“All right, then.” Will gently extricated himself from her hold. “I won’t go after him.”
Lizzie’s head was spinning, and she felt ragged from jetlag, adrenaline, fear, being cooped up on a plane for hours with nothing to do but play cards and think. She turned to Will. “Now that Myles Fletcher has surfaced, I imagine you and your MI6 and SAS friends will want to figure out what he’s up to.”
Will ignored her and addressed Fiona. “How long ago did you see this man?”
“A few minutes. Ten, fifteen. Please, you can’t…”
“I’ll do as you ask and not go after him. We’ll wait here together for your father.”
“He called me ‘love,’” Fiona whispered.
Will’s eyes shut briefly, but Lizzie saw the pain in them. She was touched by his gentleness with Fiona but knew what she had to do. “I haven’t witnessed anything.” She looked once again down the alley, as if part of her expected the dead man to walk out and say it was all a joke, a bit of makeup and sheer nerve. But she knew it wasn’t. “I’m no good to anyone if I’m stuck here explaining myself to the police.”
Will didn’t respond immediately. Lizzie gave him a moment. Finally he said, “You work for John March.”
She skimmed the back of her hand along his jaw, rough with stubble. Sexy. A reminder he wasn’t a Prince Charming out of a fairy tale. “Find me,” she said, her voice hoarse, then shifted her attention to Fiona. “I have to go. You’re safe with Will.”
The sirens blared closer now. Lizzie bolted up the side street. Will didn’t follow her. She cut down pretty residential Chestnut Street, running past classic Beacon Hill homes with their black iron fences, brass-fitted doors and wreaths of summer flowers. She came to Charles Street at the bottom of Chestnut, and fighting tears of her own, ducked into the Whitcomb. Without saying a word, she headed straight through the lobby past Jeremiah and down a half-dozen steps to the rear exit.
Her cousin reached her before she could get the back door open. With Whit and Harlan Rush as older brothers, Jeremiah had learned to stay cool in a crisis. “Lizzie, what’s going on?”
She knew she had to give him the basic facts. She owed him that much. “Fiona and I just found a man shot to death up by the Garrison house. The Brit who was with her earlier told her where to find him.”
“What can I do?”
“The police will be here any minute. I have to go, Jeremiah. I can’t stay.” She raked a hand through her hair as she considered her options. “You can find me a car. I can’t take mine-or yours. The police…” She didn’t finish.
“Take Martha’s. Martha Prescott. She’s Mum’s new assistant.” He unlocked a drawer to a small cupboard, pulled a set of keys from a series of hooks and handed them to Lizzie without hesitation. “Gray Honda on Mount Vernon. The only free space will be the driver’s seat.” He smiled through his obvious worry. “Martha’s a slob.”
Lizzie started to thank him, but he just shoved her out the door into the narrow alley behind the hotel. The Rushes might not get everything right, she thought, but they could be counted on in a pinch.
She ran between parked cars and a Dumpster out to Mount Vernon Street, finding the gray Honda halfway up to Louisburg Square. It had a Beacon Hill resident’s sticker in the back wind-shield, and every available space beyond the driver’s seat was loaded with fabric samples, empty soda cans, CDs, paperbacks, magazines, torn envelopes. Martha Prescott, indeed, was a slob, but apparently also incredibly creative and good at her job. Anyone who worked for Henrietta Rush would have to be.
The car had a full tank of gas, and Lizzie was quickly on her way.
As she pulled onto Storrow Drive, her cell phone rang. She checked the screen, recognized her father’s Las Vegas number and almost didn’t answer. “Don’t distract me,” she said as cheerfully as she could manage. “I’m in traffic.”
“Dublin?”
“Boston. Storrow Drive.”
Her father sighed. “I just got off the phone with a Boston detective named Yarborough. A real s.o.b. He’s threatening to fly out here. Lizzie, tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s complicated.”
“So? I’m playing solitaire. Clock. Ever play clock? My eyes are bleeding it’s so boring. I’ve got time. Take me through it. Start to finish.”
“There is no finish. Not yet.”
“All right. Start to where we are now.”
“The two Brits. Will Davenport and the one I asked you about who was in Las Vegas in June-I think they’re both from your world.”
“What world would that be?”
“Dad, I can’t…I have a name for the one we saw in Vegas. Myles Fletcher.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
She hesitated. “John March is in town.”
Her father sighed again. “Terrific. Have you seen him?”
“No. I’m trying to get out of here.” She squeezed into the left lane, heading for I-93 North. “Dad, I just found a dead man.”
“Damn, Lizzie.”
“I think he planted at least one bomb yesterday.” Was it only yesterday? “John March’s daughter is missing.” She slowed in the crush of traffic. “Dad, I can help.”
“Lizzie. Oh, Lizzie.”
“Norman’s obsessed with March. I didn’t see it at first. I only saw it in the last days before his arrest.”
“Lizzie.”
“I know March investigated my mother’s death.” She fought back more tears. “I haven’t wanted to tell you. I understand how painful-”
Her father cut her off. “Does Estabrook know about March and your mother?”
“He never said so, but-yes.” She eased onto the interstate, speeding up as she escaped the twists and turns of Storrow Drive. “I’m sure he knows. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think that’s why he made the call threatening Simon and Director March in front of me. He assumes I hate March.”
“So will the cops. Once they put the pieces together, you’ll look as obsessed with John March as this bastard Estabrook is.”
“That’s why I’m not sticking around.”
Silence. “That’s not why.”
Lizzie pictured her handsome father moving a card to the six o’clock position, a glass of Scotch at his side. He never drank Irish whiskey.
“You’re in deep, Lizzie,” he said. “You have been all along, haven’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
Another sigh. “I’m heading to Boston as soon as I finish my game of clock. I’ll run interference with the feds. I’ll stay as long as you need me.”
“You hate Boston.”
“Not as much as I hate Ireland.”
She managed a smile. “Thanks, Dad.”
But he was serious. “You’re hoping Estabrook comes after you, aren’t you?”
“If I knew what he was going to do, where he was, I’d tell the FBI.”
“You’re an amateur, Lizzie.”
“So is Norman. He’ll use Abigail Browning to get what he wants. Then he’ll throw her away.”
“I could call Detective Yarborough and have him stop you.”
“You won’t.”
“No.” Her father didn’t speak for a moment. “I have a picture of my mother as a little girl playing dress-up in the drawing room at the hotel in Boston. She has on an Edwardian gown she found in the attic. She’s standing on a chair, giggling in front of a mirror. Imagine your grandmother giggling.”
“Dad…”
“She did her best, Lizzie. We all did.”
“You did great. All of you. I miss Gran, too.” Lizzie tried to concentrate on her driving. “If you don’t get cold feet and actually do head out here, I should warn you that cousin Jeremiah has put his wild youth behind him. He’s a tough taskmaster these days. He’ll throw you out if you don’t behave.”
Her father laughed. “Sounds like a challenge.”
She sobbed out loud when she hung up, but her hand was steady as she dialed the number John March had given her over a year ago.
He answered immediately. “Where are you?”