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  mystery novels. He liked to barbecue, he wanted grandchildren.”

  It was tearing him apart, every word, every memory. “There is no defense,” he said. “No absolution.”

  She stepped forward. Every emotion inside her coalesced and focused on one point. “He took photographs of her. Of her face. Her eyes. Of her body. Nudes. He posed her, carefully. Her head tilted down toward her left shoulder, her right arm draped across her midriff.”

  “How do you—”

  “I did see.” She closed her eyes and spun away. Relief was cold, painfully cold. An icy layer over hot grief. “I’m not crazy. I was never crazy. I didn’t hallucinate. It was real. All of it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Impatient, she dug her cigarettes out of her back pocket. But when she struck the match, she only stared down at the flame. “My hand’s steady,” she muttered. “It’s perfectly steady. I’m not going to break now. I can get through it. I’m never going to break again.”

  Worried that he had pushed her over some line, he moved toward her. “Jo Ellen.”

  “I’m not crazy.” Her head snapped up. Calmly she touched the flame to the tip of her cigarette. “I’m not going to shatter and fall ever again. The worst is just the next thing you have to find room for and live with.” She blew out smoke, watched it haze, then vanish. “Someone sent me a photograph of my mother. One of your father’s photographs.”

  His blood chilled. “That’s impossible.”

  “I saw it. I had it in my hands. It’s what snapped me, what I couldn’t find room for. Then.”

  “You told me someone was sending you pictures of yourself.”

  “They were. It was with them, in the last package I got in Charlotte. And afterward, when I was able to function a little, I couldn’t find it. Whoever sent it got into my apartment and took it back. I thought I was hallucinating. But it was real. It existed. It happened.”

  “I’m the only one who could have sent it to you. I didn’t.”

  “Where are the pictures? The negatives?”

  “They’re gone.”

  “Gone? How?”

  “Kyle wanted to destroy them, them and the journal. I refused. I wanted time to decide what to do. We argued about it. His stand was that it had been twenty years. What good would it do to bring it all out? It could ruin both of us. He was furious that I would even consider going to the police, or to your family. The next morning he was gone. He’d taken the photographs and the journal with him. I didn’t know where to find him. The next I heard he’d drowned. I have to assume he couldn’t live with it. That he destroyed everything, then himself.”

  “The photographs weren’t destroyed.” Her mind was very clear and cold. “They exist, just like the ones of me exist. I look like my mother. It’s not a large leap to shift an obsession with her to one with me.”

  “Do you think I haven’t thought of that, that it hasn’t terrified me? When we found Susan Peters, and I realized how she’d died, I thought ... I’m the only one left, Jo. I buried my father.”

  “But did you bury your brother?”

  He stared, shook his head slowly. “Kyle’s dead.”

  “How do you know? Because the reports say he got drunk and fell off a boat? And what if he didn’t, Nathan? He had the photographs, the negatives, the journal.”

  “But he did drown. He was drunk, stumbling drunk, depressed, moody, according to the people who were with him on the yacht. They didn’t realize he was missing until well into the next morning. All of his clothes, his gear were still on the boat.”

  When she said nothing, he spun around her and began to pace. “I have to accept what my father did, what he was. Now you want me to believe my brother’s alive, that he’s capable of all this. Of stalking you, pushing you until you collapse. Of following you here and . . .” As the rest slammed into him, he turned back. “Of killing Susan Peters.”

  “My mother was strangled, wasn’t she, Nathan?”

  “Yes. Christ.”

  She had to stay cold, Jo warned herself, and go to the next step. “Susan Peters was raped.”

  Understanding the question she was asking, Nathan closed his eyes. “Yes.”

  “If it wasn’t her husband—”

  “The police haven’t found any evidence to hold the husband. I checked before I came back. Jo Ellen.” It scraped his heart to tell her. “They’re going to be looking more closely into Ginny’s disappearance now.”

  “Ginny?” With understanding came horror. The cold that had shielded her melted away in it. “Oh, no. Ginny.”

  He couldn’t touch her, could offer her nothing. He left her alone, stepped out onto the porch. He put his hands on the rail and leaned out, desperate for air. When the screen door squeaked, he made himself straighten.

  “What was your father’s purpose, Nathan? What were the photographs to accomplish if he would never be able to show them to anyone?”

  “Perfection. Control. Not simply to observe, and preserve, but to be a part of the image. To create it. The perfect woman, the perfect crime, the perfect image. He thought she was beautiful, intelligent, gracious. She was worthy.”

  He watched fireflies light up the dark in quick, flirtatious winks. “I should have told you, all of you, as soon as I came here. I told myself I wanted—needed—time to try to understand it. I justified keeping it to myself because you had all accepted a lie, and the truth was worse. Then I kept it to myself because I wanted you. It got easier to rationalize it. You’d been hurt, you were wounded. It could wait until you trusted me. It could wait until you were in love with me.”

  His fingers flexed and released on the railing as she stood silent behind him. “Rationalizations are usually self-serving. Mine were. After Susan Peters, I couldn’t ignore the truth anymore, or your right to know it. There’s nothing I can do to change it, to atone for what he did. Nothing I can say can heal the damage he did to you and your family.”

  “No, there’s nothing you can do, nothing you can say. He took my mother, and left us all to think she had abandoned us. That single selfish act damaged all of our lives, left a rift in our family we’ve never been able to heal. He must have hurt her.” Jo’s voice quavered so she bit down hard on her lip until she could steady it. “She must have been so frightened, so confused. She’d done nothing to deserve it, nothing but be who she was.”

  She drew a long breath, tasted the sea, and released it. “I wanted to blame you for it, Nathan, because you’re here. Because you had your mother all your life. Because you touched me and made me feel what I’d never felt before. I needed to blame you for it. So I did.”

  “I expected you to.”

  “You never had to tell me. You could have buried it, forgotten it. I never would have known.”

  “I’d have known, and every day I’d have had with you would have been a betrayal.” He turned to her. “I wish I could have lived with that, spared you this and saved myself. But I couldn’t.”

  “And what now?” Lifting her face to the sky, she searched her heart. “Am I to make you pay what can’t be paid, punish you for something that was done to both of us when we were children?”

  “Why shouldn’t you?” Bitterness clogged his throat as he looked out into the trees, where the river flowed in secret silence. “How could you look at me and not see him, and what he did? And hate me for it.”

  It was exactly what she had done, Jo thought. She had looked at him, seen his father, and hated. He had taken it, the verbal and physical blows, without a word in his own defense.

  Courageous, Kirby had called him. And she’d been right.

  How badly he’d been damaged, she realized. She wondered why it had taken her even this long to realize that however much harm had been done to her, an equal share had been done to him. “You don’t give me much credit for intelligence or compassion. Obviously you have a very low opinion of me.”

  He hadn’t known he had the strength left to be surprised. He stared at he
r in disbelief. “I don’t understand you.”

  “No, you certainly don’t if you think that after I’d had time to accept it, to grieve, I would blame you, or hold you accountable.”

  “He was my father.”

  “And if he was alive, I’d kill him myself for what he did to her, to all of us. To you. I’ll hate him for the rest of my life. There will never be forgiveness in me for him. Can you make room to live with that, Nathan, or are you just going to walk away? I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.” She rushed on before he could speak, her words fast and hot. “I’m not going to let myself be cheated. I’m not going to let the chance of real happiness be stolen from me. But if you walk away, I’ll learn to hate you. I can do it if I have to. And no one will ever hate you more than I will.”

  She stormed back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  He stood where he was for a moment, struggling to absorb the shock, the gratitude. But it wasn’t possible. He stepped back into the house and spoke quietly. “Jo Ellen, do you want me to stay?”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?” She dragged out another cigarette, then furious, hurled it away. “Why should I have to lose again? Why should I have to be alone again? How could you come here and make me fall in love with you, then cut yourself out of my life because you think it’s best for me? Because you think it’s the honorable thing to do. Well, the hell with your honor, Nathan, the hell with it if it cheats me out of having what I need. I’ve been cheated before, lost what I needed desperately before, and was helpless to stop it. I’m not helpless anymore.”

  She was vibrating with fury, her eyes fired with it, her color high and glowing. He’d never seen anything, or anyone, more magnificent. “Of all the things I imagined you’d say to me tonight, this wasn’t it. I’d prepared myself to lose you. I hadn’t prepared myself to keep you.”

  “I’m not a damn cuff link, Nathan.”

  The laugh came as a surprise, felt rusty in his throat. “I can’t decide what I should say to you. All I can think of is that I love you.”

  “That might be enough, if you were holding on to me when you said it.”

  His eyes stayed on hers as he walked toward her. His arms were tentative at first, then tightened, tightened until he buried his face in her hair. “I love you.” Emotions swamped him as he drew in the scent of her, the taste of her skin against his lips. “I love you, Jo Ellen. Every part of you.”

  “Then we’ll make it enough. We won’t let this be taken away.” Her voice was low and fierce. “We won’t.”

  HE lay very still, hoping she slept.

  The woman beside him, the woman he loved, was in danger, the source of which was too abhorrent to him to name. He would protect her, with his life if necessary. He would kill to keep her safe, whatever the cost.

  And he would hope that what they had together survived it.

  There was no avoiding it. They had stolen a moment, taken something for themselves. But what haunted them, from twenty years before and now, would have to be faced.

  “Nathan, I have to tell my family.” In the dark she reached for his hand. “I need to find the right time and the right way. I want you to leave that to me.”

  “You have to let me be there, Jo. It should be done your way, but not alone.”

  “All right. But there are other things that need to be handled, need to be done.”

  “You need protection.”

  “Don’t try to go white knight on me, Nathan. I find it irritating.” The lazy comment ended on a gasp when he hauled her up to her knees.

  “Nothing happens to you.” His eyes gleamed dangerously in the dark. “Whatever it takes, I’m going to see to that.”

  “You’d better start by calming yourself down,” she said evenly. “I’m of a mind that nothing happens to either of us. So we have to start thinking, and we have to start doing.”

  “There are going to be rules, Jo. The first is that you don’t go anywhere alone. You don’t step off your own porch by yourself until this is over.”

  “I’m not my mother, I’m not Ginny, I’m not Susan Peters. I’m not defenseless, or stupid or naive. I will not be hunted for someone’s sport.”

  Because a show of temper would only wound her pride and make her angry, he latched on to calm. “If necessary, I’ll haul you off the island just the way I hauled you here tonight. I’ll take you somewhere safe and I’ll lock you in. All it’ll take to avoid that unhappy event is your promise not to go anywhere alone.”

  “You have an inflated image of your own capabilities.”

  “Not in this case I don’t.” He caught her chin in his hand. “Look at me, Jo. Look at me. You’re everything. I’ll take anything else, I’ll face anything else, but I won’t face losing you. Not again.”

  She trembled once, not from anger or fear but from the swift, hard flood of emotion. “No one’s ever loved me this much. I can’t get used to it.”

  “Practice—and promise.”

  “I won’t go anywhere by myself.” She let out a sigh. “This relationship business is nothing but a maze of concessions and compromises. That’s probably why I’ve managed to avoid it all this time.” She sat back on her heels. “We’re not going to stand around and just let things happen. I’m not the only woman on the island.” She trembled again. “I’m not Annabelle’s only daughter.”

  “No, we’re not going to stand around and wait. I’m going to make some calls, gather any information on Kyle’s accident that I might have missed before. I wasn’t thorough. It wasn’t an easy time, and I might have let something slip by.”

  “What about his friends, his finances?”

  “I don’t know a lot about either. We weren’t as close the last few years as we used to be.” Nathan rose to open the windows and let in the air. “We drifted into different places, became different people.”

  “What kind of a person did he become?”

  “He was ... I guess you’d call him a present-focused sort. He was interested in now—seize the moment and wring it dry. Don’t worry about later, about consequences or payment. He never hurt anyone but himself.”

  It was vitally important that she understand that. Just as important, Nathan realized, that he understand it himself. “Kyle just preferred the easy way, and if the easy way had a shortcut, all the better. He had a lot of charm, and he had talent. Dad was always saying if Kyle would put as much effort into his work as he did his play, he’d be one of the top photographers in the world. Kyle said Dad was too critical of his work, never satisfied, jealous because he had his whole life and career ahead of him.”

  He paused, listened to the words replay in his head. And suffered their implication. Was it competition? A twisted need for the son to outdo the father? His head began to pound again, hard beats at the temples.

  “I’ll make the calls,” Nathan said flatly. “If we can eliminate that possibility, we can concentrate on others. Kyle might have gotten drunk, showed the photos to a friend, an associate.”

  “Maybe.” It wasn’t an area Jo wanted to push just then. “Whoever is responsible has a solid knowledge of photography, and quite a bit of skill. It’s inconsistent, occasionally lazy, but it’s skill.”

  Nathan only nodded. She’d just described his brother perfectly.

  “He would have to be doing his own developing,” she continued, relieved to be able to concentrate on practical steps. “Which means access to a darkroom. He must have had one in Charlotte, and then when he came down here, he’d have needed to arrange for another. The package I got here was mailed from Savannah.”

  “You can rent darkroom time.”

  “Yeah, and that might be what he did. Or he rented an apartment, a house, brought in his own equipment. Or bought new. He would have more control, wouldn’t he, if it was his own place, his own equipment?” Her eyes met Nathan’s. “That’s what drives this. The control. He could go back and forth between the mainland and the island. He’d be in control.”

  To
control the moment, to manipulate the mood, the subject, the outcome. That is the true power of art. His father’s words, he remembered, neatly written on the page.

  “Yes, it’s about control. So we check photo supply outlets, find out if someone ordered equipment to outfit a darkroom and had it shipped to Savannah. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick.”

  “No, but it’s a start.” It was good to think, to have a tangible task. “He’d likely be alone. He needs the freedom to come and go as he pleases. He took pictures of me all over the island, so he’s wandering around freely. We can keep our eye out for a man alone with a camera, though we’re just as likely to jump some harmless bird-watcher.”

  “If it was Kyle, I’d know him. I’d recognize him.”

  “Would you, Nathan? If he didn’t want you to? He’d know you’re here. And he’d know that I’ve been with you. Annabelle Hathaway’s daughter with David Delaney’s son. There are some who might see that as coming full circle. And if that’s so, I don’t believe you’re any safer than I am.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN