Sea of Suspicion Page 2

Lily jumped off and dashed up the steps to the kitchen door, tearing off her helmet.

  “Mom. Mom. Nick’s here!” She gave him a cheeky grin, this woman-child who hid her resemblance to her long-dead sister beneath fancy dress and war paint.

  He remembered Lily the day of his wife’s funeral. Ten years old—black coat, black hair, blue eyes, arsenic-white skin—the perfect miniature incarnation of his wife, Chrissie. He’d wanted to reach out to that child, but he’d had nothing to offer.

  The front door opened and a woman who looked much older than her sixty-odd years hurried down the steps, unsteady on her feet. A feeling of dread fingered his heart. He curved his mouth into an easy half smile and swallowed the rough sensation of suffocation. “Emily.”

  From the distance in the woman’s blue eyes, he knew he’d left it too long. Again. He’d stretched their relationship as thin as he dared. Lily chatted, mortaring the wounds, bandaging the blows left by tragedy.

  He stepped toward Emily and opened his arms, shame burning through him when the old woman sank into his embrace like a soft, frail dove. He squeezed her gently, held her away so he could examine the new wrinkles engraved on her skin.

  “How are you, Em?”

  She sniffed and blinked as if hoping to hide the redness of her eyes. Odd, considering grief was the thing she lived for. Her fingers plucked her cardigan.

  “It’s always difficult this time of year.” She frowned at him, her bottom lip reproachful. “I thought you’d forgotten.”

  Regret and remorse cut to the bone like a butcher’s blade. Old pain twisted in his chest until he could barely breathe.

  The twelfth anniversary of Chrissie’s death.

  The twelfth anniversary of his wife’s murder.

  “I never forget, Em.”

  “He’s still out there.” Her eyes bulged, her hands clawed his sleeve. “Waltzing around like nothing happened, like she didn’t even exist.” Vehemence infused the words with hatred, juxtaposed against such soft features. “All these years and the police never caught him. You promised me, Nick! You promised he’d be punished.”

  He hugged Emily’s shoulders and they turned to walk inside. Into a house full of memories he didn’t want to remember and she didn’t want to forget. She started sobbing. All these years, and her grief was still as fresh as it had been the day they’d stood in the rain and buried her other daughter.

  It didn’t matter what it took. He was going to bring the bastard who’d killed his wife to justice. And now he knew exactly how he was going to do it.

  Chapter Two

  The lecture theatre was dark, the room sickeningly hot. Susie took a sip of water. Restless noises told her the students were finished and she flipped to a new slide that everyone began reverently copying.

  “Now I want to show you an example of synchronous, mass and epidemic reproduction among broadcast-spawning marine invertebrates, otherwise known as coral reefs.” She flicked to photographs she’d taken during her last post-doc position in Australia. Bright purple sea fans, translucent tunicates, orange sea stars dazzling against bone-white staghorn coral.

  “In Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, five different reefs—stretching more than five hundred kilometers—spawn over the same few nights between the full and last moon in late spring.” She lifted her voice, trying to drive imaginations, to instill the magic of this immense biological event. “More than one hundred different animal species release eggs and sperm into the ocean over the same few days.”

  It never failed to amaze Susie how organisms that couldn’t talk, text or date managed to get it together for one big humongous ejaculation to continue the species. There was no parental care with coral reefs. No tangled web of family drama.

  A bead of perspiration rolled the length of her spine and soaked into the band of her pants. “That’s all for today, folks. Any questions?”

  As she flicked off the computer and accidentally plunged them into total darkness, a voice called from the back of the room.

  “What about the effects of global warming?”

  Susie tightened her lips as she searched for the light switch, her fingers getting snagged in the projector cable. She wished she could see because she didn’t recognize the voice. It was an important topic. “Climate change could have a catastrophic effect on marine systems. Some research suggests it already has—”

  “So how do you feel about your mother’s poor record on environmental issues, given she’s announced she’s thinking of running for her party’s nomination?”

  Susie’s lungs felt as if they’d solidified in her chest. Her mother had what? Her breath finally came out as a hiss. She found the light switch and flicked it on. Zeroed in on a thickly built man in an argyle sweater sitting at the back, his camera poised in one hand, pen in the other.

  The British gutter press.

  “Are you a student enrolled in this class, sir?” Her New England accent was suddenly as harsh as the Scottish weather. The journalist shifted, not at all perturbed, and she realized he was gearing up for more questions. She retrieved her flash drive and picked up her notes.

  “Did you get this position at St. Andrews because of your mother’s influence in Washington?”

  Susie narrowed her eyes. She’d worked long and hard for this position and no one was going to say she’d got it through nepotism. But she reined in her reaction because a reaction was exactly what the slimeball wanted.

  “See you next week, guys. This class is over.” And she stalked up the stairs, stopping at the back row.

  “If you enter my classroom again, sir—” she stabbed a finger toward the journalist’s chest, well aware of all her students’ eyes on her, “—I will call security.” She stormed past him and out of the lecture hall.

  Back in her office, she closed the door and put in a call to Senator Darcy Cooper. All she got was an aide who said her mother was currently in a television studio giving an interview and she’d pass on the message ASAP. Susie hung up and tried her father, but got bumped straight to voicemail. He was probably on the golf course getting in a quick nine holes before court.

  She stood and paced.

  Every detail of her mother’s background would be raked over, every detail of Susie’s background dug into like trash. Susie cradled her face in her hands.

  What was it about the woman who’d carried her in her body for nine months that trapped them in this adversarial relationship? Why wasn’t love enough? The phone rang and she grabbed the receiver. “Susie Cooper.”

  “Susie.” It was Darcy Cooper. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.” Her mother’s voice was smooth as political silk. “This time difference is inconvenient, although the U.K. is better than Australia, I suppose.”

  “Maybe when you’re president you can dictate time, Mother, but I don’t think the Brits are going to like it.” Susie tapped her short fingernails on the desk.

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. Ah.” Susie’s fingers stopped tapping, poised over the hardwood. “Is it true?”

  “That I’ve announced I’m thinking of putting my hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination?” The pause had a quality of calculation. “Yes.”

  “And I get to hear this from a reporter?” Susie dropped her head to the desk, pulling out her headband, running her fingers over her skull. “Why, Mom? Why would you do this to me?”

  “Not everything is about you, missy.” Her mother’s tone took on a self-righteous indignation Susie loathed.

  Her insides felt as if they’d dissolve into jelly. Thirty seconds talking to her mother and she was fifteen years old again. But she couldn’t pretend everything was okay. Her mother’s decision to make a bid for the most powerful position in the western world brought everything Susie didn’t dare think about rushing back into focus.

  “What about…?”

  “An old friend of yours died last week and you can be damn sure he never told anyone about it.”

  Clayton was dead? Susie gripped t
he handset tighter. She didn’t know how to feel about that. She’d loved him once. Stupid teenage love, but love nonetheless. Silence crossed the void filled with seven thousand days’ worth of sorrow. Her mother’s laugh was a fresh blow to an old wound.

  “So it’s over. All taken care of. Don’t mention the subject ever again.”

  Nerveless fingers dropped the phone back into its cradle. Shame and regret boiled inside her until they crammed her pores and poured out of her body like tears. Her airway felt constricted and she couldn’t breathe. She sank to her knees trying to force air in and out of her lungs. Slowly, steadily, her heartbeat eased back to normal.

  Normal? Ha!

  There was nothing normal about Susie’s life. Nothing normal about losing her dive buddy, nothing normal about her mother running for president and nothing normal about seducing her mother’s mentor when she was fifteen years old and stupid.

  The phone rang with shrill demand. Still shaking, she pushed out her office door to head for the seafront, but the sight of a little girl examining a map of the world brought her to an abrupt halt. The child, dressed in a denim tunic covered in pink appliqué flowers, turned to stare at her with big blue eyes.

  And there it was.

  Everything Susie wanted. Everything she’d abandoned.

  The little girl’s eyes bugged and she waddled back to her daddy, a colleague, who sent Susie a distracted smile as he rifled through his mail.

  “How you doing, Susie?”

  She fixed a brilliant smile on her face as the little girl clawed her daddy’s trousers, hiding from the crazy lady. “I’m just great.” And if that wasn’t the biggest, fattest lie in the universe, she’d eat her own liver.

  The week had been a bitch and it wasn’t finished with him yet. The barman served him straight away. Two pints of pale ale. If ever there was a day he deserved a beer…

  Nick put the drinks on the table, went to the jukebox, choosing the Dixie Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice” and “Satisfaction” by the Stones. He took the bench seat facing the door, set his back to the wall and waited.

  Ewan McKnight sat opposite. His shoulders sagged as he raised his glass to his lips and sipped. “I’ve got half an hour before I need to get home.”

  Nick met his partner’s gaze before they both looked away. Ewan’s home life sucked. Not that the man wanted pity. It wouldn’t help. The only thing that would help was a cure for multiple sclerosis which went far beyond Nick’s limited medical capabilities.

  He knew what it was like to lose someone you loved, but at least he had someone to blame for Chrissie’s death. He just hadn’t proved it yet.

  “Made my bed…” the Chicks crooned and in walked Professor Jake Sizemore along with the woman Nick had caught checking him out that morning. Lily’s Ph.D. supervisor, a newly arrived Yank with long blond hair and a perfect oval face. Nick allowed a smile to bend the edges of his lips as he watched her head to the bar closely followed by a horde of alcohol-deprived biologists from the Gatty Marine Lab. All these years and they still followed the same ritual, at the same watering hole.

  Pain shot into his skull from clenching his jaw so hard.

  “What?” Ewan glanced over his shoulder and gave a gusty sigh as he saw Jake Sizemore. “One of these days he’s going to sue you for harassment.”

  Nick shrugged. Twelve years. He stared into his beer as a drop of perspiration rolled down his temple. Twelve long years. And there wasn’t a day he didn’t wish he could go back and do things differently. Because if he had, maybe Chrissie would have stayed and the tragedy of her death wouldn’t shadow every single step he took.

  His gaze veered to Dr. Susie Cooper. Tall, slim, self-contained in an aloof way that usually turned him off. But Lily was taken with her new boss and the kid wasn’t easy to impress. Neither was he.

  Dr. Cooper picked up a half pint of lager and took a swallow, the pale perfection of her throat rippling delicately. She wasn’t just pretty. She had that moneyed, sophisticated quality. The Grace Kelly of marine biologists, compared to Jake Sizemore’s Hannibal Lecter.

  But there was nothing relaxed about her. Her shoulders were rigid. The arm not holding her beer was pressed stiffly over her waist, clawed fingers clutching her hip. She didn’t seem to be aware that half the men in the bar were ogling her in that fitted white blouse you could just see the outline of lacy lingerie beneath and clingy black trousers that hugged a first-class ass. She wasn’t his type, and yet something about her made him ache.

  Too long without sex.

  He shifted uncomfortably. Tired-looking postgrads milled around, dressed in worn-out jeans and ugly sweaters, ubiquitous in their affection of cheap beer and the Friday night buzz. More than a decade ago Christina walked in the same door having put in an eighty-hour week for less than you got on the dole.

  Nick stripped off the top layer of his beer mat, eyeing tonight’s crowd. A dark-haired, smooth-faced Latino brushed Dr. Cooper’s shoulder and she adjusted her position away from him with a pinch-lipped smile. Then she jerked slightly, her eyes flaring as if she’d received a shock.

  Narrow-eyed, Nick assessed the guy, noted the lanky build and the boyish head of curls. Figured he must be the student Lily had told him about, the kid who’d been strutting around the Gatty pulling anything with a pulse. Maybe Dr. Cooper liked getting it on with younger men. Wouldn’t be the first time a lecturer had done a little extra-curricular activity.

  The Rolling Stones’ signature guitar beat came on the jukebox, and a nasty kind of happiness crept into Nick’s lungs. He expelled it in a smile. Cautiously, like a snake scenting danger, Jake Sizemore turned his head to flick a look around the bar. Did he remember today was the anniversary of Chrissie’s death? Nick raised his glass when he caught the man’s eye, but Jake spun away.

  “You’re playing with fire, pardner.” Ewan’s lips quirked.

  “I can’t help it.” Nick smiled back, but his heart wasn’t in the banter. He wasn’t interested in anything except revenge. And Susie Cooper.

  Curious, Ewan glanced behind him and Nick noticed his colleague’s gaze slide around Susie’s figure and coil around her ass like a whip. Not that he could blame the man. Ewan hadn’t had sex in years and wasn’t likely to get any this year or next. Solitaire didn’t count.

  Jake Sizemore put his hand on Susie’s arm and everything inside Nick sharpened to a fine point. Susie retreated an inch, breaking the contact, and though she smiled politely at the murdering bastard, she didn’t look happy about the invasion of her personal space.

  Grace Kelly wasn’t anything like Chrissie had been. Nick took a big swallow of beer and forced the ale down as the tension in his throat increased. Chrissie had been warm and vivacious until her Ph.D. supervisor had gotten his claws into her. After that, their marriage had turned gray and ugly, floundering as she’d withdrawn and dedicated herself to her research. When she’d confessed to an affair with Sizemore, Nick had kicked her out, and twelve years ago today she’d been hauled up in a South African fisherman’s net, dead.

  An accident, the South African authorities had declared. How else could you classify being attacked by sharks?

  Twelve years of hatred made each chamber of his heart contract harder, building in intensity. Chrissie’s short life had been wasted. Their marriage and love turned into an empty mockery of the vows they’d made. Had she been conscious? Desperate? Frightened? Had she begged for her life in the moments before that first predator had dragged her beneath the surface, thrashing and twisting?

  Most days it was the not knowing that picked at his brain like a dirty finger scratching a scab.

  Nick held his hand steady, forced himself to pick up the glass without his fingers shaking. Alcohol raced down his throat and sweat heated his back. All he wanted was to toss the glass through the nearest window, or better yet, into Jake Sizemore’s face. But that wasn’t who he was anymore. That scared, violent little boy had vanished years ago.

  Nick stared at Susie,
who suddenly returned his gaze with a defiant blue glare that told him she’d been aware of his regard the whole time. He held back a smile. Something about her piqued his interest. And that was a damned shame.

  “Who’s the bird?” Ewan drained his glass, popping it on the beer mat with a look of regret as he wiped foam off his lips.

  Nick shrugged as if he didn’t care, finished his own pint and collected both glasses, never dropping the woman’s gaze. “New lecturer in the Gatty.”

  “You’re not going to—”

  “Oh yes, I am.” He had plans for Susie Cooper.

  He climbed to his feet as Ewan rolled his eyes. Nick placed the empty pint glasses on the bar, passed close enough to Professor Jake Sizemore to smell the fear.

  He nodded to Susie, giving her just the hint of a smile. He knew the nuances of body language and recognized the reluctant attraction in her gaze. She tilted her head slightly, watched him from under her lashes. He was careful not to touch Sizemore as he moved through the crowd, but his fingers brushed Susie’s elbow and the connection exploded through his body like a blast of gunfire.

  Tracy Good walked along the seafront and looked up at the Gatty’s brightly illuminated windows. Just a few hours ago that lovely new Brazilian student had gone down on her in the library where anyone could have barged in.

  Oh, my. Her eyes crossed at the memory.

  The waves crashed on the beach, rolling backward with the pull of the tide. She shivered. She liked him. Liked the way his eyes sparkled as he’d watched her from his knees. Liked the way he’d given her an orgasm but hadn’t wanted anything in return. Even now her body hummed with delicious little zings of leftover pleasure.

  Ditching her virginity at twenty-three had been an enlightening experience. She’d discovered being bad was a damn sight more satisfying than being good had ever been. A year later, the sex was better than ever.

  A seagull gave a raucous cry from the rooftop and made her jump. It was only early evening, but the sun had gone down hours ago.