job appeared and this time it was Sebastian who suggested they grab it for themselves. Winter couldn’t find a reason to say no, especially when he was sitting cross-legged on the barstool, his head on his hand, elbow on the bar, staring at her, his shirt sleeve rolled and pushed back to his elbows to show his forearm and strong wrist. But just this job.

So many after-job times, too. The quiet peace when her inner storm was at bay. Sebastian and movies—so many movies she didn’t know and had to catch up on, according to him. Popcorn, which she secretly hated and didn’t have the heart to tell him.

Winter could feel her eyes burning with the buildup of tears and shoved the shirt at Nial. “This is Sebastian’s,” she told him and walked out into the kitchen where it was nice and dark.

She clutched the counter, fighting hard not to cry. Remembering about the stupid popcorn was just making it worse.

“
We need to leave,” Nial said from behind her.

“
Good,” she said and straightened up. Her eyes were dry, for which she was grateful. She could turn and face him.

Nial stood at the bedroom door, still holding the shirt. He’d turned off the light. “Ready?”

She nodded and headed for the door. “Where are we going?”

“
Back to Perth for now. We’ll figure out the direction on the way there.” He spoke with a touch of remoteness.

Barney was waiting beside the car, his arms crossed, his bright eyes alert and interested as they came down the narrow concrete tiles that made up the front path. “Nothing, eh?” he surmised. “Bugger. Whatcha plan to do now?”

“
Back to the airport,” Nial said simply. “Our friend won’t stay in the country. We need to figure out where he would have gone to and follow.”

“
Right you are, then.” Barney opened the door for them and climbed behind the wheel. “Figure out what made him skip?” he asked as he started the motor.

Nial frowned. “The police checking on him must have done something to alert him. It’s the only thing I can think of.”

“
The police?” Barney sighed. “That’s where you went wrong, mate, lemme tell ya. The police around here are just one person, plus recruits for the busy season. And he’s into his own home brew on a way too regular basis, if you get my drift.”

“
I get it,” Nial said.

“
If you asked ‘im to check out something on the sly before you got ‘ere, then he for sure tipped off yer mate. Bruce is good for arresting drunk tourists and hauling truckies off each other on a Saturday night, but he’s not exactly subtle, ya know?”

Nial sat back in the corner of the seat. “Then Sebastian could be anywhere from hours to days ahead of us.”

Barney shrugged. “Yours is the only private charter in or out in the last week, mate. And the last commercial flight was yesterday. That was it for the last two days.”

Yesterday. Twenty-four hours.

Now they just had to figure out which direction he had taken.

Winter stayed in her corner of the seat and left Nial alone in his, puzzled by his remoteness and filled with her own misery over Sebastian. She had not thought it was possible to be hit so hard by memories, especially brought on by something so simple as scent.

The shirt sat on the seat between them, a mute accusation that glowed in the light of the moon that beamed through the back window of the car.

The night was gorgeous, with a starry sky and balmy air. Winter rolled down her window to let in the sounds and smells of the country. It appeared this was going to be the sum total of her time in Australia, this trip. She might as well enjoy it. It was her first time on the west coast. Her tiny glimpse of it made her want to return.

Barney, sensing their urgency, made the journey back to the airport just as smartly as the trip to Coral Bay. He brought the car to the steps of the waiting jet and bounced out to opened the door for them.

Nial dug into his pocket, preparing to pay the man, along with his promised tip, so Winter slid past and climbed up the steps woodenly, more than ready to strap in for the flight back to Perth.

The captain was sitting in one of the chairs but got to his feet when she appeared. “Miss,” he acknowledged, straightening his tie.

“
We’ll be returning to Perth,” she told him.

“
I’ll file the flight plan immediately and get clearance.” He headed into the cockpit.

The co-pilot got to his feet, more awkward and younger and nodded. “We’re refueled and ready to go,” he told her. “Should be able to get airborne in about ten minutes.”

“
Great,” she told him.

He edged past her and pushed his way into the cockpit, too, leaving her standing in the cabin alone.

Did she really look that scary?

Nial stepped into the cabin behind her and she turned to him gratefully.

“
Do
not
touch me,” he said, stepping back a half-pace, to put himself out of her reach.

Winter rode out the hurt that slashed through her, as she re-interpreted Nial’s frosty silence in the car and saw it for what it really was. Truth once again provided pain and disillusionment for her. She nodded slowly. “Sebastian will be fine,” she told Nial. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him in time.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Fine,” he said roughly and stalked over to one of the chairs and sat down. He pulled the soft satchel that held his notebook over toward himself and set the computer up on his knees.

Moving awkwardly and feeling like a wooden puppet, Winter stepped over to one of the seats furthest from Nial and strapped herself in. The ring on her left hand tapped musically on the buckle of the seat belt and she lifted her hand to look at the ring again.

It wasn’t a modern Claddagh ring. It was a solid gold band and the traditional heart and crown were carved into the gold in relief. If Nial really had turned Sebastian in the late eighteenth century, then it made sense that the ring itself would be at least that old, if it had been Sebastian’s mother’s ring.

Claddagh. Ireland.

“
Nial. Sebastian’s going to Ireland.”

Nial looked up from his laptop, frowning.

She held up the ring. “Was he born there, Nial? Is there some tiny little getaway, some village, some cottage he thinks you don’t know about where he would hole up if he was sick? Maybe where his mother died?”

Nial’s frown smoothed out. “Yes,” he said simply.

THE COTTAGE HAD dry walls and roses growing up the south wall, a thatch roof with attic windows punching through it and a garden growing around it that tourists would stop to take pictures of in the summer. The road that ran along the front of it used to have cobblestones, but had been overlaid with bitumen only ten years ago, so said the village policeman who gave Winter long-winded directions. There was a tor right behind the cottage, which set the cottage off by itself from the rest of the village and ensured that modern urban development would never take over this ancient corner of the world.

Low dark clouds had settled in by the time they reached the cottage and fine mist—not quite rain—settled on everything.

“
Now I remember what I hate about soggy old Ireland,” Nial muttered, looking up at the clouds that seemed so low Winter could reach up and touch them.

“
It’s stunning,” she dared to confess.

“
For the first hour or two,” he agreed. “Try twenty years of it.” He pushed open the low garden gate and stepped aside for her to enter while he looked the cottage over. “This was his family’s. I wonder how he got it back?”

“
His family’s?” Winter questioned.

“
Never mind,” Nial said, shaking his head.

She hid her frustration and disappointment. It just one more of the same fractured conversations she had been having with Nial since they had left Australia. She didn’t know how to break the cycle of stop-start dialogue. Every attempt had failed so far and he had been scrupulous about avoiding her touch, too, so she couldn’t get a reading on his feelings.

She walked up the path lined with rosebushes heavy with old fashioned roses, lavender, and other flowers she couldn’t name, but were heavy with scent, pretty, pink and white, blue and mauve, lavender and red and more. It was an artist’s dream.

The door of the cottage was whitewashed and faded, with a doorknocker in twisted iron that was also worn with honest age. She knocked, using the knocker.

Silence greeted them.

“
How sure are you that he’s here, Nial?”

“
It’s a guess, but how sure were you about Ningaloo?”

“
It was a guess,” she admitted. “But based on everything I know about Sebastian. It just…fit.”

Nial nodded. “So does this. Especially after you pointed out about the ring and his mother.”

“
Do we force our way inside, then?”

“
From what I know about these types of villages—” Nial turned the handle on the door and it opened.

“
You’re kidding! Even in this day and age?”

“
Even now,” Nial agreed. He pushed the door open wide and indicated she should go inside.

Winter stepped up onto the worn, uneven steps and into the cottage. The room beyond was furnished with a pair of armchairs facing the fire and that was all there was room for. There was a door into a kitchen, beyond, and another door, further to the left, with two wooden steps leading up to it, that clearly lead to the rest of the cottage. The cottage may look picturesque on the outside, but that made one forgot that the inside was very short on space.

“
Up,” Nial murmured.

Winter agreed. She veered to the left, skirting the two chairs and the silent fireplace, and grasped the big old-fashioned doorknob on the door and opened it.

Immediately beyond it, a twisting set of narrow stairs began. Winter let out her breath and realized that tension was winding itself tighter inside her with each passing second.

Up.

She began to climb, trying to do it silently, but her boots clattered no matter what she did. Nial followed more quietly and she was aware that he must be getting an eyeful of her legs, on the steep stairs.

At the top there was a tiny landing and two paneled doors. One stood open and bright light from the setting sun, lower than the clouds now, shone through it.