“Aline-Claire—Veronique.”
His gaze lasers hers. Again, his energy shifts, darkens. A breeze stirs the leaves of the olive tree, and all the cicadas suddenly fall silent. It’s as though a cloud crossed the sun—yet the sky is clear.
“What makes you ask?”
She thinks of the tiny gold serpent she spied on a chain at the throat of “Veronique” in the old newspaper image that Carter showed her—almost identical to the one gifted to Lillith. The sight of it electrified Poppy—shocked her to the core. She thinks of the photo of the man in the suit on the bridge over a canal in Amsterdam. Carter was right. That manison the ship.
It’s Hendrick.
“Just wondering.”
Dr. Marsh glances in the direction of the ruins. For a moment he watches his daughter and his grandson. He faces Poppy. “Did I see that you were traveling with someone, Poppy?”
“My boss. Lillith McGregor.”
He nods again, moistening his lips, as though still deciding how to answer her.
“Do you know Lillith?” she asks.
“I certainly know of her. Her husband was infamous. Angus McGregor’s media legacy lingers. Not in exactly positive ways, in my opinion.”
“Dr. Marsh”—she leans forward—“do you mind telling meexactlywhat happened to Aline-Claire? I’ve read that she was on a train, traveling through Pakistan. And there was an explosion on the tracks, sabotage, which led to a derailment. And she was in a compartment that went down the embankment into a river, and she was pronounced dead on the scene—found among the bodies of the many other victims. But how did the authorities know for certain it was her? From her passport? I mean, she and Vincent traveled on so many different passports stolen from travelers along the Hippie Trail, what if—”
“You know what, Poppy, I’m going to ask that you wait for the book. Given the revelatory and sensitive nature of my recent discoveries, my publisher and agent and I have just signed a mutual nondisclosure agreement. Plus an embargo. I’m actually no longer at liberty to talk about it until the release. Neither are they.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I . . . of course. I—”
“I should leave you to it.” He rises. “Enjoy the rest of the day in Turkey. Perhaps I’ll see you back on board.” He ambles off toward Carter and his mother.
She stares after him. Pulse racing. Brain wheeling. It couldn’t be—could it?
She knows Lillith’s history fairly intimately from working on her memoir. She knows that Lillith Ravenscroft was born in Mauritius to a British father and French mother. She was a single child. She studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, like many Mauritians did at the time. She started working as a news photographer in South Africa during the Apartheid era. She took some politically risky shots. Her photos were banned. So she contracted to overseas papers, selling her photos around the world, making a huge name for herself in places like the UK, France, Germany, Australia, the US. She was injured and lost her eye after an encounter with an IED on a dirt road through the jungle in Mozambique.
But what if it’s a lie? All of it?
What if her limp and scars are really from a shattered glass door in Quebec? And it earned her a settlement that helped her get to Kashmir. What if she lost her eye in that Pakistan train derailment? What if they identified the wrong body?
And now that Vincent has been released, she’s met up with him on this cruise.
No. It’s not possible. Or is it?
And if it is—what in sweet heaven’s name does she want with Poppy?
Poppy
Poppy—rattled by her own alarming and growing suspicions—hurries back to the port, her head down, focused on getting onto a tender, getting back to theOrchid, and going straight up to her cabin to lock herself inside until the ship arrives in Santorini.
“Poppy!”
She jumps at the sound of her name, and stops. She scans the street.
A man looking like aCasablancaHumphrey Bogart in a panama hat sits beneath a vined trellis at a small table outside a Turkish café. He’s in shadow. She can’t see his face under the hat.
He waves her over.
