Surgeon Sheik's Rescue. Лорет Энн Уайт

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      She stole a quick glance at the ornate Louis XVI clock on the mantel above the fire. Almost 3:30 p.m. “You’re certain Monsieur Tahar walks along the cliffs at the same every day?” she said.

      “Oui. Pierre, the sheep farmer on the other side, goes to bring in his flock before dark. He sees the Monsieur in the distance, always at the same time.”

      “You talk to this farmer?”

      “Everyone on this island talks, Amelie.” She held up a gnarled finger in warning. “But always, the talk stays here, on the island. It has been this way for centuries.”

      The whole island felt liked it was locked in medieval time, thought Bella as her attention went back to the Louis XVI clock. Madame’s eyes followed Bella’s gaze and a smile curved along her mouth, red lipstick feathering deep into wrinkled creases.

      “Go, Amelie,” she said with a dismissive wave of her veined hand. “Go see him for yourself. All this talk has exhausted me. But feed the dogs first, and don’t forget to lock the house when you go. Put the key under the mat so you don’t wake me when you return.”

      * * *

      Leaving Estelle Dubois nodding in front of the fire with her half-finished cup of milky coffee, Bella ran through drizzle to her separate maid’s quarters across a small courtyard strung with a washing line and trellised with grapevines thick as her arm at the bases. Moss-covered clay pots fringed the whitewashed walls, the vegetation inside them brown and tangled by winter frost.

      She shrugged into a warm sweater and jacket, then on second thought shucked the jacket in favor of the red rain slicker and matching hat. Even though weather on this leeward side of the island might be mild, rainstorms could be lashing the windward coast—she’d learned this fast enough. Over her thick socks she pulled on gum boots. Bella glanced in the mirror and gave a wry smile. She looked more like a mariner in a fish commercial than a seasoned political reporter. She grabbed the bike, wheeled it through the courtyard, and began to pedal up the twisting dirt road that led to the cliffs on the far side of the little island, camera bag slung across her chest, the cold air sinking deep into her lungs.

      * * *

      An hour later Bella stood atop the cliffs holding her bike and breathing hard as curtains of mist swirled and rain drove in squalls. Waves boomed unseen on rocks far below the sheer cliff drop. Light began to fade, and she felt a sharp drop in temperature. She began to shiver as dampness crawled into her bones.

      Then suddenly, at four-thirty, just as Madame had said, a hooded, black figure in a swirling cloak materialized from the mist, walking along the headland, fading in and out of the shifting brume like a specter.

      Bella laid her bike down on the heath, removed her camera from the bag.

      Zooming in with her telephoto lens she watched him stop right at the cliff edge, his back to her. He pulled back his hood, revealing thick, shoulder-length hair, black as a raven’s feathers. Face naked to the driving rain, he stared out to sea as if a sentinel watching for a lost ship, his cloak flapping at his calves.

      Far below him waves crashed as the Atlantic heaved itself against the rock face, hurling icy spray up into the mist.

      Something strange unfurled inside Bella.

      He looked so alone, as if daring the elements to hurt him in some kind of bid for absolution. Yet in his shoulders there remained a subtle set of defiance.

      Bella clicked off a few shots, zoomed in closer. Her lens was powerful, state-of-the-art. Her two-timing ex-boyfriend, Derek, had helped her choose the camera a mere two weeks before the newspaper budget cuts that saw Bella being laid off. The announcement she was being axed from the political news desk while the paper held on to the unionized deadwood had come as a gut-punching shock to Bella. One minute she was a respected, up-and-coming reporter covering the run-up to the presidential primaries and the bombing of the Al Arif royal jet at JFK. Then in the blink of an eye she was cast out on the street, unemployed, wondering how in hell she was going to make her next rent payment without cutting into her minimal severance payout.

      Bella’s job, her success, defined her. And her sudden unemployment cut to the heart of her insecurities and self-esteem that came with having been abandoned as a baby. It was something she’d never been able to shake.

      Oh, she’d hunted for new work, but the tide had turned on print media. Papers were hurting. And there was a glut of journalists, just like her, pounding on doors.

      In desperation Bella had resorted to writing a blog for a website called Watchdog—theoretically an internet news portal, but one that had been scathingly referred to as “that conspiracy theorist site.” And because the blog gig was unpaid, she’d been forced to take housekeeping jobs to support her political writing “hobby.” It was about as low as a political sciences and journalism graduate could go.

      Derek, of course, had kept his photography job at the Washington Daily, courtesy of the boss’s daughter. He’d informed Bella of his infidelity the same day as her layoff. Bella didn’t know which had hit her harder.

      She’d show them, she thought as she watched her target through her lens, fingers going numb from cold, her teeth starting to chatter. This man was going to be her route back.

      But she had to be careful. She still didn’t know who had tried to kill her back home, or why. Or how this man from the abbey—the subject of her investigation—might be linked to Senator Sam Etherington, the man likely to be voted next U.S. president come the November election.

      Bella willed him to turn around now, show his face. Instead, he began to move farther along the cliff, making his way toward a narrow, black headland that jutted out into the sea. Bella left her bicycle lying in the heather and followed him on foot, at a distance. The mist grew thicker, the light dimmer, the air even cooler.

      Right at the very tip of the headland, he stopped again. A ship’s horn boomed out at sea and through the mist came the faint, periodic pulse of a lighthouse unable to penetrate the thickening darkness and fog.

      She snapped a few more frames, then stilled as he moved even closer to the edge. He stood there, as if daring gravity to take him over, suck him down into the crashing sea. She was reminded suddenly of a similar cliff, Beachy Head in England, where the suicide rate was surpassed only by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and where the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team conducted regular patrols in an attempt to spot—and stop—potential jumpers. This was a similar cliff. No patrols. Just her observing him in the darkening gloom. A chill chased over Bella’s skin. She lowered her camera, half poised to run, stop him, help him. But he remained still as a statue, coat billowing out behind him, his hair now slick with rain.

      Slowly she raised her camera back to her eye, the shutter click, click, clicking as she struggled to tamp down a mounting rush of apprehension. Bella readjusted her telephoto lens, zooming in as close as she could go. But as she was about to press the button, he turned suddenly to face her.

      She sucked in her breath.

      For a nanosecond she was unable to move, think.

      He stared at her with his good eye, black as coal. An eye patch covered his left eye and the left side of his face was marred by a violent scar that hooked from temple to jaw, drawing the left side of his mouth down into a permanent, sinister scowl. But the hawkish, arresting features, the aquiline nose, the arched brows—they were burned into her memory after staring at so many photos of him before the explosion.

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