Diamonds were also used as a poison. The stones were ground to a powder and put into the enemy’s food and drink. Many prominent people’s deaths were attributed to diamond poisoning.
—Margaret Odrowaz-Sypniewski, B.F.A.
It happened so fast, I hardly had time to do the usual inward screech—ay yi yi yi yi!—before instinct kicked in.
Never lose your head, my father’s voice said. Steel nerves, they said of him, and the sound of his voice in my mind steadied me. He used to take me to safe places where he’d lead me to deliberately losing control of the car, so I would learn how it felt, and would know, in the very cells of my body, how to regain control.
Letting go of my high, taut nerves, I fell into the feeling of the car itself, the sensation of the frame around me, the tires on the road, the engine humming through the machinery of the car. My hands and arms, my feet and legs, my eyes, my body, became an extension of the vehicle. I downshifted and steered into the spin, bringing it down from the dizzying height of the punishing, whipping turns. As long as I didn’t go over the edge, everything should be okay.
The car slammed into the hillside, hard enough to jolt my teeth, but it was finally enough to stop the spin. I let go of my breath, listened to the sound of the car around me. For a minute, I paused, feeling the heat of fear leak out of my lungs, the cold clamminess of certain death ease away from my forehead.
Inexplicably, I thought of my cat, Michael. A gigantic, silvery, fluffy Siamese mix, he was the opposite of the aloof and complaining cat of legend. He loved me, followed me from room to room. Sulked when I took out my suitcase to go away somewhere. I’d left him with my best friend, Janine, and I was sure she was taking good care of him, but it hurt me to imagine how he’d feel if something happened to me.
It made me furious, suddenly. How had I ended up in this mess, with Frankenstein’s thugs on my tail on a very bad night in the west of Scotland?
The answer, as it so often was, couldn’t be blamed on anything but me running away from my life. Running from San Francisco and my ex-husband, who was quickly marrying someone else, before even a full year had elapsed. Marrying money, which is what he’d thought he was doing with me. A fair assumption, since my father is so rich. And it’s not like I’m poor or even struggling, but my father spends a lot, spends fast and furiously and I’m not likely to have much of an inheritance unless he dies early before he has a chance to spend it all. And only then if the wife-of-the-moment doesn’t have some great team of lawyers.
It’s always humiliating to lose out to another woman, but there’s nothing quite like realizing you were being used. Paul tried to tell me, too, which is why I still haven’t spoken to him until now. He pointed out, quite accurately, that my ex was a gold digger. We had a huge fight; I kicked him out of my wedding rehearsal, and in a snit, he flew back to Paris that night, missing my wedding entirely.
Which wounded me more than his eventually correct assumptions that Timothy was wrong for me.
Staring now into the dark, with the sound of the sea crashing to rocks somewhere not very far away, our fight suddenly seemed absurd. He’d tried to contact me several times, but I’d steadfastly avoided him.
Why had I felt so betrayed?
The answer, lurking somewhere in my memories of Arran, suddenly felt too dangerous. The one thing I most certainly did not need was two-bit psychology. I had enough problems.
Beneath me, the engine still rumbled quietly, apparently unhurt. The weather seemed to be easing. I realized I’d been staring out the windshield, waiting for my heart to slow down, and I could actually see out for most of the swipe of the wipers.
Improvement, anyway.
On such a grim night, I wasn’t terribly worried about traffic coming up on me one direction or the other, but it was better to get moving anyway. I turned the car around and headed, at a moderate pace, toward the north once again. It wasn’t great, but it was a lot better. The car seemed to be all right, despite the bumps and bangs she’d taken the past hour.
I patted the dashboard. “Sorry, baby. You deserved better.”
In my coat pocket, my phone suddenly started to ring. I grabbed it and pushed the speaker function. “Make it quick, it’s pissing rain and I’m driving.”
Paul’s voice came through, staticky, but audible. “Sylvie, is Luca with you?”
“What if I said he’s right here beside me?”
“Stop playing games. Is he or not?”
I flushed. “Not. Long story.”
“He is very dangerous, Sylvie.”
“Funny, he says the same thing about you.”
“I will admit this was not the most straightforward way of attaining a prize,” he said. “But you know I am not a killer.”
“Neither is Luca.”
“Is that what he told you? Who do you think killed Gunnarsson?”
Damn. I’d bought Luca’s story, hadn’t I? My head ached with the tangled levels of play at work here. “I don’t know.”
“Sylvie, I know he is the kind of man who makes young women swoon. But be very wary.”
“I am, all right? He’s not with me.”
“I want to help you, Sylvie. Where can I meet you?”
The car shivered on a rocket of rain. “Hold on,” I said, and put my concentration on navigating a steep curve. At least the road was heading away from the very edge of the cliffs. “I’m taking the Katerina to the police.”
“Are you? Then why are you driving all over the country tonight?”
“I got distracted,” I said, and it was true. It was also very plain that exactly what I needed to do was get the Katerina to the Glasgow police. “I’m going to Glasgow now.”
Silence met that statement. “You have her?”
“Yes.”
“You know it would mean a great deal to me to hold her for only a moment. Will you give me that chance, Sylvie? I will not ask you to do anything else. Just let me see her, touch her. One hour.”
I made a skeptical noise. “Please. You won’t hold her for an hour. You’ll take off and I won’t do anything because you know—”
“What? I know what, Sylvie? Hmm?”
“Stop it,” I said sharply. “Luca underestimated me because he doesn’t know me. You know better than that. Don’t try the charming routine, all right?”
Surprisingly, he laughed. The sound was wildly distracting, and I had to take a breath to keep my attention on the road. Just ahead was a wide spot for letting faster cars pass and I pulled into it so I could talk without killing myself. “I don’t have a lot of time, Paul. There’s a good chance I’m being followed, and I need to get to Glasgow before I get killed by thugs.”
“What are you talking about? What thugs?”
“I don’t know. Three guys followed me—or Luca—to my cousin’s holiday caravan. You remember Alan McPheator, don’t you?”
“Of course. But who were the men who followed you?”
“I don’t know, Paul! They broke in, and I took off.” The reality of this whole situation was beginning to annoy me, and now that I was away from the heady presence of Luca’s luscious voice and beautiful eyes, I no longer felt any conflict. For lots of reasons, the least of which was my career reputation, I had to get the Katerina to the inspector in Glasgow. “Look, I’ll call you later, all right?”
“Sylvie,” he said, and there was command in the word. “Will you let me see it? One hour, I promise you.”
“What will that do, Paul? Except frustrate you?”
“You know better. It will please me. I will not ask you to compromise your values. I will not stand in your way if you must take it to the police. It is only that I have gone to a great deal of trouble to find this gem, and I only wish…. the intimacy of holding it, seeing it. I know you understand that.”
A thousand things were pounding through me—Luca’s curls and smell of oranges, my reputation, hanging now by a very slim thread indeed, the lingering low roar of airplane engines that seemed to always take a day or two to go away.
As counterpoint, there was Paul’s liquid voice, a narcotic that spun over the bones of my spine, easing the tension at each little bump. I sighed, pressed my head to the steering wheel. “I don’t how the thugs found me,” I said. “This is also a jewel with a pretty serious curse, you know. Maybe I just want to get rid of it.” I laughed without much humor. “You know me and curses.”
Again there was a long quiet at the end of the line. This one went so long I said, “Are you there?”
“I am here, mon petit chou. I was thinking that it is wonderful to hear your voice again. I have missed you. Terribly.”
“I know,” I said in sudden honesty. “Me, too.”
“Have you forgiven me?”
I thought of our huge scene, in front of the small, quaint church in San Francisco. “Yes. It wasn’t you anyway.”
He chuckled. “I know.”
“Don’t get cocky on me, huh?” I looked in the rearview mirror. Still nothing but darkness. “I have to go, Paul.”
“Do not go home without seeing me this time, huh? Jewel or no, let me buy you supper one night while you’re in Europe? I am staying this week at my cottage on Arran. Come visit me.”
“Arran! What are you doing there?”
“I knew you would be in Scotland, Sylvie. Your grandmother told me.”
A hard, painful flash of a gorse-covered field on a rocky cliff, myself at seventeen, sent a fist into my chest. “Paul, I don’t—”
“You are still angry with me.”
“No! I mean, I probably am, but not for the reasons you—”
Lights were coming up behind me, and a sudden tenseness rose in my chest. In a split second, I had to decide: flip the lights off and let the car pass, or take off and try to outrun them on these bad roads if it turned out to be the thugs.
“Sylvie?”
“I think have company,” I said, and turned off the lights.
The thugs had been driving a small dark car, which was all I’d known about it. It was hard to tell what this was, coming on the road from the south. Small, nothing fancy about the lights. In the rainy dark, however, I couldn’t really tell what it was. Maybe it was a Mini, maybe not. Maybe I hadn’t even seen a Mini at the caravan. It was hard to know in the darkness and the rain.
At the last minute, I ducked down to make it appear as if the car was empty. A small dodge, but if it worked, a very easy one. Their car was anonymous. Mine was not.
Holding the phone, I said, “I’m going to take the Katerina to Glasgow,” I said. “But I’ll meet you on Arran first. Only for an hour, Paul, though, I mean it.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I’ll make your room ready in case you’d like to stay.”
“I’m not staying, Paul. I’ll just stop in and let you see it.”
“All right. When will you be here?”
“In the morning, I suppose. I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“Tomorrow will be very good, then.”
“Don’t hang up for a moment, please,” I said, peeking my head up to see if the car was the one I thought. It hadn’t slowed, didn’t appear to be stopping. Maybe I was getting a break, finally.
And maybe that was because I was finally going to do the right thing by taking the jewel to the Glasgow inspector who’d invited me here.
“I am here,” Paul said.
“It’s okay. I think I’m safe, finally.” I paused. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure. Good night, Sylvie,” Paul said.
The phrase brought back a thousand memories. I pushed them down into their box. “Goodbye,” I said, and hung up.
Then I started the car and headed north once again. There were still monsters about. It would do to be careful.