The Wild Ways (Gale Women #2) - Page 8
A MELIA CARLSON'S CELL PHONE rang at 9:02. Her private number. The one very few people had.
Catherine Gale's last payment and the note had been gone when she got to the office that morning, having already spent an hour with her personal trainer and what felt like twice as long trying to choke down a wheat grass/ banana/blueberry smoothie – anti-oxidants and potassium and she had no idea what the hell the wheat grass was in aid of, but considering what she'd paid for it, it had better work.
Her cell phone rang again. And a third time.
Paul appeared in the open doorway. For the first time since she'd hired him, he looked like he hadn't gotten enough sleep. On one level, she approved; overworked assistants gave a person credibility. On another level, bags under anyone's eyes weren't attractive.
Four rings.
"Boss?"
"I've got it." Always three rings to show she wasn't at anyone's beck and call. "Close the door on your way out." She had no idea why she'd waited for four. "Hello."
"The fourth ring is just self-indulgent," a familiar voice said. "What is it we need to talk about?"
Amelia took a deep breath and reminded herself that Sister Benedict was long dead. "I don't care what the relationship is between you and the woman Two Seventy-five N has hired to find those pelts, but I will not have her walking into my office like she owns the place."
"You won't?"
She could hear Catherine Gale's smile, and only years of practice in boardrooms and at drill sites surrounded by the good ol' boys of the oil industry kept her tone level. "No, I won't. It appears my people can't keep her away any more than they can prevent your coming and going." Contrary to common opinion, flattery was not a universal motivator, but subtle flattery could prime the pump. "I dealt with her yesterday, but I have no doubt she'll regroup and try again."
"You dealt with her?"
The question sounded disappointed, but Amelia had no idea if it was because she'd been able to deal or because Catherine Gale had wanted to do it herself. "Yes. I dealt with her, and I'd appreciate it if you could keep your relatives from wasting my time."
"I am not responsible for my relatives."
"You are responsible for this one showing up in my office."
"How so?"
The longer any conversation continued without a discussion of payment rearing its head, the less likely payment would be required. She would much prefer not having to pay Catherine Gale to deal with this. "You came to me."
"You had a problem I could solve."
"And now I have another one. The difference being, you caused this problem." Amelia had a certain skill at reading silences and this one, this one sounded amused.
"All right, here's what I'll do." Catherine Gale sounded more amused than the silence had. "I'll throw some distractions her way. If she can handle them with time enough left over to bother you, well, you're on your own."
Trying to make one last point while people were hanging up looked desperate. Amelia waited until the dial tone made Catherine Gale's final statement before placing her phone on the desk. She wanted to have Paul set up a meeting with Dr. Hardy, but that wouldn't move the wellhead fifty feet out of the Atlantic or move the Minister of the Environment off his fence.
"Ms. Carlson? The Honorable Cal Westbrook called. Personally. He wants to set up a lunch date."
"Isn't one of his responsibilities the Sydney tar ponds agency?"
"Yes, it is."
"Come up with a believable excuse."
"On it."
On the one hand, it wouldn't hurt to have another cabinet minister on her side. On the other hand, a perceived association between Carlson Oil and Cape Breton's enduring environmental disaster was not something she wanted to encourage.
"Ms. Carlson? Since Two Seventy-five N's press conference supporting the Hay Island well has gotten excellent coverage – I've sent you the list, current as of eleven minutes ago," he added before she could ask, "have you considered returning the pelts?"
"Returning the pelts?" First Catherine Gale's pale reflection, now this.
"Because they've done what you requested."
"And they'll maintain that as long as we have the pelts. Is there anything else?"
"It's just, I got the impression, from the press conference, that I was at . . ."
"Are you drunk?"
He looked startled. "No, of course not."
He wasn't lying. "Then get to the point."
"The owners of these pelts have an emotional attachment to them."
Amelia rolled her eyes. "Of course they do. That's what makes this effective blackmail."
"So you won't . . ." He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. "Of course not. You have a manicure scheduled for eleven and there'll be a reporter from CBC Halifax outside the building when you leave for lunch. He'll be looking for a spontaneous response to the press conference. I've prepared your statement. And the CRA has opened a docket on Mathew Burke."
"Should I know a Mathew Burke?"
"The union rep you wanted dealt with."
"Of course."
He paused halfway out the door, looking almost judgmental, shook his head, and kept moving.
Amelia rethought her position on Paul and sleep deprivation. It seemed as though baggy eyes were the least of the effects.
Charlie woke up to the sounds of Mark and Tim in the bathroom, saving water. The fiddler in her head played "Never was Piping so Gay" and given the whole piping/plumbing thing, Charlie supposed she would have done the same had their positions been reversed. Closer, she could hear Shelly up on the sofa bed, snoring softly. The light against her eyelids said it was close to noon, and she could smell grass fires as her uncles burned off the thatch in the ditches.
Wait . . .
Opening her eyes, she came face-to-face with Jack, cocooned in his sleeping bag, mouth open, a smudge of ash on his cheek.
Someone would've screamed by now if it was serious, she reminded herself and poked his forehead.
His eyes snapped open instantly, flared gold, then softened to annoyed teenage hazel. "What?"
"You came in."
"Too light too early," he muttered, flopped over, and went back to sleep.
Charlie ticked off another fact on her Jack-as-teenager list – doesn't stress about burning the house down if he wants to sleep in. Since it would clearly be a while before she got to use the bathroom, or would want to use the bathroom if she'd matched up the correct actions to the sounds, she joined him.
Paul had never felt this way about anyone. He thought he'd been in love before – Janis Rinscind in grade six, who'd shoved him off the end of the pier and he'd had to ditch his jacket and shoes to make it back to shore, and Bonnie O'Neill in the summer between first and second year university who'd lost her hat at Peggy's Cove and he'd almost been swept away getting it back – but what he felt now, what he felt for Eineen Seulaich, was the difference between looking at a puddle and looking at the ocean.
Janis and Bonnie, they'd been puddles.
Eineen was like the ocean – deep, mysterious, too beautiful to describe.
The sea is a harsh mistress had been one of his father's more persistent homilies. Paul had never understood it. The sea had always been nothing more than a large body of salt water containing rapidly depleting fish stocks that some men chose to risk their lives for.
He understood it now. Palm sweaty against the plastic case, he waited for Eineen to answer the phone.
"Hello?"
It wasn't her voice. "Is Eineen . . . She gave me . . ." The words got stuck behind his need to speak with Eineen. His need to know nothing had happened to her since he'd left her at dawn. His need to know the entire night hadn't been a dream no matter how much the bruises on his knees suggested it had been very real. Pebble beach; not his first pick for that kind of activity although at the time, he hadn't noticed the rocks.
"Paul, right? Hang on, I'll get her."
"Thank you." Sitting in his car in the dry cleaner's parking lot, he remembered how his name in her mouth had sounded like a storm at sea, sweeping up and shattering everything in its path.
"Paul." Today, it was like waves sliding up over the shore, quiet and welcoming.
"Where are you?"
"With my cousin in Louisburg."
"I need to see you."
"I know."
"Ms. Carlson won't give the pelts back until the drilling has begun."
"I told you."
"I had to ask."
She sighed, and Paul swore he felt her breath against his cheek. "I know."
He thought she'd tell him they'd have to take them back themselves, steal them back, but she said nothing. He listened to his engine purr and his air conditioner hum and thought about the gas he was using and the oil that gas had come from and how there was better than ninety percent chance there were billions of barrels of it under the sea by Hay Island – even if only 500 million were recoverable with today's technology, and said, "I know where they're hidden. We can get them tonight. We can't get them now," he added quickly before she could protest. "I have meetings all afternoon and three calls to Fort McMurray I can't make until after five, but then I'll pick you up and we'll get them, I promise."
"You would turn against your company for me?"
His lips twitched into what was almost a smile. "You told me to."
"You could have refused me."
"No . . ." He ran his thumb along the leather seat, thought of the soft skin of her inner thighs, remembered the empty eyes of her seal pelt, and started talking again before things got weird. Weirder. "How could I? You're the reason I'm breathing." It was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing he'd ever said. And the truest.
"But only after your day's work is done."
He could call the office, tell Ms. Carlson something had come up he had to deal with personally. She'd assume it was to do with his job, with her, and it wasn't like he couldn't – didn't – do a good portion of his job in the car. No, wait, he couldn't, he had to deliver her dry cleaning so she could wear her favorite silk blouse to dinner with Mac Reynolds from the Canadian Environmental Law Association. The blouse was the perfect blend of professional and might-be-interested and he'd been on the lookout for a couple more like it, but for now . . .
"Paul."
"Don't ask me to walk away from this job. It's . . ." It wasn't his father's job. It wasn't up before dawn, and a body destroyed by the cold and the wet, and still not enough money to make ends meet.
"I haven't. I won't."
He believed her. And he chose to ignore the subtext that said she wouldn't have to.
The Louisburg stage for the Samhradh Ceol Feill was a solid seasonal structure near the Fort's Visitor's Center that took advantage of the Fort's parking. It had a backstage area actually large enough for the bands to transition smoothly and a stage manager who seemed to know what she was doing. Although Grinneal had drawn a Saturday evening spot, the entire band had taken advantage of their all access passes to check it out. When Tim didn't swear at the electrical, and Mark approved of the roadies who'd be helping Jack, Charlie figured they were set.
Actually, some of the roadies looked familiar.
"Those two played in Mabou," Shelly told her, pointing at a couple of scrawny teenagers staggering past with cases of bottled water. "They volunteer and get a chance to go on stage between bands. Most of them are solos, but they can have up to three in a group. Their names go into a lottery; winners sit out the next draw but go back in the draw after. The festival stage offers a lot of exposure."
"Sure," Charlie snorted, "if you want to be an itinerant musician dependent on the kindness of strangers, which I'm not saying is a bad thing," she continued as Shelly's brows went up. She spread her arms. "I mean, hello, knowing of what I speak."
"It's not a bad life." Shelly grinned. "In fact, it's a fine life."
"No show tunes!" Mark snapped, swinging around to face them, sunlight glinting on his holographic Sharon, Lois, and Bram medallion. "I end up in one more drunken ode to Rodgers and Hammerstein and I will put my head through my floor tom."
"It's three in the afternoon. Who's drinking?"
As Shelly began naming names, Jack poked Charlie in the side. "Ow."
"Yeah. Whatever. The seal-girl, I mean the fiddler's girlfriend, is trying to get your attention."
"Tanis? Is she crying?"
Jack leaned out to the right, and squinted. "I don't think so."
"Wonder of wonders." Charlie turned and Tanis waved. "Come on."
"I don't . . ."
Jack's arm was warm when she grabbed it but more like car parked in the sun than burn the flesh from your bones. "This may be about what happened last night. You're my distraction."
"From what?"
"I don't know if you've noticed, but Tanis is a bit emotional. Tanis, hi. What's up? Don't kneel!"
Tanis wobbled but stayed standing and compromised by so obviously not looking at Jack she might as well have been staring. "Eineen . . ."
"Has hooked up. I heard. I'm happy for her."
"Who told you . . . ?" Her gaze flicked over to Jack for a millisecond then locked back onto Charlie's face, eyes moist. "The Dragons are wise and all knowing."
"Know-it-alls, maybe," Charlie grunted as Jack elbowed her in the ribs.
"I wouldn't say . . ."
"You didn't." She got him in a headlock but knew she'd never get him to say auntie before he raised his body temperature from sun-warmed to deep-fried. "Was that all?"
"No . . ." Tanis watched them, confused, but that was a huge improvement over moist. "The man she joined with, he works for Carlson Oil."
Suddenly released, Jack hit the ground on his hands and knees. Swearing under his breath, he slapped out a small grass fire.
Charlie kicked him lightly with the side of her leg. "Watch your language, Your Highness. So Eineen's with a man from Carlson Oil? That's interesting."
"More than interesting; he's the personal assistant of Amelia Carlson."
"Not a fiddler, then?"
Tanis searched out Bo in the crowd of musicians. "He says his father was a fisherman."
"He?"
"Paul."
"Okay." Charlie waved a hand in front of Tanis' face until the Selkie stopped staring at her boyfriend. "Did Eineen plan this?"
"We don't plan the dance."
Jack made a rude noise that morphed into a squawk when Charlie smacked the back of his head. "If it was a plan, it's pretty clever. If it wasn't . . ." She glanced up at a cloudless blue sky and wondered if the gods were laughing. ". . . it looks like the universe is sticking its oar in again. It's a seagoing reference," she added when Tanis looked confused. "Is Paul giving your sealskins back?"
"He doesn't have them, but he knows where they're hidden. Eineen says they're going to pick them up tonight."
"They are?" Charlie looked up at the sky again. "So, I wonder why I'm even here . . ."
The fiddler in her head broke into a reprise of "I Won't Do the Work."
"I didn't say I wouldn't do it. I just said I didn't know what needed to be done."
"Uh, Charlie?" Jack poked her arm. Hard. "You're talking to yourself."
"I have a fiddler in my head," she sighed.
"Is that like one of those things that means something else?" he asked. "Because if it isn't, you're officially the weirdest person I'm related to."
"I'm officially the weirdest person you're related to."
"Okay, then."
And the fiddler played "Farewell to Decorum."
When Paul walked out of the office at 7:22, the earliest he'd ever left voluntarily, Eineen was waiting for him by his car. She wore a purple tank and faded, low-cut jeans held over the sweet arc of her hips by a worn leather belt. On her feet, cheap department store sneakers. She looked like the girls he'd grown up with in Dartmouth except that her hair flowed over bare shoulders like water from the darkest, deepest part of the ocean and the curve of those shoulders was the perfect curve of a wave heading for shore. He cupped her face with both hands and realized, as he caressed her cheeks with his thumbs, that her skin felt like water sun-warmed in tidal pools. Her eyes promised him everything, unconditionally.
He felt as though he was being swept away by all she offered, so he anchored his mouth to hers and . . .
. . . remembered he was in the parking lot outside of Carlson Oil's Sydney office.
Licking lips that tasted of salt, he pulled away. "I can't do this here."
"But you're doing it so well." She yanked him back against her by his belt loops.
"No, I work here. It's unprofessional." He shifted slightly, changing the angle of contact while he was still able.
"To have a life?"
"I was going to pick you up in Louisburg."
Her shrug moved their bodies together in interesting ways. Goose bumps rose on his scalp under the cool paths her fingertips stroked over the side of his head. He didn't realize she'd removed his earpiece until she handed it to him. "It was faster for me to come to you."
"How . . . ?"
"I took a taxi."
"But money . . ."
"Dead men's bones can't stop us claiming treasures from the ocean floor. Also," she added, allowing him to step away, "about forty years ago one of my cousins danced for an investment banker. We have a comprehensive portfolio."
"An investment banker?"
Eineen smiled. "His father was also a fisherman. And he was a better than average fiddle player, if only at ceilidhs."
She spoke like she'd known him.
Paul remembered seeing her change, he remembered seeing the pelt fall empty-eyed to the rock, and while he knew it had happened only the night before, it felt as though it happened to someone else a long time ago, everything that had happened overshadowed by the crystal clear memory of how she'd danced to the rhythm of his heart. He knew what she was. He didn't care. Hell, if she didn't care what he was, he had no grounds for complaint. She was tall enough, he barely had to bend when he stepped back in and kissed her. "Let's go make this right."
She licked her lower lip as though chasing his taste, but she didn't look happy. "Returning the skins won't make it right."
"But it's a start?"
"Yes, it's a start."
He knew he should put his earpiece back in. The greater part of his job involved being available when Ms. Carlson needed him. The plastic housing was warm and slightly greasy in his hand. He slipped it into his jacket pocket.
"Yeah, I had a call you were coming, Mr. Belleveau." The guard at the gate frowned, but it looked more like concern than suspicion. "It's kind of late and it's going to be dark soon. Are you sure you don't want to do this tomorrow?"
Paul fought to keep his grip on the steering wheel loose. He'd been pleased to see a different guard than the one who'd let him in before although a repeat of the first man's disinterest would have been a bonus. "I'm here tonight."
"Pardon me for saying this, but you're not exactly dressed for . . ."
"I came straight from the office."
"Well, okay, but . . ." He pushed his cap back and rubbed at the red dent in his forehead. ". . . you shouldn't be going in alone. What if something happened?"
"You know where I am."
"Well, yeah, but . . ."
"If I'm not back in three hours, assume something has happened."
"Three hours is . . ."
"I have no intention of rushing an inspection."
"I guess that'll . . ."
"Good. Thank you." Paul stepped on the gas just emphatically enough for instinct to move the guard away from the car. He drove as fast as he thought was unremarkable to the other side of the wellhead and parked. And exhaled.
"He didn't see you."
"I told you he wouldn't. He saw your jacket and your briefcase." Eineen lifted them both off her lap, twisting gracefully to drop them in the backseat.
"That's amazing. You're amazing."
"I just wasn't the droid he was looking for." When he frowned, she shook her head. "Never mind. Come on."
Paul hadn't even considered going back to the Duke alone, although had Eineen not been able to do whatever she'd done to the guard, getting her in would have been complicated. In all honesty, he had trouble thinking about doing anything alone. Every thought of the future, from ten minutes to ten years, involved Eineen. There were whole blocks of time, minutes stacked on minutes, when he didn't think about work at all.
She looked incredible in the hardhat. As the cage descended down the hoist shaft, he wrapped his hands around her waist and kissed a line up one side of her throat, along her jaw, and down the other while she murmured his name and held onto his arms tight enough to leave bruises.
When the cage jerked to a halt at Canaveral, Paul pulled away and fixed his shirt before opening the gate. The corner of Eineen's mouth twitched and he knew she was laughing at him but there was nothing wrong with looking good even one hundred and fifty meters underground. He was still who he was, and who he was did not wander about with a dress shirt untucked and rumpled.
"It's this way, down C tunnel. We can grab the cart I used the last time; it's just inside the tunnel."
When he turned his helmet light on, Eineen reached up and turned it off again. "It might be best," she said quietly, "if the shadows weren't moving."
There were more shadows with the only illumination coming from the tunnel lights, but Eineen was right. They stayed put and that was a huge improvement over his last trip when fear had seeded the deserted mine with imaginary dangers.
Pulling his phone from his pocket, Paul called up the schematic as they walked. Without it, he'd never recognize the correct cross corridor. In all honesty, he hadn't tried very hard to mark the place where he'd left the pelts. That wasn't like him, and he wondered if it had been guilt, already present but buried under his obligations to his job.
The cart rolled effortlessly along the tracks, easy enough to push one-handed. They walked silently, Eineen close enough to his side he could feel the turbulence her movement caused in the still air.
"We're under the sea . . ." Cool fingers pressed down on his mouth, stopping the words. When he turned toward her, she shook her head, reached out, and pulled the cart to a stop. Pulled it to a stop before he stopped pushing. He looked at his hand on the crossbar, on her hand beside his, and decided beside his was the important thing to remember.
As the last of the noise chased itself down the tunnel – metal on metal, his leather soles on the stone – she leaned close and whispered, "There's something down here."
And all at once he remembered the sound of claws against rock.
"Where . . . ?"
She shook her head, but whether she wanted him to stop talking or because she didn't know where, he couldn't tell.
The cross tunnel, the first cross tunnel out under the sea where he'd left the pelts, was still about ten meters away. Paul pointed and jerked his thumb to the left.
Eineen nodded, came out from behind the cart, and started forward slowly.
Completely silently.
Sweat dribbling down his sides, he followed. Not quite so silently.
It was a deserted mine. It had been deserted for years.
There was nothing down here with them.
They were granting the dark and the quiet and the heat and the oppressive weight of rock and water too much influence.
They were allowing their imaginations to . . .
He missed his footing on a bit of uneven rock, brought his right foot down a little too hard.
It wasn't much of a sound. Anywhere else, it would have gone unnoticed, lost in the ambient noise. Anywhere else, there would have been ambient noise.
He froze. Eineen froze, then slowly reached back toward him. Paul caught her hand and laced their fingers together, breathing shallowly, trying to hear past the blood roaring in his ears.
It sounded like rats at first, rats in the distance.
Claws skittering against stone.
He remembered that sound.
It grew louder and sounded less like the random movement of animals.
Still claws against stone, but moving purposefully.
Behind that sound another sound, harder to hear. A rough burr. Stone scraping against stone? As if whatever moved slowly up from the lower tunnels dragged a rock. A large rock. Under the scraping, he could hear a slow thud. Slow but steady. His heart began to match the rhythm.
Eineen's grip tightened as she turned. Her voice bypassed Paul's ears and jabbed straight into his brain, overriding the rhythm that held him in place. "Run!"
They abandoned the cart, and when Eineen's hardhat fell off, crashing and rolling behind them, they abandoned that, too.
Slick soles slipped against the rock. These were not the shoes he would have worn if he'd known he was going to be running for his life. He'd been a runner in high school, quit in university when someone had made a crack about Kenyans, making it a race thing, but he was barely keeping up and he could tell Eineen had slowed her pace.
He wanted to tell her to go on without him.
He didn't.
He hung on, let her yank him forward, keep him from falling, keep him moving faster than he could've gone on his own.
He tasted iron at the back of his throat.
His lungs fought to suck in enough hot, humid air. Then fought to force it out. In. Out.
Don't think of what might be following.
Just run.
Eineen reached the cage first, out in front by the length of their stretched arms. She ran in through the open gate and turned, staring past him. Her eyes were too large. Too dark. Her face the wrong shape. Nostrils flared too wide. He could see her chest, rising and falling. Her shoulders were too broad. Her torso out of proportion. Then he touched the steel and she was Eineen again. Stronger than him; he couldn't have turned to look behind them. Not for anything.
Panting, he keyed in the code with his free hand.
Nothing happened.
The hoist wouldn't work with the gate open.
He'd have to turn.
He spun on the ball of one foot. Grabbed the bar. Yanked it sideways. Swore as it bounced back.
The skittering scraped over his skin, rubbed nerves raw. The boom boom boom slipped into a more primal place.
Eineen's hand beside his, he slammed the bar home again.
This time, it caught.
No, latched. This time it latched. Don't think caught.
He input the code again.
Smacked the green button.
The cage jerked up. He staggered back, Eineen steadying him as the cables groaned and the elevator began to rise steadily toward the surface.
Then something hit the bottom of the cage, slamming into the metal grating hard enough they both grabbed for the safety bars to keep from falling.
"Don't look down!" Eineen made it a command.
Paul wanted to obey, but he'd already ducked his head.
Clinging to the cable, the claws of one hand stuffed through the grate, was something out of nightmare. Huge eyes. Like a lemur's. An evil lemur's. Bulging and glistening. Too many teeth. Too many sharp pointed yellow teeth in a mouth too wide. Small ears, small and round and tight against its head. Paul couldn't help thinking they should have been pointed. Not much of a nose. Black skin. Really black. Not black like he was black. He was medium brown at best. These guys were black like the coal that had come out of the Duke back in the day. Purple iridescent highlights – the whole nine yards.
And the thing on the cable wasn't alone. Seven, eight, ten . . . They spilled into Canaveral like cockroaches. As the cage rose past the roof, they crowded to the edge of the hoist shaft.
"Do you have any salt?"
"Do I what?"
"Have any salt!"
"No! But I have sugar substitute." Not every coffee shop had the brand Ms. Carlson liked.
"Sugar substitute?" She was laughing at him, but it wiped the look of horror from her face and that was all that mattered. And looking at her was better than looking down. She cupped his cheek, leaned in . . .
Steel screamed as claws gouged deep lines in the grate.
. . . and she snatched the hardhat off his head.
"The light!" Dropping to her knees, she flicked the headlamp on and aimed the beam right into the creature's face.
It screamed, much as the steel had, and dropped away. The light glinted off its flailing hands. The creatures it passed as it fell screamed with it.
"Rings."
"What?"
"It's wearing rings!" Paul expanded, not sure he recognized his own voice. "It's not an animal."
"Of course not." Eineen rocked back up onto her feet, impossibly gracefully, still pointing the headlamp down the shaft. "It's a Goblin. A type of Goblin, anyway. And they shouldn't be here."
"No shit!"
"A gate has been opened."
Paul sagged against the side of the elevator, only barely managing to stop himself from clinging, raising both feet up into the air. The air still seemed fine. The sea had hidden depths and the earth wanted to kill him, but the air, it hadn't changed. That was comforting.
Eineen leaned against him, her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and anchored himself in the one thing that really mattered. Laid his cheek against her hair and