Carla Neggers - The Mist

Near Kennebunkport, Maine

8:19 p.m., EDT

August 26

Lizzie took the stairs up to the wraparound deck of her small house built on the rocks near the mouth of the Kennebec River. The tide was going out, pleasure craft and working boats still making their way to the harbor. She let herself into her house-one main room with very little separation of space-and opened up the windows and doors, the evening breeze pouring in through the screens. She walked out to the deck and shut her eyes, listening to the sounds of the boats and the ocean at dusk.

The rambling house her grandfather Rush had built was two hundred yards up the rockbound shore. After an architect friend had walked through it with her, he’d sent her a book of matches in lieu of a plan for renovations. Lizzie loved Maine, but her father avoided it, just as he did Dublin and, to a lesser extent, Boston. “The water’s always too cold,” he’d say. But memories haunted him here, too. Nostalgia not just for what had been but what might have been.

Lizzie was ten when she’d first fantasized her father was a spy and fifteen when she knew he was one. He always deflected her questions without giving a direct answer, even as he taught her how to defend herself, how to spot a tail, shake a tail, do a dead drop-how to think in such terms.

Only when she went to Ireland herself was Lizzie certain that her mother hadn’t tripped on a cobblestone after all, and the circumstances of her death-his inability to stop it-were why her father had taught her how to jab her fingers into a man’s throat. “Don’t be bound by dogma,” he’d say. “Never mind niceties or rules when you’re in a fight for your life. Trust your instincts. Do what you have to do to get out alive.”

Lizzie opened her eyes, noticing a cormorant swooping low over the calm water. Her grandmother, famous for her frugality, had spent as much time as she could in Maine during her last years. She liked her crumbling house the way it was, liked the memories it conjured up for her.

“Sitting here by myself, the memories are like a warm, fuzzy blanket,” she’d told her only granddaughter. But that was a rare display of sentimentality for Edna Whitcomb Rush, and in the next breath, she’d said, “Tear this place down when I’m gone. It’s the location I love.”

Lizzie had smiled. “It’s magical.”

“Ah, you have your mother’s romantic soul.”

“Do you believe she tripped on a cobblestone, Gran?”

It was a question Lizzie had asked before, but her grandmother only answered it then, at the very end of her long, good life. “I’ll ask her when I see her in heaven, Lizzie, but no. No, I never believed your mother simply tripped and fell. But,” her grandmother had continued, some of her old starch coming back into her voice, “I do believe that whatever happened to her, justice was rendered. Your father would have seen to that.”

“What was she like?”

“She was very much like you, Lizzie.”

The sound of a car pulled her out of her thoughts and drew her attention to the gravel driveway down to her left. She walked to the railing and leaned over as a familiar sedan pulled to a stop behind the one she’d borrowed from Martha Prescott.

Jeremiah’s car.

Jeremiah who now owed her, Lizzie thought as she watched Will Davenport get out on the driver’s side and look at the darkening horizon. She waited, but no one else appeared.

At least he’d come alone.

She remained on the deck, listening to his even footsteps on the stairs. When he came around to her, she put both hands on the back of an old Adirondack chair she’d collected from her grandmother’s house farther up the rocks. “You got here even faster than I anticipated.”

“Does that surprise you?”

“No. Not even a little.” It was true, she realized. “You’re more rugged looking up close. I can picture you humping over remote mountains with a heavy pack and a big gun.”

He smiled, walking toward her. “I see your imagination and flare for dramatics are at work again.”

“Ha. SAS and MI6 equal heavy pack and big gun.” She frowned. “Jeremiah told you where to find me? I have blabbermouth cousins.”

“Who adore you and whom you adore in return.”

“Serves me right for using them to run interference.”

But she saw the strain of the past day at the corners of his eyes as he squinted out at the Atlantic, seagulls crying in the distance, out of sight. “Is this your place, or does it belong to your family?”

“It’s mine. My great-grandfather Rush was a Maine fisherman. His son did well and married a Whitcomb from Boston, and he came back here and built a big-but not too big-house. I own it, too. No one else in the family wanted it after my grandmother died two years ago.”

Will turned and leaned against the railing, his back to the ocean, the evening breeze catching the ends of his hair. His eyes were more blue-green now, dark, observant. “Maybe they wanted you to have it.”

Lizzie dropped her hands from the chair and stood next to him on the railing, facing the water. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. My family-I love them all, Will.” She watched a worn lobster boat cruise toward the river harbor. “My parents planned to raise me here. Then my mother died, and my father-well, things changed.”

“Things always change.”

She glanced sideways at him. “How much do you know about me?”

That slight smile again. “Not nearly enough.”

She hadn’t expected the spark of sexuality in his eyes, but it was there. And it pleased her even as it unnerved her. “I looked up your family in Burke’s Peerage and Gentry.”

“You were in London in July,” he said.

“Josie’s been busy following my trail?”

“Very. I spoke to her on my drive up here.”

“I imagine the FBI will want to talk to her.”

“I gave them her number.”

“Supposedly you were in Scotland fishing when I was in London. I was careful to stay off any spy radar. I met people at a hotel bar where you and Simon often meet for a drink, and I walked past your sister’s wedding dress shop. I never saw her-I wouldn’t do that.” Lizzie shrugged, stood back from the deck railing. “I was just the hotelier on a London holiday.”

“I never knew,” Will said.

“That was the idea. I didn’t get close enough for you to find out.”

“You should have.”

Lizzie turned and faced him. “Maybe you should go back to Boston and join forces with Simon and the rest of the FBI, do what you can from there to find Myles Fletcher.”

“It’s Abigail Browning we need to find. Myles isn’t important compared to her safety.”

“Will…this place is my refuge. I’ve never…” She paused, tried to smile. “I’ve had my cousins over for lobster rolls, but otherwise this is where I come to be alone.”

“I get your meaning, Lizzie. I’m invading your space.”

“‘Invading’ is too strong. I had ants once. Now, that was an invasion-”

He touched a finger to the corner of her mouth. “I can see you battling ants.” He trailed his fingertip across her lower lip. “Are you all right, Lizzie?” he asked softly.

“Sure. Yes.” Her heartbeat quickened, but she tried to ignore its meaning. That she was reacting to this man. That she’d lost all objectivity with him. “I’m not the one lying dead in an alley or recovering from shrapnel wounds or-” But she squeezed her eyes shut at sudden images of where Norman could have Abigail Browning, what he could be doing to her. She tried to block them as she opened her eyes. “I don’t want him to hurt her.”

Will tucked his fingers under her chin and raised it so that she was meeting his eye. “Whatever happens won’t be your doing. Guilt gets us nowhere.” He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her softly. “I’ve been thinking about doing that for some time now.”