Trophies (47 page)

"I was sitting here, thinking of you," he
said.

"Were you?" The sunlight through the windows
drenched me in warmth.

His smile deepened. "That's not particularly
surprising under the circumstances, is it? I intended to ring you
and apologize. I was attempting to decide where to begin when you
entered. You see, William and I had — well, a long talk this
morning."

Although his voice remained gentle, I could
easily picture him ripping William's face off. I winced. At the
same time, I couldn't help feeling a certain satisfaction. For the
first eleven years of my life, I'd watched our father give
preference to my elder brother; this partial settling of that score
eased something tight and ugly deep inside me.

"When I saw you the other night at the
gallery, I was shocked," he said into our pause. "You were always
such a happy, playful child. I couldn't imagine what turned you so
hostile."

I remembered myself as selfish and prying,
into everything and particularly where I shouldn't be. Perhaps
William and my father weren't the only ones who needed to
reconsider my role within the family.

"I had hoped," he continued, his voice
lowering almost to a whisper, "for a full family reconciliation,
but I see now that may not be possible."

I shrugged and his eyes widened again, this
time with surprise. My relationship with William, with its layers
of rage and love and resentful sibling rivalry, was rather more
complicated than the one with my father. But the occasional flashes
of sympathy and understanding I felt for William indicated that, if
we were able to work through the rage, as it seemed Father and I
had done, the potential for peace existed there, too.

Somewhere along the line, while Father had
spoken, the remaining tension eased between us. We had much to
discuss, he and I, much to understand and forgive. But the
willingness to simply quit fighting and accept one another sat down
with us in the lobby of the bed and breakfast, and I knew that no
matter how we argued in the future, our relationship would never be
quite the same again.

Which gave me the confidence to ask the
question that preyed on me.

"Father, there's one thing I must know."

His chin lifted.

I chose my words carefully; if this was
something he didn't know about his little sister, I didn't want to
be the one to clue him in. "I've learned a lot about Aunt Edith
since she died, the sort of thing one doesn't expect, you
know."

An angry sort of understanding flashed across
his face. I paused: it was at this point during our conversation at
the law office that he'd lost his temper. But it seemed he, too,
now understood that old grudge, for he drew a long, steadying
breath and nodded.

"What hold did she have over you so you
didn't return to fetch me?"

For the first time he looked away, dropping
his gaze to the walking stick he clutched between his knees. "Think
back to the reading of the will."

"She left you an embroidered lace
handkerchief."

"It wasn't your mother's."

I'd imagined a lot of possibilities. But this
one had never crossed my mind. I managed to keep my voice from
rising. "You abandoned me to keep an affair quiet?"

Even as I said it, I knew I wasn't being
fair. He hadn't hesitated to admit his impropriety when I asked.
Ashamed he might be, he was also determined to be honest.

More honest than Aunt Edith, who never
explained that real life was the cost of the magical lure she
dangled.

His inspection of that stick became even more
concentrated. "I was a coward and a bloody fool. Can you forgive
me?"

His honesty didn't help. My re-awakened anger
throbbed unabated.

But Caren had asked for the security guard's
name; she'd humanized Ezra Higdon, who died leaving a wife and
four-year-old son. She'd reminded me the victims are human, too,
and the rawness of that vulnerable moment still coursed through my
veins. I stared at my father's immobile profile and the quiet depth
of his pain joined it, seventeen years of wondering if his son
would ever speak with him again. It became a part of me, too. In a
way, I'd murdered the proud barrister my father had been, the same
way Aunt Edith had murdered Ezra Higdon. But instead of killing him
swiftly with a well-aimed bullet, I'd cut his heart with a thousand
tiny strokes and left him to bleed.

Perhaps I wasn't like Aunt Edith at all.
Perhaps I was worse.

I fought off the tumbling emotions as I would
a flashback and focused. Had I ever felt like a coward and a fool?
Yes, indeed. The spotter had been in my sights and a dead man
walking when the machine-gun fire had ratcheted into the sandbags
beneath me and I'd flinched. If I'd held firm and not been faked, I
might have had him. And that moment lived on in my waking
nightmares and might do so for the remainder of my life.

Father stared at the knob of his walking
stick, a man equally disappointed with himself and awaiting my
judgment.

In my heart, our peace treaty was
ratified.

"I can't say I've never been either." It was
easier, I found, to forgive him than myself. "Remember your
suggestion, that night at the gallery? We don't have to get into
this right now. Let's save this particular argument for a rainy
day."

When his eyes widened in an entirely
different manner, I knew the awkward moment was past.

Off to our right, a newspaper rattled. We
glanced aside together. Sherlock stood at a distance out of hearing
for anyone else, propped against a wall reading some touristy
publication. His gaze remained on the glossy pages and never turned
toward us.

"Perhaps I shouldn't keep you," Father
said.

But seeing Sherlock, patiently or otherwise
waiting while Father and I worked things out, reminded me of more
current events. I swung back toward him and the window and leaned
forward, propping my elbows on my knees. "Father, what can you tell
me about a man named Basil Glendower?"

five years earlier

At the end of two physically and emotionally
satisfying years in the Army, something distressing happened.

I became bored.

At first I attempted to ignore it, as I tend
to ignore everything until it explodes in my face, and simply
carried on. I was on General Holmes' staff at that time, spending
far too much of each day reading and summarizing despatches and
reports, and my original notion of revenge against Aunt Edith began
recurring at discouragingly shorter intervals. My new image of
myself — strong, capable, dependable, resolute — crumbled a tad
about the edges, and soon I realized either the boredom or the new
image would be vanquished.

Also on staff, at this base that shall remain
nameless, was a light colonel named Greentree (not his real name).
He wasn't a bad sort, and I had early learned to respect his
intellect and erudition, but he was cursed with an utter lack of
that trait termed a sense of humor, and the larks of the younger
officers surrounding him, myself included, tended to bring out a
regrettable amount of choler in his relationships therewith. After
a public dressing-down regarding certain puns I'd buried in one
utterly unimportant summary that no one else was ever going to read
— and I'd considered them rather snazzy, myself — after that
incident, I say, I realized that my furtive and vindictive younger
self, still hanging about somewhere deep inside me, had already
decided upon his punishment.

Later that morning, Lieutenant-Colonel
Greentree's office keys unaccountably vanished. As these devices
accessed not only his personal office but also certain filing
cabinets, storage areas, and even cipher machines and safes, this
loss was not considered amusing. All employment within the
department came to a crashing halt, and everyone therein proceeded
to rip the building apart brick by brick. Needless to say, quite in
vain.

My uniform pocket, meanwhile, felt rather
heavy. And increasingly hot.

That midnight, while Greentree and those who
couldn't escape continued the search, I rappelled down the outside
wall of his apartment building, let myself into his bedroom, and
planted the ruddy things in the trouser pocket of the uniform he'd
worn the previous day. It seemed a decent enough plan at the time,
and my skills weren't so rusty that I left any fingerprints that
would incriminate me. And I must admit to a sensation of
sopping-wet-rag relief as well as giddy satisfaction as I let
myself out of the building at the end of the operation, carrying my
tools camouflaged in a gym bag and crossing the parking lot to my
own housing at around one in the morning.

But at the edge of the lot, a soft slow drawl
spoke out of the impenetrable shadows at the foot of the boundary
wall. "You know, I generally mind my own business."

I froze, my heart in my teeth. If Greentree
learned of this stupid little prank, my promising Army career would
have a rather precipitant conclusion.

"But this time, I gotta ask."

Two occasionally painful years in the Army
had taught me never to respond to an unidentified voice with the
first words that crossed my impolitic mind. I slipped a penlight
from my pocket, snapped it on, and traversed the wall until I
located a nearly recumbent body, slid so far down I wondered the
spine remained intact, neck propped against a rucksack, one
reasonably presentable combat boot crossed atop the opposite knee.
The collar tabs on the uniform keeping said body decent sported the
eagles of a full colonel — well beyond my little lieutenant's range
of flight — and the bottle in the attached left hand, the only one
visible at my angle, could not be described as half full by the
most optimistic of fools.

I didn't recognize his face, rugged as if
sculpted by a sandblaster and dominated by hooded dark eyes that
peered into the light without blinking. But confidence of that
genus only came from experience earned in the field, not from
sitting behind a desk nor from any bit of metal decorating a
uniform, and a knot of worry began eating at my stomach. If this
one turned out to be a fire-eater, even an inebriated fire-eater,
he would be much more than I could handle.

My own face was touched by the lights of the
parking lot, the ones casting the shadows in which he hid, and I
didn't doubt that my sudden tension was perfectly obvious to
him.

In my dark civilian clothing, I didn't spring
to attention. But I did bring my heels together and straightened my
shoulders. "Sir?"

He belched softly. "'Scuse me. What the hell
were you doing on the side of that building at this hour of the
frigging night?"

The knot in my stomach proceeded to expand
exponentially. There wasn't going to be any fooling this one. I
didn't try. "It's personal, sir."

One of his eyebrows canted. After a moment
his head tilted back, in much the same manner that my father and
William used to look down their Roman noses at me. But with the
angle of his entire anatomy and the alcoholic relaxation about his
mouth, the effect was considering, and I could detect no trace of
contempt in his mien.

"A bet? A prank?"

I glanced aside. "Something like that."

He popped his eyebrows, up and down in a
quick little motion that implied acceptance of my answer. "Most
people would have tried to deny it."

I was growing to like him, even if he did
have the drop on me, and my tension was diminishing in an inverse
ratio. There was something here that reminded me of Aunt Edith, and
not a spark in sight. "Couldn't see any point to that
exercise."

Something flickered in his eyes that the
little penlight didn't catch. He offered me the bottle.

Discretion over valor or hygiene. I took a
swig. To my astonishment, it wasn't cheap whiskey but an incredible
old brandy, smooth, mellow, fiery, and probably worth more than
every stitch I wore, even throwing in the wallet and all its
contents.

"Oh. Oh, that's good."

"You like that?"

"It hits every spot I've got."

He grinned lazily, then showed me his right
hand, clutching a pair of night-vision binoculars that had been
hidden at his side. "Been watching you for an hour," he said,
suddenly apologetic. "Best entertainment I've had all year."

This particular gig was fully up, it seemed.
For some reason, I couldn't get worried. "May I ask your
intentions, sir?"

He set the binoculars aside and reached.
"Gimme a hand up."

It cost both of us a fair amount of effort to
haul his big frame erect, but once there, he maintained position
without weaving, even when he stretched, even when he retrieved the
rucksack and binoculars from the ground. "What's your name?" he
asked.

I told him. From this perspective, I put his
age at mid-thirties or just past, which made his rank nothing less
than incredible. I was doubly glad I hadn't tried to fool him.

"Lieutenant Ellandun," he repeated, tasting
the syllables. As if they reminded him, he took the bottle from me
and slugged from it. "The robber." He cocked an eye at me, again
consideringly. "You work for my dad, don't you." It wasn't a
question.

I froze. Office rumor had mentioned General
Holmes' son, with the inclusion of epithets ranging from "one
helluva soldier" to "out of his ever-loving mind." On one point did
everyone agree: what this man had achieved in the Special Forces
gave a whole new meaning to the term feats of arms.

At that thought, for some reason, my heart
beat faster.

"Yes, sir," I said.

He handed me the bottle and while I took my
turn — worth it no matter how the adventure ended — he stuffed the
binoculars into his rucksack. "Old Greentree's keys had to be
somewhere," he said to the empty air of the parking lot.