Jayne Castle - Deception Cove

“Whatever you have on draft is fine,” he said.

Maud selected a glass. The ghost hunters at the bar went back to leering at the giggling young women. The energy level in the room went down.

Drake looked at Alice. “Thanks for the character reference.”

“You’ve got five minutes to convince me you are not going to be a problem for me,” she said.

“The thing is, I probably am going to be a problem. But on the positive side, I may be able to help you with your current unemployment situation.”

She sat back and watched him warily. “You need a box-jumper?”

He thought about it and then smiled. “That’s as good a description as any. A couple of very important items have disappeared. We need to find them, and fast.”

“We?”

“Let’s start at the beginning.”

“Where is that, exactly?”

“The last time you were on Rainshadow Island.”

Alice went very still. She got a little blurry around the edges. It was suddenly hard to focus on her. Drake was pretty sure it was not deliberate. Her instinct to disappear when she felt threatened was a natural aspect of her talent. He jacked up his senses a bit so that he could see her clearly once more and waited.

She took a sharp breath and snapped back into focus. Her expression gave nothing away, but it didn’t take any psychic talent to know that her anxiety level had spiked.

“What does this have to do with Rainshadow?” she asked, her voice unnaturally even.

Before he could answer, Maud bustled around the end of the bar with two glasses in her hands. She set the beer in front of Drake and the white wine in front of Alice.

“Eggs and pizza will be out in a minute,” she said to Alice.

“Thanks.” Alice gave her a grateful smile.

Drake waited until Maud was out of earshot.

“Eggs and pizza?” he asked.

“The eggs are for me. The pizza is for Houdini.”

“Got it,” he said. “All right, to get back to our business. You do know about the Sebastian-North legend, I assume.”

“I do now.” Alice took a small swallow of the wine and lowered the glass. “But I had never heard about it until a year ago.”

“A year ago?”

“That’s when I found out that I was descended from a certain Nicholas North.”

That stopped him for a few beats. “I know you grew up in an orphanage, but didn’t you know anything about your family history?”

“Nope.” She drank some more wine. “The most that anyone at the orphanage could recall was that I arrived there at about age three after my mother was killed in a car accident.”

“What do you mean, that was all anyone could recall? There must have been some records when you were taken in.”

Alice shrugged. “There was a fire in the records office at the orphanage when I was four. What little information there was relating to my family history was lost.”

“What about your father’s people?”

Alice gave him a cold smile. “Nothing. The general theory at the orphanage was that I was the product of a one-night stand or a short-term affair in which neither party had kept current with their anti-pregnancy shots.”

Drake said nothing.

Alice raised her brows. “They do happen, you know.”

“What happens?”

“One-night stands between two people who don’t take precautions.”

He realized he was flushing a little. “I’m aware of that.”

“Society and the legal system do everything possible to make sure no one grows up without a family, but kids still get orphaned.” She paused. “I realize that sort of thing doesn’t happen in the Sebastian family world, though.”

“No,” he said, refusing to let her sarcasm get to him. “It doesn’t. We take care of our own.”

Alice gave him a cool smile. “How very traditional.”

“Moving right along, how did you find out about the connection to Nicholas North?”

“Long story. Involves my dead husband.” Alice drank more wine. “I don’t like to talk about him.”

“We’re going to have to discuss him at some point because I think he’s linked to this thing.”

Alice eyed him coldly. “What thing would that be?”

“The treasure that North and Sebastian buried on Rainshadow. It’s gone missing.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You think I stole it, don’t you?”

He watched her closely. “Did you?”

“No.” She held up one hand, palm out. “And before you ask, no I can’t prove it.”

“Do you know who did steal it?”

“Uh-huh.” She studied him over the rim of the glass. “Fulton Whitcomb.”

“Your husband.”

“Dead husband. And it was just a Marriage of Convenience so it doesn’t really count. Death results in an automatic dissolution of the marriage. The surviving spouse does not inherit any property. She has no legal or financial obligations pertaining to her husband’s estate. It’s like the marriage never happened.”

“Unless there are children from the union,” Drake said softly.

Children changed everything. The birth of a child into an MC automatically converted what was otherwise a dressed-up romantic affair into a full-blown Covenant Marriage. Dissolving a Covenant Marriage was a legal, financial, and social nightmare. His brother, Harry, had discovered that the hard way.

“Yes, well, there were no children,” Alice said coolly.

“Because both of you kept current with your vaccinations?”

“I certainly kept mine up-to-date. Not that it mattered.”

Drake heard a tiny mental ping warning him that this was important. “Why didn’t the shots matter?”

“Because getting pregnant would have been biologically impossible under the circumstances.” Alice drank the last of her wine and set the glass back on the table. “Fulton and I never had sex.”

Maud came out of the kitchen carrying two plates. She set the pizza down on the bar. Houdini waved ecstatically and chortled.

Maud chuckled and carried the platter of eggs, toast, and potatoes to the booth where Alice and Drake sat. Alice looked at the repast as though it were a diamond necklace.

“Thanks, Maud,” she said. “This is just what I need.”

Maud went back to her work behind the counter. Drake folded his arms on the table and watched Alice dive into the eggs. It occurred to him that she was hungry because she had used up a lot of energy that evening with the magic act and then defending herself in the alley. She was probably exhausted.

She swallowed a bite of eggs and began munching on a slice of toast. She paused mid-munch, glaring at him.

“What?” she said around a mouthful of toast.

“Nothing,” he said. “I know you’re hungry. I’ve been there. Go ahead. You can tell me your side of the story when you’ve finished. I’ll tell you mine while you eat.”

She nodded and went back to her eggs.

“Here’s where things stand on Rainshadow,” Drake said. “The treasure, which consisted of three dangerous Old World crystals of unknown properties, was stolen sometime during the past eighteen months. Recently one of the crystals was recovered deep inside the Preserve on the island.”

Alice ate some of the potatoes. “Just one?”

“The other two crystals are still missing. We believe they are also on Rainshadow.”

“We?”

“My family.”

Alice frowned. “Well, that’s weird. I wonder why someone took them back to Rainshadow after going to the trouble of killing Fulton and stealing the stones.”

“Is that what happened?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Not to get too personal, but why would you enter into an MC with Whitcomb if you didn’t intend to sleep with him?”

Alice raised her brows. “Because I was an idiot.”