Nine

Epilogue

One Year Later

Somewhere in the South Pacific

The man who had once been known as Everett Corey awoke with a headache.

He tried to dispel the lingering effects of whatever he had to drink the night before, to make sense of the situation he found himself in. He saw a woman’s navel come into view. It was a nice enough navel, he supposed, but she seemed to be upside down. It took him a little while to realize that, in fact, it was he who was upside down. That he was naked. That he was being held above the deck of a boat by a winch that was attached to ropes tied around his ankles. That his wrists, dangling uncomfortably below his head, were also bound. That there was a piece of duct tape across his mouth. There was something terribly familiar about it all.

“I think the roofies are finally wearing off,” the woman said. She bent down so that he could see her face.

She was pretty, even upside down. Her hair was thick and wavy, an almost apricot-gold color. She had large green eyes. She was athletic-looking. He smiled at her, as best he could.

Alex Brandon and Moriarty stepped out of the hotel bar and into the island’s afternoon heat. They began walking toward the harbor.

The hotel was favored by the most discriminating of American tourists. Everett Corey had not been a guest there, but a man matching his description was often found in its bar, buying drinks for those from his native country. Wealthy American visitors to the island found him a helpful man of many interests, who asked nothing of them but news of home. In the few weeks he had been on the island, he had become a favorite of the staff-he was a man of style and charm-and a generous tipper.

Last night, the bartender told him, was the first time he had seen the gentleman drink too much. The bartender swore he did not serve many drinks to him, but perhaps he had been drinking before he came to the bar. He didn’t behave obnoxiously. Everything was fine-he had left on the arm of a beautiful woman, a wealthy widow who was going to let him sleep it off on her yacht.

The bartender liked the newcomers, who were also generous and charming. He told them that the American gentleman was there almost every night-they should come back.

“You think he’s given us the slip again?” Moriarty asked.

Alex shrugged. He looked up at the clear blue sky, felt the warm sun on his face.

Moriarty grinned. “Colorado getting too cold for you?”

“No regrets about moving there. By the way, I talked to John a little while ago.”

“Let me guess. Emily and Chase were bickering. Rusty was barking, and John asked when the hell we were going to come back home.”

Alex laughed. “That’s about it. I could hear the fight in the background. Chase was calling Emily ‘Spooky.’”

“Damn. She must have really ticked him off.”

Alex felt contented with his new life, more contented than he had been in years. When the timing mechanism in the Sedgewick bell tower didn’t immediately set off the explosion, he had been able to escape with not much more than a few cuts and bruises, and two cracked ribs.

He had wondered what malfunction had kept the bomb from going off immediately. Kit said, “I don’t think it was a malfunction. It was intentional, I’m sure.”

“Then why-?”

“For the same reason Cameron didn’t kill you immediately with the garrote. If you enjoy the suffering of others, you don’t grant your victims a quick death.”

Alex stared at him as the implications became clear. “Everett planned for both of us to be hanging there, listening to the last ball fall into place, waiting in terror for the explosion.”

“Yes.”

• • •

Alex’s recovery had given him time to think, and to consider a job offer from Kit.

He had sold the house in Manhattan Beach, and John had sold his in Long Beach. They had bought a place together in the Rocky Mountains-Kit and Moriarty each had homes nearby.

A few weeks after the night at Sedgewick, John had a long talk with Clarissa, and later, another with Miles. Alex didn’t know what he had said to either of them, or if he had threatened Miles, but a decision had been made: Instead of sending him off to boarding school, Chase’s parents would allow their son to come to Colorado to live with his uncles, where he’d be home schooled by a reputable, credentialed private tutor. Alex suspected, from hints John dropped now and then, that Clarissa had made it clear that she would leave Miles if he failed to agree to this arrangement.

Alex had talked to her a few times, but only about Chase. Still, he found it eased something in him to do so, allowed him to feel as if their past didn’t have the bitter hold on him it once had.

They had all made it clear to Chase that he could return to California whenever he liked, for a visit or to stay. So far, he had remained in Colorado. Miles never called. Clarissa sometimes called when Miles wasn’t home. Alex noticed that Emily was always a little kinder to Chase after he got one of those calls. Sometimes he thought she had picked up Kit’s ability to read people.

Alex liked the work he was doing now. A man of Kit’s fortune always had need of information and security, and Kit let Alex have a great deal of freedom in structuring his work life. And Alex now lived in a rock climber’s paradise.

He traveled more. Some of his duties took him to California, so that when he missed it he could almost always find a reason to be there-but he never had to stay so long that the sorrow he sometimes felt in L.A. could overwhelm him.

Before coming to the South Pacific, he had gone to Southern California, to visit Gabe Taggert in the minimum security facility where he was serving a six-year sentence. Both the district attorney and the judge had been lenient, in part because an FBI agent and a recently retired sheriff’s homicide detective had spoken of Gabe’s heroic help in Malibu. In part it had been the incredible defense attorney Kit had paid for. It didn’t hurt that Alex had helped to locate one Kevin Delacourt, the man who had done all the killing in the burglary gone bad, and proved that the only witnesses against Gabe had been on the payroll of Everett Corey. And to some degree, Alex thought, it was Gabe’s genuine remorse. Judges and prosecutors didn’t see that so often.

Agent David Hamilton testified that Gabe had returned to aid him, when he could have easily used the opportunity to run away. Hamilton felt sure he owed his life to him. While taking care of the agent, Gabe had discovered that Hamilton had a cell phone, used it to call for help, and stayed with him, despite knowing that he would be captured when that help arrived.

Far out at sea, under the heat of the sun, Everett Corey began to have vague recollections of the evening before. He had been feeling homesick, as usual, thinking of sneaking back into the U.S. This lovely young American woman had wandered into the place just then, a widow who invited him out to her yacht for a drink.

She had regaled him with crazy stories of her late husband, something about his parents being shot in Russia as spies, about his grandmother being a fortune-teller. He couldn’t remember much else.

At that same moment, in the Colorado Rockies, while other members of the household were distracted, a yellow Lab began exploring the closet of his absent master. He found a leather dress shoe and stuck his nose down into it, verifying that its heady scent was that of his missing owner. Unable to get enough of this delight, he began gnawing it.

At that same moment, Mrs. Christopher Logan asked her husband to come out onto the lanai. He had just finished reading an e-mail from Alex. He shut the computer off and, taking a careful route that kept him away from the lines of grout in the marble tiled floor, reached his wife.

Meghan poured two glasses of champagne.

The woman on the yacht in the South Pacific stood up now and moved toward a winch. She operated it with the skill of someone who was at home on the sea and knew how to use all of the equipment on the vessel.

Everett was just over the water now. The boat was rocking gently, not under sail.

The woman lifted a bucket that seemed to have chum in it. She poured it over the side and waited patiently. Soon the water began to churn.

She took a small, sharp knife and began to prick his skin. To his horror, he bled profusely from these little wounds. He looked at the water beneath him. Single, long fins began to appear.

Terrified, he looked back at the woman. She calmly met his gaze.

“Give my boyakina my love,” she said, and hit the switch that plunged him into the shark-infested water.

It was all over in a few minutes. She had wondered if she would feel horror or disgust. She felt relief.

She raised the sails and set a course for Hawaii. She would stop there before heading back to Malibu.

She poured a glass of champagne. She thought of her mother, at rest for almost a year now, finally free of suffering. She thought of her father, who-hearing the size of the fortune bequeathed to his daughter-had wanted to renew his relationship with her. She smiled, thinking of him waiting for a promised phone call. And waiting. And waiting. As she once had waited for his calls.

She thought of the Whitfields, who, thanks to her attorney, Mr. Blaine, had never had a chance of getting their hands on their son’s money.

If she hadn’t known how they had treated their son, she wouldn’t have fought for it. She had never dreamed of riches, but getting the money had meant that after years of being the one who took care of others, she could do almost everything she wanted to do to take care of herself.

She couldn’t say, knowing all she knew about Frederick now, that she admired her benefactor, but she had come to believe that they had met for a reason. She was the one who would not let him be forgotten, uncounted. She would remember him.

She could not deny that she remembered him fondly, or that even now, the memories of the pleasures of a single afternoon and evening made her smile. Something had happened then, something that nothing in the rest of his life or hers could diminish.

Even he had acknowledged that, she believed, with his note, and when law enforcement officials failed to find Everett Corey, she felt that she owed it to Frederick to seek revenge for Everett Corey’s betrayal of him. It was not the killing on Mulholland that brought out this desire for vengeance. It was that Corey had taken what she had seen in Frederick that one evening and made the worst possible use of it. As far as she was concerned, Corey deserved to die as much for that as for any of the other misery he had inflicted on the world.

She unfolded the note that had been given to her by Mr. Blaine. The note Frederick had included with the will.

My One and Only Boyakina-

I told you I might surprise you, Vanessa. Drink a toast to me one day while you’re sailing in the South Pacific. It makes me happy to imagine it.

Thanks for making me less dangerous.

Yours always,

Frederick

P.S. If you are reading this, my mission didn’t go so well. If you want to, feel free to use some of this money to hunt down the asshole who killed me. It makes me happy to imagine that, too.

“Be happy, Frederick,” she said, and sipped the champagne, which had grown warm.

“What did you say the name was?” Moriarty asked the man at the boat fuel dock, who said he had refueled the young widow’s yacht.

“The yacht was the Boyakina, sir.”

“It left last night?” Alex asked.

“Yes. Please don’t worry about her. The ship is seaworthy and well supplied, and she is an excellent sailor, sir. She won’t have any trouble getting to New Zealand.”

They thanked him and walked away.

“Auckland next?” Moriarty asked.

“A waste of time.”

“You know something,” Moriarty said.

“Yes. I know that we can go home now.”

Moriarty studied him, then asked, “What’s a boyakina?”

“It means ‘lucky in love.’”

Moriarty laughed. “No wonder I don’t know the word. Let’s go back to the hotel and drink a toast to the skipper of the Boyakina, then.”

In Maui, newlyweds Kit Logan and Meghan Taggert Logan tipped the edges of their glasses together.

“What are we drinking to?” Kit asked.

Meghan kissed him, then said, “Our luck.”