Chapter Sixteen
The moment the door closed, I questioned my decision. I should’ve told James, and now that I was alone with Mack, that oversight seemed vast and unforgiving.
“You have four minutes, Mack.”
“I’ve never lied to you,” he said. “I may not have told you everything, but I wouldn’t lie. Not to you.”
“Then explain it to me.” My voice broke under the strain. “He told me that someone on the inside led him to me. If it wasn’t you, then—”
His head rocked from side to side, and when he spoke, it was with quiet calm. “I don’t know what you think you heard, but it wasn’t me. I would never—”
“So, you don’t know him, personally, I mean?”
Mack’s lips clamped shut, and he stared at his feet. He didn’t have to say anything. The truth was evident.
“You’re a real piece of work.”
“It’s not what you think. We aren’t friends. We never were. It’s just that—” Mack reached out for my hand and threaded his fingers through mine. “Please, you have to understand.”
I heard his words, and I heard them echo again from somewhere else, from somewhere far away. The pit of my stomach hollowed, and I swayed on my feet.
“What did you say?”
“I said—” His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear anything over the echo. Mack squeezed my hand, and I met his eyes. That look was back—the one so familiar—the one that tugged at my chest and made me doubt everything I held true. A faint smell of tobacco tickled my nose, and the pull of my drift yanked at my soul.
Gray smoke billowed as Nino Roselli puffed on his cigar. I was quaking with fear, and here he stood, so happy and content. He’d called our first encounter a memorable night, like there hadn’t been a brutal murder, like we were old friends reunited. He’d said it like James’s life meant nothing, and I was a pawn in his game, to be used and tossed away.
I hated him. I hated him more than should be possible.
“Colin, my dear friend, I’m still waiting on an introduction.”
I turned and Colin’s hand dropped from my shoulder. His eyes were drawn and tight at the corners, and in them, I saw guilt and even disgust, but above all, I saw the truth.
“No.” I shook my head and clutched harder at the shoe I held. “You saved me. You couldn’t have—” But there was nothing in his expression to deny it, to convince me I was wrong, and the fissure that resided inside my heart spread wide and gaping.
“Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me it wasn’t you. Tell me you didn’t kill James.” How had this man, this man I loved, turned into someone I didn’t even know?
He took my hand in his and clamped our palms together.
“Please,” he said. The words ripped from his lips in a way that was grotesque and pleading. “You have to understand.” He broke off when Roselli stepped between us and clapped a hand on each of our shoulders.
“No need to apologize now, my friend. I think she very well hates you.” He laughed, then, too loud and shrill to be real.
“Abigail,” Colin pleaded, ignoring the man between us.
I pulled my hand from his and took several steps toward the shelf Colin had patiently built after I’d complained there wasn’t enough space for my books. Setting my broken shoe on an empty ledge, I ran my hand over the polished wood, and the diamond ring, the one he’d given me when he asked me to marry him, sparkled under the light.
I moved my finger back and forth, marveling at how ugly and heavy the ring had become. The night he’d found me in that alley, I’d known he was running from something horrible. He’d never hidden that fact, and I’d never asked what it was he’d done. I’d assumed it had nothing to do with me, when in actuality it had everything to do with me. Nausea swirled in my throat. How could I have been so wrong?
“I didn’t know who he was,” he said. “To you. I didn’t know he was your—”
I picked up a framed photograph—one of Colin and I—and threw it at him. I missed, and the frame crashed against the wall. The glass shattered, and fragments scattered across the wood floor.
“You knew that night! You knew I loved him. I told you as much.” I gasped when the last image I had of James, lifeless on the concrete, flashed in my mind. “You knew you were responsible when you picked me up and carried me away from his body. You knew when you asked me to marry you.” I pulled the ring off my finger and threw it at him, and this time, I didn’t miss. The ring hit Colin in the chest, but he didn’t move to catch it. It fell to the ground and lay in the pile of broken glass. “You’re a liar and a murderer.”
Roselli clapped, slow and deliberate, and a chuckle erupted from his chest. “This is all very heartwarming. However, I did actually come here for a purpose. I suspect you know what that is.” He raised a brow and turned to me, his face now sober and without a hint of mirth. “Where’s my necklace?”
No one spoke. The only sound was my labored breathing.
“She doesn’t know where it is,” Colin said in a flat voice. I looked to Colin, but he only had eyes for Roselli. I stared at his features, the same I’d always known, but they were somehow different. More cunning. More purposeful. More frightening.
“Then I’ll ask you. Where is it?” Roselli said turning to Colin.
“You’ll never know.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Roselli clucked. “Not playing very smart here, are you Colin?” From his side he pulled a revolver I hadn’t seen. He opened the cylinder, snapped it closed, and gave it a spin for good measure. “You’ll tell me what I want to know.” Pulling the hammer back, he lifted the gun and aimed it at my head. “Or your wife dies.”
A hollow pounding pulled me away from my drift and back into the present. “Open the door, McCormack.” I heard James’s voice, but it was muffled and distant.
I blinked the room into focus as Mack’s apartment door swung open. I turned, somewhat dazed, and saw James standing in the doorway.
His eyes, curious at first, turned a stormy black as they flicked between me and Mack.
“James,” I breathed. “You’re here.”
“I am,” he said and raised his brow as he looked at my hand.
All at once, the situation came into focus. Mack and I were standing in the center of the room, our bodies close and our hands linked together. I pulled my fingers from his and took a step back.
“You’re bleeding,” James said as he strode into the apartment, barely giving Mack a second look.
I wiped at my nose and saw the red that covered my fingers. Mack turned his back, and James led me to the bathroom.
“Sit here,” he said as he shut the lid of the toilet. James pulled several tissues from a box on the counter and handed them to me. I pressed them to my nose and rested my elbows on my knees.
He sat on his heels in front of me and chewed the inside of his lip. “Are you okay?” he asked.
I dropped my hand and lifted my shoulders. “I don’t know,” I said. The drift was still playing, and Colin’s last words were on repeat. If I believed him, and the necklace wasn’t where I’d last seen it, then Colin was the only one who knew where it was. Which meant Mack was the only one who knew where it was.
James extended his hand. When I took it, he pulled me up until my body was flush with his. He ran his hand up my arm and settled it at the curve of my neck.
“What happened?” he asked. Concern burrowed in the crease of his brow.
“I had a drift.” I leaned into his palm and closed my eyes. The image of Roselli raising his gun to my head played again. “I think I was about to die.” I opened my eyes and James stilled, his body rigid.
“You think or you know?” Mack asked. His voice was too loud against our quiet.
I peered around James and saw him standing in the doorway. I had questions, but I didn’t have time to speak a single one before he spoke.
“Were you wearing a green dress?” Mack asked.
I didn’t move.
“Had the clock chimed ten?”
The events of my drift replayed. I heard the clink of my diamond ring as it hit the shattered glass, and Colin’s words just before Nino lifted his gun.
“You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” I asked Mack. I wanted to step forward, but James kept me from moving. “My death.”
He looked between me and James and nodded his head.
“Then you know where it is,” I said.
“Where what is?”
“Abby, what’s going on?” James asked.
“In my drift, Colin told Roselli I didn’t know where the necklace was. He told Roselli he’d never find it.”
Mack scratched at his neck. “That was a hundred years ago.”
“Where’s the diamond, now?” I asked, my voice loud with impatience.
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
“I can’t.” Mack turned away.
I took a step forward. “But you can drift, and if you’ve seen where the necklace is hidden, then you can tell me where to find it.”
“I told you, I can’t.” He ran his hands through his hair and grunted. “Not anymore.”
James and I shared a sharp look. “What do you mean, not anymore?” James asked.
Everything fell silent, even the blood humming in my ears. Bits and pieces of our conversations about drifting clinked together until a bigger picture formed.
“At the gun range, you told me you’d only known one person that ended their drift.”
Mack nodded.
“Who was that one person?”
Mack’s lips twisted, and he rolled his shoulders back.
“It was you.” I tried to understand, but I couldn’t. “You stopped your drift? How?”
Mack shrugged. “It wasn’t anything I did. My drift ended the moment I first saw you, and since that day, I haven’t seen anything new. I’ve seen our life together. I’ve seen parts of my life before, but I don’t know where the necklace was hidden. I never saw that. I’d have ended this a long time ago if that were the case.”
I didn’t know what to say, or for that matter, what to think.
“Abby, we should go.” This time, I let James pull me toward the door.
“Do you remember what I told you, when you first started drifting?” Mack was patient, but it did nothing to calm me down. “Specifically, about what would happen if you relived your death?”
“I remember.” My voice was just as quiet.
“There’s no coming back,” he whispered.
“I know.”
James opened the door.
“Abby, don’t go looking for it. Stay here. With me. Let me take care of it.”
“I think you’ve done enough,” James said as he pushed me toward the door.
“Abby,” I heard him say as I walked out of the apartment. “Abby, Abby!” The door closed and Mack’s pleading words were silenced.
James and I stood still for a moment, absorbing what had happened. Mack’s drift had ended when he found me, yet mine continued to come. Whatever the reason for my seeing my past, it wasn’t yet resolved.
“Are you ready?” James asked.
I looked at him, into his dark, soulful eyes, and all the anger, the anxiety, the confusion I’d felt inside Mack’s apartment melted away. “Let’s go.”
We headed toward Galveston on Forty-Five South. I’d driven this route so many times, it was likely I could navigate it blind, but knowing why we were heading there made my surroundings look different, almost unrecognizable. Mack, James, and I had an entangled past, and Galveston was where it all began. Hopefully, in a few hours, we’d have the information we needed to end it.
I dropped my head against the window and closed my eyes. James stayed quiet and thoughtful, and the only sounds were the occasional rock that dinged under the belly as the truck bumped along the freeway.
“There’s something I need to know.” James paused as if considering his words. “Back in the apartment, you said you thought you were going to die. In your drift.”
A vision of Nino pointing his gun at my head surfaced. “Yes.”
“Were you wearing…?” His words faded and the parts left unspoken sat between us.
Of course James would remember. How could he know I was trying to forget? “A green dress?” I finished.
James nodded and glanced at me before turning his gaze back to the road.
I could see every moment of my drift as if it’d happened yesterday, not a century ago. I could smell the lingering cigar smoke in the air. I could taste the fear on my tongue when Roselli pulled out the revolver. I remembered the color of Colin’s suit, and I could feel the weight of his hand on my shoulder. I could see his eyes and all the emotions that flicked through them.
“It was olive green.” I looked down at my lap. “It had this delicate white lace around the bottom hem.” I shrugged. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I could’ve had a hundred different green dresses and worn them on any of a hundred different days.”
James’s grip on the wheel tightened. “But it was that day you thought you were going to die.”
I didn’t respond. There was nothing to say. We fell into silence, and the marshes gave way to the bay. We crossed the Causeway shortly after noon. The skies were a dull gray, and the air, heavy with the smell of salt, wafted through the vents.
James wound his way through the streets of downtown Galveston. We passed Old City Cemetery, where I knew James was buried, and we didn’t stop until we came upon a yellow clapboard house with a faded turquoise door.
“Is this it?” I asked as James cut the engine.
“This is it.”
I was slow to exit the truck. A sense of panic made my muscles feel loose and disconnected as I stared with uncertainty at the house.
“Do you have any idea what I should say? I mean, I can’t very well open with ‘I’m looking for a lost diamond.’”
“We need to stick to as much of the truth as possible. It’ll be easier. Do you want me to do the talking?” James asked.
“No. I’ll do it.” I pushed off the truck and headed for the porch. Staring at the door, I focused on the splintered wood and fading paint. With my heart hammering in my chest, I lifted a finger and rang the bell.
It echoed inside the house and fell silent.
“Maybe she’s not home,” James said.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say “maybe she’s dead,” but I thought better of it. We stepped off the porch and had taken two steps back to the truck when I heard the deadbolt turn. I whipped around and watched as the door widened with a creak.
“Can I help you?” A woman, too young to be Evelyn, stood in the doorway. Her dark curly hair was pulled back, but strands streaked with gray sprung from her temples in disarray.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I began. “We’re looking for Evelyn Bastone. My name is Abigail Swift, and this is James Kingsley.”
“Is my mother expecting you?” Her voice was harsh and held the gravel of a long time smoker.
“Um, no, actually. This was pretty last minute.”
“Can I ask what this is about?” she rasped.
I looked to James, and he nodded his encouragement. “Well, I was hoping she had some information regarding something I lost.” I internally cringed, knowing I sounded incredibly stupid.
The woman’s eyes narrowed, and her weight shifted to her back foot. “You’re treasure hunters, aren’t you?”
James and I glanced at each other and back to her within a second’s time. “Treasure hunters? No.”
“So you’re not here for information about the lost Florentine Diamond?”
I didn’t know what to say. “Well, not just the diamond. The necklace, actually.”
The woman laughed, and her voice cracked and wheezed. “You’re not the first, and I’m sure you won’t be the last, but my mother doesn’t know anything about that diamond. Go on now,” she said as she stepped back into her house and closed the door.
“Wait,” I said, my voice panicked and hurried. I slammed my palm against the door, preventing it from closing. “It’s a matter of life and death.”
The woman opened the door a fraction, her eyes cautious and cold. “It always is, my dear, but I’m afraid my mother can’t help you.”
She shut the door, and the turquoise paint became my only focal point. I knocked against it. “Please, I just need a minute of your time. It’s about Nino Roselli.”
Silence.
“Come on,” James said as he placed his arm around my waist. “Let’s go.”
My hand fell from the door but I didn’t move. “Please,” I said again. “He’s going to kill me. I just need to ask Ms. Bastone a few questions.”
Two heartbeats later, the door opened. The woman’s face was torn, haggard even. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” The door opened wider and hope flourished in my chest. “But if my cousin Nino is really involved, you’re already dead, and I won’t risk my life, or my mother’s life, by getting involved. Now leave, and don’t ever come back.”
She shut the door, and the deadbolt locked into place, and when her footsteps faded away, my heart sank. With the click of that lock, she’d sealed our fates. We had nowhere else to go. The necklace was lost forever, and I feared our lives weren’t far behind.