Taylor Smith - The Innocents Club

But her strokes were becoming more ineffectual. It wasn’t just fatigue and the loss of blood. Her sodden dress was weighing her down. It would have to go, Renata decided. Her pumping legs kept her afloat while she wrestled out of it, wincing with pain. All she had on now were her sagging underthings, but her bra straps cut into her wounded shoulder. Her panties, too, drooped with the weight of the water they’d absorbed. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought ruefully, slipping out of them, as well.

Then, she swam on, holding down rising anxiety by sheer force of her legendary indomitable will. It worked for a while, but between her injured shoulder and flagging strength, she made slow progress. Inevitably, panic began to creep up, and in spite of herself, Renata began to cry. She was so weary! She’d been paddling for what felt like hours toward the nearest boat, yet it never seemed to get any closer.

They must be moving off, leaving me all alone out here! Oh, God, I can’t do this!

Her father’s impatient voice rose from the deep recesses of her memory: Stop whining and get on with it, girl! We make our own fate. Don’t get mad, get even.

He was right. Terrible to be so weak, Renata thought, angry with herself now. She’d become too sedentary, that was the problem. Her self-indulgences had once included scuba diving in the Mediterranean, all-night dancing and many, many men, but now they ran to more sedate pleasures—the latest gallery opening, a very good cognac, dinners at the White House. Certainly nothing that would prepare her to leap off a boat and swim, bruised and bloodied, toward a shoreline that was—what? Miles off, it must be.

She breasted a rising swell, breathing hard through gritted teeth, but her waning strokes no longer carried her forward against the rolling sea. Renata paused to catch her ragged breath and give her aching arms a rest.

Just for a moment. I’m so tired.

She lay back, arms spread, a tiny, naked crucifix on the water’s surface. Something warm seeped over her right breast, a tepid rivulet trickling over her shoulder and down into her armpit. Her fingers probed the wound’s sticky edges. It should hurt, she thought, but it didn’t anymore. The narcotic effect of sheer adrenaline, she supposed. She closed her eyes, trying not to imagine how much blood she’d lost. How much was still ebbing away into the great, insatiable ocean.

From somewhere deep inside her head came another voice, low and drawling, offering stoic reassurance: Just a flesh wound, ma’am.

John Wayne, she thought, smiling. He used to have a big house just across the Newport inlet from their own summer place. Her father had been a stocky, barrel-chested little man, even in his elevator shoes, but his swaggering stride had always lengthened a little when he walked next to that famous, side-loping amble. In the last few years of their lives, the two men would often disappear together for a day of drinking and deep-sea fishing. The Duke and Daddy—what a couple of old bears.

Renata rocked on the waves, eyelids drooping, a profound lassitude spreading through her body. A sleepy yawn built inside her, but she stifled it, forcing her eyes open.

Stay awake!

Overhead, the sky arced like a great, speckled dome. It was beautiful this far out, away from the city lights. Lazily, she traced a constellation with her finger, her thoughts reaching into the past for names she’d learned from Nikolos, the white-haired Greek who’d crewed for so many years on her father’s yacht.

Look, Renata, there is Sagittarius, the archer. And, there, up high, next to Vega. Do you see him? It is Hercules, with his foot on the head of Draco, the dragon.

Good old Niko. So full of stories. Bunk, her father said. Had he perhaps been just a little jealous, Renata wondered, of her love for that kind old sailor with a thousand tales?

Listen! Do you hear it?

What, Niko?

The celestial symphony—music of the cosmos.

I don’t hear anything.

You must listen harder, little one. It is the music made by the turning of the stars. The music that the angels dance to.

Renata smiled, closing her eyes so she could concentrate. The warmth at her shoulder was Niko’s big, gentle hand, and she was a child again, lying on the smooth, rolling deck of her father’s yacht. So peaceful. So—

A rude bump interrupted her reverie. A surfboard? Out here? Then, another bump. And this time, a sharp, stabbing sensation in her ribs. Renata opened her eyes and looked around, irritated.

Get away! You’ve got the whole ocean, for heaven’s sake!

Another bump knocked her sideways. She righted herself in the water, but not before a thousand tiny razors sliced her left foot—a quick sensation, gone almost before her brain had time to register it.

Oh, for pity’s sake! Move on! Now, before I call the police!

That did the trick. The ruffians scattered, and Renata was left in peace, rocking on the waves. Good riddance.

She was so very tired. She needed to rest. And then, when she had her strength back, there was something else she’d been meaning to do. What was it?

She lay back on the water, eyes fluttering as she searched the stars for the answer. They were so beautiful. Her trembling hand reached up. Almost close enough to touch. And then—

Oh, Niko! I think I hear it. I do! I hear the symphony!

Renata Hunter Carr was not remotely dead when Mariah Bolt first laid eyes on her. Far from it. That condition was soon to change, of course, and Mariah would be the agent of that change. For those who believe in fate, the wheel was set inexorably in motion three days before Renata’s ill-fated swim.

Three days and nearly three thousand miles away…

Jack Geist, deputy director of Operations, acted as if there were nothing unusual about summoning Mariah to his office on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

His secretary turned the handle on the big wooden door leading to the inner sanctum, her other hand raised to Mariah, indicating she should wait. Through the crack between the door and the frame, Mariah saw the deputy at his desk, flipping through a stack of files. When the DDO didn’t look up, the other woman cleared her throat softly.

“She’s here, sir. Ms. Bolt? Who you asked me to call in?”

He raised his head slowly, looking distracted and irritated, and gave her a curt nod. She scuttled back out, nodding to Mariah, then pulling the door shut behind her as Mariah entered.

Geist’s demeanor went through a transformation. He got to his feet and came around his massive desk, hand extended, lips stretching wide in a smile. “Mariah Bolt! I don’t think we’ve ever had the pleasure. Jack Geist.”

The smile stopped well short of his pallid green eyes, she noticed, taking his hand. He fixed her with a long, piercing look that could have been interpreted in any number of ways, none of which put her at ease.

His skin had the leathery texture of a pack-a-day man. When he finally released her hand and waved toward the leather sofa and chairs on one side of his wood-lined office, Mariah caught the scent of stale cigarettes only partially masked. She tried to picture the deputy huddled in the center courtyard with the rest of the agency’s nicotine junkies, but the image refused to come. He didn’t look the type to mingle with the masses, for one thing. Also, in her experience, covert Ops people played by their own rules, so she found herself looking around the office for the ashtrays she knew had to be there, despite the building-wide smoking ban—certain he’d have dismantled the office smoke detectors.

“Thanks for stopping by,” Geist added, following her across the room.