Tash raised a hand to her throat. “You’re suggesting Randolph Packard is my grandfather?”

“It explains why he put you in his will. He spent most of his life trying to find his daughter. But she was dead by the time he did, and he was near death when he learned about you. He couldn’t reveal his connection with you without incriminating himself. Still in love with the woman he had killed, all he could do was give you the place where she gave birth to your mother.”

“A ruin.”

“Fitting, given all the lives that were ruined in the name of love.” For a moment, Coltrane couldn’t help thinking of the ruin his own father had caused. But not me, Coltrane thought. He dismally surveyed the husks of the buildings. “Well, as long as we’ve come this far…” He walked along the wall, passing a gigantic aloe vera, approaching the back of the estate.

“Where are you going?”

“To see where your grandmother died.”

Tall cacti stood like sentinels as Coltrane approached the cliff. Ignoring a lizard that scurried underfoot, he concentrated on the catlike rock formation before him. “Definitely the formation in the photographs that Packard took of Rebecca Chance.”

He paused a few careful steps from where the cliff fell away to the sea. The pounding of surf against rocks rumbled up, making him uneasy.

“The lantern was behind this rock formation,” Tash said. “The path down the cliff is… over here, where the coastline curves toward the village, forming the bay. This is where Randolph Packard and Winston Case fought.”

“And where Packard inadvertently pushed the love of his life over the cliff. He spent the rest of his days mourning for having killed the woman he worshiped. He couldn’t let the world know what had happened, so he built a secret monument to her, where he achingly studied the photographs he had taken of her.”

Although the day was hot, Tash hugged herself and shivered.

“Stay there for a moment. Just like that,” Coltrane said.

He stepped back from her, moving farther along the ridge, putting the cliff on his left and Tash’s profile ahead of him. As a breeze pushed her hair, he raised his camera, sighting through the viewfinder. Reality and his memory coincided. “Packard once stood on this very spot, taking a photograph of your grandmother on the spot where you are now, in that same pose.”

Tash shivered again.

Coltrane pressed the shutter release. “If you were wearing a white shawl, the images would be virtually identical.”

“This gives me the creeps.”

“The height doesn’t help much, either,” Coltrane said.

“Good-bye.” Tash peered down, as if addressing the soul of her grandmother.

“I warned you,” a voice said from behind.

Spinning, Coltrane just had time to see the blur of a fist before it jolted him off his feet.

12

SPRAWLED NEAR THE ROCK FORMATION, Coltrane struggled numbly to raise his head. Blood streaming from his mouth, he stared up dizzily at the impossible towering presence of Carl Nolan.

“I gave you a fair chance.” Nolan’s face was livid, twisted with fury. “I told you nicely.” The sergeant’s powerful arms, his weight lifter’s muscles bulging in a short-sleeved flower-patterned shirt, dragged Coltrane to his feet and shook him so hard that Coltrane’s teeth snapped together. “But a smart guy like you just can’t listen, can you? You always know better. Well, maybe you’ll listen to this.”

The second blow struck Coltrane harder. Ears ringing, his vision blurring, he landed hard, but his head seemed to be falling farther, and at once his consciousness cleared enough for him to realize that his head had indeed fallen farther. Half of him was hanging over the cliff.

“Or to this.” Nolan kicked him another few inches over the cliff. “I told you not to touch her again, but you went ahead and did it anyhow. You never take advice.”

This time, when Nolan kicked him, the force was so great that it shocked Coltrane over the edge. A groan escaping him, stomach rising, he clawed at the rock wall, scrabbling to find an outcrop. With a strain that threatened to dislocate his arms, he jerked to a halt, his body dangling, his fingers clinging to a two-inch ledge ten feet below the top. A hundred feet farther down, the hungry, pounding surf waited for him.

“Still hanging around?” Nolan frowned over the edge. “What do I have to do, drop a rock on your head?”

Staring up helplessly, his ribs aching from where he’d been kicked, Coltrane opened his mouth to say… he didn’t know what. Whatever it was came out as a hoarse inhuman croak.

Above him, Nolan looked around, presumably for the rock he meant to drop, then scowled at something behind him. “Hey, where the hell do you think you’re going?” He charged away from the cliff.

Tash, Coltrane thought. She must be running for help. He’s trying to stop her.

Despite the agony that racked his body, Coltrane scraped his shoes against the cliff. Unnerved by the thunder of the surf below him, he trembled, feeling a surge of hope when his right shoe found support in a crevice.

Do it! he mentally shouted. He lifted his left foot, taking three tries before he pressed his shoe onto a rock spur. His mind became gray. No! Clinging more fiercely, he inhaled deeply. His heart pounded faster. His consciousness focused, the gray dispersing. Move!

But his body didn’t want to obey.

Then his reflexes took control when he heard Tash shouting. He reached up his right hand, wedged his fingers into a crack in the stone, lifted his right foot, scraped it against the cliff, planted it on an outcrop, and pulled himself higher. The camera around his neck snagged on something. He squirmed, fearful that his movements would dislodge him, imagining his plunge to the rocks.

Again Tash shouted. He freed the camera and stretched higher, lifting, pawing, groping. Then he couldn’t find another handhold. His strength dwindling, he clawed at air, heard Tash shout a third time, and realized that the reason he couldn’t find another handhold was that there weren’t any to be found. His fingers were at the top. All he had to do was grip the edge, push himself up, and…

13

THE ROCK FORMATION CAME INTO VIEW. Squirming over the rim, he rolled onto his back, but he couldn’t allow himself to rest, and he rolled again, onto his hands and knees. The next shout from Tash made him waver to his feet and charge in her direction.

Her cry came from somewhere among the ruins. Adrenaline giving him strength, he didn’t waste time looking for a gate through the waist-high wall. He raced straight ahead, sending more lizards scurrying as he scrambled over the wall. Landing among a tangle of ferns and flowers, he heard Tash yell within the maze of buildings. His camera thumping against his chest, he charged past the shells of what might once have been guest houses and servants’ quarters. Vines tugged at his ankles, threatening to topple him as he veered around a corner and saw Nolan push Tash against a wall, trying to kiss her.

This time, it was Nolan who was caught by surprise. Before he could register the noise behind him, Coltrane slammed against his back, driving him hard past Tash, ramming him against the wall. With a groan, Nolan sagged, then spun, only to double over from Coltrane’s fist in his stomach.

But before Coltrane could strike again, Nolan rammed his head forward. Colliding with Coltrane’s chest, he propelled both of them across a flower-choked courtyard, walloping Coltrane against the opposite wall.

Coltrane wheezed, his breath knocked out of him. He did his best to punch Nolan, but his arms were weak from struggling up the cliff, and he had no effect on Nolan’s solid body. Nolan’s hands found his throat, gripped the camera strap around it, and twisted. Wheezing again, Coltrane fought to breathe, his face swelling as Nolan tightened the camera strap, cutting into Coltrane’s neck.