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  “Everyone was her type. Are you in politics?”

  “Law. I work for the Justice Department.”

  “A lawyer!”

  “Clearly not one of your favorite professions. But it’s not as if I work for Dewey-Cheatem & Howe.”

  “I’d rather swim with a shark,” she muttered darkly. “What do you do at Justice?”

  “Besides write 10,000 word documents and call them Briefs? Criminal Division, Federal investigations, mostly. Send bad guys up the river.” A smoky shadow skimmed across his eyes. “If I’m lucky.”

  “Eve had more lawyers than shoes. Did you ever represent her?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did she come to see you here, on the island?”

  He stared down at her, clearly surprised. “Eve was here? No. Why the cross-examination?”

  “Don’t like the tables turned, Counselor?”

  “Look, Evangeline had her problems, I know. But she was a breath of fresh air in a stuffed-shirt city. I liked her a lot. Her death seemed very wrong to me.”

  Something in his eyes, something he wasn’t saying. I’ve underestimated you, she thought.

  He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she shied away.

  “Sorry.” Very deliberately he stepped away from her, his face dark and set.

  Her eyes locked on Garcia’s dark Nikes. Too soon, too soon to trust anyone. “I’ve taken far too much of your time,” she said abruptly.

  He stood very still, his face as rigid as granite. “Right.” His voice became distant - curt and professional. “And a woman is waiting for me at the yacht club. Vamos, Hoover. See you around, Red.”

  She turned away as the dog, clearly reluctant, left her side.

  Behind her, the back door closed with a decisive crack.

  She moved then, to lock him out.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Knocking on the moonlit door...”

  Walter de la Mare

  “Yes, Liv, I’ll be home late tomorrow. I promised Ruby that I’ll wake her up when I get in, and we’ll read a story together. Good. Sleep well, and kiss my darling for me.” In the dim bedroom, Alexandra turned off her phone with a deep sigh.

  She turned on the lamp and moved to stand, watchful and alert, at the window. The fog was heavy and wet, carrying with it the sharp scent of the sea. For a moment the wind tore open the curtain of grey, and the boats in the distant harbor appeared, wreathed in white mist, their ghostly passengers weaving across the decks. Then the mist closed in once more and the boats disappeared. Now her eyes could barely find the close, swaying shapes of the cedars.

  The ferry, too, was locked in by the fog.

  Damn, damn, I can’t even kiss my child good night...

  On the road just below Cliff House, red tail-lights blinked like fireflies through the fog. The young policeman, she hoped, keeping watch as he’d promised. She owed him one, especially since they had to spend one more night here. She’d checked the locks on all the doors and windows, and now rubbed a thoughtful hand over the huge shears she’d found in the kitchen. If the intruder returned… she’d protect Juliet no matter what it took.

  She could hear Juliet’s music throbbing in her bedroom, and she shook her head in frustration. The girl had serious abandonment issues. Her niece was defiant, angry, selfish, with a shell as hard as a shield around her - and yet… She couldn’t seem to shake the image of the girl hunched on the beach, aching and alone. Slowly disappearing. The same child who had run with her, laughing, on a beach so long ago.

  How did we get so lost, Eve?

  Mist ghosted like a face against the window and once more her sister’s voice, vivid and raw, rushed out of nowhere. You could be in danger, Zan.

  Frightening blue eyes watching her for days, someone breaking into her apartment, her office – and now Cliff House. A stranger’s fingers tangled cruelly in her hair while he searched her body. What was he looking for? What did he want?

  I want what she gave you.

  What she gave you.

  Jesus. It had to be Eve’s recording, still hidden in the dollhouse. All this is happening because of you, Eve! What were your secrets?

  A fierce, reckless anger surged through Alexandra’s blood. Her life wouldn’t be her own until she fought back. She eyed the old shears. Juliet had cut off her hair, hadn’t she, to feel as if she had some control over her life. To be a new person.

  Maybe we do have more in common than I thought, Jules. Alexandra reached for the scissors. Statue or bird? she asked herself. Bird, she decided. Take control. Be free! The long hair had been her ex-husband’s choice, not hers. Long hair that he would use to jerk her head back, hard, during sex. Long hair that had been tangled, just hours ago, in an intruder’s filthy hands. She pictured, suddenly, the bars on her apartment window in New York. I have been hiding, she thought. And the only way to get my life back is to take it back.

  I won’t be a victim ever again.

  The shears whacked with determination in the silence of the room.

  * * * *

  In the shadow of the cedars, Jon Garcia sat in his SUV, waiting. For what, he wasn’t sure.

  On the leather seat beside him, his dog snored softly. Wind parted the mist and Cliff House took ghostly shape above him. In an upstairs window, a small lamp blinked through the fog.

  Was she there?

  Garcia flexed his large hands, still aware of the feel of her narrow body beneath his fingers as he’d pulled her off the cliff face. Fragile and light as a seabird’s wing...

  So maybe Alexandra Marik was attractive in a purely unconventional way. Bohemian, he thought, picturing her in the oversized Berkeley sweatshirt and narrow jeans. But she was too damned intense, too neurotic and prickly, too... New York. And she carried more baggage than a bellhop at the Plaza on a Saturday night.

  Hell, he’d been done with that for a long time. Now he liked his women serene, sexy and uncomplicated. Women who dressed in silk for dinner, who wore high heels, dammit, and enjoyed the touch of a man. A woman who could cross a street without having a piano fall out of the sky and land on top of her.

  This woman was guarded, obstinate, with a temper that flared bright as her hair. And yet - she’d saved his dog’s life.

  He’d known her for one day. Less! So why did he keep seeing her in his mind, framed by the light of the cottage window? Why did he keep hearing the husky fear in her voice? Why was he here, hunched in the dark, unable to take his mind off a grieving adolescent and a woman with the saddest, most haunting eyes he’d ever seen? What the devil was wrong with him?

  He looked down to see Hoover staring at him, his single liquid eye knowing. “You think she’s a tough cookie, don’t you, Hoove?” he said to the Lab. The tail thumped loudly on the leather of the SUV seat. Garcia nodded. “I think you could be right.”

  If only she hadn’t told him she was Evangeline Rhodes’ sister… He wasn’t a man who believed in coincidence.

  Let it go, he thought. Alexandra Marik has nothing to do with my investigation. She’s just an innocent single mom trying to make a go of it.

  Or was she?

  She’d shown up on his cottage doorstep out of the blue. He’d gotten the distinct feeling she’d already known his name. And then there was the shadow in the mist, the unmistakable sound of a Harley’s engine, roaring away from Cliff House. Someone had attacked her on the terrace. Someone had almost taken her life.

  Not a simple robbery.

  All his instincts told him that Alexandra Marik was as dangerous as a grenade with the pin already pulled. He rubbed a hand across his bruised jaw. She was ‘peligroso’ all right. Muy peligroso.

  “Greta Garbo,” he said into the darkness. Beside him Hoover opened his single eye, raised his sleek head and waited. Garcia smiled grimly as he scratched the soft ears. “Remember that old Garbo movie we watched last weekend? ‘A woman in distress, there’s nothing more irresistible,’ he quoted softly to the Lab. ‘A woman with a secret, there’s noth
ing more deadly.’”

  He waited. Hoover stared back at him, for once having no advice to offer. “Just don’t come to me later saying I told you so,” muttered Garcia. Esta bien. Let Alexandra Marik and her niece go back to New York. He’d had enough heartache over a woman and child to last a lifetime.

  He wasn’t about to mess up any more lives.

  But still he couldn’t leave the cliffs.

  “Amigo, you are heading for trouble,” Jon Garcia told himself bleakly.

  Once more the mist opened like a curtain, and he looked up, oddly touched by the single lamp that burned gold in the high window. What the hell was he waiting for?

  * * * *

  One fierce, final chop.

  A tangle of bright bronzed hair lay curling at her feet. She turned slowly toward the mirror and was stunned by the stranger with enormous eyes and hollowed cheeks staring back at her. Alexandra drew a shaky hand through her wispy, shorn locks.

  “Oh, my God,” she murmured, pulling frantically at the two inch spikes, “what have you done?”

  It will grow back, she consoled herself. Someday.

  And in the meantime - she had promises to keep.

  And questions to answer. Eve had heard a man with a familiar voice tell Charles Fraser, “Ivan is the key to Operation Firebird. We’ve got to find Ivan before he...”

  “Damn you, Eve!” muttered Alexandra. “Before what? You knew I’d try to help you. Knew I’d try to find Ivan for you...”

  Ivan had to be the missing piece that would explain the mystery of her sister’s death. She could not identify Charles Fraser’s visitor – yet, she told herself – but her sister had given her three names. Ivan, Fraser - and Jon Garcia.

  The questions crashed around her in the shadowed room. Who were these men? What was Firebird? What was going to happen if it was not stopped? And how, how was Eve’s death connected to it all?

  Her sister’s last message had given her the place to begin – with Dr. Charles Fraser, Intelligence Advisor to the President. The trail to Operation Firebird began in the very heart of the White House. She’d call her brother-in-law Anthony in the morning and tell him she’d be coming back to Washington.

  If you take the feather, you will know trouble. The words from the Firebird legend, spoken in a dark wood to the mysterious Prince Ivan, slid into her head.

  Alexandra reached for the yellowed childhood sketch pad and chalk, lying forgotten on the window seat. Could she? She hadn’t drawn – or painted – in years...

  The chalk felt familiar against her skin, an extension of her hand. She flexed her fingers and then, with a quick breath, set the chalk to paper. The first mark was hesitant. Then her fingers were flying across the blank page. God, it felt so good. So right.

  Moments later she sat back. Raising a hand to the unfamiliar spikes of her hair, she stared down at the drawing in her lap. Captured in bold charcoal strokes, a faceless hunter moved through a shadowed forest. Just a few lines of chalk now. But she would find a way to complete the portrait.

  I’m coming after you, Ivan, she told him.

  She was just closing the pad when her cell phone rang. “Marik.”

  The accented voice was sickeningly familiar, low and close to her ear. “Shura. I knew you would survive the fall.”

  Jesus God. She forced herself to breathe. “You bastard. You almost killed me! Get the hell out of my life.”

  “But we have unfinished business, my beautiful Shura, do we not?”

  “I have nothing for you, you coward.”

  “You have a beautiful little girl,” the voice whispered. “I saw her in Washington Square park. Hair the color of rubies…”

  Hot rage, fierce and burning, blazed in her. “I’ll kill you before I’d let you hurt her.” She slammed the phone down and closed her eyes. The fear rushed at her, threatening to overwhelm, but above it all was the anger, savage and primal. Use it!

  She stood quickly, catching her reflection in the mirror, and once more was startled by the stranger’s face. For a brief moment, she thought she saw Eve’s face in the glass, shimmering in the shadows behind her. And she knew, instinctively, that this was one of those moments when everything changes.

  It’s all up to me, now.

  She took a deep breath, called Olivia, and gave calm, precise instructions for her child’s safety. Then she stood and moved to the window, gripping her elbows hard to quell the shaking of her body. I don’t know if I can do this, she thought.

  Outside, the dark night waited. She could hear her father’s whisper on the wind.

  Eve needs you, Alexandra.

  “Okay, Eve,” she said aloud. “I’m in. But you’re going to have to help me. We have our two girls to protect. And we will keep them safe, I promise you. Tomorrow, we fight back.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “In a dense and mysterious forest, Prince Ivan is hunting...”

  Ballet Guide, “The Firebird”, by W. Terry

  THE GREEN MOUNTAINS, VERMONT

  24 HOURS LATER

  The hunter moved quietly through the forest.

  High above him, the late day sun painted the sky with fire. But here, in Vermont’s high country, the trees were so thickly crowded that the last light could barely penetrate the branches.

  He was almost invisible in the shadows, in spite of his red wool jacket. A tall, older man, he still moved with a dancer’s liquid grace. The dying light filtered in hazy bars through the firs, catching the quiver of arrows slung across his shoulder and turning the snowy hair around his temples to pewter.

  Last night, he had dreamed of the deep woods of his childhood. And in my dreams, he thought, I see myself riding on a wolf’s back, riding along a forest path…

  He stopped at the edge of the clearing and peered through the splintered light.

  The buck by the stream raised its head. It stood frozen, huge antlers shining in the twilight. The hunter retrieved an arrow, pulled back the taut bow, and sighted on the white star in the middle of the buck’s forehead.

  Beautiful brown eyes locked on his.

  With a soft oath, the hunter lowered his bow. “I know how you feel, Little Brother,” whispered the man. The words were spoken in Russian.

  With a graceful leap, the buck disappeared into the dense pines.

  The hunter turned and headed north through the darkening woods. Ten minutes later, he stood silently in the shadow of the firs, watching the lodge.

  The hunting lodge, built on the very edge of the mountain, was quiet. One lamp burned in the huge wall of glass that faced the abyss. Upstairs, the rooms were dark. In the purple half-light of the forest, the old lodge looked mysterious and magical, like a czar’s refuge from the legends of his childhood.

  For the man, it was a refuge.

  Decades before, in need of a place to be alone, he had found the chalet on the edge of the deep wood in the heart of the Green Mountains. Over the years, it had become his secret place - a place to stare into the stove’s embers on a cold dark night, to watch, through the high glass window, snow fall like great pearls from a vast cobalt sky. To remember what it was like to hear the soft voice of Little Mother, murmuring the words of the ancient Russian folk tales.

  Today, he had come to this place to grieve. The death of Evangeline Rhodes was a terrible burden. But the lodge held no solace - and no answers - for him.

  All day long, he’d had an ominous feeling. Now, in the darkening wood, the threat felt very close.

  A column of smoke curled from the high chimney. His breath caught.

  Fire! A fire in the hearth!

  The hunter drew an arrow from the quiver and moved slowly across the clearing.

  In the shadow of the porch, he saw the black Harley motorcycle.

  He climbed the steps. The huge oak door was unlocked.

  Across the high foyer with its glass lantern swaying from a long chain, past the oak-paneled library, into the beamed sitting room.

  The room was lit by the flames in th
e hearth. A dark figure sat waiting in the chair facing the fireplace.

  He felt, suddenly, like the buck trapped in the clearing. “Show yourself,” he growled.

  A man stood and turned to him. Firelight flickered on corn-colored hair, in pale blue eyes.

  “Prince Ivan,” said the stranger. “We have been searching for you for a long time.”

  The hunter froze. After all these years... “Who are you?”

  “Panov,” said the man. “I am your new Control. I have been traveling for hours. Did you think we would not find you?”

  The hunter strode past the stranger, reached for the tall pitcher of water that stood on a table next to a golden samovar, and flung the water onto the fire in the hearth. As the logs sizzled and died, he stared at the cold-eyed stranger standing so confidently in his lodge. “Who sent you?”

  “My instructions come from St. Petersburg. That is all you need to know.” The stranger held out the front page of the New York Times issue that reported the discovery of a sophisticated eavesdropping device planted in the State Department. “I assume you were responsible for this?”

  “Why have you come here?”

  “We must return to Washington immediately.”

  Beyond the high windows, the last birch leaves quivered in the gusting wind and spiraled to the earth. “I need to know why,” said the hunter.

  The stranger reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and held out a small velvet pouch. “I was told to present this to you.”

  Very slowly, the hunter opened the velvet and stared at the winged brooch glinting in his palm. “My God. The Firebird...”

  “Yes, Prince Ivan. The signal you have been waiting for all these years. The time has come. Operation Firebird has been activated.”

  ACT II

  ST. PETERSBURG

  “the Firebird, rigid with fear, is trapped and earthbound...”