Deep Waters (9 page)

“I didn't know Whispering Waters Cove had a crime problem.”

“We don't. At least, not by city standards. The police chief, Hank Tybern, suspects some summer visitors. But there's no way to prove it. I just hope they've left the area. What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

“No. I was out for a walk. Thought I'd stop by and
see if you'd care to join me for an evening of scintillating theatrical entertainment.”

“Entertainment? What entertainment?” The temptation to open the screen door was almost overwhelming.

“A musical drama known as chanting down the sun. I can arrange front-row seats for tonight's performance if you're interested.”

Charity smiled in spite of herself. “It's gotten lousy reviews.”

Elias shrugged. “I figure it beats trying to conduct a conversation with Crazy Otis. He wanted to go to sleep.”

“So you got bored and decided to come over here?” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could recall them.

“It was just a thought.” Elias held up a hand. His expression was shadowed and unreadable. “If you'd rather do paperwork …”

She winced. “Hang on, I'll get my key.”

He contemplated her kitchen table and chairs as she turned away from the door. “Bet you didn't buy this stuff down at Seth's New & Used Furniture Mart, did you?”

Charity flicked a glance at the sleek lines of her expensive Euro-style furnishings. “Nope. Brought it with me from Seattle. Thank God the vandals contented themselves with throwing food from the refrigerator onto the floor and writing nasty words on the walls. They didn't get around to ruining my furniture.”

With the key in the pocket of her jeans and the door securely locked behind her, she joined Elias in the warm summer twilight. Without a word they walked toward the old dirt path that wound along the bluffs above the beach.

Charity had made it a habit to walk several times a
week. It was part of the self-prescribed therapy she had adopted to help herself recover from burnout. She hadn't had a panic attack in months, unless one counted the brief twinge she had gotten when Rick Swinton had tried to pressure her into a date.

The storms of anxiety had eased shortly after she had moved to Whispering Waters Cove. But she had maintained the exercise ritual along with some of the other stress-reducing techniques she had learned. They had become her talismans.

She loved the feel of the cove breeze on her face. It never failed to invigorate all her senses and clarify her mind. Tonight the effect was even stronger than usual. She was keenly aware of Elias gliding along beside her. She sensed the heat and the quiet strength in him even though he had not touched her.

“I'm sorry I snapped at you a few minutes ago,” she said at last. “The crack about your coming over to see me because you were bored was rude.”

“Forget it.”

She hesitated and then decided to take the plunge. “I had an interesting conversation with my brother today.”

There was just enough light to reveal the brief, wryly amused twist of Elias's mouth. “I assume that I was the main topic of conversation.”

She sighed. “To be honest, yes. Davis said he'd heard of you and Far Seas, but he'd never met you.”

“I've heard of him, too. Our paths have never crossed.”

“He said I should be cautious around you, that you weren't the type to run a little curio shop on a small-town pier. He said you were probably here in Whispering Waters Cove on behalf of some big off-shore client.”

Elias kept his gaze on the grove of trees that
marched down to the edge of the bluff. “My reasons for being here have nothing to do with business. Your brother's assumptions are based on a faulty premise.”

“In other words, he's looking through murky water?”

“Sounds like you picked up a few things from Hayden.”

Charity smiled briefly. “I liked Hayden. But I never felt as if I knew him well. There was always something distant and remote about him. It was as if he existed in his own private universe.”

“You're right. He did. As far as I know, I was the only one he ever allowed into that universe.”

Something buried in his dark voice caught and held Charity's attention. “He was more than a friend to you, wasn't he? And more than a teacher, too.”

“Yes.”

She breathed out slowly. Empathy washed away several layers of common sense and caution. “It's only been two months since his death. You must miss him.”

Elias was silent for a couple of heartbeats. “I was with him when he died. Made him go to the emergency room. He kept telling me it was a waste of time, that he was going to die and that no doctor could do anything about it. But he knew that he had to let me take him to the hospital because if I didn't, I would have spent the rest of my life wondering if he could have been saved. He would have preferred to die quietly in my house.”

“But you took him to the emergency room, and he died there, instead?”

“Yes.” Elias looked out over the cove. “He was very calm at the end. Centered. Balanced. He died as he had lived. The last thing he said to me was that he had given me the tools to free myself. It was up to me to use them.”

“Free yourself from what?”

Another beat of silence. “The need for revenge.”

Charity stared at him. “Against whom?”

“It's a long story.”

“I don't mind listening.”

Elias did not respond for several minutes. Charity began to think he had no intention of answering her question. But after a while, he finally began to talk.

“My parents were divorced when I was ten. I lived with my mother. She … suffered from bouts of depression. One month after I turned sixteen, she took her own life.”

“Oh, God, Elias. I'm sorry.”

“I went to live with my grandparents. They never recovered from their grief. I think they always blamed my father for my mother's problems. And some of that blame shifted to me after her death. I waited for my father to send for me. I never heard from him.”

Charity's throat tightened. “Where was he?”

“He ran a small air-freight business based on an island named Nihili.”

Charity frowned. “I've never heard of it.”

“Few people have. It's out in the Pacific. After a while I talked my grandfather into paying my way out to Nihili. It wasn't hard.”

“What happened to your father?”

“Dad had a rival, a man named Garrick Keyworth.”

Charity said nothing when he paused again. She simply waited.

“Keyworth sabotaged Dad's only plane. My father knew it, but he took off, anyway. The plane went down out over the ocean.”

Charity was stunned. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn't a tale of murder. “If that's the truth, then it seems to me that you had every right to want revenge against this Keyworth.”

“It's not as simple as it sounds. Things rarely are. Dad knew the plane had fuel line problems that day, but he chose to take the chance and fly. He had contracts to fulfill. One of the things I never wanted to admit to myself was that he made his own decision to risk his life.”

A flash of intuition went through Charity. “He not only risked his own life, he risked leaving you alone, didn't he?”

“You could say that.” Elias's smile contained no humor. “Hayden certainly said it a few times.”

“Your father may have been guilty of poor judgment, but if you ask me, that still doesn't absolve this Garrick Keyworth. Not by a long shot.”

“No, it doesn't. To make a long story short, I arrived on Nihili a couple of days after Dad had gone down. It was Hayden who met me at the airstrip. For reasons of his own, reasons I never fully understood, he accepted me as his personal responsibility. He finished the task of raising me. Helped me start my business. Taught me how to be a man. I owe him more than I can ever repay.”

Charity swallowed to keep herself from bursting into tears. “I see. What about the man who sabotaged your father's plane?”

“It took me a long time to learn his identity. After I found out who he was, I spent years devising a way to bring down his empire. And then Hayden died.”

“And that changed things?”

“Everything. I looked at Keyworth's reflection in a different light after I said good-bye to Hayden. One of the things I hadn't seen before was that Keyworth has paid a price for his crime. He knows that everything he has today is founded on that one act of destruction. It's eating at his soul. It's what drives him, and it will ultimately destroy him. It's already cost him
more than he even knows. I decided to leave him to the prison he's built for himself.”

Charity exhaled deeply. “That's a very philosophical way of looking at it. Downright metaphysical, in fact. No offense, but I find it a little hard to believe that you just walked away from that situation and left Keyworth to the great wheel of cosmic justice.”

Elias's dark brows rose. “Very perceptive of you. You're right. I wasn't exactly a saint about the whole thing. I went to see Keyworth before I came here. Showed him some documents that proved beyond a doubt that I had the contacts and connections to cripple, possibly even destroy, his operations in the Pacific.
Then
I walked away.”

Charity was speechless for a few seconds. “And left him to live with the knowledge that you had had him in your power and let him go?”

“I decided I owed myself that much, at least.”

She drew a deep breath. “Very subtle. Perhaps too subtle. Keyworth may think you backed off simply because you were too weak to go through with your plans. Or because you lost your nerve.”

“I doubt it,” Elias said quietly. “I studied him for a long time before I made my move. I know him well.”

“You think that the knowledge that he was vulnerable to you will add to the pressure that's building inside him?”

“Perhaps.” Elias made a small, dismissing movement with his hand. “Perhaps not. It doesn't matter. Keyworth no longer concerns me.”

“Yet you spent years plotting against him?”

“It takes time to set up the kind of vengeance I planned.”

Charity held her breeze-tossed hair out of her eyes. “Did you have the confrontation with Keyworth shortly before you moved here?”

“Yes.”

“Whew. You've been through a lot during the past couple of months, haven't you? The death of your friend Hayden, the showdown with Keyworth, a major career shift, and a move to a new location.”

He glanced at her with a curious expression. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you'd score pretty high right now if you were to take one of those psych tests that measures recent stressful events in your life.”

“I don't plan to take any psych tests.”

“No, I don't suppose you do.” For some reason the thought of Elias sitting down to a battery of psychological tests almost made her smile. “You'll probably just gaze into a nice, clear pool of water instead.”

“It works for me.”

She gave him a sidelong look. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

He appeared to brace himself. “No.”

“Why did you tell me all this? On the first day we met I got the distinct impression that you were the strong, silent type.”

He smiled. “Still suspicious of me?”

“I prefer to think of it as cautious. Suspicious has paranoid connotations, and I don't think I'm that far over the edge.”

“All right. Cautious. The answer to your question is that I gave you a piece of my privacy as a gift because I want something from you in exchange.”

“Damn it, I
knew
it.” And he had known just how to get past her defenses, she thought furiously.

She was not hurt or even disappointed, she told herself. She had known there would be a catch to this little evening stroll. Elias wasn't the kind of man who would share intimate secrets with anyone unless he had an ulterior motive.

“Let's hear it,” she snapped. “What do you want from me? If this has something to do with the lease negotiations, you're wasting your time.”

“I don't care about the lease arrangements. All I want from you is the chance to get to know you.”

She came to a sudden halt and swung around to face him. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.” As if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if they shared a regular habit of walking along the bluffs in the evening, Elias reached out and took her hand. “My turn to ask you a question.”

4
 
 

The approaching storm turns the surface of the sea to steel and silver. Only danger reflects clearly from such a mirror.

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

Charity instinctively tensed as Elias's powerful hand wrapped around her fingers. He was strong. Stronger than she had realized. But she still did not sense so much as a tiny frisson of the old claustrophobic sensation that had seized her during the days when she had dated Brett Loftus. And certainly nothing of the twinge of the fight-or-flight response she had felt last month when Rick Swinton, Gwendolyn Pitt's assistant cult manager, had attempted to sweep her off her feet with his oily charm.