Smoke and Mirrors (38 page)

Maybe, Fiona considered bleakly, but it wasn’t like her to leave things to chance, so she dialed the Scottish number and texted a few choice words. Hopefully her supplier, Christian Ollason, would get the message and do something about it.

Captain Christian Ollason - Cadbury bar jammed between his straight white teeth - steered the 20-metre steel-hulled trawler into her slip exactly fifteen days after she’d left Lerwick Harbor.

“Perfect,” his first mate’s gruff voice cut through the cries of circling gulls and the whine of engines. “Just like me entering the port of a bonny lassie.”

His lewd comment brought forth a spatter of laughter that escalated when someone else yelled, “So what you’re saying, Finn, is you enter softly with a big splash ahead of your docking?”

More hoots and jeers broke out and Thorfinn reddened. “Watch your mouth, laddie,” he warned. “Remember you’re picking on our captain.”

“Nooo,” the voice shot back, “I’m picking on you.”

Thorfinn’s eyes narrowed. “Then you’re even dumber than you look, because I’m what’s standing between you and land.”

“Och, let them have a bit of fun, Finn,” Christian chuckled darkly, “They’ve earned it.”

Thorfinn scrutinized the spotless deck, looking for anything about which to complain. Unfortunately, they had done well, very well indeed, considering the European Union’s fishing bans. They’d filled the MV Tempest Fugit’s cargo holds with more than enough fish to line their own pockets with plenty of brass.

Satisfied that he’d made them squirm long enough, Thorfinn turned. “Well, get on your way then. Go on, only don’t blow it all on lager.” They cheered and clapped him on the back as they departed.

Christian folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the side of the wheelhouse. “Go with them, Finn. I’ll sort things out.”

“You sure?”

His captain’s grin was self-deprecating. “I’ve nothing else to do.”

Thorfinn eyed Christian. Closer to seven feet than not, strong, and able, with a Viking’s arresting looks, he could have had any woman he wished. Yet he was single. So chins wagged, some going so far as to say he had a cruel hand when the bottle took him.

But Thorfinn knew better. His captain’s mistress was the ocean. That, along with Christian’s uncanny knack for finding fish, made him the finest skipper on the North Sea.

In fact, if Thorfinn had been superstitious, he’d have believed their captain to be a selkie, part man, part seal. How else could he smell a cod at a hundred miles out?

“Aye, go on before I change my mind.”

Thorfinn slung his bag over his shoulder and stifled a yawn. “Right then, I won’t argue with you.”

Christian watched his first mate move down the pier. The weather was fine, warm for a winter’s day, and he drew off his thick sweater. He was nearly done tidying the lines when his pocket vibrated. Pulling out his mobile, he raised an eyebrow at the text message.

Where’s my order, you bastard?

It was Fiona. Elusive, enigmatic Fiona. The buyer at an upscale American seafood restaurant serving only the very best.

And Christian always had the very best.

Thrusting the mobile back into his pocket, he put off answering. Their yearlong relationship had been strictly via text messages. But lately, an oddly intimate note, one Christian couldn’t quite explain, had infused their words. Perhaps that was why they’d never spoken. The magic would end. She’d be pretentious, overly manicured and short. He’d be coarse, undereducated and far too tall.

It was better to dream. So Christian set to work with the image of a leggy, green-eyed Irish witch in his mind’s eye.

Eirik Vagard stared long and hard at the woman across from him. He couldn’t believe his eyes or good fortune. Elegantly dressed, she still managed to emit a wildness that made his throat constrict. Dark hair loosely gathered in a chignon, she was staring down at a chic menu with a glint of frustration in her green eyes. It was she. With the high-boned cheeks, flawless skin and tall, lithe figure - it had to be.

She had opened the restaurant’s back door to greet a fishing truck when he’d rounded the corner. He thought he was hallucinating. Then, after the initial shock, he waited, watching, until she exited the front door. He heard her call to the man working with her.

“Sean?”

“Yeah, Fi?” The man’s Boston accent was thick even without the use of the enigmatic ‘r’.

“What can we serve with Canadian salmon?”

Eyebrow raised, the man had sniffed. “Canadian salmon?”

She dropped the menu and glared out at Boston Harbor, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Yes, C–A–N–A–D–I–A–N salmon, Sean. Mr. ‘I’ve got a purrrfect crate fer ye, lassie’ hasn’t come through this time. What do you have in mind?”

Peering upward at the winter sky, ‘Sean’ had advanced on the cellar with an air of martyrdom. “I’m not a miracle worker.”

“Thank you… ” Her words of gratitude drifted off.

Eirik continued to watch as she restacked the menus outside the restaurant’s entryway. She was nervous. So much the better.

Fiona’s stomach was flapping like a landed fish.

A blond man had been loitering outside the restaurant. She’d seen him when she met the delivery truck around back. She’d also seen him when she glanced out the restaurant windows ten minutes later. At first, she thought he was meeting someone for lunch. But he never looked at anyone passing him by. He just stared at the restaurant. When she had opened the front door, his unsettling gaze fixed on her.

She could have told Sean, who’d have gladly walked over and asked him to clear off.

She could have gone back inside and ignored him.

Instead she braced herself and looked straight at him. “Can I help you?”

The man, handsome in a hardened way, studied her for a long moment before walking away. She felt the familiar press of fear weigh her down. The stranger had a long scar running down his face, and the bulge along his ribcage showed itself to be a black handgun when his turn lifted the flap of his leather jacket.

“You’re an idiot,” she muttered with angry desperation. “Now he’s gone, and no one’s seen him but you. It’s just another story to add to the fabulously fictional life of Fiona.”

She lifted her leaden legs and reentered the restaurant. He was nobody, she lied to herself. Nobody, just like her.

“Hej, Herre Mortensen,” Eirik spoke to his boss from an alleyway adjacent the restaurant, “I’ve found her. The woman in your painting. Ja.”

There was a stunned silence on the other end of the line.

“Herre Mortensen?” Eirik asked again.

His employer was incredulous. “But she isn’t…I mean I didn’t think she… ” Eirik waited patiently until his boss finished with, “Keep her there, Eirik, do you understand? Do what is necessary, but if you value your life, you won’t lose her. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

“Don’t you want to know where I… ” Eirik began, but a muffled click stopped any further conversation.

He pocketed the cell and thought about the woman’s long legs. A pity he couldn’t hurt her. He liked long legs and liked them even more when their owners struggled and screamed as he broke them.

Mads Mortensen turned his back on his desk and stared at the painting behind it. It wasn’t priceless like the ones from the Gardner theft. It wasn’t even very good; after all, he was no painter. But it did capture her likeness. Remarkably so, he conceded.

A voice interrupted his musings. “Your tea, sir.” It was his ever-punctual valet, a man as silent as the steam drifting off the porcelain teapot.

“Leave it on my desk.”

The service touched down with a whisper of compressed air. “Would you like anything else, sir?”

“No. I have everything I need.” As Mads considered with a faint air of surprise, it was finally true.

He’d found her at last.

And this time, no one would be there to rescue her.

His valet exited, aware that Mortensen’s usually dour expression had undergone a subtle change. The valet shuddered as he closed the door to the opulent office, sincerely hoping Mortensen’s favorable mood had nothing to do with the ethereal woman whose green eyes stared out longingly from their canvas prison.

I
t was late when Christian returned to his trawler’s cabin. He had stopped in at a pub to swap stories and demolish a plate of fish and chips until exhaustion finally caught up with him. Yet now, several hours after he’d returned, he still tossed in the confines of his cabin’s bunk.

Light ebbed and flowed in front of his eyelids. Yellow and orange snowflakes twirled outward from the center of his pupils, opening like the petals of a rose. He reached for one, but his hand came away empty. Undaunted, he extended his fingers toward another.

He stopped trying when it formed an eye.

Green and perfectly oval, it reproduced itself, becoming wide enough to dominate any remaining space. Unchanging and unblinking, twin orbs now stared back at him. Christian struggled to look away, but the eyes held him captive.

His mouth grew acrid and he felt an edgy, claustrophobic sensation steal over him. His breath shortened and his heart thudded as he tried to escape the gaze.

Panic squeezed his throat. His feet hit the ground, firm and cold beneath him, and he struggled to wade forward. The eyes were calling for him to halt. But he dared not. Not until they were far away, distant enough not to stare into his soul. He placed one foot down, then the other ahead of it.

The sound of breaking glass and the thump of his body smashing against the floor woke him. Shaken, he looked around, relieved to find he was in his dark, but familiar cabin, the web-like shackles of sleep broken.

Heart still pounding, Christian untangled himself and flipped on a light. He made his way to the galley, loosening fear-stiffened limbs, and reached for the bottle he hadn’t touched in fifteen days. He unstoppered it with rattled fingers. Then lifted the single malt to his lips and drained several long gulps before self-loathing stopped him and he tossed it down.

What the fuck was wrong with him?

At sea, he was fine. Busy, confident, almost happy. At least enough to avoid the numbing comfort of whisky. But on land when his men headed for the comforts of flesh? On land he was alone with his nightmares.

“Come drinking wi’ us, Cap’n,” they had urged.

Occasionally, he had indulged them. But it was always the same. He’d find himself alone with a beautiful woman, desperate for her touch, and the eyes would come. That’s when he’d started drinking. Sometimes it worked and he had a few hours of respite. But when he slept, they’d resurface along with ghastly visions.

Visions that made him scream.

Visions that woke his companions.

Christian could see their pale, dawn-touched faces, even now. Sheets clutched to their chests, eyes wide and fearful, they’d murmur a few words and leave before the sun fully rose.

But that hadn’t been the worst of it.

Staring out over the darkened harbor, Christian rubbed his wind-burned face with calloused hands.

There had been one woman, a Swedish accountant with golden skin, pouting lips and provocative eyes. They’d met in The Blow Hole, one of Lerwick’s outdoor beer gardens, and ended up back at his flat.

He hadn’t been drunk, but it didn’t matter. When they’d slept at last, the eyes had come, and with them a snake. He’d finally come awake to the sensation of liquid dripping down his face and chest. He was standing, shards of a broken vase surrounding him, in an ever-growing puddle of water.

“What happened?” he’d asked.

She was on the other side of the room, naked, shaking, a chair between them. “Christian?” she’d breathed uncertainly.

He had tried to smile, to reach for her, but she gathered up a blanket and wrapped it hastily around her torso.

“What’s the matter?”

Her blue eyes had sprung wide. “What’s the matter? You tried to strangle me!” She managed with great effort not to scream the last word, her eyes darting back and forth to his cheek.

He’d fingered his face, drawing his hand away, sticky with blood. The misty memory was coming back…she’d clawed his cheek and he’d grabbed her wrist. But there was something more…

He had picked her up and carried her toward his bed. But the room whirled around him, and it took him precarious moments to regain his balance. She was laughing in delight, her arms wrapped around his broad shoulders, her tongue trailing against his collarbone. He lurched toward his goal and chanced to kick a silver torc lying by the chair. It spun lazily and rested upright after a few slow turns.

Then the coil of cryptic symbols brightened and the torc lunged with the speed of a snake. Intangible fangs bit into his leg. As the venom dragged bitter cold through his body, he collapsed headlong onto the stone floor.

“You were… ” his companion paused, “screaming in your sleep. I tried to wake you… ” Her voice faltered again briefly. “I…I scratched you when you moved. Your voice…it was…not like it is. You weren’t…well, you were speaking Norwegian. You called me…Sigrid.”

“What?”

His genuine surprise seemed to relax her somewhat. “You were shouting at me, saying that it was my fault, saying that I’d hurt him.”

An image burst before Christian’s eyes. One of a small boy, head bent, arm clutched in pain. But Christian didn’t know such a child. “Hurt who?” he had growled; she was making no sense and his head was aching.

Her eyes were slits of sudden rage. “How the hell should I know? You grabbed me! It hurt, so I slapped you and that’s when you tried to choke me!” She touched the red marks on her neck in illustration. “If I hadn’t been able…able to reach your stupid vase…I’d be…I’d be… ” She’d broken down completely then - sobbing as she dressed, teary eyes never leaving him - and backed out of his flat.