Thirty Nights

“My budget is chicken feed compared to the bucks you guys spend. Hell, the price of your expense account lunches at all those high-priced trendy Washington restaurants alone could fund me for another six months.

“And if there do happen to be any mumblings about expenditures up on the Hill, then it’s your job to quiet them. You guys aren’t the only game in town, you know.”

A scowl darkened Van Horn’s classically handsome WASP face. “Then the other rumor about you meeting with the Russians is also true?”

“I haven’t met with them.” And wouldn’t. But Hunter had perversely enjoyed the momentary panic he’d viewed in Van Horn’s eyes. “But I have received some inquiries regarding certain aspects of the project.”

“You realize that sharing information with them—especially information that’s been classified—could get you arrested for treason.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Van Horn gave him another hard look, as if trying to determine whether or not Hunter was jerking his chain. Which, of course, he was. It was one of the few side benefits of working with bureaucrats. They were so marvelously predictable. And competitive.

“There’s something else.” Van Horn had begun working that crease again, Hunter noted.

“I rather suspected there might be.” After all, a blizzard had been predicted and Hunter didn’t figure the guy had come all the way to Castle Mountain to sip hot toddies beside a roaring fire at the Gray Gull inn and watch the winter wonderland occurring outside the lace-curtained windows.

“I heard from one of my sources at the CIA that you’re on a terrorist hit list.”

“Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?”

“I just wanted to pass the warning along.”

“Consider it passed.” Hunter stood up, effectively ending what had turned out to be little more than a fishing expedition. “And now that I’ve been properly warned about Congress and terrorists, I’m sure you won’t mind if I return to work. After all,” he said as he plucked the soft cashmere coat from the rack and held it out to James Van Horn, “as you’ve pointed out on so many other visits, time is money.”

With that he ushered the dapper diplomat out the door. Then, giving up on getting any work done when he couldn’t keep his mind off the damn clock, he locked the door to his inner office, set the secret code on the security system, then headed home to wait for Gillian’s arrival.

FIVE DAYS AFTER her father’s incredible revelation, Gillian was sitting in the back of a car crawling its way up the cliff leading out of the quaint village that could be used as a movie set of a late-nineteenth century New England fishing village. The narrow gravel road, which was currently packed with crunchy snow, would soon become impassable for days during winter storms. Which was, Gillian thought, probably just the way Hunter liked it.

All the articles she’d read about him, including the recent one in Newsweek, invariably mentioned his obsessively reclusive lifestyle these past years. Which wasn’t that surprising. She remembered how reluctantly he’d always seemed to attend the parties at her parents’ home. Even back then no one could have called Hunter a social animal.

Of course, that hadn’t stopped her mother from inviting him. And on those rare occasions when Hunter would accept one of her invitations, Irene Cassidy would pull out all the stops. She’d fluff her frosted hair, and her skirts would be shorter, her necklines lower.

Her eyes would become visibly brighter, glittering with a dangerous light, her silvery laugh would edge a few notes higher and several decimals louder, and the way her hips swayed as she walked in those high, spindly heels and tight skirts was guaranteed to draw the eye of every male in the room.

At the time Gillian had resented her mother’s blatant sexuality. How in the world was Hunter ever going to notice her, a skinny adolescent with a mouthful of braces, when her mother was always flitting around him, like some exotic, gilded butterfly?

Unfortunately, the sad, miserable truth was that even without the competition from her mother, she could have been invisible where Hunter was concerned.

But apparently that had recently changed. According to her father, after viewing her recent video, Hunter had decided that he wanted to go to bed with her. Even knowing that as a modern, liberated woman of the twenty-first century, she should be appalled and infuriated by such a hideously outdated, chauvinistic attitude, there was just enough of that lovesick twelve-year-old still living inside Gillian to have her experience a warm flush of feminine satisfaction.

Not that she intended to actually sleep with Hunter, of course. The idea was as impossible as it was outrageous.

They came to a pair of tall wrought-iron gates topped with what appeared to be deadly iron spears. The driver paused beside a stone pillar. A moment later his window rolled down and he was touching a keypad. A camera hidden inside the gate whirred and there was a series of clicks. The gate slid smoothly open, allowing them access.

When they repeated that process three more times, Gillian decided that reclusive wasn’t a strong-enough word to describe Hunter St. John. Paranoid might be a better fit, she thought as she realized that the camera was actually measuring and reading the driver’s eye. She’d heard of such technology, but had never seen it firsthand.

The numerous security checks they passed through had Gillian expecting Hunter to live in a huge, hulking stone stronghold reminiscent of a medieval fortress. When they turned a final corner and the house came into view, she drew in a sharp, appreciative breath.

Constructed of cedar logs that had been aged to a pale, grayish blue, the house was perched like a seabird on the very edge of a cliff, offering spectacular views in every direction.

“Oh, it’s absolutely stunning,” she murmured to the driver, who, in the taciturn way of New Englanders, hadn’t uttered more than five words during their choppy ride from the mainland.

“Ayuh,” the man who’d introduced himself as Ben Adams agreed. “That’s what most people say, first time they see it.”

“I can imagine.”

Actually, stunning didn’t even begin to describe this architectural wonder. The focal point of the home was a two story glass wall that boldly thrust out from beneath the wooden-shake roof like the prow of a ship. Gillian imagined that standing next to that window must give the viewer a bird’s-eye view of the stormy Atlantic. Two single-story wings jutted out from each side. Behind the house, pine trees rose like shaggy arrows shawled in white velvet.

“’Course, one of these days this cliff’s gonna erode,” the driver pointed out with Yankee practicality. “Then all St. John’s gonna have left will be a pile of logs on the beach.”

“In the meantime, he has a magnificent view,” she said.

He shrugged. “Can’t argue with that.”

He pulled up into the curving driveway, stopping just in front of the double doors. “My missus works here during the week,” he revealed, stringing together more words than he’d managed thus far. “She’ll be inside, getting things ready for you. Dr. St. John said to expect you earlier,” he volunteered. “By yesterday, at the latest.”

“I was held up.”

“That’s what my missus told him probably happened.” He parked the car. By the time he came around to open her door, she was already standing on the flagstone drive. “But Dr. St. John t’weren’t too happy when last night came and you t’weren’t here.”

“I take it Dr. St. John is accustomed to having things his way?”

“Ayuh. That he is,” Ben agreed. “But he’s still a fair man to work for. When my Mildred came down with flu last winter, he paid her for days she couldn’t even work.”

Gillian was unimpressed by that little newsflash. “Gracious,” she drawled, her voice thick with uncharacteristic sarcasm. “I’m surprised he wasn’t voted the humanitarian of the year award for such an outstanding act of generosity.”

He squinted down at her, obviously curious as to her reason for being here on the island in early December. From the icy wind blowing off the water, Gillian suspected this wasn’t exactly tourist season on Castle Mountain.

“He’s a fair man,” he repeated. “You’ll find that out when you’re working with him.”

Gillian wondered what the elderly man would say if she told him the truth: that she wasn’t here to work with Hunter, but had instead been ordered to Maine as part of his blackmail threat against her father.

He wouldn’t believe her. Gillian didn’t believe it herself. If she had, she never would have agreed to such a bizarre situation. Deep down inside, she continued to believe that Hunter’s sole motivation was to shake her father’s comfortable world to its foundations. Which he’d clearly done.

Now, having succeeded in watching his former mentor squirm, Gillian expected Hunter to laugh at her foolish naiveté and send her home. And that would be that.

The man she remembered might be unorthodox. But he wasn’t cruel or dangerous. Surely human nature couldn’t change that much?

Ben Adams’s wife was tall and thin, with salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a utilitarian knot at the nape of her long neck.

“Dr. St. John expected you earlier,” she said as her husband carried Gillian’s bags into the house.

“As a scientist, Dr. St. John should be accustomed to practicing patience.”

Mildred Adams gave Gillian a long, hard look. “You’re different from the other.”

“The other?”