Velocity of a Secret Read online

  “I hope we didn’t kill her before we find out what she knows,” the voice added.

  Kill her? Intense, concentrated horror bored through Rose, but she remained powerless to react.

  “We don’t even know how much Barbury had figured out, let alone if he blabbed anything.” This new speaker sounded almost American, but the words were tinged with an accent . . . a German accent.

  Sharp shards of alarm shredded Rose at the mention of the viscount.

  Spies. These men were spies.

  The British noble hadn’t been lying about uncovering espionage. Somehow, these German agents had tracked her down—the last person to see Barbury alive. If they had exerted this much trouble to tie up a single potential loose end, she had no illusions about their plans for her. She was a thread to be snipped and discarded.

  Rose tried to draw in air, but her lungs remained painfully shut. Without them functioning, she could do nothing to protect herself. She couldn’t even lift her head.

  Desperation set in.

  “I told you that wrecking her auto was a dangerous scheme. Suppose they’ve heard the crash back at the house? We should have erected the barricade farther away.”

  Oxygen. She needed it now. Panic clawed her, and her brain began to buzz. But her diaphragm remained stubbornly and agonizingly frozen.

  “I’ve been watching her for weeks. I know how these people think.”

  “If she knows too much, it could ruin everything. Every day that treaty discussions continue in Versailles is a day closer to the end of hope.”

  The viscount’s words blazed into her mind.

  Talk. Only. To. Him. Spies. Everywhere. Active everywhere.

  The spy ring was still in operation! The knowledge ripped through Rose.

  She forced air into her abused lungs. It burned and ached like hell, but she’d faced worse. When she had enough breath, she screamed—sharp, loud, and chilling.

  “Bloody hell. I thought she was unconscious!”

  Ignoring the protests of her battered body, Rose rolled into a crouching position. Frantically, she scanned the moonlit beach, searching for deadly shadows. She saw nothing but her wrecked Bearcat and shimmering white sands. Forcing her shaking muscles to cooperate, she stayed low and slunk to the overturned vehicle. Peeking over one of the tires, she spied two dark shapes about fifteen yards away. One, to her increasing horror, looked particularly massive and brutish.

  With trembling fingers, she reached inside the Stutz for her reticule. It took her two attempts to undo the latch, but she managed to pull out the trench knife that a grateful French soldier had given her after she’d driven him to safety. Forcing her hands to steady, she sliced through the straps on her silver evening shoes, the blade nicking one of her ankles. Ignoring the burn, she tossed the pumps but kept her purse.

  Drawing in another agonizing breath, Rose took off in her stocking feet through the sand. The men gave a shout, and her skin prickled at their closeness. Not risking a glance over her shoulder, she dropped the knife into her beaded evening bag and searched for her gun. Instead of her snub-nose British Bull Dog revolver, her fingers found the blade again. She sliced her middle finger but not enough to slow her down. It wasn’t easy searching the tight opening of the reticule as her feet pounded over the uneven sand, but finally she felt the cool, cylindrical metal of the barrel.

  After pulling out the weapon, she started to cock it, but her uneven gait almost caused her to drop it. Cursing now, she pulled back the hammer with her thumb. She might have bought the little revolver as a lark to scandalize her mother, but Myrtle’s relatives had taught Rose how to shoot.

  Before Rose could turn and fire at her pursuers, though, she heard Myrtle shout her name. A male voice followed and then another. Rose’s original bloodcurdling scream must have been heard, perhaps even the crash too. A concentrated beam of a flashlight broke through the silvery night.

  Thank goodness for Myrtle and her taste for expensive, newfangled gadgets.

  Rose glanced backward. The shadowy figures had gained on her, but they’d stopped now, their bodies positioned away from the bobbing glow. Clearly, they did not wish to be seen. Rose hoped they would decide that being caught was riskier than letting her go. They had admitted they had no idea if she knew anything.

  Which she didn’t. At least not much.

  But she was certainly going to find out everything now.

  The cries of the partygoers grew louder, and the beam of light spread around Rose’s feet. The illumination seemed to prod the attackers into a decision. They stopped their pursuit and melted into the darkness, as if they’d never existed.

  Rose didn’t stop her mad dash. Luckily the loose style of her Greek-toga-inspired garment allowed her to employ her full stride. Soon she could make out the shapes of new figures—familiar ones, safe ones. The chief of police, dressed as a Roman centurion, reached her first. He was a tall, imposing man, his barrel-like chest puffed out. The fake gold helmet with its garish plumes somehow suited him.

  “Two men,” Rose gasped out as she gestured behind her. “Spies. One of them huge, the other of average build.” She couldn’t describe them beyond that, as their facial features had been shrouded in darkness.

  At her third word, the chief’s footsteps faltered. But he did not pause. The tinfoil that he’d used on his legs to simulate leg armor flashed in the moonlight as he pounded down the beach.

  “Are you okay?” Myrtle asked, throwing her arms around Rose. “What happened?”

  “There were two attackers. They tampered with my Bearcat.” Rose gave her friend a brief embrace before she sank to the ground, finally allowing herself to feel the aches spreading over her body.

  Thank goodness her shout had brought reinforcements. Rose had always had a knack for theatrical screams—a skill she’d previously put to use only during boarding school pageants and house party performances. She’d never thought that one day her ability to create earsplitting shrieks would save her life.

  Her family physician knelt down next to her. His long and obviously fake beard brushed against Rose’s bare arm. Dressed as Rip Van Winkle, the man wore tattered clothes and a crumpled tricorn hat.

  “Did your car crash, Miss Van Etten?” Dr. Stevens asked. “We heard an odd sort of thud during a lull in the fireworks.”

  Not one to show weakness, Rose did as she’d done since she was a little girl trying to please her parents, who had no tolerance for tears or pouts: she hid her fear and pain beneath blitheness.

  “The Stutz did crash, but I’m unharmed except for some bumps, bruises, and minor cuts. Sand is much more forgiving than gravel.” She shook back the bangs that had fallen in her eyes. She’d been one of the first society ladies to lop off her hair. She’d done it as a lark and to stir up some minor scandal, but it had proved useful on the Front, especially given some of the spartan living conditions she’d faced.

  “I still should check you over, my dear.” Dr. Stevens’s voice had taken on that kindly but undeniably stern tone that men liked to employ upon “headstrong” women. Rose had never done well with stern.

  “No need.” Rose forced herself to pop up from the ground and stretch her painted lips into a wide, carefree grin. “I’m as right as rain.”

  “Are you certain?” Myrtle asked.

  “Nothing I haven’t experienced before,” Rose said, “except for the spies. That was novel.”

  “Spies?” Dr. Stevens asked, his fuzzy gray eyebrows pulling downward in concern . . . but not the kind of worry one would normally express after an announcement that foreign agents were nearby. “Are you experiencing another nervous upset, my dear?”

  A nervous upset. What a domestic, prosaic way to describe the piercingly sharp memories that would slice through her consciousness without warning.

  Before Rose could respond, the police chief returned, huffing a bit. His helmet listed to the right, and a piece of his leg armor had come loose, making a crinkling sound when he walked. Aside from
looking disheveled from his run, he thankfully did not appear harmed.

  “Did you encounter them?” Rose asked Chief Montgomery.

  “The, er, spies?” The man’s mustache twitched on the last word.

  Rose narrowed her eyes, frustrated anger replacing her shield of blitheness. “Yes, the spies. The men who laid an ambush for me.”

  Chief Montgomery exchanged a speaking look with Dr. Stevens over Rose’s head.

  “I did not see anyone.” The chief spoke gently, as if mere words could break her.

  “What about footprints?” Rose asked between gritted teeth. “How many sets were there?”

  “How fast were you driving?” The policeman’s tone softened even more, making it clear he did not regard this as a true investigation. Very likely, he hadn’t even believed her enough to search the scene for evidence. Rose wished she had on her tailored uniform instead of a flowy, fancy dress. Yet she doubted even that would improve her credibility to these men.

  “Did you even attempt to corroborate my account?” Rose demanded. Just as it had been her duty to transport the wounded to safety, it was now her responsibility to stop these spies.

  Again, the man’s eyes flicked toward Dr. Stevens. The two men’s gazes held, and frustration welled inside Rose. They didn’t believe her.

  Dr. Stevens gave her shoulder a pat that was supposed to be reassuring. It was not.

  “Now, Miss Van Etten, you know how easily you can become overset—”

  “Overset!” The word exploded from Rose like a shell from a dreaded Paris Gun. “My Bearcat was sabotaged, I was chased by two men speaking of conspiracy, and I am overset!”

  Dr. Stevens glanced around nervously. Taking in the growing crowd of wide-eyed party guests, he started to steer Rose out of hearing distance. She shook off his hand, but she still followed. Although she generally didn’t give a fig what high society or the press said about her, she was not about to have the gossips dissect her shell shock over canapés and cocktails.

  When they had moved far enough away from the rest of the crowd, Dr. Stevens cupped her elbow again. “My dear, you have been . . . well . . . prone to . . . shall we say . . . flights of fancy. Your nerves have simply not recovered from your time in Europe.”

  The physician spoke as if she had simply been on a Grand Tour of the Continent.

  “I believe the word you are searching for is hallucination,” Rose said crisply. “And yes, my service on the Western Front has left its mark on me, but the attack was no mirage.”

  Chief Montgomery clasped her other arm, as if the two men were trying to prop her up like a fainting damsel in a dime novel.

  “Miss, the war is over. Why would there be spies lurking about the beach in Florida?”

  “Perhaps because I may know something.” Rose crossed her arms—against both the men’s words and the twinge of doubt they’d triggered.

  It had been real. Hadn’t it?

  But she’d been so jumpy lately. It wasn’t even just the war memories. Even an unexpected tread of footsteps could send her clambering to her feet, ready to fight.

  “She has a point.” Myrtle, who had been standing a few feet away, spoke quietly, and she stepped closer.

  “My dear, you were an ambulance driver. You do not need to fear that the crippled German Reich has any interest in you. This is merely an offshoot of your hysteria—quite a common occurrence in a lady of delicate breeding such as yourself,” Dr. Stevens said as he hoisted his gaslight lantern.

  “It just doesn’t make sense, now, does it, miss?” The chief spoke softly and earnestly. Neither of the men meant offense. Her family was too wealthy, too connected, and too powerful—and not just in Florida, where her father had practically single-handedly built the state’s infrastructure. The men seemed to be trying to placate her, not insult her.

  Rose, though, had listened to enough. She’d bottled up her words all evening, hoping to spare the good folks from the well of acid burning holes inside her. It was time to unleash her irritability.

  She leveled her gaze first on Dr. Stevens in his Rip Van Winkle garb. “It makes as much sense as one would expect from a man who slept through the war.” Then she turned toward the police chief dressed as a Roman centurion. “Or from a man who ran away from an empty tomb just when things were about to get interesting.”

  Wishing that she felt as certain as her words sounded, Rose marched away toward the house, her face once again turned to the sea. She grabbed a cig from her ever-handy reticule and stuck it into her mouth and sucked on it as she stared out at the pinpricks of light dotting the sky.

  “If it’s any consolation, I believe you.” Myrtle caught up to her, matching her angry strides.

  “It’s more than a consolation,” Rose said, taking the paper tube of tobacco from her mouth and walking it through her fingers as she tried to calm the clawing frustration. Lately it seemed that if she wasn’t trying to contain her anxiousness, she was battling back crankiness.

  “Rose, you always accomplish the impossible. You’re capable of convincing the right people.”

  Myrtle wasn’t entirely wrong, but she wasn’t completely right either. Rose didn’t persuade people. Her father did. Politicians, businessmen, leaders—they all listened to the titan of industry—or, at the very least, to the amount of wealth and influence he had amassed. And Daddy . . . well, Daddy would pull any strings to mollify his “hysterical” daughter, even if he thought her utterly mad. And sometimes she feared that she was. Just a little.

  Momentarily stopping, Rose bent down and plucked a shell from the sand. After standing back up, she heaved it out to sea. She waited until the waves swallowed up the flash of white before she spoke. “Why do you believe that this wasn’t another one of my hallucinations?”

  “Did it feel like one?” Myrtle queried softly.

  “No,” Rose admitted as she remembered the pain of landing on her back, the air leaving her body. “It felt real.”

  “Then that’s enough for me.”

  “Perhaps it was best that the men didn’t believe me,” Rose said.

  “How so?”

  Lord Barbury’s voice echoed through Rose’s mind. Talk. Only. To. Him. Spies. Everywhere. Active everywhere. The words seemed prophetic now . . . or was that only because they’d just inspired her latest episode of shell shock?

  “My attackers mentioned the name of one of my last patients—an English nobleman who spoke of an extensive network of foreign agents.”

  “Surely you don’t believe that the local doctor and the police chief are part of the conspiracy?” For the first time, Myrtle’s voice held a hint of skepticism—not that Rose blamed her on this point.

  “Heavens no, but if I look into Lord Barbury’s claim, I need to be careful about what hornet’s nest I poke.” Rose started walking again, as if the momentum would somehow give her a sense of direction. “If what the viscount said was true and I confide in the wrong person, whatever actual evidence there is could disappear.”

  “Are you planning on tracking down a spy ring? By yourself?” Myrtle huffed a little as Rose set a punishing pace toward the east end of her parents’ mansion, where the family wing was.

  “I . . . I believe I am.” Rose paused at the steps that led to a private veranda outside her bedroom.

  Myrtle inclined her head toward Rose’s room. “Shall we head inside so no one can overhear?”

  Rose nodded and opened the french doors to a small sitting area attached to the bedchamber. Despite the rather heavy-looking armor that composed her Joan of Arc costume, Myrtle sank down onto the settee and patted a spot next to her.

  Rose joined her friend. After neatly arranging her Grecian-inspired dress, she launched into how she’d first met the viscount when she had been sheltering in the poste de secours. Myrtle, who normally asked a thousand penetrating questions, remained silent as Rose recounted what had happened.

  “I only found out the viscount’s identity right before I fell ill. I wasn’t sur
e how much of the truth he’d spoken . . . until tonight,” she concluded.

  “What do you plan to do next? You’ve just had an attempt on your life!” Myrtle asked, worry lacing her normally collected tone.

  “Well, one botched abduction at least—that I may or may not have imagined,” Rose corrected, refusing to allow shadowy figures to terrify her any further. “But now that I am aware that they may be lurking about, I can take precautions.”

  Myrtle snorted. “I don’t think you know the meaning of caution—pre or otherwise.”

  Rose rolled her Lucky Strike between her thumb and forefinger. “Well, then I’ll just need to discover who the spies are before they can get to me.”

  “On your own? Entirely?” Myrtle questioned.

  “I can’t see another option,” Rose said.

  “How in heaven’s name are you going to unravel a spy ring with practically no information and absolutely no resources?”

  “For someone who has devoted her life to digging through mud in hopes of discovering a hint of the habits of long-dead peoples, I would think you’d have more faith.”

  “But where to even start?”

  “I have Lord Barbury’s key.” Rose tugged on the chain and laid the piece of metal on the outside of her costume. “I know that it opens a chest or safe or locked drawer that holds his reports on the spy ring. He told me to go to a place that sounds like hammer and that a man would be able to help me. He also mentioned a woman—Tamsin Morris, I believe. I know from my own inquiries that Lord Barbury was the Earl of Mar’s son.”

  Myrtle arched a blonde eyebrow. “That still begs my initial question of where to begin.”

  “Why, London, of course.”

  “London?”

  “Where else to find information out about a peer of the realm? Besides, his father is often in residence there. I can learn more about the late viscount from his friends and family, and maybe the clues he left will make more sense.”