More Than a Man Read online

  “I’ll think about it,” he said. He’d detected a subtle note of disquiet in Thomas’s tone. “Anything else?”

  His chief of staff cleared his throat, then spoke in a halting voice. “Simon is home.”

  Noah sucked in a breath. Simon was Thomas’s older son. And in following long-standing tradition, he should have been the one to take over from his father. But Simon had never been an easy child to deal with, and in his teen years, he’d exhibited some mental instability that had evolved into paranoid schizophrenic episodes.

  Noah had paid for his treatment at a very expensive private mental hospital in the Bay Area. With medication, he’d been able to leave the hospital and had been living in Half Moon Bay, working at one of the many garden centers in the town.

  “He quit his job and came home,” Thomas said. “I think he might be off his meds.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault. We’ll deal with it.”

  “He’s been asking questions about you,” Thomas continued. “Questions I won’t answer.”

  “I’m sorry to put you in that position.”

  “As you said, it’s not your fault.”

  They talked for a few more minutes about the young man as Noah drove north, looking with disgust at the brown haze hanging over the coastline.

  By the time he reached Santa Barbara, the sky looked better. Continuing north of town, he turned off on a two-lane road that wound through stands of sycamores, live oaks and mounds of pampas grass.

  It was a landscape he liked, a landscape he hoped he wouldn’t have to abandon anytime soon.

  He had a good chance of realizing that ambition, because the location of his home was secret. When he’d changed his name twenty years ago, he’d made sure that nobody knew where the man named Noah Fielding really lived. His mail came to a post office box. His bank was out of state. And he could handle transactions over the Internet. In fact, there were no clues leading to his current location, and he meant to keep it that way.

  GARY Carlson arrived on Grand Cayman just after Noah had checked out of his bed-and-breakfast. Gary was the brother of Eddie Carlson, the man who had been piloting The Fortune when it had gone down.

  Eddie and Gary had been close, and he was having trouble coping with his brother’s death. He was also wondering why Noah Fielding felt compelled to transfer a million dollars to the widows of the men who had been in the submarine with him.

  As soon as his plane landed, Gary went directly to the police station and tried to get the straight scoop on what had happened below the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.

  The cops were sympathetic, but they wouldn’t give him anything beyond basic information because the incident was still under investigation.

  Next he talked to the captain and crew of Neptune’s Promise, which was docked in George Town.

  There were mixed reactions from the crew. Some thought the rich man who had backed the expedition, Noah Fielding, had sacrificed the other men to save himself. Others thought Fielding was just a lucky son of a bitch.

  Whichever it was, Gary wanted to talk to him. But nobody seemed to have his address and nobody knew how to get in touch with him.

  After thirty-six hours on the island, his anger and frustration building, he knew he wasn’t going to get any information on his own. He wasn’t a patient man under the best of circumstances, and he suspected his grief was affecting his judgment.

  But he wasn’t willing to drop the inquiry into his brother’s death. Once back in Baltimore he looked up a local outfit he’d heard about—the Light Street Detective Agency—and hired them to tell him where to find Fielding.

  PULLING up at the entrance to his walled estate, Noah used his remote control. The gate swung open, then closed behind him as he drove toward the sprawling house.

  The landscaping along the winding driveway took advantage of the dry climate, interspersing huge boulders with yuccas, cacti and native plants like manzanita. Rounding a curve, he caught sight of the house which was mostly one story but jutted up to a second floor in several locations.

  Home.

  It was based on the design of an ancient pueblo village that he’d seen long ago and admired for the simplicity of its lines. He’d drawn up plans and started building the house himself, on acreage he’d acquired years earlier while using a different name. It was the site of an old ranch that the family had never been able to make a go of. They’d been glad to unload it to the eccentric gentleman from San Francisco. Noah had found it the perfect solution to his need for privacy. An estate out in the dry, brown hills.

  The first dwelling had consisted of five rooms, but he’d added on to it over the years, hiring local workmen to help him with the construction. The house wasn’t the only building on the grounds. He had a workshop, a lab, a stable, a number of storage buildings and a fully equipped gym spread out around the property.

  Thomas must have been waiting for a signal from the gate because he stepped outside the front door and waited for the car to pull to a stop.

  Noah slowed, studying the man as he walked toward the Lexus. He’d been with Noah for a long time, and now he was in his sixties. He still stood straight and tall, and his mind was as sharp as ever. But there were little signs that he was getting on in years, like his receding hairline and the sagging skin under his chin. He wouldn’t be here forever, and Noah would have to face that sad truth sooner or later.

  He pulled to a stop, put the vehicle in park and pressed the button to open the trunk.

  Thomas stepped forward. “Let me help you.”

  “No need.”

  As Noah walked around to the trunk, he caught a flash of movement and looked up to see Simon appear in the doorway.

  Moving slowly and deliberately, he approached Noah and his father.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “It’s good to see you,” Noah answered evenly, as he studied the son of his old friend, trying to figure out how this would go. One thing he knew: he didn’t like the look in the young man’s eyes or the tone of his voice.

  Simon answered with a laugh that made the hair on Noah’s scalp prickle. “You can’t fool me. You hate me.”

  “Of course not.”

  “You and my father. You’ve always been against me.”

  “Let’s go inside and talk.” And I’ll contact the hospital and have them pick you up.

  “You’re hiding something from me.”

  “No. Let’s go in and I’ll tell you everything.”

  Hope bloomed in Simon’s eyes, and Noah thought he had broken through.

  But the moment passed. “It’s too late for that.”

  Simon pulled a gun from under his jacket.

  Thomas’s eyes widened. “Put that away.”

  The young man aimed the weapon at his father.

  “You don’t want to hurt him,” Noah called out.

  The weapon swung toward Noah who was calculating his chances of disarming the kid before something bad happened.

  As the three of them confronted each other, Simon focused on his father again.

  “If you won’t tell me what I want to know, then you’re going to die.”

  As Simon raised the gun, Noah acted on instinct. Leaping forward, he pushed Thomas out of the way.

  He heard an explosion, felt the impact of a bullet slamming into his chest. He crashed to the ground and as he lay in the driveway, another bullet made him jerk.

  “Stop. For God’s sake, stop.” That was Thomas shouting at his son. Then he called out, “Help. Somebody help.”

  Noah’s gaze swung toward his friend’s voice, but it was too much effort to keep his eyes focused. Everything around him was dimming.

  He heard running footsteps, then scuffling sounds.

  “Get the hell off me.” That was Simon. He started babbling threats, his voice fading as someone dragged him away from the bloody scene.

  Thomas knelt over Noah.
“I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  Chapter Two

  Noah felt hands on his body and heard a babble of voices.

  “Careful. Get him to his bed.”

  “He needs a doctor.”

  “Forget it! He’s done for.”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks.” That was Thomas, calm and sure as always.

  They laid him down.

  “Leave me with him. I can take care of this.”

  The chaos faded into the background. Gently Thomas unbuttoned Noah’s shirt. Now that they were alone, his old friend drew in a sharp breath.

  Noah could imagine the horrible wounds the man was seeing. He had seen many like them over the years.

  His lips moved, but no sound came out. He tried to cling to consciousness, but staying awake was beyond his ability, and he drifted away to another reality. To a time long ago.

  He was an eleven-or twelve-year-old boy named Edmond George, crying and wandering through a squalid little village. Everyone else was dead from the great pestilence. That’s what they called it then. Not the black death.

  He was weak from starvation when a group of friars came through the area, praying for the victims.

  “A miracle. It’s a miracle that God spared this boy’s life,” the leader of the group proclaimed as he laid his hands on Edmond’s head.

  They took him to their monastery and nursed him back to health.

  His memories leaped twenty-five years ahead in time. He was a lean-bodied, dark-haired man who never caught the passing illnesses that plagued the rest of the brothers. And he was no longer an uneducated lout. He was a well-read man, versed in all the important disciplines of his time, highly respected by many in the monastery. Except for the ones who whispered that his health and good fortune came from the devil.

  Those were violent times, even in the church. He was in line to be the abbot when a rival poisoned him. When he didn’t die, the devil whispers became a chorus.

  One night he fought off a savage attack and fled, bleeding from a host of stab wounds.

  Staggering into an abandoned hut, he prayed to God for a favorable reception into heaven and waited to die. Instead, he awakened in the morning, amazed that he was still breathing and that the holes in his flesh had closed themselves. Another miracle.

  He was alive. He didn’t know why, but he felt a burning desire to stay that way. The monks had taught him scruples, but they had tried to kill him, too.

  Quickly he realized that his situation called for desperate measures. With no money and no place in the world, he stole a horse from the stable at a nearby inn, then robbed the occupants of a coach that was making a rest stop along the road.

  While the Earl of Bradford was relieving himself behind a tree, Edmond acquired the man’s trunk full of clothing and also enough money to live on while he figured out his next move, which was to one of the Italian city-states.

  With his classical education, his dark good looks and the political savvy he’d acquired at the monastery, he set himself up as an expert on religious artifacts, which he exported to England at very advantageous prices. He’d also acquired his first mistress and discovered the pleasures of the flesh.

  His mind took another leap—this time skipping a hundred years.

  He was Miguel Santana who had made a fortune in the wine trade and was one of the backers of a Spanish expedition to the new world. He’d funded three ships and a crew with the proviso that he traveled with the explorers across the Atlantic and then inland across a vast continent, looking for gold and trading with the natives they met.

  The party found no gold and turned around, but Miguel Santana slipped away from the explorers and stayed in the new world, where he eventually set himself up as an apprentice to an Indian shaman.

  His mind bridged another wide gap.

  He was Justin Glasgow, a rich San Francisco settler who had moved south and bought a piece of backcountry property in the hills north of Santa Barbara, where he’d built himself a comfortable estate. Then Justin had “died” and left the property to “his nephew,” William Emerson, who had eventually passed it on to his own nephew, Noah Fielding, the man he was now.

  He should have another twenty or thirty years before he had to change his name again.

  As that thought settled in his mind, he opened his eyes. When he turned his head, he saw Thomas sitting in a chair beside the bed.

  “How are you?” his chief of staff asked.

  “I’ll live,” he answered, then barked out a laugh. “I always live.”

  “Is that so bad?” Thomas asked in a low voice.

  “What’s worse, do you think? Dying with everyone else when global warming or some man-made plague kills the population of the planet or still being here?”

  Of course, there was no answer to the riddle. Just as there was no answer to the riddle of Edmond George or Miguel Santana or Justin Glasgow.

  After seven hundred years on earth and millions of dollars spent on research, he still didn’t know why he never got sick and his body was blessed—or cursed—with the ability to heal any injury.

  He stopped thinking about himself as he took in Thomas’s weary countenance.

  “You look like you’ve been up for days.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What did you tell the gawkers?” he asked.

  “That Simon was using blanks. That the wounds looked worse than they really were.”

  “Did they buy it?”

  “If not, they’re keeping quiet about it.”

  Noah thought for a moment. “Maybe it might be a good idea for me to take up Dr. Hemmings on his offer to attend that New Frontiers in Longevity conference in Las Vegas. Getting away from the estate for a week or so might be prudent.”

  “Yes.” Thomas cleared his throat. “Simon is back at Gray-field Sanatorium.”

  Noah blew out a breath.

  Thomas continued with his explanation. “I, uh, bound him and confined him to his room before they got here to pick him up.”

  “That must have been…difficult for you.”

  “Yes, but it was necessary. When they got here, I told them the story about the blanks. They have him back in the locked wing and back on medication. He was sounding pretty confused. If we’re lucky, maybe he will even buy the story that he didn’t really want to kill anyone.”

  Thomas made a frustrated sound. “He’s been obsessed with you for a long time. I used to catch him sneaking into the warehouses you have on the estate, looking through your memorabilia.”

  Noah laughed. “Warehouses packed with stuff I should have thrown out long ago.”

  “I understand why you want to keep things from your past. They’re your continuity.”

  “Yeah, but someone may get the idea that I’ve been doing a brisk business in stolen Anasazi pots and Maya stelae. Maybe it’s time for some housecleaning and some discreet donations to a couple of deserving museums.”

  Thomas shrugged. “Do you want some help?”

  “I’ll leave it until after the conference.”

  Thomas turned the conversation back to his son. “Simon was always jealous of our relationship. He always knew there was something special about you.”

  Noah nodded. “I’m sorry you have to go through this.”

  “Not your fault. The bad genes are just surfacing after all these years.”

  Noah pushed himself to a sitting position and winced as a healing scar pulled. “Stop. You don’t have bad genes. Or at least no worse than anyone else. You’ve read the articles on what’s happening to American kids. Simon’s probably just a victim of pesticides or air pollution or heavy metals in the water.”

  Thomas nodded.

  “You’ve proved you’re my friend over and over.”

  “And you mine,” Thomas said. “You’ve done so much for my family over the years.”

  The Northrop family had worked for Noah since the seventeenth century. Thomas’s ancestor had arrived in the New World as an indentured servant,
worked for a time on a plantation in Virginia, then escaped a cruel master. Noah had been on a trip east to find out how civilization was progressing on the coast. He’d been posing as a trapper when he’d saved Wade Northrop from a slit throat after the master had caught up with him, and he’d had the loyalty of the family ever since.

  Thomas had been born right here on the estate. Noah had known him from birth, watched him toddle around the family quarters, tutored him at home until he was ten, then sent him to a top prep school, where he was already ahead of the other pupils. He’d earned a place at Stanford and graduated with honors. And he’d been in charge of Noah’s estate ever since his father, Philip, had turned over the reins to him.

  “Maybe Jason can take on the responsibility,” Noah murmured.

  Jason was Thomas’s second son. He was still a little young to be trusted with the family secret. They’d have to watch him and see how he shaped up.

  Noah reached to adjust the pillows more comfortably behind himself and winced again.

  “You should rest,” Thomas said.

  “I should get out of bed and go down to the lab to prove that story about the blanks.”

  When he heaved himself up and grabbed the bedpost to keep from falling over, he saw Thomas’s lips firm. He knew the man wanted him back in bed. But he had far more experience with his recuperative abilities than his chief of staff. Hundreds of years of experience, and he knew that whether he rested or went back to work, the outcome would be the same. The only difference was in the level of discomfort. Maybe he was after discomfort—as payment for the miracle of his life.

  JARRED Bainbridge clenched his fist and waited for the spasm in his rib cage to pass. He had always had a high pain tolerance, which was why he was able to get through most days without a heavy dose of medication. At night, he let himself drift away in a narcotic fog and dream of a cure for the very nasty disease that had its hooks into him.

  Multiple myeloma. A cancer of the bone marrow where malignant cells replaced healthy plasma-producing cells and left the patient weak and susceptible to infection.