Tyler passed the photo to Amanda. “You have a list of places he visited?”
“Some.” She consulted her notes. “London, Bristol, York, Chester. Paris, Marseilles. Rome, Florence, Ferrara, Milan. Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia. He spent time in Navarre-a little longer than the other places. I also have reports that in each of these places, he often vanished into the countryside for days at a time.”
Tyler frowned. “I’ll give you a list of some properties near each of those areas. I’d like to know if he visited any of them.”
“Yours?”
“No,” he said, “but if my list matches his travel pattern, I have an idea why he may have visited those areas.” From the time Horace Dillon, the homeless man whose deathbed he had attended five days ago, had mentioned “an old enemy,” Tyler’s suspicions had lain in Colby’s direction, even though he had never truly considered Colby as such-probably because he was irritated by Colby’s attention to Amanda. Now, he saw his mistake.
All of the cities Alex had named were places where Adrian deVille had lived. In outlying areas some miles from each of them, Adrian had built small cottages, places where he might safely reappear. Tyler had spent a great deal of time discovering these retreats and systematically destroying them. Had he found them all?
He could only imagine Adrian’s wrath at discovering that his refuges no longer stood.
Alex said, “I asked if they were your properties, because Eduardo was apparently looking for you.”
“For me-by name?”
“Yes. He asked about you in each place but didn’t get any help.”
“Tyler…,” Amanda said faintly.
He smiled, trying to reassure her. “Shade is still with me, remember?” He turned to Alex. “What’s his source of wealth?”
“That’s a little difficult to determine, but I have some guesses.”
“Is sunken treasure one of them?” Tyler said.
She stared at him in astonishment. “How did you know?”
“Let’s say I made a good guess. Otherwise, I begin to believe I have been remarkably stupid about all of this. Tell me what else you’ve learned about Eduardo.”
“Eduardo Leblanc is indeed his real name. Cuban American, born and raised in Florida. He has been estranged from his family since he was a teenager-his dad owned a dive shop, and Eduardo was a good diver, by all accounts. Eduardo turned eighteen, dropped out of high school in his senior year, went to work as a diver for a salvage company. Seemed happy with it until one disastrous dive.”
“They found the Morgan Bray.”
“The Morgan Bray-,” Amanda said.
“You know about it?” Alex said, openly puzzled.
“I knew someone who lost an ancestor on it,” Tyler said. “And, as it happens, I recently spoke to Amanda about that. It was a famous shipwreck in its day. Said to be cursed.”
“Well, that sure fits what happened to this expedition,” Alex said. “It nearly drove the company out of business. The owner said he had never experienced anything like it, and Eduardo was not the only diver who quit after that day. He and another diver were attacked by sharks-”
“Two divers?” Ron said. “Shark attacks on humans are really rare, and it’s almost always a lone diver or a surfer.”
“The owner of the dive company said much the same thing. He had worked in the Caribbean for decades, completed hundreds of dives, and had never seen sharks behave as they did. It was unheard of. But that wasn’t the only thing that went wrong. Other members of the dive crew suddenly fell ill. Tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of the ship’s specialized equipment malfunctioned or was damaged.”
“They don’t blame Eduardo for all of that, do they?” Brad said.
“No, of course not.”
After a moment, Tyler asked, “Do you think the ship owner would let you see a list of what they recovered from the Morgan Bray?”
“I’ll ask. He told me they had just started work on it when this disaster happened, and it took years for him to rebuild his company-the legal fees alone nearly did him in. But his company had the salvage rights, and he returned. He said they had no problems whatsoever after that.” She paused. “I got caught up in his story, but he gave me most of the information I was looking for early on-that Eduardo Leblanc had worked for him, but quit and never returned after the problems with the Morgan Bray.”
“I may not need the list after all,” Tyler said. “Tell me what else you’ve learned.”
“Eduardo made his wealth from a treasure, it seems, but this former boss doesn’t believe that Eduardo did it legally. Because he started hearing rumors that Eduardo had made a discovery so soon after he left the company, at first he worried that Eduardo had stolen something from the Morgan Bray. When he investigated, though, he learned that the items Eduardo sold were two hundred or more years older than anything recovered from the Morgan Bray, and were mostly Spanish and Portuguese. The Morgan Bray was an English ship, not carrying anything in the nature of those items.”
“He’s had a silent partner,” Tyler said. “And I’m sure whatever wealth he acquired after that was by subtler means.”
“That fits,” Alex said. “I had suspected as much. What little information about his wealth I could track down didn’t match up with the expertise one would find in most twenty-one-year-old salvage divers. Every description of him before that dive was of an impulsive, rough-edged, and rather immature young man. Energetic and smart, but uneducated.”
“And after?”
“I can answer that,” Brad said. “If I hadn’t seen that photo, Alex, I’d swear the Eduardo I met was a different person. The Eduardo I knew was sophisticated, unassuming, soft-spoken…”
“Worldly-wise?”
Brad hesitated. “Yes, but world-weary, too. Cynical to the point of seeming depressed.”
They were interrupted by the entrance of Rebecca.
“Amanda, are you ready to go?”
“Alex?” Tyler asked.
“Sure. If Amanda’s ready?”
“Alex is not coming with us!” Rebecca said.
“Yes, she is,” Amanda said. “But-Tyler, do you think Rebecca should leave?”
“Not this again!” Rebecca said. “I refuse to be held prisoner here!”
Tyler sighed. “No one wants you to stay here if you don’t want to.” To Amanda he said, “I’ve tried to warn her. She refuses to hear what I have to say.”
“Rebecca, you do understand that you could be in danger?” Amanda asked.
“In danger of what?”
“The people who attacked Brad might attack you.”
“Nice try. Look, if you don’t want me staying at your house, I’ll just go home to the desert. But I am not staying here.” She stalked out of the room.
“If you’d like, I’ll have someone patrol there every hour or so,” Alex said. “We’re stretched a little thin right now, but in a few days the people who’ve been tracking down Eduardo can be back here, and I can have someone there twenty-four/seven after that.”
“Thanks,” Tyler said. “I think that would be a good idea, if Amanda won’t mind?”
“Not at all. Thanks.” Amanda sighed. “I guess we’d better get going, or she’s going to get down to my house and discover she doesn’t have a key to get in.”
“Hurry up then,” Brad said with disgust, “or she’ll break in a door.”
Half an hour later, Amanda stood on the small balcony outside her room. Alex had sensed that she needed time to herself, and left her alone on the pretext of checking the house to make sure it was still secure. Amanda had already packed up what she needed, and now she simply tried to calm herself, to overcome the feeling of foreboding that had been pressing in on her from the time she had heard that the wreckage of the Morgan Bray had been discovered. Was Adrian deVille alive again?