Blood Ties (24 page)

Rafi did not know how to find his uncle's house.
When he had followed Seema and Wali to the well,
Wali remembered the way home. Wali was big. He
laughed at Rafi and called him two fingers. Little. Rafi
knew it was bad to cry. When he cried, the Big Papa
Man hurt him.

Rafi cried anyway.

Bailey stepped out of Daniel's shower and he handed
her a terrycloth robe. She wrapped her wet hair in a
towel and pulled the robe on. "That feels heavenly."
She'd come home from the dig dirtier than she'd
been in a long time.

Puzzle wound around her ankles, wagging her nonexistent tail.

"Will said he was going into Tawes. He'll pick up
your mail."

"He's not staying for spaghetti?" She could smell
Daniel's sauce bubbling on the kitchen stove.

"Said he had some things to do."

She slipped her feet into her sandals and padded
into the kitchen. She was tired and her back ached.
She wanted nothing so much as to curl up with a
book, but she and Daniel had a lot to talk about. He
refused to allow her to go home unless he accompanied her. She understood his protectiveness, but it
didn't make the situation any easier. Thoughts of Lucas and his threats were enough to send her screaming off the island.

But she was a Tawes woman now, and Tawes women
didn't run. This was her home, and she'd be damned
if she'd let some psycho ruin her life.

Daniel handed her a glass of iced tea as she came
into the kitchen. "Decaf. Lots of lemon."

"I could get used to this."

"I hope so."

She took a seat at the round oak pedestal table. "I
do love you, you know."

He moved to stand behind her. His hands were
warm as he massaged the back of her neck and her
shoulders.

"You're supposed to say, `I love you too,' " she
prompted.

"I love you three."

She twisted to smile up at him. How could she care
so much for him and yet be so confused about their future together? "What are we going to do?"

He leaned closer and brushed her mouth with his.
She reached up to cup his cheek. When he began to
kiss her again, she turned her head away.

"It's that way, is it?"

She nodded. Catching his hand, she laced her fingers with his. "Talk first, kiss later."

"If there is a later."

She pointed to the chair across from her.

"The water's boiling. The pasta-"

"The pasta can wait." She looked into his beautiful
eyes and felt a rush of emotion. After Elliott, she'd
never expected to find love again. But Daniel was
more than she'd ever dared dream of. And now that
she'd found him, he was everything to her. How could
she face life without him? "As Will would say, we need
to find a way out of this brier patch."

"Bailey-"

"No. No sweet talk. No honey. Let's start with the basics. Three questions. And I want straight answers
or...

"Or what?"

"Or I'm out the door. For good, Daniel."

"Fair enough."

She pulled the robe tighter around her. "Number
one. Why would Lucas think you could raise that
much money? You didn't earn a fortune working for
the government."

"No, I didn't." He squeezed her hand. "I'm not rich,
but I'm not a starving carpenter either. I've made
some good investments in the stock market."

"OK..." Something told her that he was telling the
truthjust not all the truth. And maybe he never
would. "Can you swear to me that you didn't break any
laws to acquire that money?"

"That's two." He smiled at her, the killer smile that
always tugged at her heartstrings and made her
crazy-mad for him. "Hell, no, I didn't rob any banks
or smuggle any drugs. I don't have a still under the
back porch, and I don't even cheat on my income
taxes. Whatever I do or have done, my life is an open
book to the agency. And what they know, Lucas has
access to."

"Three."

"The magic number."

She took a deep breath, trying not to burst into
tears. "Do you still love her?"

"Mallalai?"

"I've answered that one before," he reminded her.

She gripped the edge of the table. "Humor me. I
need to hear it again."

"No, babe. I don't love her. I love you. Maybe I never
did love Mallalai. How the hell would I know? I was in
a foreign country. People were trying to kill me. Everything I thought I knew was coming apart, and I found
someone to fill the lonely nights. Infatuation? Who
knows? Maybe I was just too long without a woman.
But she betrayed me, murdered a good friend of mine,
and tried to blow me to hell. Do you think I'm crazy
enough to still be in love with her?"

"But you could love her son?"

He didn't protest that that was number four. He just
squeezed her hand and answered with a question of
his own. "Could you?"

"I hope so ... I could try ... would try."

"So we're in this together?"

"I want to be."

He bent and kissed her. "Trust me, Bailey."

"I'm trying."

Later, she curled up in a big leather chair in front of
the hearth while he went to shower. She had a book,
but she found herself reading the same page over and
over with no idea of what she'd read. Marking her
page with an advertising card out of a magazine, she
tossed the book onto the floor and stared into the cold
hearth.

July was too warm for a fire, but she vividly remembered a blustery night in late March when she and
Daniel had spread a blanket on the floor and shared
a picnic of apples, cheese, bread, and wine. After
they'd stuffed themselves and finished a bottle of
Merlot, they'd made love. It was on that night they'd
decided to go to Princess Anne and get the marriage
license ... and the night they'd made a child together, she thought.

The kitchen wall phone rang, pulling Bailey out of
her reverie. She got up and answered it. "Hello?"

"Bailey? I thought you might be there."

She gasped, and the handset nearly slipped out of
her hand. "Lucas?"

"Are you alone?"

"Daniel's in the other room."

"Good. I have a proposition for you."

She sank down into the nearest kitchen chair. "I
have nothing to say to you."

"Don't you?"

"What do you want?"

"I thought it was fair to give you a chance to make a
counteroffer," Lucas said. "How much is it worth to
you to keep Daniel from ever laying eyes on the kid?"

Abbie and Buck lay wrapped in each others' arms listening to the fat raindrops spattering on the tent walls.
"What made you come out here tonight?" she asked
sleepily. They'd just completed a very satisfying session of slow, delicious lovemaking, and vibrations of
honeyed pleasure still echoed and drifted through Abbie's body.

He kissed her lips tenderly. "You can ask that after
inviting me into your sleeping bag and attacking my
body?"

She chuckled. "Is that what you call it? Seems to me
I was taken advantage of. Seduced by a fast talking
cop." She was trying to keep things light between
them, but it was getting more difficult by the moment.

She liked Buck. A lot. Maybe too much. She didn't
have time in her life for a significant other. She had
her life planned out. Once she found her mother's
killer and saw that he got what was coming to him, and
after she completed work on her doctorate, she'd
spend summers in Greece and Turkey and winters teaching at an American university. At least, she hoped
she would. It had been her goal for so long.

Buck nibbled the lobe of her left ear. "Mmm. Nice."

His breath was warm on her throat, and she sighed
and arched against him. The man was a devil for
knowing how to push her buttons. "Isn't there a law
against police torture?"

"Not on Tawes." He stroked the curve of her back
and rolled over, pulling her on top of him. "No jury
would convict me."

She nestled her head against his shoulder. "Seriously, why did you come out here? It wasn't just for a
few tricks in the sack."

"You'd be surprised how far I'd come to be with
you." He pulled her head down and kissed her again.

She shivered. Sweet Zeus, but he was habit forming.
"Seriously."

"No," he admitted, "it wasn't."

From outside the tent, Archie whined and thrust his
big, wet nose into the open door-flap. "No!" Abbie
protested. "There's no room for you in here."

"He's wet. Maybe we could squeeze over a little."

"And have my sleeping bag smell like wet dog for a
month? I don't think so." She zipped the door closed.
"He can go in your tent if he wants."

"It leaks."

"I told you that."

He threaded his fingers through her short hair. "I
don't remember."

"I did. I distinctly told you that your tent was worthless, that it had holes in it. Just before you told me it
wasn't going to rain."

"I take the Fifth."

She straddled him and sat up. "It won't work, you
know. Changing the subject. What's up, Buck?"

He laughed.

"Besides the obvious." She dug her knees into his
ribs. "I said to be serious."

"I'm trying, but you make it hard."

She smacked his bare chest.

"Ouch!"

"Enough of your crude humor. I warn you, we traditional people are masters at the art of torture. Next I
start yanking chest hairs."

"OK, OR I have reason to believe that you could be
in danger, and I plan on making it my business to see
that no one harms a hair on your head."

"You think I was right-about my mother's death?"

"It's starting to look that way." He shifted his arms,
lacing his fingers behind his head. "I got a heads up
on Sean Gilbert's autopsy from a friend. There's good
reason to believe that his death wasn't an accident."

"What? And you didn't tell me?"

"I'm telling you now, aren't I?"

"How did he die?"

"I shouldn't be sharing anything with you. I don't
have the complete autopsy report, but it looks as
though the boy might have died of a blunt-force injury. One or more blows to the back of his neck. I've
contacted the lead investigator working on your
mother's case and asked him to call the chief medical
examiner's office in Baltimore."

"I don't understand."

"They need to compare Sean Gilbert's blood with
DNA samples taken from the murder weapon."

"The stone ax?"

"Yeah. It's a long shot, but just maybe if he was murdered by the same person who attacked your mother,
he or she may have used the same weapon."

"So traces of his blood might be on the ax?
Wouldn't the killer have washed it off?"

"Not so easy as you might think. Forensics are a lot better than they were even five years ago. If Sean was
murdered with that ax, there's a good chance the evidence is still there."

Matthew kicked the sheet off and rolled onto his side.
He'd been listening to the rain on the bedroom windows for what seemed like hours. He should have
been asleep long ago, should have been exhausted
from the physical work he'd done at the burial
ground. He'd told himself that tonight he would
sleep; he wouldn't be bothered by bad dreams or the
restlessness that had troubled him in the last year.

"It's wrong, Grace. I tell you they aren't giving me
the respect I deserve on that dig."

Matters were not proceeding as he would have
hoped, and they seemed to be getting worse. Now that
Dr. Knight was gone, he'd hoped her daughter would
be willing to heed his advice, to take advantage of his
experience. He might not have a degree in archaeology, but he wasn't ignorant of the science.

They had to find something of worth, objects that
would prove the value of the site. He'd had them, and
he'd let them slip through his hands, or rather Dr.
Knight had. He wondered if he should contact Tess
Quinn, that television personality who'd written the
article about the curse. If he told her that Irish Bronze
Age treasures had been found on the island, it might
bring other scholars and archaeologists, people who
would believe him. She might even be willing to publish the photos. He still had those, at least.

"Do you think I should, Grace? She seems like such
a nice young woman, that Miss Quinn."

But what if she didn't believe him? What if Miss
Quinn laughed at him? He didn't think he could stand
any more insults.

"Martha was short with me today, dear. She told me that I was scraping the sides of the pit wrong. She said
it right in front of Phillip Love, and he agreed with
her. Can you believe it?"

Without his diligence, there would be no excavation, and doubtless backhoes and bulldozers would already be destroying the ancient gravesites. It would
serve them all right if he didn't go back to assist tomorrow morning. No one appreciated him, so why
should he waste his valuable time? He hadn't completed Sunday's sermon yet. He sighed heavily. It
seemed as though they were harder and harder to
write.

How he missed his dear, dear Grace! He glanced at
the wall where her large oil portrait hung. He'd had it
done from a photograph last fall, and it had been
worth every penny he'd spent on it. It comforted him,
having her here where he could see her lovely face before he closed his eyes at night and the first thing
when he opened them in the morning.