Deception Cove (A Rainshadow Novel) Read online

  Chapter 42

  ALICE AWOKE ALONE IN THE BED. SHE OPENED HER EYES and glanced at the clock on the table. Dawn was still an hour away. The room was dark because the amber lamp had not been lit. For the first time since they had arrived on Rainshadow, the space was flooded with moonlight.

  She had not expected to sleep at all that night, but after reading several pages of Nicholas North’s bad handwriting she had fallen asleep.

  Alice could see Drake standing at the window, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the silver glow. He was naked except for his briefs. Houdini was with him, perched on the ledge. Man and dust bunny gazed pensively out into the night.

  Alice levered herself up on her elbows. “Everything okay?”

  “Everything is fine,” Drake said. He turned to look at her. She saw that he was not wearing his glasses. “What about you? Catch up on your sleep?”

  “Yep.” She studied him. “You don’t mind moonlight?”

  “I can tolerate it but it’s the equivalent of high noon for me.”

  She pulled the covers aside, stood, and reached for the robe that Rachel had loaned her. She crossed the room to the window. Drake put an arm around her waist and drew her close. She allowed herself to settle into his warmth and strength.

  “What did you see today?” she asked after a while.

  “When I walked into the Dream Chamber?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “The inside of a pyramid made with hot crystal.”

  “No nightmares?”

  “No,” Drake said. “No nightmares. But there is something important locked in the stones of that Chamber. We need to find out what it is.”

  “How do we do that? You’re the only one who can actually see inside that place. Even with the energy levels lowered it’s still filled with dark light.”

  “We’ll go back tomorrow and I’ll take a look around,” Drake said. “I think I can handle the energy in that Chamber.”

  “Do you think that whatever is concealed in the pyramid crystals is dangerous?”

  Drake hesitated. “What I sensed was something powerful and important. Powerful, important forces are always dangerous to some degree. But it did not feel destructive.”

  “Should be interesting. Well, congratulations to us, huh? We found the missing crystals. Mission accomplished.”

  Drake tightened his arm around her, pinning her close. “This thing isn’t over yet. We still have to deal with your ex-mother-in-law and Aldwin Hampstead.”

  “Hampstead shouldn’t be a problem. Zara Tucker has already implicated him. You heard her this afternoon. After she stopped blaming me for everything that went wrong, she started in on him. Slade said it won’t be hard for the Federal Bureau of Psi Investigation people to tie him to the conspiracy. Zara turned on Egan Quinton, too.”

  “And he turned on her. Took him long enough to realize what she really is,” Drake said. “That leaves Ethel Whitcomb.”

  “Once she’s confronted with the facts, she’ll have to accept the truth,” Alice said. “I didn’t murder her son.”

  “Obsessed people don’t usually pay much attention to facts. Exhibit A would be Dr. Zara Tucker.”

  “Good point. So, have you got a plan to convince Ethel to leave me alone?”

  “I’m working on it. Meanwhile, we stay married.”

  “You really think that’s the best way to deal with the Ethel problem?”

  “For now.”

  Alice took a deep breath. It wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear, but it was a good plan for the near term. She’d never had much luck with long-range planning, anyway, she reminded herself.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay?” He turned to face her, his hands closing around her shoulders. “That’s all you can say about staying married to me? Okay?”

  The low-burning fires of anger in his words and the heat in his eyes startled her. Bewildered, she flattened her palms on his chest.

  “I said okay as in, I’m okay with going along with your plan,” she whispered.

  “And as in you’re okay with staying in an affair with me?”

  “Well, yes, I guess so.”

  “You guess so?”

  Her bewilderment flashed into anger. “Stop throwing my words back at me. Why are you trying to start a fight here? It’s been a really long day. If you want to argue, could we save it until some other time?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” She was suddenly incensed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who started this argument.”

  “Don’t you dare blame me,” she snapped.

  Drake’s eyes got hotter. “You’re right. We’ll save the argument until some other time.”

  His mouth came down on hers, silencing her before she could figure out where to go next.

  The kiss acted like a catalyst, transmuting the smoldering flames of the incipient quarrel into the hot fires of passion. Energy flashed in the atmosphere. Alice felt the heat arcing through her blood, arousing all her senses.

  The next thing she knew the room was spinning around her. Instinctively she clutched at Drake’s shoulders to steady herself. It took her a heartbeat to realize that he had scooped her up and was carrying her to the bed. He dropped her onto the tumbled sheets and blankets. For a few seconds he loomed over her, his broad chest and shoulders blotting out the moonlight.

  An urgent chortle and a scratching noise interrupted the scene.

  Drake turned away from the bed long enough to open the door. Houdini disappeared out into the illuminated hallway.

  “Damn,” Drake said. There was irritation and pain in the single word. He closed the door very quickly and locked it.

  “Your eyes.” Alice sat up. “Are you okay?”

  “I will be in a minute.” He remained where he was near the door, gripping the knob. “Forgot the lights were back on out there in the hallway.”

  “Can I get you anything? A cold washcloth to put over your eyes?”

  “No. I said I’ll be okay. Takes a few seconds for my senses to calm down, that’s all.”

  “I’m just trying to help,” Alice said.

  “I know. Stop.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do me a favor,” Drake said.

  “What?”

  “Don’t use that word again until tomorrow at the earliest, preferably never.”

  “What word? Oh. Okay. Oops. Sorry.”

  Drake just looked at her with silvery heat in his eyes.

  She started to giggle. She rolled onto her stomach and tried to smother the laughter with a pillow, but it was hopeless.

  “You know,” Drake said in ominous tones, “this isn’t going quite the way I had planned.”

  “Sorry about that,” she mumbled into the pillow.

  “But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few days, it’s that things rarely do go according to plan—not when you’re involved.”

  She never heard him cross the room, but the bed suddenly gave beneath his weight. He put her on her back and came down on top of her, his eyes fierce with energy. She realized he had stripped off his briefs.

  “Turns out I like that in a woman,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He anchored her wrists to the bed and kissed her until she stopped laughing; until she was hot and wet and excited; until all of her senses were thrilled; until a deep, demanding, aching need built inside her. When she started to struggle and twist beneath him, he freed her wrists and pulled her nightgown off over her head.

  She put her hands around him and pulled him back down to her, sinking her nails into his shoulders.

  He groaned and rolled onto his back, taking her with him. She kissed his mouth, his throat, and then his bare chest. She could feel the rigid length of him pressing against her inner thigh. She sat up slowly until she was resting on her knees astride him. She wrapped one hand around his erection and guide
d him into her heat. The pressure at first was almost unbearable, but then he was inside her and the intense fullness was exactly what she needed.

  She climaxed on the third thrust.

  He gripped her hips with both hands and watched her with his molten eyes.

  “Alice,” he said. “Alice.”

  Her name was a plea, a command, a claim.

  He thrust again and again and then found his own release. Once again she experienced the sense of a deep intimacy for which there were no words.

  Such magic could not last forever, she thought. But Alice knew she would remember and cherish the sensation for the rest of her life.

  * * *

  DRAKE AWOKE TO THE NEW DAY. AUTOMATICALLY, HE groped for his glasses and put them on before he opened his eyes. He saw that Alice had left the shades down to protect him against the daylight. She was gone, however. So was the diary.

  He got to his feet and headed toward the bath.

  Fifteen minutes later he made the trek downstairs. Alice was in a booth at the rear of the tavern. Burt looked out through the kitchen pass-through and called out a greeting.

  “Help yourself to the coffee, Drake.”

  “Thanks.”

  Drake poured a mug full of coffee and carried it to Alice’s table. She looked up. He saw that she had the diary open in front of her. Houdini was perched on the table, finishing the last of a peanut butter cracker. He chortled a cheery greeting.

  Drake gave him a pat and sat down. He looked at the diary.

  “Are the answers all there?” he asked.

  “Most of them.” Alice gave him a misty smile. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have this diary.”

  Drake thought about the hours he had spent in the Sebastian family archives over the years. “I understand how it feels to be able to touch your own past.”

  “I owe it all to you. You really are a magician.”

  “No,” he said. “We needed each other to get through this thing. If it hadn’t been for you, Tucker would have destroyed Rainshadow.”

  Alice shook her head. “I’m the one who put the crystals in her hands.”

  “That wasn’t your fault. You were trying to retrieve some pieces of your past. In my family, we don’t consider that a crime.”

  She sighed. “Thanks. I appreciate that. Still, if I hadn’t fallen for Fulton’s line—”

  “If I hadn’t fallen for Zara Tucker’s line three years ago, none of this would have happened. There’s plenty of blame to go around.”

  “She really is a sneaky, conniving, sociopathic twit, you know. Also a total psycho. Any woman could immediately see through her.”

  “Maybe that was my problem, I’m not any woman.”

  Alice stared at him for a heartbeat. Then she laughed.

  “Point taken,” she said. “Think you’ll have a problem seeing through women like that in the future?”

  “No,” Drake said. He watched her through his glasses, savoring the light and energy that danced in the atmosphere around her. “I see everything a lot more clearly these days.”

  Chapter 43

  “ALICE THINKS SHE OWNS HALF OF RAINSHADOW?” Harry asked.

  It was rare to see his brother looking dumbfounded, Drake thought. But this was one of those moments and he relished it.

  “Half of anything of value that might be found inside the Preserve, to be more precise,” Drake said. “And she’s right. There’s a signed copy of the agreement in her great-grandfather’s diary and, according to it, there’s another copy in the Sebastian family archives.”

  Harry whistled softly. “Son of a ghost. Wait until the old man hears about this.”

  “Should be interesting.”

  Harry raised his brows. “Another person, someone who didn’t know you well, might wonder if that’s why you got involved in an MC with Alice. Maybe trying to use a fake marriage to get her to cooperate with you?”

  “No,” Drake said. His sense of amusement evaporated in an instant. He was suddenly angry and a little worried. Was that what Alice believed? he wondered. “That’s not why we’re married.”

  Harry nodded. “Figured it wasn’t.”

  “I’ve got a strategy.”

  “You always have a strategy. That’s why they call you the Magician back home.”

  “For the record, I had a hell of a time convincing Alice to go for an MC.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Her last MC husband tried to kill her.”

  “That would be Fulton Whitcomb?”

  “Yes.” Drake looked at him. “And before you ask, I believe Alice’s version of events.”

  Harry nodded, still thoughtful. “Okay, in that case I believe it, too. Doesn’t explain why you’re in an MC.”

  “Ethel Whitcomb has been spending a lot of money this past year trying to make Alice’s life hell. The effort has been successful for the most part. The night I found Alice, I had to deal with a private investigator searching her apartment, looking for anything that could be used against her. Ethel wants Alice in jail.”

  “You figured Ethel Whitcomb would back off once she found out that you were in the picture.”

  “I thought it would send a message,” Drake said evenly. “At the time I was concerned that Whitcomb might try to have Alice followed to Rainshadow. We didn’t need the complications. That was before I found out that the island had been shut down by the fog.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Drake looked at him. “What?”

  “You’re sleeping with Alice North.”

  “So?”

  “I’m thinking you didn’t need to get involved in an MC to protect her from Ethel Whitcomb. You have other resources available to you for handling situations like that.”

  “In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t absolutely necessary. It just seemed like the most efficient way to get Whitcomb out of the picture until the problem here on Rainshadow was resolved.”

  Harry smiled slowly. There was a knowing look in his eyes. “Wait until Mom finds out.”

  Chapter 44

  ALICE PUT THE NORTH DIARY DOWN ON THE TABLE AND looked at the small crowd gathered in the café at the back of Shadow Bay Books. Drake and Harry both lounged against the wall. Jasper, Fletcher, Rachel, and Charlotte sat at tables, cups of tea in front of them.

  “In the years that followed the breakup of the North-Sebastian partnership, my great-grandfather returned to Rainshadow on a number of occasions,” Alice said. “His light-talent made it possible for him to come and go through the psi-fence, and his copy of the psi-code treasure map allowed him to get to the cave where the crystals were stored. He ran some experiments on the stones and at some point he discovered that they could be made to function as paranormal compasses.”

  “Compasses that pointed toward hot spots on the island?” Drake asked.

  “Right,” Alice said. She put her hand on the diary and thought about what she had read. “Properly positioned, they resonated with the energy fields coming from the various ruins on the island. But he could not navigate the terrain inside the Preserve any better than anyone else—until he found Bainbridge’s personal papers that led him to the hole-in-the-wall entrance and into the tunnels.”

  Rachel smiled, understanding. “Once North was down in the catacombs, he set out to map them, and in the process he found the ruins of at least two Alien labs, the pyramid and the aquarium.”

  Drake smiled appreciatively. “Aware that the ruins were finds of potentially incredible value, he very cleverly got his old pirate partner, Harry Sebastian the First, to sign an agreement giving North and his heirs half of anything of value that was ever discovered on the island.”

  “That was probably the only shrewd business move my great-grandfather ever made,” Alice said.

  Fletcher chuckled. “Could turn out to be downright brilliant.”

  “At that time Harry Sebastian probably wasn’t paying much attention to Rainshadow, anyway,” Harry said. “He was busy building his business
and starting a family. He would have had no objection to signing the agreement. As far as he was concerned, he and North had been partners when they buried the treasure. He figured North had every right to half the value of whatever was discovered on Rainshadow. But he assumed that nothing of financial importance would be found on the island for years, if ever.”

  “He also assumed that if something of value was discovered, Sebastian, Inc., through the Rainshadow Foundation, would control the discovery,” Alice said. She kept her tone exquisitely polite.

  A quick grin came and went on Drake’s face, but he said nothing.

  Harry narrowed his eyes. “Your great-grandfather’s version of your family history is a little different than the Sebastian family version.”

  “They say that happens a lot when it comes to history,” Alice said. “Different people hold different views and the prevailing story is the one written by the winners.”

  “There are no winners and losers here,” Harry growled. “Just a partnership that went bust.”

  Drake shot Harry a warning look and took charge of the meeting. “To continue, Nick North died before he could return to Rainshadow again after the agreement was signed. Thanks to his MC wife at the time, the diary and Nick’s psi-code map to the cave where the crystals were stored disappeared into the underground antiquities market.”

  “There’s always a market for lost treasure maps,” Charlotte observed. “No telling how many people tried to find those ruins over the years.”

  “Tried and failed,” Alice said. “Because only a descendant of Nick North, who also possessed a version of his talent, could decipher his copy of the psi-code map.”

  Drake folded his arms and sat back. “Zara Tucker came across North’s psi-code map and the diary during the course of her research. She became obsessed with finding the ruins, particularly the pyramid, which North believed contained extraordinary secrets that only a light-talent could unravel. But first she had to locate the crystals. She landed a position at the Foundation research labs to try to get an inside track and access to the Sebastian family archives.”