by Celia Ashley
Stopping above the surf, Paige flicked on the light, casting its blue-white glow over the sand. Apparently high tide had come in while she’d been talking with Liam. A narrow scrim of tumbled shell and stone showed where the water had begun its slow withdrawal. Any footprints lay beneath the water, scrubbed away. Nevertheless, Paige continued toward the jetty, flicking the light on and off to make sporadic checks of the ground. Once there, she scuttled up onto the rocks to sit a few moments. She figured it was safe to do so. She might have been in a dangerous position if the tide were still coming in.
Paige shoved the flashlight back into her pocket and drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around her legs. She could see the lights of town against a lowering cloud cover. Sitting on a porch that had once been her own hadn’t felt as much like home as this did. Jammed between the huge boulders beneath the night sky, staring toward town while the ocean rushed in and out at her back was far more nostalgic. She’d often come here to sit alone long after her parents had thought her asleep. Why? She hadn’t been meeting anyone. The number of friends she’d had was fairly limited. For one thing, she’d been uncomfortable inviting anyone over. Looking back, though, she couldn’t place her finger on a particular reason for that avoidance. Not her parents’ fighting. She’d witnessed spats between other kids’ parents and none of them cared. They all brushed it off as a normal course of events. She supposed it was, indeed, daily life, relationships. But as far as she knew, none of their mothers had been the victim of a brutal attack by her spouse.
Secrets. Her early life had been full of secrets.
Paige bit her lip and lowered her forehead onto her knees. The pounding surf reverberated from her heels on stone up through the hard mass of knee and skull. She squeezed her eyes shut against the discomfort, refusing to move.
A male voice spoke nearby in a series of unintelligible words. Sucking in a breath, Paige lifted her head, scanning the shadowed beach. Seeing nothing, she considered using the flashlight, but decided not to draw attention to herself. Not Liam, so whoever it was, she’d rather they passed on by.
A light flared. Paige narrowed her eyes, peering between her lashes. A man stood with a lantern in his hands at a distance of about twenty yards. She could see him clearly, bearded and wearing an ill-fitting coat despite a comfortable night. If he saw her, he gave no indication, but began walking away with the same slow, ambling stride she’d seen earlier.
Watching him move back along the beach, she tried to decide if she should speak to him, get his name, so she could tell Liam she had met his mirage, his ghost, in the flesh. In the lamp’s golden glow, she could distinguish his coat’s dusty folds, the coarse knit of his cap, his curly beard and hair, but below the coat’s hem his legs were invisible, hidden in shadow. She stood up. “Hello?”
Paige scrambled down from the rocks, eyes on her descent to avoid breaking her neck. When her feet touched sand, she looked up again. The man was gone. “Hello?” She whipped the flashlight from her pocket and passed the beam in a huge sweep across the rocky beach. Still finding nothing, she hurried to the place she’d seen him last.
Suddenly dizzy, she stopped, her gaze glued to an indistinct mound on the sand in front of her. It looked like a body. Oh, God, had the old man fallen? She staggered over. Before she reached him, recall slammed like ice into her skull, a silver flash, swiftly to the mark—
Mom, what is that?
Come away, Paige. Now.
—and then nothing.
What lay on the beach before her was no more than rock and seaweed. The man with the lantern was nowhere, and her mind was trying to make mincemeat of her resolve. She backed away in haste and fell over a piece of driftwood. The flashlight flew from her grasp. With a strangled cry, she crab-walked in search of it and located the instrument by the beam half-buried in the sand. Snatching it out, she jumped to her feet. Something huge and dark and solid blocked her way. With a scream, she launched the light at it, which hit with a noise like rock on stone.
“Shit, Paige, what the hell are you doing?”
Paige reeled in shock relief. “Who is that?”
“Dan. It’s Dan Stauffer.”
Paige brushed sand from her pants and arms, retrieving her flashlight once more from the ground. “Sorry,” she said. “I hope that didn’t hurt too much.”
“I’d be charging you with assault if it wasn’t so damned funny.”
Mouth twisting, she shone the light on his face, checking for bleeding. “Could be a bruise cropping up. What are you doing here?”
“I saw a light and came to investigate.”
“So you saw him, too? Good. I need to—”
“Him? I saw you. Was there somebody else here?”
His gaze darted back to her from the direction of the jetty as he held up a hand to block the light.
“Yeah,” Paige said. “There was a guy with a lantern. You didn’t see him?”
Dan’s hand dropped. A fleeting confusion passed across his features. “I didn’t see anyone but you, staggering like a drunk. Have you been drinking?”
Lowering the flashlight to her side, Paige raised her other hand to her hip. “I had half a beer. Not even. I lost my balance for a second, but I’m fine. Just where were you that you ‘saw’ me?”
He jerked his thumb toward the ridge. “Up there by the cottage. I came to talk to you—”
“I didn’t give you the address.”
“I’m a cop, remember?”
For the first time she noticed he wore street clothes, his size diminished by the missing bulletproof vest beneath his dark T-shirt. She needed no reminder of his occupation, but she found the fact that he’d been able to locate her unsettling. “How’d you do it? Find me, I mean?”
“I’ll be honest. It wasn’t such a feat. The woman who rented you the place happened to mention it to me in passing about a half an hour ago. And I figured I’d stop by for a chat.”
Paige shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “It’s after nine o’clock at night, Dan. Bit late for a chat.”
“Your lights were on, so—”
“No, they weren’t.”
He stepped aside, affording her a full view of the rental cottage. Sure enough, every window in the bungalow glowed with the distinct cast of incandescent lighting. The door stood wide, illumination seeping into the night like yellow dye.
“Did you go in?” Paige asked.
“I did not.”
Paige lurched into a run up the hill.
Chapter 6
“Stay where you are. I’ll check it out,” Stauffer ordered as he passed her, keys on a ring jangling from his belt loop. Paige ignored him. She’d never been one for listening. That behavioral trait had earned her a reputation as an intractable student in school despite her straight-A status. She pursued Dan doggedly up to the cottage and arrived on the walkway only a few seconds behind him.
An elongated shadow undulated across the lit squares of stone. “Wait here,” Dan commanded again, and vanished over the threshold.
Paige followed.
“Paige?”
She skidded to a halt. Liam stood in the room’s center. Beside her, Dan, who had been extending an arm to stop her, dropped his open palm to his denim-covered thigh with a slap.
“Do you know this man?”
Paige circled around Dan. “Liam, what are you doing here?”
Liam moved to the left, as if trying to keep both of them in his line of sight. His gaze kept straying to Stauffer. Dan glanced frequently at him, too. Something odd inhabited the exchange.
“Do you two know each other?” Paige asked.
Neither man spoke.
“Do you?”
The two men employed another silent exchange, as if gauging each other’s size and capabilities.
“No,” said Liam.
“I’ve seen him once or twice,” said Dan. “Don’t know him, though.”
“Oh, for crying out l
oud,” muttered Paige, swinging the door closed. “Liam, this is Dan Stauffer, an officer with the local PD. Dan, this is Liam Gray.”
Both men grunted in greeting. Paige sat down in the room’s only chair and pulled off her left shoe to shake out a pebble. Sand stuck to her jeans and hands like glitter from a grade school project.
“What happened to your head?” Liam asked. From the corner of her eye, Paige saw Dan touch his bruised forehead.
“She threw her flashlight at me.”
Liam laughed. To Paige’s surprise, Dan chuckled, too. Paige lifted her brows. “Well, ha-ha. But I need you both to tell me what you’re doing here. Which one of you is going first?”
Both men maintained a stoic silence.
“Okay, I’ll pick. Liam?”
Crossing the floor, he stopped at the small section of kitchen counter and leaned his hips against it. He folded his arms across his chest. “I came looking for the cat. Your door was open. Again.”
“I shut it,” Paige said, more to herself than to either of them. Still, they exchanged a look. “What?”
Liam shook his head.
“So,” Paige went on, “you found the door open and the lights on and walked in.”
“Lights were off. I turned them on when I realized you weren’t here. If Shadow was inside, he’s gone now.”
“Do you think Shadow nudged the door open?”
“Doubtful,” interrupted Dan. “Not if you closed the door properly.”
Paige shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t.”
Dan shook his head. “Then you should take better care. Is anything missing?”
“Missing? A cat’s not likely to—”
“You don’t know it was the damn cat,” Dan said.
Paige looked from Dan to Liam, whose expression had gone stony. “I don’t have much worth stealing,” Paige advised them both.
“Check your purse.”
From where she sat, Paige could see that her bag on the bedpost hadn’t been disturbed, but she rose to check it, slipping her foot back into her shoe. On her way across the floor, she gave a wrinkle in the area rug a shove with the toe of her sneaker. She felt something hard beneath. “What’s that?”
Without waiting for an answer she expected wouldn’t be forthcoming, Paige grabbed the rug’s edge and peeled it back. A curved iron handle stuck up at a slight angle from a recess in the floorboards where it normally rested, meaning it had been moved. She stepped back, searching each man’s face. “What is that? A trap door? Do you think someone might have—”
“I’ll check,” said Dan. “Paige, give me that flashlight of yours.”
Liam held his hand out for the flashlight at the same time, ignoring the fact Paige had extended it in Dan’s direction. “It’s only a crawlspace,” Liam said. “Every cottage along the beach has one. Still, it’s worth a look.”
“Why don’t you just let a cop do his job?” Dan demanded with a touch of sarcasm.
At the change to Liam’s demeanor, Paige dropped the instrument onto his palm instead of Stauffer’s and moved away. She didn’t care which man did the checking. It wasn’t out of the question that a rambunctious cat could have shifted the handle in a battle with the rug, but she needed an assurance that no one lurked beneath the cottage.
Paige pulled the rug back a little more. “It couldn’t be the man from the beach, could it? I can’t see him moving that quickly.”
Liam paused, the ring for the trapdoor gripped in his hand. “The one you said you saw earlier?”
“I saw him again, right before I ran up here.”
Liam looked at Dan. “Were you out there on the beach?”
“Yeah, and I didn’t see anyone. Anyone but Paige, that is.”
Sand ground between Paige’s fingers as she stretched them in agitation. “I followed him. Or tried to. He disappeared when I was climbing off the rocks.”
“I didn’t see anyone,” Dan repeated. “And that’s a stupid move, trailing some unknown guy alone in the dark like that.”
Paige remained silent. Liam shot her a fierce, unfathomable glare before yanking the trapdoor up, rusted hinges creaking. He shined the light down into the darkness. Paige stepped forward to peer into the hole from behind him.
Dan grabbed her arm. “Just do me a favor and stand over there.”
Mutely, she complied. From a man’s viewpoint, it made sense to have a woman out of harm’s way. But as the woman in question, one who’d always maintained her independence, free from reliance on any male in her life, the request grated. Still, she was grateful not to have to deal with a possible intruder alone.
“Do you see anything?” she called down to Liam, who had descended into a crouch at the bottom of the decrepit stairs.
Dan wagged his head. “I think we would know if he did.”
Hunkered over his heels, Liam shuffled forward. The light went with him, blocked from the crawlspace entrance by his shadow. A tremor shook the floorboards beneath Paige’s feet. Dan felt it, too, and ducked toward the entrance.
“You okay down there?”
Liam appeared in the open square. “Sorry, bumped the joists. I want to check something farther back. If I yell—”
“I’ll be right there,” Paige said at the same time Dan spoke similar words. Blushing, Paige retreated to the chair and sat. Stupid thing for her to say. She folded her hands between her thighs. Dan lowered himself to his knees next to the trapdoor.
“Is he talking down there?” Paige asked.
Dan waved a hand. “Shhh. To himself.”
She heard Liam say something else, louder this time. Dan shoved his upper body into the opening. Paige tensed. Two seconds later, he was back out and rising. Liam appeared a moment later. He climbed up, brushing cobwebs from his hair, and then flipped the door shut. The crash of wood on wood echoed through the room. He pushed the handle down into the depression. The two men pulled the rug back into place.
“Clear?” asked Dan.
Liam nodded in a manner that made Paige sit up.
“What was down there?”
“Spiders,” said Liam. “Some discarded furniture. A few nests.”
“Nests?” Paige echoed. “What kind of nests?”
“The kind that might be the reason Shadow keeps coming over.”
Paige pictured a dank and dirty subterranean space filled with cavorting mice. Better than rats. And far better than a bearded man in a coat and a knit cap—because that was where her mind had traveled, despite the absurdity. “Thank you both,” she said, “for checking.”
Liam tossed the flashlight to her. Paige snatched it from the air above her head.
“I’ll be heading home, then. You’re safe.” He shot a look at Dan. “I assume.”
Paige stood. “I—”
“It’s all right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Dan followed him outside after telling her he’d be right back. Paige frowned at the closed door, listening to their indistinct voices on the opposite side, Liam’s gravel tones raised. Since she had no interest in an abrupt conversation between two strangers intent on pissing on each other’s shoes, Paige went to the bathroom to rinse the sand from her hands. A few minutes later, Dan returned.
“Paige?”
She stepped out, towel in hand. “I’m assuming you have something to tell me? You came looking for me, after all.”
“Yeah. You need to be more careful with your doors.”
“It was shut—”
“I know it was. When I came around to knock before I saw you on the beach, the lights were all on but the door was closed.”
Paige frowned. “What are you saying? That Liam is lying?”
“He said the door was open and the lights were off, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he lied.” Paige thought a moment. “It could mean that after you were at the door and before Liam came over, someone else came and went.” A light chill fingered its wa
y along her nape.
“That, too,” Dan agreed.
“Why would someone come in here?” Paige heard the shrill intensity in her voice and knocked it back a notch. “I mean, does it look like a place where someone might be stashing big bucks?”
“Nothing’s missing, right? Check your purse, now, will you?”
Paige hurried to the bed. She yanked her bag from the headboard. Her wallet was still inside, along with the cash and all her cards. Her keys rattled, glinting in the light from the bedside lamp when she tipped the purse’s contents for a better look. “Everything’s here.”
Dan shook his head. “Then I don’t know the answer. Use that lock, though, when I leave, okay? Lock it whenever you go out, even if it’s only to the water.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know what to think. Except that Gray guy is probably full of—”
“No,” said Paige. “He’s not.”
“Okay.” Dan started for the door.
“Wait, you did have something to tell me. And not about keeping my door locked.” Paige started after him and paused. “Isn’t that why you came? Did you find out what happened with my father’s boat?”
“Oh. Yeah,” said Dan, turning around. “Got anything to drink? Water? I’m a little dry after that run up from the beach.”
Paige yanked a bottle from the refrigerator and twisted off the cap. She handed the water to him, lobbing the cap into the sink. “Go on.”
He drank half the bottle down before answering. “Yes, your father’s sailboat went down in an unexpected storm. I’m digging into the details. Your father wasn’t alone when the ship sunk. He had crew members. All in all, there may be some things you don’t want to know.”
“Like what?”
“Drowning can be pretty gruesome.”
“Is there something to mark his passing? Like the stone cross on the headland? His name’s not inscribed on the one here in Alcina Cove. I checked.”