“Silkie!”
The master bed- and sitting room was at the end of the hall. Double doors, one standing open. As he approached along one wall, Glock held high in both hands, he made out the shapes of furnishings because of a bathroom light shining beyond a four-poster bed draped with a gauzelike material.
Furniture was overturned in the sitting room. A fish tank had been shattered.
Pete edged around the foot of the Victorian bedstead and had a partial view of a seminude body face-down on the tiles. Black girl. There was broken glass from a mirror and a ribbon of blood.
“Silkie, answer me, what happened here?”
He was almost to the bathroom door when Silkie stirred, looked around blank-eyed, then tried to push herself up with both hands as she flooded with terror. Blood dripped from a long cut that started below her right eye and ran almost to the jawline.
“Is she gone?” Silkie gasped.
Peter read the shock in her widening eyes but was a split second late turning as Taja came off the bed, where she’d been lying amid a pile of pillows he hadn’t paid enough attention to, and slashed at him with her stiletto.
He turned his wrist just enough so veins weren’t severed but he lost his automatic. He backhanded her in the face with his other hand. Taja went down in a sprawl that she corrected almost instantly, cat-quick, and rushed him again with her knife ready to thrust, held close to her side. Her face looked as wooden as a ceremonial mask. She knew her business. He blocked an attempt she made to slash upward near his groin and across the femoral artery. She knew where he was most vulnerable and didn’t try for the chest, where her blade could get hung up on the zipper of his leather jacket, or his throat, which was partially protected by a scarf. And Taja was in no hurry: she was between him and his only way out. Acrobatic in her moves, she feinted him in the direction she wanted him to go—which was back against the bed and into the mass of sheer drapery hanging there.
Pete heard Silkie scream but he was too busy to pay attention to her. The bed drapery clung to him like spiderweb as he struggled to free himself and avoid Taja. She slashed away methodically, the material beginning to glow red from his blood.
His gun fired. Deafening.
Taja flinched momentarily, then went into a crouch, turning away from Peter, finding Silkie. She was standing just inside the bathroom, Peter’s Glock 9 in both hands.
“Bitch.” She fired again, range about eight feet. Taja jerked to one side, hesitated a second, glanced at Peter, who had fought his way out of the drapery. Then she sprang to the bedroom doors and vanished.
Pete slipped a hand inside his jacket where his side stung from a long caress of Taja’s stiletto. A lot of blood on the hand when he looked at it. Holy Jesus. He looked at Silkie, who hadn’t budged from the threshold of the bathroom nor lowered his gun. When he moved toward her she gave him a deeply suspicious look. She was nude to well below her navel. Blood dripped from her chin. She had beautifully modeled features even Echo might have envied. Pete coughed, waited sus-pensefully, but no blood had come up. He saw that the cut on Silkie’s face could’ve been a lot worse, the flesh laid open. Part of it was just a scratch down across the cheekbone. A little deeper in the soft flesh near her mouth.
He had to pry his gun from Silkie’s hands. His own hands were so bloody he nearly dropped the Glock.
He no longer considered going after Taja. Shock had him by the back of the neck. He heard sirens before a rising teakettle hiss in his ears shut out the sound. His face dripped perspiration, but his skin was turning cold. He had to lean against the jamb, his face a few inches from the tall girl’s breasts. My God but they were something.
“What’s your name?” he asked Silkie.
She had the hiccups. “Ma-MacKENzie.”
“I’m Peter. Peter O’Neill. We’re old friends, Silkie. We dated in New York. I came up here for a visit.
Can you remember that?”
“Y-yes. P-P-PETEr O’Neill. From New York.”
“And you don’t know who attacked you. Never saw her before. Got that?”
He looked her in the eye, wondering if they had a chance in hell of selling it. She looked back at him with a slight twitch of her head.
“Why?”
“Because Valerie Angelus is dead and you came close and that, that he does not get away with, don’t care how much money. I want John Ransome. Want his ass all to myself until I’m ready to hand him over.”
“But Taja—”
“Taja’s just been doing the devil’s work. That’s what I believe now. Help me, Silkie.”
She touched a finger to her chin, wiped a drop of blood away. The wound had nearly stopped oozing.
“All right,” she said, beginning to cry. “How bad am I?”
“Cut’s not deep. You’ll always be beautiful. Listen. Hear that? Medics. On the way up. Now I need to—”
He began to slide to the floor at her feet. Shuddering. His tongue getting a little thick in his mouth. “Sit down before I uh pass out. Silkie, put something on. Now listen to me. Way you talk to cops is, keep it simple. Say it the same way every time. ‘We met at a party. He’s only a friend.’ No details. It’s details that trip you up if you’re lying.”
‘You are—a friend,” she said, kneeling, putting an arm around him for a few moments. Then she stood and reached for a robe hanging up behind the bathroom door.
“We’ll get him, Silkie. You’ll never be hurt again. Promise.” Finding it hard to breathe now. He made himself smile at her. “We’ll get the bastard.”
When Echo woke up half the day was gone. So was John Ransome, from her bed.
She looked for him first in his own room. He’d been there, changed his clothes. She found Ciera in Ransome’s study, straightening up after what appeared to have been a donnybrook. A lamp was broken.
Dented metal shade; had Taja hit him with it? Ciera stared at Echo and shook her head worriedly.
“Do you know where John is?”
“No,” Ciera said, talkative as ever.
The day had started clear but very cold; now thick clouds were moving in and the seas looked wild as Echo struggled to keep her balance on the long path to the lighthouse studio.
The shutters inside the studio were closed. Looking up as she drew closer, Echo couldn’t tell if Ransome was up there.
She skipped the circular stairs and took the cabinet-size birdcage elevator that rose through a shaft of opaque glass to the studio seventy-five feet above ground level.
Inside some lights were on. John Ransome was leaning over his worktable, knotting twine on a wrapped canvas. Echo glanced at her portrait that remained unfinished on the large easel. How serene she looked. In contrast to the turmoil she was feeling now.
He’d heard the elevator. Knew she was there.
“John.”
When he looked back he winced at the pain even that slow movement of his head caused him. The goose egg, what she could see of it, was a shocking violet color. She recognized raw anger in conjunction with his pain, although he didn’t seem to be angry at her.
“Are you all right? Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You needed your sleep, Mary Catherine.”
“What are you doing?” The teakettle on the hot plate had begun to wheeze. She took it off, looking at him, and prepared tea for both of them.
“Tying up some loose ends,” he said. He cut twine with a pair of scissors. Then his hand lashed out as if the stifled anger had found a vent; a tall metal container of brushes was swept off his worktable. She couldn’t be sure he’d done it on purpose. His movements were haphazard, they mimicked drunkenness although she saw no evidence in the studio that he’d been drinking.
“John, why don’t you—I’ve made tea—”
“No, I have to get this down to the dock, make sure it’s on the late boat.”
“All right. But there’s time, and I could do that for you.”
He backed into his stool, sat down uneasily. She put his tea within reach, then stooped to gather up the scattered brushes.
“Don’t do that!” he said. “Don’t pick up after me.”
She straightened, a few brushes in hand, and looked at him, lower lip folded between her teeth.
“I’m afraid,” he said tauntly, “that I’ve reached the point of diminished returns. I won’t be painting any more.”
“We haven’t finished!”
“And I want you to leave the island. Be on that boat too, Mary Catherine.”