Night’s Landing

Eight

Sarah passed bellmen and limousines on Central Park South and lingered a few seconds under the awning of the expensive hotel where the news conference touting the joint fugitive task force had been held.

She could almost see Nate Winter and her brother walking out onto the street in their dark suits, relieved to have that tedious ninety minutes behind them.

The weather was better today. Cool, partly cloudy.

And it was later in the day. Afternoon rush hour. Sarah made her way across the busy street. There had to be more cars and more pedestrians on Central Park South now than yesterday at midday.

For the first time all day, she was-at last-alone. She walked alongside the stone fence overlooking the south end of the park until she came to Fifth Avenue, which ran north along the huge park’s eastern side.

Her interview with Joe Collins had been short and to the point. Sarah had made it clear that President Poe had checked on her simply as a friend. It wasn’t that big a deal. She didn’t know whether Collins was convinced or not. She spent the afternoon with her brother for five or ten minutes at a time. He was still out of it from his surgery and medications, but when he was awake enough to talk, he told her to go back to Tennessee.

Sarah had finally told everyone she needed to get out on her own for a while. By herself. No marshals, no FBI, no doctors. No seriously injured brother she was upsetting with her presence.

What if Rob got into trouble for being the president’s friend? Had he intentionally kept it a secret from his bosses, and now his twin sister had opened her big mouth? In hindsight, Sarah wished she’d taken the phone into the bathroom of her hotel room instead of talking to Wes right there in front of a deputy U.S. marshal. Let Rob be the one to tell his colleagues about their friendship with the president.

She stopped hard at the Fifty-ninth Street entrance into Central Park, the same one her brother and Nate Winter had used yesterday. Across from her, the Grand Army Plaza split Fifth Avenue. She noticed the bright gold statue of William Tecumseh Sherman on his horse. The “Grand Army” was the Union Army of the Potomac, the plaza named in its honor after the Battle of Gettysburg.

She’d read about it in a New York guidebook Juliet had thrust at her during a long wait at the hospital while doctors were in with her brother.

The new leaves on the trees were a fresh spring-green, not as thick as the leaves in Night’s Landing, and when Sarah started down the stone steps, she saw the stretches of lush grass and the thousands of tulips that had been shown repeatedly on the television coverage of the shooting.

The crime scene tape was gone. Sarah didn’t notice any FBI agents or reporters, but she did see two uniformed NYPD officers on foot.

Her breathing was shallow, her stomach tight with tension.

Ducks floated along the pond’s edge. An elderly woman with a cane settled onto a bench as if nothing had happened there, and three animated women in sneakers fast-walked north into the park.

Normalcy.

People must have accepted that the sniper had specifically targeted the two marshals, and yesterday’s shooting wasn’t a random act likely to be repeated, at least not with regular New Yorkers in the crosshairs. Maybe with another deputy.

Maybe with a deputy’s sister.

Sarah pushed the ridiculous thought out of her mind and continued gingerly down the steps.

There’d been no warning-no man seen running with a gun, no shouted demands from the bushes. Just Rob jerking with the impact of the first shot, Nate Winter seeing the blood and getting them both to cover.

She spotted the rock outcropping and realized for the first time that the park was well below street level here at its southeast corner.

Was the shooter hiding somewhere in the bush now, watching, waiting?

She warned herself not to succumb to her family penchant for drama and instead tried to absorb some of the get-on-with-life spirit of the tourists and New Yorkers around her.

But her hands were clammy, and her vision seemed constricted, as if her mind was resisting taking in the details of her surroundings, mixing them with those of what she’d seen on television on the shooting, what she’d been told and had heard in the hospital corridors.

According to news reports, witnesses hadn’t heard shots fired or noticed anything out of the ordinary, certainly no one crouched in the bushes with an assault rifle. They’d only seen the two men falling, the tall one helping the more seriously injured one to cover behind the rocks, his gun drawn as he shouted instructions to onlookers, then the New York City police officer arriving on his horse, and finally dozens of paramedics and federal, state and city law enforcement officers descending.

The undergrowth along the pond and on the hillside below Central Park South conceivably could hide a shooter, but how could he get away with a near-instantaneous dragnet dropping on the surrounding area? How could he have avoided being seen crawling under the brush, setting up his weapon? The Pond-that was its name, just The Pond-was a wildlife sanctuary in the heart of the city.

Sarah reminded herself she wasn’t an investigator or firearms expert. She ran her fingertips along the smooth granite face of the rock outcropping.

As she forced herself to take a deep breath she noticed a man standing at the stone fence above her on Central Park South. He seemed to be watching her. He wore a black turtleneck and black leather jacket that were a little too warm for the conditions.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.

The clothes. The dark hair that was long in the front.

She squinted-yes, the angular features.

She’d seen him before.

Not in New York. He wasn’t a reporter, a doctor, a marshal.

Where?

Amsterdam.

Sarah expelled the air from her lungs and tried to gulp in more, but her head was spinning. How could it have been Amsterdam?

The Rijksmuseum.

Now she remembered. She’d flown to Amsterdam from Scotland three weeks ago to visit her parents while Rob was there on vacation.

They’d all gone to the Rijksmuseum together.

You’re being dramatic again.

What difference did it make if it was the same man she’d seen at the museum?

The man above her on Central Park South made eye contact with her briefly, then turned and disappeared across the street.

Sarah started for a bench, but her knees buckled under her. She felt herself sinking. Damn. I can’t faint.

“Hold your breath.” Nate Winter walked up behind her, speaking firmly, even sternly. “You’re hyperventilating.”

“I’m not-I can’t breathe.”

“It just feels that way.”

She nodded, doing as he said. He slipped an arm around her middle and stood motionless, silent, for the minute or so it took for her to get her breathing back to normal.

Feeling foolish, she stepped back out of his arm. “I’m okay now. Thanks.” She was too far away to have made a credible, positive identification of the man-of anyone-up on Central Park South. Thinking she recognized him had to have been a trick of her imagination. A product of the stress of the past two days. “I hope you didn’t hurt your arm.”

Winter seemed even taller than he had at the hospital. “I didn’t grab you with my injured arm, although I could have. It’s doing fine.”

“I wouldn’t have fainted.”

He half smiled. “Of course not.”

Sarah had no intention of telling him that she may have recognized someone up on the street. New York had a population of eight million-it had to be a common experience for people to think they saw someone they knew and have it turn out to be a perfect stranger. She didn’t even know why she remembered the man from Amsterdam. Because he’d stopped to look at a Dutch painting with her while she waited for her mother?

Not entirely, she thought. She also had wondered if he might be with the silver-haired man who’d stopped to say hello to her mother in front of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch.

But that happened all the time. Her parents knew many people that Sarah had never met.

“I didn’t expect to have that reaction,” she said, covering for her embarrassment. “I’ve never fainted. I thought-I guess I didn’t think. I just ended up here, and I assumed I was prepared.” She directed her gaze at Nate, met his blue eyes with an incisive look of her own. “Did you follow me from the hospital or are you here for your own reasons?”

“Both.”

“Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“Probably. There’s a hotel bar I like between here and the hospital. I can get a drink and take a breather, and you can get something to eat before you really do pass out. When’s the last time you ate?”

She thought a moment. “I had a candy bar at lunch.”

“No wonder you’re wobbly. Your blood sugar must be in the cellar.” He nodded toward the steps back up to Fifth Avenue. “Let’s go.”

“Deputy Winter-”

“You can call me Nate.”

“Okay.” She made herself smile. “It’s still hard for me to think of my brother as Deputy Dunnemore. When I think of marshals, I tend to think of Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp.”

One corner of his mouth twitched, but he said nothing as he led her up to Fifth Avenue, then back along Central Park South to the Avenue of the Americas and a hotel with a sprawling ground-floor bar that looked out on the street. They sat at a small round table near a window. He ordered a beer, and she ordered a beer and a quesadilla, wondering if she’d have pegged him as a federal agent if she were just meeting him.

More likely as someone here to rob the place, she thought.

Maybe if he were in a suit.

“You okay?” he asked.

She checked her thoughts. “Yes, fine. Thank you.”

He settled back in his cushioned chair, his so-blue eyes narrowed. Although he gave off an air of nonchalance, nothing about him was relaxed. “I can see why your brother wants to get rid of you. You don’t belong here.”

“I was hoping you hadn’t overheard that.”

She scooped up a handful of peanuts and tiny pretzels from a small bowl their waitress had dropped off and noticed the strain in his face, the shadows under his eyes. He’d been out there yesterday. Getting shot, trying to save a colleague. He wouldn’t have known if the sniper meant to mow down everyone within his sights.

“Rob’s just scared and frustrated,” she went on. “It can’t be easy for him to lie in that hospital bed, hurting, unable to chase after whoever shot him.”

“He wouldn’t be able to chase after the shooter, regardless. It’s not his job.”

“Or yours?”

His gaze settled on her. “That’s right.”

The man had zero sense of humor, at least right now-or humor wasn’t something he used to defuse his own anxiety. Or anyone else’s. Like hers. “Rob and I are twins.”

“So I hear. Fraternal twins, obviously. He doesn’t wear sweater sets.”

There. A touch of humor. It threw Sarah, especially when he looked at her in her twinset the way he did. “We’re very close. I’m sure he’s just projecting his own feelings onto me. I think that’s what I just did in the park. I could imagine him out there yesterday-it was so real. On some subconscious level, Rob wants to be safe in Night’s Landing himself, so he wants me to be there.”

“He’s worried about you.”

“Projection. He’s dealing with his own fears by worrying that I could be the shooter’s next victim.”

“I’ve learned to pay attention to my instincts.”

“I’m not talking about instincts.” She decided she should just stop talking, trying to explain. Nate was a concrete thinker. Give him the facts, skip the bullshit, the loosey-goosey bond between fraternal twins, brother and sister. “I’m sure instincts are fine when they’re not clouded by medications, surgery and blood loss.”

Their beers arrived, and Nate took a sip of his, eyeing her. “There’s nothing else?”

She didn’t touch her beer. “What do you mean?”

“There’s no reason for Rob to be worried about you?”

“No, of course not. Is this a friendly drink or an interrogation?”

His smile caught her completely, totally off guard. “Neither.”

She felt the heat rush to her cheeks.

“I promised your brother we’d look after you,” he added.

“Oh.”

Their waiter brought her quesadilla. Nate nodded to her. “You should eat some of that before you belt down your drink.”

“What about you? Aren’t you on pain medication? I didn’t think it mixed with alcohol-”

“I’m on Tylenol.”

Sarah lifted a triangle of the hot quesadilla, realizing something about him made her feel so self-conscious. He’d seen her in weak moments twice in one day. It was a thing with her, she knew-she didn’t like men seeing her when she was vulnerable, thinking they had to take over her life because she was small and blond and book-smart. And impulsive, she thought. It was impulsiveness that had taken her to Central Park and put her in the position where she was having a beer and a quesadilla with this man.

She noticed that the sleeves of his flannel shirt were rolled up to his elbows. He had taut muscles in his forearms. She assumed he was armed but couldn’t see his weapon under his shirt. She’d never gotten used to the idea of her brother walking around armed. What was it he carried? A Glock, she thought.

She pulled herself from her thoughts. “Rob’s just freaked out by what happened,” she said. “Don’t try to read anything into his concerns.”

“Right, Deputy Dunnemore. I’ll remember that.”

There was a slight edge to his words. She swallowed her bite of quesadilla. “I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job.”

“Forget it. I’ve been in a bad mood all day.” He paused, the incisive gaze settling on her again. “Sorry if I’m making you feel uncomfortable.”

She licked her lips. “I have a feeling you make most people feel uncomfortable.”

He winked at her. “You look as if you can handle it.”

She took another triangle of quesadilla, the hot cheese oozing out onto the plate. She realized how hungry she was. “Aren’t you hungry? You’re welcome to a piece-”

“Beer’s fine. You’re an archaeologist?”

“Historical archaeologist.” She was aware of him watching her and wondered if he could see the strain of the past two days on her. Did she look drawn and tense? But she hadn’t been shot, she reminded herself. She’d had bad news. There was a difference. But, once more, she forced herself not to let her thoughts drift too far astray, not to let Nate Winter have that kind of an effect on her. “It means I deal in the historical period-people and societies that left behind some sort of historical evidence. Letters, diaries, books and so on. Historical archaeology is an interdisciplinary field. It incorporates archaeology, anthropology, history, folklore-the idea is to try to piece together what everyday life was like in the past.”

He took a drink of his beer, in a tall, slender glass. “You don’t dig up bones?”

“I can. I’m more likely to dig up a family dump-what we’d call the material remains of a site. We put them together with any written record and oral history.” She smiled, aware of her southern accent amid her fast-paced urban surroundings. “It’s rather like quilting. There are all these pieces that make up a fascinating whole.”

“You could go on forever, couldn’t you?”

“I almost have, haven’t I?”

“No. I’m not bored.” He held up his glass. “Helps to have a beer. I understand you’ve spent most of your career working on President Poe’s childhood home.”

That brought her up short. “Rob told you?”

He shook his head. “Juliet. She checked you out.”

Taken aback, Sarah abandoned her quesadilla. What she’d thought was a casual, friendly conversation about what she did for a living was obviously something else entirely. She wondered if Nate Winter allowed himself casual, friendly conversations or if he was all work, all the time.

Then again, they were just a few blocks from where he’d been shot a little more than twenty-four hours ago. Under the circumstances, she could cut him some slack.

And herself, she thought. She didn’t have to get everything right, not today.

“I suppose that’s to be expected,” she said, trying to hide how upset she was. “He wasn’t president when I became interested in the Poe House. He wasn’t even the governor of Tennessee. I was in high school. Leola and Violet Poe, the sisters who raised him, were our neighbors and very dear friends.”

“They’re the ones who found Wes Poe on their doorstep?”

Suddenly Sarah could picture them in their rockers as elderly women, reminiscing, wandering from one topic to another and back again as they talked about neighbors, family, friends, people they’d met on the river-and, always, their fight to keep and raise the infant boy they’d found one Sunday morning on their porch overlooking the Cumberland River.

Now he was the president. It was the sort of story Americans loved. Some were already placing it alongside George Washington’s cherry tree and Abe Lincoln’s log cabin.

“He was in an apple basket,” Sarah said. “Dr. Jimmy-Jimmy Hankins, Leola and Violet’s doctor-said he wasn’t more than two days old.”

“Do you have a theory about who his mother was?”

“Theories, rumors and hints are easy to come by.”

She laid on her southern accent, although she wasn’t sure why. To mark her territory to this hard-nosed New Englander? To give weight to her own claim to the topic of the Poe sisters? It had consumed her for so long. But she knew she had to let go. She wasn’t Wes Poe’s biographer-she’d hardly touched on his life. It was the Poe house, the Poe family, the site itself and its development along the river that had excited her. Wes was a neighbor and a friend. He was complicated, driven, ambitious and compassionate. And, now, he was the president-not exactly an “ordinary” person.

Nate seemed, finally, to sense her ambivalence and changed the subject. “Rob said you two grew up in D.C. more than you did in Tennessee.”

“We went to school in Washington. Home is Night’s Landing.”

He smiled. “Do you speak seven languages like your brother does?”

She shook her head, her unexpected tension easing. “French and a little Spanish. Rob’s always had a gift for languages.”

“You and your family weren’t prepared for him to become a marshal, were you?”

“I didn’t even realize marshals were still around.”

His eyes sparked with unexpected humor. “Thought we went out with Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp?”

“I still don’t know exactly what you all do.”

He swallowed more of his beer. “Some days neither do I. How’s the quesadilla?”

She hadn’t touched another bite. “It’s good. Have some.”

“My family left me with a refrigerator full of food.”

“Parents, brothers, sisters?”

“An uncle, two sisters and two brothers-in-law. No parents. They got killed hiking in a storm on Cold Ridge when I was seven.”

“You’re the oldest?”

“My sisters were five and three.”

“So they don’t really remember, and you do.”

His eyes were distant. “You’re quick, Sarah. Most people don’t get that right away.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

“No need to be sorry.”

She thought he meant it. “Sometimes I can be too impulsive. It’s been known to get me into trouble.”

“You don’t look like a troublemaker.”

She laughed. “That’s why it surprises people when I do something I shouldn’t.” She stared at the rest of her quesadilla, no longer hungry. “My parents are still in Amsterdam. It’s not that easy for my father to travel these days. Flying to New York and back to Amsterdam again would be hard on him. And, no,” she added, “I’m not making excuses for him or my mother. It’s just the reality we all have to deal with.”

“Does he advise the president?”

“As a friend, if asked.”

“He was an assistant secretary of state-”

“For about five minutes for an administration that was not John Wesley Poe’s.”

“They get along?”

“Very much so.” She sat back, studying the man across from her. “Special Agent Collins asked me many of these same questions, you know.”

Nate surprised her again by smiling. “But he was asking them because he’s conducting an investigation. I’m asking because I’m curious.”

“I think you’re looking for distractions.”

“Maybe. I’ve worked with your brother for four months. I didn’t have a clue he was pals with the president. I need a little time to adjust.”

Sarah doubted he’d needed more than a half second to adjust, but she didn’t call him on it.

“Rob visited your folks in Amsterdam a few weeks ago. Were you there?”

She thought of the man in the park and felt her stomach tighten, even as she reminded herself it had to be a case of mistaken identity. “I flew in from Scotland. We don’t get that many opportunities to be together as a family.”

“I’ve never been to Amsterdam.” Nate finished the last of his beer. “What’s it like?”

“Narrow streets, a mix of old and new buildings, crowded, fascinating, more diverse than you might think. Lots of bicycles. The canals are beautiful-we all did a canal tour.”

She didn’t mention the Rijksmuseum, because if she did, her anxiety would show, Nate would see it, and she’d have to tell him about the man in the park and what a nutcase she was for thinking she’d recognized him from the museum. But that had been such a strange day, her, Rob, their parents, playing tourist, trying to be a family in that foreign city because that was where they’d found themselves together.

She couldn’t eat any more and took one last sip of beer, her glass still half-full. She offered Nate money for the tab, but he refused. As he pulled out his wallet, she noticed that he favored his injured arm and saw him wince in pain. She regretted how close she’d come to losing it in the park, to the point that he’d obviously felt he’d had to whisk her off for a beer and something to eat. However bad the past day and a half had been for her, they’d been so much worse for him and her brother.

The evening air had turned chilly, but Sarah felt hot, agitated. Nate was watching her closely-too closely, as if he believed she was trying to hide something from him. Not a pleasant position to be in. But she didn’t consider herself to be hiding anything. She’d been mistaken about the man in the park.

And Nate was recovering from a bullet wound and a shocking attack that could have killed him.

She had no business reading anything into his actions, his questions, the way he looked at her.

“I should get back to the hospital,” she said. “It really was serendipity that you followed me. Thanks.”

He stepped off the curb to flag a cab. “I don’t believe in serendipity.”

She smiled at him. “Of course not.”

When they arrived back at the hospital, Rob was out for the night-and Nate was done for. Sarah could see it in the dark smudges of fatigue under his eyes, the hollow look to his cheeks. “Do you have a car?” she asked him when they returned to the waiting room. “Do you want me to drive you home?”

“That bad, huh?” He grinned at her, a sudden spark in his eyes. “You can drive me home another time, Dr. Dunnemore. When I don’t look and feel like death on a cracker.”

Her mouth snapped shut.

He laughed, and although he sounded exhausted, she felt a tingle of pure sexual awareness dance up her spine.

After he left, Juliet Longstreet put down the magazine she’d been staring at and shook her head. “That man. Total hard-ass, married to the job and absolute hell on women. They all fall for him.”

“Did you?”

“No way.” She grinned. “I go for the southern frat-boy types.”

Sarah laughed.

“I think Nate liked following you. Gave him something to do. He does not tolerate idleness well.” Juliet got to her feet and stretched her arms over her head. “Which should be a warning to you.”

Not knowing what to say, Sarah peeked in on her brother. He looked better. Not well, but better. She wondered if he wanted her out of town not so much because of snipers in the park, but because of the reputation of his senior deputy-but that was a lot of silliness. She rejoined Juliet in the hall and set out to her apartment for another night with the fish and the plants.