heavens, she didn’t need this. She’d just come off a grueling nine-month tour; she’d caught a cold in London that had stayed with her for weeks; she’d been traveling for hours; and exhaustion was beginning to catch up with her, along with the jet lag she’d been struggling to outrun as she’d raced around the world performing to standing-room-only crowds, talking to the press, trying to remember what she’d said one day in Sydney so as not to repeat herself exactly in Melbourne….
“You stole his project.” Her flat tone revealed a deep disappointment she felt all the way to the bone.
“He can’t prove a thing,” George insisted, dodging the question.
Gillian sighed and allowed herself a moment of profound sadness as her last illusion regarding her father shattered. Then, with a strength of spirit that had gotten her through far worse than this, she began to think the problem through.
“Given Hunter’s fame and reputation these days, he wouldn’t need to prove his accusation,” she mused out loud. “It would be his word against yours. And I’m afraid that just may be a battle you couldn’t win.” It had, after all, been a very long time since her father had been featured in Newsweek.
“That’s what I was trying to tell you, dammit,” he said grumpily. “The devil’s going to cost me everything I’ve spent my life working for, Gilly.”
The headache that had been threatening hit with jackhammer force, pounding at her temple, behind her eyes. As she looked out at the sleet that was being driven against the window, Gillian desperately wished she was back in New Zealand. Or Rio. Anywhere but here.
“I wonder why he waited all these years?”
“That’s simple.” The alcohol had him slurring his words. “I didn’t have anything the black-hearted devil wanted until now.”
“I see,” Gillian said, not really seeing anything at all. Bone weary, she’d intended to fly straight from Kennedy airport to her beach house in Monterey, where she could spend a restful few weeks recovering from both her cold and the rigors of her tour by sitting out on her deck, watching the whales migrate. She’d been sitting in the first-class lounge, drinking a cup of honey-laced tea that she’d hoped would clear her sinuses but hadn’t, waiting to board the flight home, when her father had tracked her down, claiming a life-or-death emergency.
He’d stubbornly refused to be more specific, but concerned enough by the uncharacteristic tremor in his voice, Gillian had immediately changed her plans, taking the plane to Boston instead. Only to discover that the problem wasn’t honestly life-threatening at all, merely career-threatening.
Then again, Gillian reminded herself wearily, her father’s work had always been his life.
“What does Hunter want, Father?”
He stared at her through blurry, glazed eyes. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“No.”
“He wants you, Gilly. The heartless, amoral bastard says that if I don’t send you to Maine to sleep with him for thirty nights, he’ll ruin me. He gave me seven days to get you there. That was three days ago. I’ve only got four days left before I’m ruined.”
He shook his head. Then, muttering something about devils and the lowest circles of hell, George Cassidy passed out.
3
Castle Mountain
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS PAST the deadline, Gillian still hadn’t shown up on the island. Frustrated and disgusted with himself for the way he’d been watching the clock, Hunter had driven to the think tank located a few miles from his house, where he’d tried, with scant success, to concentrate on work.
“I figured you’d be working at home today,” a familiar voice said.
Hunter glanced back over his shoulder and saw Dylan Prescott standing in the doorway. Dylan, the founder of the think tank, was extraordinarily brilliant and unrelentingly good-natured. His sister was police chief and he was married to a science fiction writer whose stunningly cool beauty defied every nerdy stereotype regarding the mostly male genre.
More important, Dylan was also one of the few individuals Hunter trusted without hesitation. They weren’t working in the same fields—Dylan’s area of interest and expertise was space and time travel—yet Hunter enjoyed running hypotheses by his friend. Invariably, the imaginative scientist would come up with a new twist that Hunter hadn’t considered.
“Why would you think that?”
Dylan shrugged. “I dropped into the Gray Gull for coffee this morning before coming here. Ben Adams mentioned something about having to pick up a guest of yours from the mainland on his mail packet.”
He was too polite to ask, and too good a friend to probe into personal matters, but Hunter knew Dylan was curious. Especially since Hunter wasn’t known to entertain all that many guests at his remote, well-guarded home.
It was his turn to shrug. “That’s up in the air,” he said vaguely.
Dylan gave him a probing look, then, knowing his friend well, apparently decided that there was no point in digging. “It’s just as well you’re here,” he said. “Since you’ve got a visitor.”
“Oh?” He wondered if Ben had actually brought Gillian here, instead of to the house as he’d instructed.
“It’s that GQ guy from State,” Dylan revealed. “He’s currently cooling his heels in the reception area.”
Hunter shook his head. A government bureaucrat was just what he needed to top off a less-than-perfect day. He cursed. Then, remembering that the government was paying the bills for his research, sighed with resignation.
“I suppose, since he’s come all this way, I’m going to have to see him.”
“I’ll go tell Janet to send him in, then,” Dylan said.
As the receptionist ushered the man into his outer office, it crossed Hunter’s mind that if Hollywood ever went looking for someone to cast in the role of a rising player in the high-stakes world of international diplomacy, James Van Horn would be perfect for the part. His hundred-dollar haircut and cashmere coat suggested the family wealth Hunter knew had made him a legendary undergrad at Princeton. The British accent he tended to affect was a reminder of his days at Oxford, and his shoes—wing tips, for God’s sake—were far more appropriate for walking the marbled halls of the State Department than wading through Castle Mountain’s snowdrifts.
“I wasn’t expecting you.” Annoyed by the intrusion, and even more irritated that the man wasn’t the woman he’d been expecting for the past twenty-four hours, Hunter didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“I suppose you wouldn’t believe that I was in the neighborhood and decided to drop in and see how the work was progressing.”
“Not on a bet.”
Without waiting for an invitation, he took off his coat, which he hung with precision on the coatrack, hitched up the legs of his wool suit slacks, sat down in a leather chair, crossed his legs, then ran his manicured fingers down a knife-sharp crease.
“I had business
