Deep Waters (17 page)

“Probably. But there's nothing illegal about her firm as far as we can tell. She's the president. Only one employee on the payroll.”

“Let me guess. Rick Swinton?”

“Actually, his full name is Richard Swinton. Sounds like you've made his acquaintance.”

“He paid me a visit last night. Uninvited.”

“I see,” Craig said. “Want me to dig deeper into his background?”

“I'll probably ask for more information after I repay Swinton's visit.”

“Sounds like the two of you are getting friendly.”

“You know how it is in a small town. Everyone tries to be neighborly.”

“Better pay your return visit before this Swinton character leaves on a spaceship,” Craig said.

“I'll do that.”

“By the way, I have some unrelated news that may be of interest to you.”

Elias gazed at Otis through the office doorway. The
bird was sidling impatiently back and forth along his perch. It was closing time. “What news?”

“Remember Garrick Keyworth? The guy you had me do some work on?”

Elias went still. “What about him?”

“Word has it that he tried to commit suicide last night. Took a whole fistful of pills.”

All of the air went out of Elias's lungs. With no warning, the river that flowed out of his own past suddenly revealed the pale form of his mother. She lay sprawled on a bed, an array of pill bottles neatly arranged on the night table beside her.

With an act of practiced will, Elias sent the image back into the darkness from which it had come.

“Did he succeed?” Elias asked.

“No. Nine-one-one was called. They got him to the hospital in time. He'll recover, but you can imagine what the news will do to the company. Once the shock wears off, Keyworth International is expected to go into a tailspin. You know how it is in an operation like that where there's no clear successor poised to take over the leadership slot. Everyone panics.”

“Yes.”

“Too bad Keyworth never took his son into the firm. If he had, there would be someone at the helm now to calm customers and creditors.”

“Keyworth and his son are estranged,” Elias said.

“So I heard. Well, I'd say this will be the end of Keyworth International.”

7
 
 

A man can drown in passion as surely as he can drown in the sea.

—“On the Way of Water,” from the journal of Hayden Stone

Something was wrong.

Charity closed the new issue of
Gourmet
, which she had been poring over for the past half hour. She could feel the wrongness in her bones. The feeling of unease had been growing steadily since late this afternoon when she had seen Elias lock up his shop for the night.

He hadn't even bothered to wave good-bye to anyone, let alone see Charity to her car, as had become his habit during the past few days. He had set off toward the parking lot without a backward glance, empty travel cage in one hand. Otis had perched like a vulture on his shoulder.

For some inexplicable reason, the sight of man and bird pacing down the pier had sent a chill through
Charity. Now, several hours later, the cold feeling was getting worse.

She tossed the glossy magazine onto the whimsically designed, frosted-glass coffee table. It landed on a bevy of cookbooks that she had brought home from Whispers. She had spent the entire evening scouring the collection for interesting recipes. Elias's tastes, like hers, were distinctive and a little eccentric. Nothing had been said aloud, but Charity sensed that a gauntlet had been thrown down. Elias had deliberately challenged her. She intended to hold her own in the next round of the Truitt-Winters cook-off.

But what she was feeling now was not a form of chef's anxiety. This restlessness was different.

She could not get the image of Elias's grim silhouette against the evening sun out of her mind.

Something was definitely wrong.

She uncurled from the curved lipstick-red sofa and walked across the small living room to open the front door. She stepped out onto the porch. It was after nine. Nearly full dark. There was a new chill in the air. Fog was gathering over the cove.

She curled her hands around the old, white-washed rail and studied the maze of trees that stretched the quarter-mile distance that separated her cottage from Elias's. She could not make out any sign of light through the thick foliage.

On impulse she straightened, locked the front door, and went down the porch steps. She paused again, listening to the sounds of the onrushing night. She thought she could hear the distant chants of the Voyagers, but it was difficult to tell for certain.

She walked out to the bluff path. Once again she gazed in the direction of Elias's cottage. From here she should be able to see lights from his windows through the trees.

Nothing. Not so much as a glimmer from his porch light. Perhaps he had gone into town for the evening.

The sense of wrongness grew stronger.

She took one step and then another along the path. She had covered several yards before she acknowledged that she was going to walk to Elias's cottage.

This was probably a mistake. Checking up on Elias could prove to be an embarrassing move in the cat-and-mouse flirtation game that the two of them seemed to be playing. He'd probably view her curiosity as a sign of eagerness or even desperation. She would lose the upper hand.

But she could not make herself turn back.

What the hell. She never had been any good at the kind of games men and women played. There had never been any time to practice.

The night closed swiftly in around her as she hurried along the top of the bluffs. When she reached Elias's madrona-shaded garden she saw that there was still no light in the windows. She walked around to the front of the cottage. Elias's Jeep was parked in the drive.

She wondered if he had gone for an evening walk farther up along the bluffs.

Charity made her way back around the cottage to the garden entrance. For a moment she stood, one hand resting on the low gate. After a moment she raised the latch and went into the garden.

She was halfway along the winding path, headed toward the unlit porch, when she sensed another presence in the garden. She stopped and turned slowly.

It took a few seconds for her to make out Elias. He sat cross-legged in front of the reflecting pool, a still, silent figure shrouded in twilight shadows. The small pond was a black mirror that revealed nothing.

“Elias?” She took a step forward and hesitated.

“Was there something you wanted?” His voice held the distant, chillingly detached quality that had unnerved her on the day they had met.

“No.” She took another step toward him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Elias, for heaven's sake, what's wrong?”

“An interesting aspect of water is only revealed when there is an absence of light. The surface becomes as opaque to the eye as a wall of obsidian.”

“Great, we're back to the Zen-speak.” Charity walked to the edge of the pond and halted a short distance from Elias. “Enough with the cryptic comments. Tell me what's going on here.”

At first she thought that he would not respond. He did not move, did not even look at her. He seemed completely focused on the dark, blank surface of the reflecting pool. An endless moment passed.

“Garrick Keyworth tried to commit suicide last night,” he said at last.

The stark words hit her with the force of a wave crashing on rocks. She recalled what Elias had said about his mother's death. Suicide always held a special horror for those who had been touched by it.

“Oh, Elias.”

She sank down beside him. A section of the hem of her light chambray dress settled on his knee. She followed his gaze into the darkness of the reflecting pool. He was right. There was nothing to be seen there. The night sat heavily on the garden.

Time passed. Charity did not attempt to break the silence. She simply waited. It was the only thing she could do.

“I thought that because I had decided to walk away from my revenge, the matter was finished,” Elias said after a while. “But I did not truly turn aside. I went
to Keyworth one last time. Showed him what I could have done to him, had I chosen to go through with it.”

“You don't know that your meeting with him had anything to do with his suicide attempt.”

“It had everything to do with it. I studied him for years. I should have seen the full range of possibilities when I made my last move. Maybe I did see them but refused to acknowledge them.”

“Don't be so hard on yourself, Elias.”

“I knew damn well that the knowledge of his own vulnerability would add to the poison brewing inside Keyworth. But I told myself that it would be only a single small drop in the mixture. Not enough to change the final results.”

“You couldn't have known that it would push him over the edge. You still don't know that it did.”

“It takes only a small impurity to destroy the perfection of the clearest pond.”

Charity tried to think of something to say, but everything that came to mind was useless. A less self-aware, less self-disciplined man might have been comforted by her insistence that he was not responsible for Keyworth's suicide attempt. A less complicated man might have taken triumphant satisfaction from the situation. After all, some would say that had Keyworth been successful, it would have been nothing more than simple justice. But Elias was not like most men. Elias was different.

After a while Charity reached out to touch his arm. Every muscle, every tendon, every sinew beneath his skin was as taut as twisted steel. He did not move. He seemed oblivious to her fingers.

“It's getting chilly out here,” she said eventually. “Come inside. I'll fix you some tea.”

“I don't want any tea. Go home, Charity.”

The icy remoteness in his voice made her want to
recoil. She fought the instinctive urge to leap to her feet and run. “I'm not going to leave you sitting out here. There's a fog bank moving in over the cove, in case you haven't noticed. The temperature is dropping.”

“I can take care of myself. I don't need your help. Leave me alone, Charity. You shouldn't have come here tonight.”

“We're neighbors, remember? Friends. I can't leave you alone.”

“You have no responsibility for me.”

“Listen up, Mr. Control Freak, you've got your code, and I've got mine. Mine says I can't leave you out here by yourself.” She got to her feet and tugged on his arm. “Please, Elias. Let's go inside.”

He looked up at her with eyes as unreadable as the surface of the reflecting pool. For a moment she thought he would refuse. Then, without a word he rose to his feet in a single, fluid movement.

She took advantage of the small victory to lead him up the steps. He did not resist, but the hard tension in him did not ease. She opened the door and urged him gently inside.

She kicked off her shoes and groped along the wall. “Where's the light switch?”

Without a word, Elias extended one hand and flipped a switch. A lamp glowed in the corner. Otis muttered a complaint from beneath the cover that encircled his cage.

For the first time Charity got a clear look at Elias's face. What she saw there made her wish she hadn't asked him to turn on the light. Some things were best left concealed in the shadows.

On the other hand, some things only got more scary if they were hidden in the dark.

“I'll put the water on,” she said.

“I think you'd better leave, Charity. I'm not going to be good company tonight.”

The words were an unmistakable warning. A tiny frisson of fear went through her. She shook off the sense of impending danger. “I said I'd fix you a cup of tea.”

She brushed past him and crossed the barren room to the small kitchen. The kettle sat on a back burner. She discovered a pot in a cupboard. There was a cannister of Kemun beside it.

“I doubt if my tea will be up to your standards, but at least it will be hot.” She ran water into the kettle.

“Charity.”

She paused, kettle in hand, and glanced at him over her shoulder.

“Yes?”

He said nothing. He simply stood there, watching her with a shattering intensity that paralyzed her. She was riveted by the bleakness in his gaze. In that moment she could see straight through the wall of pride and self-discipline he had so painstakingly built around himself. An ancient loneliness crouched like some great monstrous beast in the darkness beyond the wall.

“Elias,” she said very softly. Slowly she put down the kettle. “I know you think you can handle this by yourself, and you're probably right. But sometimes it's better not to try to go it alone. That stuff about the Way of Water may work just fine as a philosophical construct, but sometimes a person needs more.”

“Tal Kek Chara is all I have,” he said with stark simplicity.

“That's not true.” She shook off the spell that had seized her and went to him.