Nate’s headache returned because fate liked to watch him vomit and pass out. Hopefully, as long as he didn’t have a seizure, he’d be okay.
He waited on the sidewalk for Sarah to park her truck in her driveway. He’d told her he was following behind when the truth was he’d ridden his bicycle and hidden it in a nearby alley. He didn’t want her to know he wasn’t allowed to drive. Male pride and all that.
While he waited, he scanned the surroundings, especially the house. White columns supported the antebellum brick home graced by an elaborate stone-and-cast-iron staircase. Creeping fig covered the stone walls protecting the enclosed garden. The scent of jasmine wafted by on the warm breeze while pots of pink flowers stood as sentinels on each step. He rubbed his damp hands on his jeans and wished he’d polished his boots. Then he noticed Sarah’s skirt and sleek ponytail. He always felt underdressed around her. “This is a beautiful home.”
Sarah rummaged through her straw bag. “It was my mother’s. She inherited it from her parents.” She found a key, led him up the steps, and opened the door. “My great-great-grandparents lived in the original building, but that burned down in the nineteenth century.”
The door opened silently, and she led the way. A freestanding circular staircase dominated the cool, dark foyer. He appreciated the silence and was hesitant to unsettle the stillness the house demanded. On his right, he passed a sitting room with two club chairs, a fireplace, and built-in shelves. To his left, the dining room had a polished table, sideboard, and six dining room chairs on an embroidered carpet. Even the crystal chandelier looked original.
He inhaled deeply. The house smelled like orange oil and gardenias. It smelled like home. “You need an alarm.”
“You sound like my dad.” She led him past the staircase, down the hallway, into the kitchen and family room. The open area with white cabinets and black granite counter, clearly an addition, had windows overlooking the garden with a raised fountain. The eating area held a round table, and a desk sat in an alcove near a couch and coffee table.
“We came home less than a year ago, and I haven’t had a chance to install an alarm.” She dropped her bag on the desk and took off her sweater. “Would you like water or a soda?”
He threw his jacket on the table and closed his eyes. “Water, please.”
“Nate?” When he opened his eyes, she was in front of him. She touched his hot face with her cooler hands, but her gaze was focused on his neck. “Are you alright?”
“Sure.” He didn’t move because he didn’t want her to stop touching him. She was so close, he could smell the gardenia scent in her hair, see a tiny scar on her forehead that he had a sudden desire to kiss. Her cool hands alleviated the heat building in his body.
“Do you have a headache?”
Among other ailments. “Is it that obvious?”
“Yes.” She left him to fill her teapot with water. “My father suffers from seizures and headaches. I have an herbal tea that helps.”
That sounded iffy. “Do you have ibuprofen?”
She found a metal card catalog from behind the toaster and opened it. The box looked like it’d belonged to the original Betty Crocker. “That stuff will destroy your stomach.” She flipped through cards and took one out. “I also have a homemade salve that will help with the burns on your arms.” She read the card. “You’re not allergic to buckthorn oil or beeswax, are you?”
He almost laughed, but she looked so serious he just said, “I don’t think so.”
She stared at his chest until he cleared his throat.
Turning away, she tucked her hair behind her ear. He could’ve sworn her cheeks looked redder than before. “Sarah, I swear to you I had no idea about those photos in Kells’s office. I know what it’s like to be betrayed, and I’d never do that to you.”
She nodded, switched on the gas range, and set the teapot to boil. He ached to go to her, to take her in his arms, but she had to decide on her own if she trusted him. The next move had to be hers. The only sound came from the gas flame and the hiss from the water. “Are we okay?”
Whatever answer she gave him, he’d hold in his heart and carry to the prison hospital.
“Yes,” she said softly as she took a mug out of a cabinet. “We’re okay.”
He released a loud breath. She hadn’t looked at him, but it was a start. “That’s…good.”
She grabbed a Chocolate de Paris tin on the counter and popped off the top. An unsettling smell drifted out. “I know this is an unusual request,” she said as she filled a tea ball with herbs from the tin. “If you take off your shirt, I’ll put salve on your arms while we wait for your tea.”
Whoa. He’d not expected that, especially since she still hadn’t met his gaze.
He hesitated and then yanked off his tee. Why the hell not. In forty-eight hours he’d be on his way to the psych ward. He had to make the most of his time left. “Now what?”
She popped the tea ball into the mug and took a glass jar out of a cabinet. “My burn salve is made with aloe vera, rosewater, sea buckthorn oil, coconut oil, honey, and beeswax. I’ll massage it into your arms to ease the tightness.” The teapot whistled, and she poured water into the mug. Then she added a big dollop of honey.
“What’s that smell?”
She smiled. “Bacopa and feverfew and a few other herbs.” She came over with the lotion. “The honey makes it taste better.”
He doubted it. “I don’t think that’ll help.”
Now she chuckled. “You sound like my father.” She held out the salve container so he could sniff. “This one smells nice.”
It reminded him of summer picnics, which led to visions of Sarah in a bikini, which led to clenched hands and a raging hard-on. “It does.” He still wasn’t sure about her salve, but he said yes. If it meant she was volunteering to touch him, he was all in.
He sat on the stool while she dipped her hands into the container and rubbed her fingers together. “I need to warm it.”
“I don’t mind if it’s cold. I’m always hot.”
She kept her attention on his arms. “Tell me if there’s any irritation.”
He didn’t say anything because her hands were on his shoulder and slowly working the salve around his biceps and forearm and down to his wrist. The cream felt cold on his tight skin, and he closed his eyes.
“Are you alright?”
He nodded because he had no words to describe the sensation of her hands running up and down his arms.
“My grandmother and mother left me these recipes.” Sarah spoke in such a low voice, he opened his eyes as if that would help him hear her better. “They believed in homeopathy. Many of their recipes date to the seventeenth century, to Anne Capel.”
“Besides being an accused murderer and a romantic who helped teenagers elope, Anne was a seventeenth-century healer?”
“Yes.” Sarah finally met his gaze, and he was relieved to see her brown eyes had lightened, that the tight lines around her lips had disappeared. “Some recipes don’t work, but others do.”
He swallowed instead of answering. The sensation of her hands on his arm felt hypnotic and wonderful and erotic at the same time. He prayed she wouldn’t look down and notice his arousal. It’s not like he could hide it or help it. And while he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, he wasn’t ashamed either. “Did your mom teach you to make herbal remedies?”
“Yes. One of my most vivid memories is an argument my mother and grandmother had about whether ginger or roasted dandelion root was better for an upset stomach.” She paused in her massaging to wipe a hand on a towel, take out the tea ball, and hand him the cup.
He tried hard not to notice her breasts through her white cami. The AC in the house had kicked on, and she seemed oblivious to her own reaction. He looked away because he was a gentleman. But daaaaaaamn.
He took a sip and tried not to gag. “It tastes like sh—sludge.”
“If you finish it, I’ll do your other arm.”
He pinched his nose with one hand and drank it in three gulps.
“Nate! It’s hot!”
Oh, yeah it was. The skin in his throat had burned away, but it was worth it if she’d touch him again. He put the mug on the counter and held out his other arm.
She shook her head and smoothed the salve on his skin. “These are serious burns.”
“From an accident.” He didn’t want to lie to her, so he didn’t say anything else.
She sent him a questioning glance yet didn’t ask for details. His shoulders dropped in relief, and he sank into the sensation of her hands on his skin while she worked the miracle cream from his shoulder to his wrist.
“How does this feel?”
Unbelievably erotic. “Wonderful. And my headache isn’t as bad.” Which, amazingly enough, was true. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. You should wait a few minutes before dressing. The salve needs to dry.” When she was done, she put the lid on the jar and washed her hands. Then she went to the fridge and got out two water bottles. “You need to drink water after your tea.”
“Why?”
“The tea can sometimes upset your stomach.”
He opened the lid and took three long swallows. That’s when he noticed they were on opposite sides of the granite counter. Adversaries where they’d once been friends. Or at least colleagues. Who’d kissed. Twice. “Do you want to show me what you took from Kells’s office?”
“Do you want to tell me why a group of ex–Green Berets are pretending to run a gym in Savannah?”
He moved away from the counter and pulled out two kitchen chairs. He deliberately put them close enough for their knees to touch if she wanted. Which, since she still stood, she didn’t.
“I’ve no idea why Kells did that, but I can tell you what I know. My friends and I recently got out of the army and needed a new life. Since few of us had families and Calum had just bought Iron Rack’s, we’re running the place for him.” Nate took another drink of water. So far, his stomach felt fine. “Nothing sinister in that.”
“Maybe.” She wrapped her arms around her waist. “You said you were leaving town.”
“I did.” He finished his water and put the bottle on the table. “I leave Sunday afternoon.”
“And you’ll be gone for—”
“A long time.”
She reached for the tin of gross tea. Then she opened a drawer, found a stack of white sheer squares, and counted them.
When she didn’t speak again, he switched subjects. “What did you mean when you said there were photos of your father’s last case in Boston?”
She blinked a few times before putting aside the white squares and dragging a folder out of her straw bag. She handed it to him, yet when he grabbed it, she refused to release it. “Two weeks ago, Juliet Capel told me you were a good guy. A man a woman can trust.”
“I am.”
She nodded before letting go. “I’m counting on that, Nate Walker. I’ve not had luck with trusting coworkers. If you betray me, I’ll hunt you down and beat you with a shovel.”
He held his laugh but not his smile. The thought that she could hurt him physically was beyond absurd. “Threat noted.” He opened the file and laid the photos and papers on the table.
He separated them into two sections. On the left, he put out the handwritten page about Sarah’s life—in Kells’s distinctive type A printing—and the photos of Sarah alone. In all of them, she was around the preservation office. Two were taken of her walking to work; the others were of her working at a table in the garden. A pain drove through his molars, and he relaxed the teeth grinding. “Sarah, do you have any idea when these were taken?”
“Within the past two weeks.” She came over and pointed to her low-heeled sandals. “I bought those the day before we met.”
He took the photo of the two of them in the garden and moved it on the table. “This one is first. Which one is second?”
She added the two of her sitting in the garden. Then the one of them in the police station.
“These two of you coming into work, they happened after that night we met in the police station?” After. The. Kiss.
“Yes. They were taken last week.”
He exhaled and moved on to her life story. He scanned the page slowly. Handwritten words always made his dyslexia worse. “Wow. You really did go to all of these schools and get these degrees.” She wasn’t even thirty. He read the final paragraph. She’d been put on administrative leave soon after the publication of an article she’d written. “What’s The British Journal of Eighteenth Century History?”
“The peer-reviewed publication that tanked my career? A.k.a. the Great Betrayal?” She pursed her lips. “The British Journal published a draft of my thesis without permission.”
She stared at the photos with no emotion. Either she didn’t care about what had happened or was holding her feelings so tightly, she didn’t know how to unwind them. The fact that she’d named the event meant she was probably dealing with the latter.
“How’d The British Journal get it?”
Her eyes had shifted from the brilliant brown swirls to a flat, mud-like color. “My colleagues sent it to them.”
She’d been betrayed? By those she trusted? “How’d your colleagues get your draft?”
She went to the counter and those white squares. “They stole it. Broke into my computer, actually.” Slowly, she used a small spoon to fill the white squares—which were pouches—with tea leaves. The brilliant passion he’d seen this morning with Cassio and again when she’d faced his men had disappeared.
And, apparently, they were playing twenty questions. “How did that happen?”
“My fiancé took my password.”
His throat tightened, and he felt nauseated. “You have a fiancé?”
“Had.” The disgust in her voice made him want to sing. But publicly celebrating would’ve been rude. “I never should’ve gotten engaged. My dad hated Augustus.”
“Augustus?” Nate almost laughed, but instead he released his breath in short, relief-laden spurts. He’d love to know more about this loser ex-fiancé who was probably short and out of shape. “Why did Augustus and your colleagues betray you?”
She blinked twice. “To discredit me.”
“Hacking into someone’s computer, stealing their work, and then publishing it is more than simple discrediting.” Nate pointed to the photos. “This is personal.”
She frowned and took a roll of white ribbon and a pair of scissors from a drawer next to the sink. Carefully, she cut lengths of about eight inches. “I guess.”
“There’s no guessing here, Sarah. Your colleagues, your fiancé, must’ve had a reason to do this. Did they want your job?”
“No.” She paused in her cutting to look at him. “I’m the youngest in my department. I worked in a different time period, mostly on my own research projects.”
And they were back to twenty questions. “Did they dislike you?”
“You mean was I a bitch who deserved a slapdown?” She started cutting again. “No. I worked on private projects helping people sell their collections to the Smithsonian.” She dropped the ribbon and came over to look at the police station photos.
Was she remembering that night as well? Had she lost as much sleep as he had?
“I established and confirmed provenance, authenticated and catalogued items—documents, weapons, clothing—from the mid-seventeen hundreds through the end of the Revolutionary War. The only way to stay competitive in my time frame is to publish. By publishing my research before it was completed, my colleagues made me a laughingstock and ruined any chances I had at getting research grants to finish my work.”
“I thought the Smithsonian paid for your work?”
“Not all of it. I use private and public grant money to help with certain projects.” Now she took the photo of them sitting in the garden on the first day they met. “For this project, I hoped a private research grant would give me enough money to prove myself and my theory.”
“But the project was destroyed by your colleagues for no apparent reason.”
“No reason I can think of.” She laid the photo on the table. “At the time Senator Prioleau jumped on the ruining bandwagon. And she hasn’t gotten off. I’ve no idea why, though, since she also hired me to do the authentications for the Prioleau/Habersham collection auction.”
He laid out the rest of the photographs. They were crime scene pics with dead guys covered in sheets and bags of white powder lying around. A sign over the Dumpster read PROPERTY OF O’MALLEY’S PUB. NO DUMPING. CITY OF BOSTON. “When were these photos taken?”
“Three years ago. It was my father’s last case where he and his former partner Hugh Waring were falsely accused of horrible things.” Her shortened breath raised her breasts enough that he considered asking her to put on her sweater again.
He focused on the photos. “Then what happened?”
“They were exonerated, and my dad took early retirement. Ever since that night behind O’Malley’s Pub, my dad has suffered seizures, headaches, and memory loss. It was hard with me in DC and him in Boston. After my thesis was published, I was put on administrative leave and we returned to Savannah. Almost ten months ago.”
Nate rearranged the Boston photos again, placing them first, then the handwritten notes, then the photos of him and Sarah. “What is this last photo? Is this another crime scene?”
“Yes. It’s from a recent crime scene in Charleston.”
“You’ve seen this picture before?”
“This morning. Detective Hugh Waring, my father’s ex-partner, is now a detective in Charleston. He drove down to ask my father about the photo.” She pointed to the older ones from O’Malley’s Pub. “He wasn’t supposed to show it to us, but it’s similar to the ones taken in Boston.”
“Similar how?” Nate stopped himself from asking about this ex-partner. Like how old he was, whether he was married, or if he was in love with her.
“The dealers in both the old and new photos were shot in the chest, and someone carved a letter B on their left palms. And see the heroin bags?” She pointed to the alphanumeric string I9A4B8M5C6 printed on every one. “These photos were taken three years apart.”
He placed the new photo at the end of the line, next to the last one taken of Sarah.
“What are you doing?”
“Building a timeline.” He pointed to the first photo. “Your father’s last case behind O’Malley’s Pub, which sent him into retirement. Two years later, your published thesis ruins your career. Almost a year after that, we meet and you’re being followed. Then, a few days ago, a drug bust in Charleston unearths heroin bags with the same type of alphanumeric sequence.” He put his hands on his hips. “I know there’s something connecting us, I’m just not sure what it is.”
She dug her phone out of her straw bag. “There is one thing that connects both of us to these photos, but—” She tapped her screen. “Don’t be mad.”
He wasn’t sure he could ever get mad at her. “What is it?”
She gave him her phone. “It’s a photo I took of that map you brought me two weeks ago. The one of the Isle of Grace. I’m not supposed to take pictures of artifacts without consent. If my boss finds out—”
“He won’t.” Nate expanded and contracted the photo as he moved it around. “Did you use this map to find the Cemetery of Lost Children earlier?” It would explain how she found her way out there while experienced hunters—a.k.a. poachers—got lost.
“Yes.” She leaned over his shoulder. Her gardenia scent riled up every masculine part of him, and he shifted forward to hide his reaction to her. “Remember the compass rose in the corner? The one with north off by thirty degrees?”
“I do.” Two weeks ago, when he’d brought her the hard copy of the map, she’d discovered that the compass rose was “broken.” But neither one of them had thought it mattered.
She put on her glasses and moved until her breast brushed his arm. “Below the compass rose. What do you see?”
Sweat lined his brow, and it took all of his strength to read. Below the compass rose, someone had scrawled P1C3S4L2R4 in faint script. “It’s an alphanumeric sequence. Similar to what’s on the heroin bags.”
She took off her glasses. “Yes.”
He wiped his brow with his arm. Had the AC stopped working? “That map was over three hundred years old.”
She touched his arm. “Are you okay? You look hot.”
“I’m fine.” He pressed his fists on the table. “What connects two heroin busts years apart, a seventeenth-century map of an isolated sea island, and a group of ex–Green Berets?”
“A cipher.” She pointed to her résumé. “More specifically, the Prideaux pirate cipher.”