Chapter 11

 

 

Vic hurried away from Malcolm as fast as she could go, retreated to her cabin, and slammed the door. She collapsed back against the bulkhead and closed her eyes to catch her breath.

That man was a raving lunatic. That’s all there was to it. He must have gone psychotic in this war against the Angui. Boyd said he sacrificed everything for his duty. That must have destroyed his senses to make him act like that against someone trying to sympathize with him.

Vic made up her mind then and there to avoid Malcolm Gunn like the plague. Boyd wanted her to come along on this trip, and he knew how to behave. She would stick close to him. At least that man kept his head and didn’t fly off the handle when someone tried to talk to him.

She’d made a mistake trying to bridge the gap with Malcolm. She should have known he was too far gone to reclaim. Reclaiming him wasn’t her job anyway. Her job was to keep an eye out for Lewises she knew from the twenty-first century, and one of them was right here, on this ship.

She opened her eyes all ready to march off and find Boyd to tell him about Noah when she halted on the spot. There sat Boyd on her bunk—or, rather, the bunk where she had just slept.

He leaned against the wall and crossed his legs in front of him. He grinned at her. “Ye’re up and about, lassie. Do ye feel better?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you doing in here?”

“I came to check on ye, and I found yer bunk empty. I took a peek out on deck and saw ye talking to that gorilla.” He shot her a grin. “What did I tell ye about him and women?”

She blushed. “I thought I’d try to thaw the ice. It didn’t go so well.”

“Just leave him to himself,” he said with a wave of his hand. “He can seduce any woman alive if it’s for the cause, but when it comes to relating to them, he’s a hopeless case. Ye never have to question his loyalty, though.”

She crossed the cabin to sit down on the bunk next to him. “That’s a relief. He just told me the story of how the Falisa poisoned the Angui’s women. He was very broken up about it.”

Boyd shook his head. “Ye shouldnae be alone with him. He’s a live wire. One spark’ll set him off.”

“I found that out.”

“He takes a controlled hand,” Boyd told her. “Stay away from him from now on. I mean this for yer safety, lass.”

“I understand,” she replied. “I’ll stay away from him. He’s a loose cannon. I won’t go near him again.”

“Good.” Boyd got to his feet. “Then ye can come to the wheelhouse and share a meal with me.”

Vic glanced around. “This is the cabin. Why don’t you eat in here?”

“Och, I couldnae do that,” he exclaimed. “This is yer private abode as long as ye’re on this ship. I’ll sleep below with Malcolm and that deckhand, and I’ll take me meals in the wheelhouse. Come along.”

He ushered Vic to the wheelhouse where she found two place settings waiting on the captain’s table. All the charts and logs and papers had been stacked on top of a shelf along the side wall. The furnishings couldn’t compare with the Guild House. No crystal or silver or servants to make this an elegant affair. None of the plates or cups or utensils matched. Boyd gestured for Vic to sit and then sat down opposite her.

Noah entered and served them bacon and beans. His cheeks burned bright red, and he kept his eyes trained on the floor until he finished his job, then retreated out of sight and left Boyd and Vic alone.

Boyd raised a clay mug and touched it to hers, even though both held only weak brown tea. “Here’s to a smooth voyage and success on our adventure.”

Vic took a sip and made a face, then put the cup down. “What is our adventure, exactly?”

“We’re going after the Lewises’ ship, the Prometheus,” he replied. “We’ll get on board a British ship at Stornoway and intercept them off the coast of Lewis.” He glanced into his teacup and made a sour face too. “I dinnae think that man kens much about cooking.”

Vic studied him across the table. He still didn’t know Noah’s first name. He probably never would. Why did she hesitate to reveal Noah’s identity?

That conversation she’d had with Malcolm gave her further pause. A fanatic like him might take punishing Noah to the extreme. He might not settle for killing him and throwing him to the fishes. He might decide to torture the poor guy or something disgusting like that.

Vic couldn’t be a part of anything like that. For all she knew, the Falisa had been doing stuff like that to the Angui for thousands of years. Maybe the Falisa weren’t the benighted slave race rebelling against their overlords at all. Maybe the Angui weren’t tyrants or dictators.

Malcolm said millions of people died and became displaced when the Angui fell. What did the Falisa do to help them—or were they too bent on revenge to care who got hurt? The Falisa slaughtered who knew how many Angui women and girls, all the way down to infants. One of the Falisa told her that, so it must be true. They were proud of what they’d done.

She blinked away her thoughts as Boyd smiled at her across the table. He was one of them. He was Falisa, but she couldn’t believe he would do anything like that. He was too nice and kind and considerate. One more time, she pushed her misgivings out of her mind.

He set down his cup. His hand glided across the table. His fingers twined into hers, and a delicious thrill traveled up her arm and into her guts.

“Now, lassie,” he purred, “I asked ye here to talk about yer people in the future. Ye said ye worked at a chemical company, and yer friend is using the resources there to create the Cipher’s Kiss.”

For a fraction of a second, Vic stiffened against that insidious touch. What was he doing to her? Was he trying to seduce her for information about Ree’s activities?

The next instant, she softened to that magical sensation of his skin caressing hers. She’d never felt anything so divine, and she wanted more. “They’re working on it, but they haven’t gotten very far with it. They’re still trying to identify the ingredients. The names they gave us don’t make any sense, so we’re doing a bunch of research to find out what they are.”

“What are the ingredients?” he asked.

“Don’t you know?” she countered. “I thought you said they stole the recipe from you.”

“I just want to ken if they’re using the right recipe,” he replied. “If ye tell me what they’re looking for, I’ll ken how far they’ve got with it or if they stole the wrong book.”

She frowned again. Was he trying to trick her? He must know exactly which book they’d stolen and thus if they found the right recipe, so why was he asking her? He must be testing her compliance.

He couldn’t be doing that. They were just sitting here, enjoying a friendly dinner conversation. She thought back to the last time she read through the Prometheus file.

“Well, there was wicknot root and brandywine tundra beetle. I remember those, and then there was something called hefmorquen flower. That’s about all I remember. We were working on those three first, before we moved on down the list to identify the others. Ree is meeting with some big-shot entomologist to identify the tundra beetle, and my other friends are investigating the wicknot root and the flower.”

He nodded and twirled his fork over his plate. “Do ye have any idea where they got these ingredients—the list, I mean? Did ye ever see the source material?”

“Nope,” she replied. “Ree gave me a list printed off the computer. I can only assume she got them out of that book, wouldn’t you tend to think? They must have been sitting on the book for three hundred years before they found a lab to make the formula.”

He tilted his head back and studied the ceiling. “Here’s the part I dinnae understand, lass. All this time, the Lewis men have stayed away from women. We’ve followed them for generations, and do ye ken no’ a one of them has taken a wife in all that time? Dinnae ye think that says something about their motives?”

Vic blushed. It didn’t really tell her much about their motives, whatever they might be. “I can only guess they’re still upset about losing their wives and daughters so long ago.”

“Aye. That’s the size of it,” he replied. “The point I’m making, lass, is that after all this time, Ned Lewis—who, unless I’m mistaken, is their leader—has got himself hitched up with an alchemist who has the laboratory he needs to make it happen. How do ye think that happened?”

“I have no idea,” she replied. “I never expected Ree to get with a guy—and I mean any guy. She’s been a eunuch for years, and then wham! She hooks up with Ned, who is about the last guy on the planet I ever expected her to get with.”

“In what way?” he asked.

Vic waved her hand. “You know! He’s handsome and suave and magnetic and charming. He’s successful and…and he’s… Well, he’s like something out of a magazine. He’s perfect—or as near to perfect as you can get.”

“And Ree?” he asked. “Is she no’ as near to perfect as ye can get?”

Vic’s cheeks burned all over again. “No, she isn’t.”

Ree Hamilton. She might be pretty and brilliant and successful, but she had issues with guys and only had one leg. She kept it hidden from everyone but her closest friends, and Vic wouldn’t reveal her secret to someone Ree had never met. That would be outright betrayal.

“That only proves me point,” Boyd went on. “If they’re so different, how did they wind up together, working on the Cipher’s Kiss? I find it unaccountable.”

“So do I.”

“And ye have no explanation for it?” Boyd’s eyes bored into Vic’s soul.

Vic squirmed in her chair. Why did this conversation give her a squirrely feeling in her middle? She almost felt guilty for not being able to answer his questions. “Nope. None.”

He didn’t take his eyes off her. “There’s something missing in this puzzle, lassie. I sincerely hope ye’re no’ keeping anything from me.”

“I’m not.” Her eyes darted away from his face and back again, slipping from the sensation of being mesmerized the way he always did when he locked his gaze on her. She picked at her food with her free hand, letting her mind wander as she gazed out the window.

What was wrong with her? Why didn’t she just come out and tell him about Noah? The longer she talked to Boyd—or better yet, the longer he talked to her—the more entrenched she became in keeping it to herself. What was going on here? This had nothing to do with Ned and Ree. This was all about Vic and Boyd—no one else. For the first time since she’d met him, she found herself not wanting to trust him. She couldn’t put herself into his hands, much less put someone else in his hands.

She believed every word of their story about the Angui and the Falisa and how the war got started. She even believed that outlandish tale about the Angui being immortal. Noah Kelly proved it. She even believed a guy like Malcolm had lost his mind in the obsession of hunting these immortals down and destroying them off the face of the Earth. She believed Ned and Ree got hold of that book and used Primary Industries to make the formula.

One thing she couldn’t get on board with, though, was being directly responsible for one of these guys getting killed. She’d looked Noah Kelly in the eye and spoken to him. She recognized him.

She could help Boyd find out who sent her here. She could give him all the information on Ned and Ree’s activities. But she refused to be responsible for Noah’s death, and that was exactly what she would be if she told Boyd what she knew.

What was Noah doing right now, anyway? He was manning this ship to take them where they wanted to go. He wasn’t killing anybody. He wasn’t doing anything that earned him a trip to Davey Jones’s locker, or worse.

At that moment, her gaze fell on Noah and Malcolm in the far forward bow. Malcolm leaned against the rail, one foot propped on the capstan behind him. Noah squatted on the deck, braiding some rope as the two men talked and laughed.

A very different expression flashed over Malcolm’s countenance. For a fraction of a second, he ceased to be a psychotic, murderous ogre. He looked like a mischievous little boy as the wind rippled in his loose, curly hair.

Whatever he was, he knew a lot more about Noah Kelly than she did. Boyd might believe Malcolm was totally loyal to the Gunns, but he’d seen fit to keep Noah’s identity to himself.

Was it possible the Angui weren’t all bad? Maybe one or two realized the error of their ways. Maybe some of them were good people, in spite of what they’d done in the past.

For the last time, she put Noah’s identity away in the back of her mind. She would never tell Boyd—or at least not until she saw a more compelling reason to do so. Right now, she only saw a lot of reasons not to.

She turned around to find Boyd studying her. “Lassie?”

She gave his hand a squeeze. “I’m all right. I guess I’m still a little disoriented. I think I’ll go lie down again. Thank you for the meal. I appreciate you taking such consideration of me.”

He leaped to his feet so fast he kicked his chair over. “Not at all. Ye should get yer rest. We’ll be in Stornoway in the morning.”

She slid back the door leading to the cabin. Relief deluged her when she saw the bunk, but when she sat down on it, she stiffened again as Boyd closed the cabin door from the inside.

“What are you doing?” she asked, trying not to sound too alarmed.

“I’m keeping guard over ye.” He sat down at the foot of the bunk. “I wouldnae want anything untoward to happen to ye while ye sleep. Go on. Lie down and rest. Ye’ve naught to bother about until morning.”

She was trapped. She couldn’t exactly tell him to skedaddle, could she? She sank onto the bunk and lay down. He crossed his legs and leaned against the bulkhead the way he had before. She pretended to sleep but couldn’t let go of the tension holding her taut. She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t…

She didn’t know what she would do if he wasn’t here, but he thwarted any plan she could come up with. She didn’t know how to account for him. Was he interrogating her, or did she just imagine it? Was he really dangerous? He couldn’t be as dangerous as Malcolm, but all the glorious trust she thought she’d put in Boyd evaporated into the breeze.

She would give anything to get that back. She would give anything to fall into that blissful peace of knowing she could rely on at least one person in midst of all this insanity.