Authors: Alan F. Troop

The Seadragon's Daughter (34 page)

BOOK: The Seadragon's Daughter

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In my arms, Chloe begins to giggle too.

After Derek and I have dried off and dressed, we all gather together in the great room. I can’t keep my eyes—or my hands—off Chloe. I try to stay as close as possible, following her into the kitchen, helping as she prepares steaks to warm up in the microwave for breakfast, brushing against her as we pass each other. Finally, she gently pushes me away, saying, “Go sit. I’ll do the rest.”

I join Derek and Claudia at the large oak table and look around the room from window to window, taking in the views of the ocean, the bay and the islands to the north and south of us. Nothing could appear more beautiful to me. No place could feel more comfortable. The aroma of meat warming fills the room, and I sigh and sink back into my seat. No doubt attracted by the smell, Max pads into the room and lies down near my feet. “It’s so good to be home,” I say.

Derek frowns at me. “I’m sure it is, old man—for you. But you’re forgetting about that damned Pelk poison in both of us. I’m not sure I would have chosen to die in terrible pain, in a week, for the pleasure of being here.”

“We have a good chance of figuring out the antidote,” I say, sitting straight, pointing at the woven seaweed bag that Claudia’s left at the far end of the table. “My father’s journal is in there. I’m sure Claudia will find something there.”

Claudia shakes her head just a little as she says, “Wait a minute, you guys.
Maybe
I’ll find something. I’ve already been going through the logs. It’s tough reading that stuff. The handwriting alone could make you cry. It’s all in old-fashioned Spanish too. How would you like to read page after page of old English?”

“Not very much,” Chloe says, bringing four plates with warm, almost-raw steaks to the table. She serves Derek and me, puts a plate on the floor for Max and sits down next to me with her steak. “But Peter already found that sentence about the antidote. He can show you where he found it.”

Both Max and Derek dive into their food immediately, Derek cutting and eating pieces as fast as he can, Max biting and chewing chunks of his. Claudia, who’d rather go hungry than eat bloody meat, stares from one to the other as they wolf down their food and shakes her head.

“Just because I can speak and read the language,” she says, “you both think of me as Spanish. I am, but you forget that my family came here hundreds of years ago with Don Henri. I only really learned to read Spanish after I took it in college. Maybe we should get someone else to read through the stuff, someone who knows the language better than I do.”

Chloe looks at me. I shake my head. “We can’t have an outsider reading my father’s words.”

Claudia nods. “I can understand that. I read about some pretty strange things in the log books. Don’t worry—none of it bothered me. In the Gomez family we’re sort of raised to ignore anything weird about you DelaSangres. But it sure could shock anyone out of the family . . . maybe not the Tindalls, but anyone else,” she says.

I cut a large piece of meat, put it in my mouth, chew and swallow it before I say, “I’m sure you’ll find the answer somewhere in my father’s writings.”

“I certainly hope so,” Claudia says.

“Of course, old man,” Derek says, pushing his now empty plate away from him. “An antidote won’t be worth spit if we’re killed by those damned Pelks.”

“You’re a ray of sunshine today, aren’t you?” Chloe says to her brother.

He waves his hand as if to dispel her words. “Your husband got me into all of this. I had a perfectly nice nest, with three perfectly good females. Not the best food, mind you, but more than enough to eat, and nothing but sex expected from me.” Derek points at me. “He had to come, bonking the srrynn leader’s daughter, riling Mowdar up with his resistance, killing the only person who knew how to make our antidote and dragging me over here with him—where I may either die of poison or be killed fighting. And you expect me to be happy about that?”

I frown at Derek. “You would have lived that way the rest of your life?”

He nods. “I would have given it a try. It certainly beats dying.”

“No one here’s going to die!” I growl, wishing I felt as sure as my words sounded.

Once we finish breakfast, Derek leaves the table, sits in my reclining chair and falls instantly asleep. While Chloe carries the plates back to the kitchen and busies herself there, I go to the seaweed bag. Opening it, I take out my father’s journal and feel it for dampness. I let out a sigh when I find it dry.

Searching through the pages until I find the one with the word
antidoto
, I think about all that Derek said. I can’t fault the man for worrying. When I think about all that must happen and how little time we have to pull it off, I despair too.

I find the page and hand the book, open, to Claudia. “Read from there,” I say, pointing to the sentence at the bottom of the page. Standing next to her, I watch as she reads the paragraph and the next page.

She looks up at me and says, “Nothing yet, Peter. Please stop staring. Go away.”

Chloe looks up from the sink when I come into the kitchen area. I walk over and try to hug her, but she blocks me with her hand and shakes her head. “You’re going to have to understand this is hard for me,” she says. “I am glad you’re back. I was thrilled to see you. But I’m furious too . . . and hurt.”

“But I already told you it was against my will.”

“Apparently my brother doesn’t think so. Didn’t he just say you were bonking her?”

“Chloe, I didn’t want her. . . .”

“When was the last time you had sex?”

I sigh. If I could lie to my wife, I would at this moment. But I have never wanted to have a relationship based on untruths. “Last night,” I say. “But I had to. . . .”

Chloe turns back to the sink, opens the spigot and begins washing the dishes. “You had to,” she says, her voice acid. “I’ll tell you something else you have to do. Get away from me—right now!”

Max follows me downstairs and out onto the veranda. He stays at my side as I pace from the ocean side to the stairs leading down to the dock. One minute, rage makes me want to rush back to the great room and shout to my wife how unfair she is. The next minute, sorrow overtakes me. I chose nothing that brought me to this point. I wanted nothing but the life I had with my wife and children.

Finally, I walk over to the gumbo limbo tree overlooking the harbor where I buried Elizabeth and sit down in its shade, my back to its trunk. Max lies down next to me, dropping his massive head in my lap. Studying the harbor, scratching behind the dog’s ears, Max making a sound halfway between a sigh and a growl as I do, I wonder just where the Pelk attack will come from and how I can defend my wife and myself.

Just the process of thinking it out seems to diminish my sorrow. I remember my father’s saying,
“Action always trumps despair,”
and I smile.

Thanks to Lorrel, I know where their safehold lies. But I can’t be sure that they’ll attack directly from there. I look back to the veranda and the large oak door that opens to the nearest of my father’s arms rooms. I can make good use of his ancient cannons, rifles and deck guns, and the barrels of gunpowder, canisters of shot and stacks of lead cannonballs stored with them.

But I also think it might be good to have Claudia arrange some modern firepower. I check my watch and nod when I see it reads only ten forty-five. Plenty of time left for other things. I turn my mind to Jordan Davidson and what I need to do to finish with him.

“Chloe,”
I mindspeak.

“No, Peter. I told you I don’t want to deal with you right now.”

“I love you and you love me, right?”
I mindspeak.

“Of course. This isn’t about that.”

“Good. Then let’s not deal with me or what I did right now. Let’s table the whole thing until after we take care of everything else. I need your help. We have to prepare for the Pelks’ attack. I think we have a couple of days’ leeway, but it could come any time after that. I’d like to settle this whole mess with
The Weekly Dish
and Pepe Santos’s lawsuit before it happens.”

Chloe mindspeaks,
“Why bother with that now?”

Max’s ears pick up when I sigh.
“Because, if the Pelk win, our children will have troubles enough without having to contend with the legal system and the media over my problems. I think I have it all pretty much worked out. I’m going to wake Derek. After that I’m coming back upstairs to go over what I need with you and Claudia.”

I’d been prepared to offer my brother-in-law money or to threaten him if necessary, but to my surprise, after I spell out everything I need, Derek says. “Why not, old man? It doesn’t sound very difficult to me.”

“And you’re sure you remember how to do it?” I say.

“Bloody well sure,” he says. “You know our kind doesn’t forget things like that.”

It pains me to stop Claudia from reading through the journal, but I say, “I need you to put the journal down for now. I’d like you to go to shore for me and arrange some things.”

“No problem, boss,” she says, closing the book. “I haven’t found anything useful in there yet anyway.”

I nod. “I need you to get in touch with Toba. Didn’t you say that she and Pepe like to go fishing a lot?”

Claudia looks at me. “Yeah, I did, I think.”

“Can she get him to go fishing at night, when and where I want?”

“Probably.”

“ ‘Probably’ won’t work,” I say. “I want to know exactly when they can be available. Also, I want to know what type of gun she uses. Your father did say she’s a great shot, didn’t he?”

Claudia nods. “She’s won a lot of marksmanship awards. I think she can shoot most anything, but she carries a small automatic.”

“I need you to find out the make and model.”

“Okay, boss,” Claudia says.

“And Jordan Davidson still has his own boat?”

“A Robalo 28. He keeps it behind his house.”

“Can you get one of your operatives to do something so he can’t use it in the next few days? Something that could be easily reversed?”

“Sure.”

“You said he likes to play with guns. I need to know whether he has any registered.”

Claudia nods and I tell her the rest of what I want from her and Toba. She stares at me a moment and then says, “You sure all this will make whatever you’re planning work?”

“I think so,” I say.

After Claudia leaves, Chloe says, “Okay, now tell me what’s going on.”

I explain all of it to her—my plans for Derek, how I intend to use Toba and Pepe, how all of it should come together.

“And Derek went along with it?” she says.

“Without even one question.”

Chloe shakes her head. “It sounds as if it could work. Do you really think we can pull this off?”

“With luck, maybe,” I say.

She smiles. “So now what?”

“I have to call Ian. I thought maybe you’d take a swim with me after that.”

“You want to go swimming now?”

I grin. “I want to show you something.”

Ian Tindall picks up his phone as soon as his secretary tells him who’s on the line. “Damn you, Peter,” he says. “Where the hell have you been?”

I smile, say into the receiver, “Hi, Ian. Good to hear from you too.”

“Look, don’t expect sweetness and light from me. Your disappearance has made it unbelievably difficult for me to do my job for you. Missing the deposition is probably the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. Gil Martinez is sick to his stomach over it. When he ran for district attorney we were his biggest contributors. And because of you, he had to ask for a warrant for your arrest.”

“Believe me, Ian, it wasn’t my choice to go. But I’m back now and I want to get things worked out.”

“Are you out on Caya DelaSangre? No, don’t tell me that. Just tell me what your plans are.”

“That’s why I’m calling. I want to come in and surrender, get the whole thing over with.”

“Good. I can arrange it with Gil. We can probably have you in and bailed out within minutes, before the media even gets wind of it.”

“No,” I say, picturing Ian’s expression, the red flush that will soon start spreading across his pale face. “I want the media there. I want Martinez to do the whole show, the perp walk, the fingerprints, everything. And I want to refuse bail. . . .”

“What? Are you crazy? There’s no need for that.”

“I want you to tell Martinez and the press that I’m refusing bail to show how unfair this accusation is. I want as many people as possible to know I’m in jail.”

“It makes no sense, Peter.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense to you. It makes sense to me. Can you negotiate my surrender without it leaking?”

BOOK: The Seadragon's Daughter

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