Amber Storm (Assassin In Paradise Book 1)

by Jack Stroke

  “Maybe I’m just trying to get you back. Surprise you coming out of the water.”

  “See, but I’m smart. I’m coming out on the beach, not attempting to climb up slippery rocks. Plus I’m not fully dressed.” He grabbed his towel and dried himself. “Did you just come over to watch me get out of the water, kid? I mean, that’s fine if you did…”

  Of course he would think that...

  “No.” Amber tried to relax the tension in the back of her neck and not get defensive. “I came to take you up on your offer.”

  “Oh, yeah? What offer was that?”

  “Going on a date.”

  “What? You and me?”

  “That was the general idea, wasn’t it?”

  “How do you know the offer is still on the table?”

  She smiled. “What? Am I too late? Oh well, my bad luck, I guess.”

  He took his time, happily drying himself, not even a little self-conscious. “I suppose we could go on a date, if you really want to. What did you want to do?”

  “Your choice. Surprise me.”

  “All right. Tonight?”

  “No time like the present.”

  “Cool. I’ll pick you up around eight.”

  “Sounds good. Paradise by the Bay Holiday Cabins. I’m in number six.”

  50

  “Can you believe it? It’s a miracle,” Joan said with a ridiculously large smile on her face.

  “Joan…” Ben grumbled.

  “Not only did Amber manage to get him out of bed on a Saturday, she got him to do exercise.”

  “We get it, Mum,” said Megan.

  “Hey, Amber. Any tips for getting him to clean his room?”

  The four of them stood around the cottage kitchen, three of them wishing Joan would stop.

  “Well, I think it’s great. Great,” Joan said. “You should go with them next time, Megan.”

  “Mum, enough, okay?”

  “I’m just saying —”

  “Were you in the office earlier?” Megan interrupted.

  “Me? No. Not today,” Joan said. “Why?”

  “I could have sworn I saw someone in there this morning,” Megan said, turning and staring straight at Amber.

  “Wasn’t me,” Joan said, slight concern in her voice. “I’ll go check.”

  She hurried out.

  Ben mumbled something about a shower and disappeared too, leaving Megan and Amber.

  “He clearly likes having you here. So does Mum.”

  “He’s a good kid.”

  “Is he? Do you know many seventeen-year-olds?”

  Amber shook her head.

  “How would you know then?”

  “He’s just, I don’t know. Switched on. He seems smart.”

  “Not that you’d know it from his school reports.”

  They drifted into silence, the kitchen clock suddenly quite loud.

  “They’ll be sad when you go again. Mum and Ben.”

  “I’m not going to… Well, I mean… I’m going to stay around. Not necessarily right here, but stay in touch.”

  “U huh,” Megan said.

  The ticking clock took over the space once more, Megan flicking through a local paper.

  “So, where do you want to go for this night out?” she asked Amber. “Pub or something? We could go to the Half.”

  “We could, yeah, sure. I mean, I don’t drink…”

  Megan rolled her eyes. “Of course you don’t.”

  “No, I mean, sure though. The pub is fine. Whatever you like.”

  “What, you want to sit there and watch me get drunk? Why do you want to do this if you don’t drink?”

  “I don’t care where we go. I just thought it might be nice if we could spend some time together…”

  “We’re spending time together now.”

  Amber pushed through the unpleasantness. “When did it become so strained between us? We used to…” Her sentence died away, never discovering its destination.

  “I don’t know. When did you stop being a person and doing normal things like having a drink and eating food? Not this weirdo freak you are now.”

  Every cell in Amber’s body told her to stand up and walk away. Out of the cottage. She forced herself to stay. The clock kept ticking on.

  “How’s it going with Vaughan?”

  “He asked me on a date.”

  “You going to do it? You should. There’s stuff all men around here. Mum said you said some weird thing about having to date people from your work or something.”

  “Not exactly. It’s difficult to explain.”

  “Everything is difficult to explain… Were you in a cult, Amber? That would actually make a lot of sense to me right now.”

  “No, no cult. I just… haven’t had a lot of time for men or relationships this past few years.”

  “See? That’s even weirder coming from you than not drinking.”

  “Are you saying I used to be a slut?”

  “I wasn’t saying it, but yeah, you were.” A hint of a smile lit up Megan’s face. She tried to fight it, unsuccessfully. It was nice to see her smile.

  “What about you?”

  “Was I a slut? Nowhere near as big as you.”

  That wasn’t how Amber remembered it.

  “I mean, are there any men in your life?”

  “Ben. He’s more than enough for me.”

  Megan finished the paper, turned back to the start and began flicking through all over again.

  “No one else?”

  “Who? Like I said, there’s no men around here, unless you count Grubby at the bait shop.”

  “But Port Simmons…”

  “They’re all Mum’s age. Even if there were men about, they wouldn’t be interested. We don’t all look like you, Amber. I’m an overweight woman in my forties with a kid. Not exactly a catch.”

  Once again, Amber searched for the sort of comment you might get in a film to boost Megan’s self-confidence and restore the friendship. Once again, nothing came to mind.

  “Ben was asking about Ellis.”

  Amber had no interest in talking about Ellis, but she was desperate and it slipped out when she couldn’t think of a single other thing to say.

  “Here we go. It was only a matter of time.”

  “What was?”

  “Until you mentioned Ellis. Go on, say it.”

  “What?” Amber asked.

  “I told you so. Clearly you’ve been waiting to say it this whole time.”

  “Told you so about what?”

  Megan shut the paper, ripping the front page in half. “About Ellis. That he was a loser. And you were right all along and I was wrong and I was stupid to ever hook up with him.”

  “Megan. I wasn’t —”

  “Well, you were wrong. If I hadn’t got together with Ellis, I would never have had Ben. My beautiful boy. Then I would have nothing. Is that what you want?”

  Amber stared back. “Megan, that’s not —”

  “What have you got to show for your life, Amber? Anything at all? You’re happy to look down your nose at me, but your life isn’t so hot.”

  “No, I’m not looking down my nose. My life is a complete mess.”

  “Whatever. It’s great that you’ve decided to hang about. I’m sure Ben is thrilled and Mum is thrilled. I’ll just wait and see if it actually happens this time, shall I? You might have everyone else fooled, Amber, but not me.” Megan stood, the chair toppling heavily behind her.

  Amber decided to keep her mouth shut. Why were even the most basic conversations so difficult now?

  51

  As the afternoon turned into evening, Amber found herself surprisingly nervous. It had been a while since she had been on a date which didn’t end in her killing the other person. Or killing somebody. Not necessarily the person she was on a date with. Sometimes a date was merely a cover to allow her to slip away unnoticed or poison a stranger’s drink. Hiding in plain sight. No one would die at her hand this evening. She hop
ed. Although that probably depended on if Vaughan insisted on calling her ‘kid’…

  Her wardrobe was limited. She didn’t want to wear the pantsuit she had worn arriving in Paradise Cove, so she asked Joan if she could borrow the hatchback to go into Port Simmons to find some kind of nice outfit. Joan seemed thrilled about the date and was more than happy to lend the car, as long as Amber promised to drive a little more sensibly than last time. There didn’t seem much point explaining she didn’t actually like Vaughan, and that she was merely making an effort to do what normal people do.

  Most of the clothes stores in Port Simmons skewed older, catering more for Joan’s age-group than Amber’s. Eventually she managed to find a nice outfit - a simple red sundress with a white flower pattern that suited her figure and revealed a touch of cleavage but not too much.

  She even splashed out on a little makeup to complete the look.

  Returning home, Amber was ready by around seven-thirty and found herself trying to think of conversation topics in case they ran out of things to say.

  With the clock ticking over slowly, her mood soured, annoyed with herself for having to do this at all. Annoyed with Vaughan for asking and making her purchase a whole new outfit. Just annoyed generally. He was late too, which didn’t help her mood at all, and when he finally did show up, his choice of outfit annoyed her all the more. He wore tatty board shorts (quite possibly the same pair he had gone swimming in that day), a lurid green pair of those horrible plastic Croc shoes and a shirt which looked like it had been liberated from a Goodwill bin. What had she been expecting? A tuxedo? Why had she bothered to make an effort?

  “Nice outfit,” she said.

  “Thank you. You don’t look so bad yourself.”

  No sign of chocolates or flowers or anything like that. Was that a calculated decision on his part? Or more laziness?

  “Okay, so what are we doing?”

  “A woman who gets straight down to it. I like that. Let’s just go for a walk first, see how we go.”

  They took their time moving to the beach across the road. Amber could feel someone watching. Megan probably. Joan too. Maybe even Ben. She knew the three of them were about, even if she couldn’t see them.

  “Take off your shoes,” Vaughan instructed.

  “Why?”

  “So we can wade. That’s one of life’s great pleasures, wading up to your ankles in the ocean.”

  He was correct. The water gently washing about her feet was calming and tranquil and felt like freedom and childhood all rolled into one.

  “Why did you change your mind, kid?”

  “About what?”

  “Our date. You were pretty adamantly not interested yesterday.”

  “I just adore being referred to as ‘kid’ and couldn’t resist a whole evening of it.”

  “That so?”

  Water gently splashed her feet. She shook her head. “I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m trying to be more of a normal person.”

  He shot her a look. “Really? I might not have said yes if I had known that.”

  “Why?”

  “I would have preferred you’d come because you were interested in a date with me, not because you were on some self-improvement kick.”

  “Oh well, take what you can get.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “What? The new me? It’s tough. I haven’t had a lot of practice being a regular person. Doing regular person things.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, most people find it tough. Even people who have had regular practice.”

  Conversation flowed easily with Vaughan. Relaxed and comfortable. It was nice to have conversations like this without a specific goal or attempting to extract information. She gave him the edited highlights of her life, and he told her what she presumed to be the heavily edited extracts of his.

  “Are you lost, Amber? In your life?”

  “Strange question coming from you, isn’t it?”

  “Why?”

  “From what you’ve told me, you seem to be a drifter in search of something, but with no idea what, just hopeful you’ll know when you find it.”

  “That’s quite a condensed version, but pretty accurate. Searching doesn’t necessarily mean lost though. You seem lost.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  He shrugged. “It’s okay to be lost every now and again, kid.”

  “I guess. I don’t really like it.”

  “You’re used to being in control.”

  “Probably. My work, it’s very… specific and involved. There’s not a lot of room for anything other than it. And that is fine, that’s what I thought I wanted. And now, I’m trying to find my way back… to somewhere. Regular life, I guess. Except I have no idea where it is.”

  Arriving at the Paradise Cove dock, Vaughan took Amber out to a small sailboat, similar to the one Amber had burned down the evening before. A little smaller than that one though, and more modern.

  “Is this your boat?”

  “It is. Would you like to come aboard?”

  “I guess it would be rude to ask how a drifter moving from place to place could afford a boat like this.”

  “Maybe. No ruder than if I were to ask how someone could afford to quit their job and take off with no sign of looking for a new one.”

  They climbed aboard.

  “It’s good keeping the boat here where I can keep an eye on it. You never know what might happen, keeping it out at sea. Like that boat you didn’t go on the other day.”

  “Oh, yeah? What happened with that one?”

  “No one seems to know. Not there anymore. Up and disappeared in the middle of the night last night. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  Oh crap. Had Vaughan seen her? Again?

  52

  Standing on Vaughan’s boat, Amber rocked gently from side to side. She told herself to relax. Yes, she had destroyed the sailboat, but Vaughan hadn’t seen anything. She played it straight.

  “That boat’s gone? They must have moved on. Sailed somewhere else.”

  “Maybe.”

  Vaughan gave the tour which only took a few moments. He offered her a drink, cracking himself a beer while she had a water.

  “So, Ben said you’re looking for work taking tourists out on this thing.”

  “Why not? All I need is some tourists.”

  The two of them settled into deckchairs, the floor swaying ever so slightly below them.

  “They say find a job you love, you’ll never have to work again.”

  “Or something like that.”

  “Or something like that. You know what I mean.”

  “And you love your boat?”

  “No place I would rather be.”

  Amber could picture that. Vaughan in a tank top and tattered cowboy hat, taking out holidaymakers. The tourists would eat it up. Especially young women. All women actually. If he had been here way back when, young Amber and Megan would have booked his services every chance they got.

  “Plus I pick up bits and pieces of work from the locals.”

  “What sort of work.”

  “Just odd jobs. Whatever needs doing.”

  A light breeze gently tickled them, perfectly offsetting the warmth of the disappearing sun.

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Do you love this business whatever it is you do? Or should I say did?”

  She took a few moments to ponder the question. “No. I didn’t love it. I felt I was making a difference sometimes, so that’s important. Mostly though, it was something I was able to do that paid well.”

  “That’s a positive.”

  “Not if it destroys your soul.”

  Her stomach grumbled. Given this was a date and he had picked her up at eight, or at least would have if he hadn’t been late, Amber had assumed that meant dinner. Maybe she was wrong. There was no sign of any food. No sooner had she thought this than she spotted a deliveryman ambling down the
dock towards them.

  “You can order pizza? To a boat?”

  “Why not?” Vaughan said. “Do you want to pay or do you want me to get it, kid?”

  “Do I want to pay? Is that what you just asked?”

  Vaughan shrugged. “I don’t want to be presumptuous. Some women don’t like having their meals paid for.”

  “We can split it.” She fished some cash out of her purse.

  Vaughan and the pizza man appeared to know each other, making Amber believe this was a fairly regular occurrence.

  “Where’s it from?”

  “Port Simmons. It’s kind of crappy pizza, but good crappy, you know?”

  “I guess I’ll find out. What type did you get?”

  “Hawaiian. Everybody loves Hawaiian.”

  “No, they don’t. Not the president of Iceland.”

  “The president of Iceland?”

  “He tried to have Hawaiian banned. In Iceland. One of his campaign promises.”

  “That seems like an abuse of power.”

  “I don’t know how serious he was. But my point stands. Hawaiian has pineapple on it. There are many people throughout the world who believe pineapple on a pizza is a travesty.”

  “Like the president of Greenland.”

  “Iceland. Exactly. Plus Hawaiian has ham as well. What if I’m a vegetarian?”

  “Pick the ham off. Or don’t eat. More for me.”

  He took the largest slice from the box and bit in, closing the box again, not offering her a slice or a plate.

  “Pick it off? That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “No, that’s what I would tell you if you were a veggo. But I don’t think you are. I think you’re just fishing for trouble.”

  His presumptuousness irritated her, even if he was quite correct. She wasn’t a vegetarian, nor was she averse to Hawaiian. She grabbed a piece, and as suggested the pizza was both crappy and delicious. Sitting on the deck, eating and chatting, it wasn’t hard to see the appeal of Vaughan’s life.

  Amber found herself skipping forward to the evening’s conclusion. How would it end? Did he expect sex? He was a guy. He almost certainly wanted it. How would it work? Would they go below? Him using his attractive forearms to remove her sundress? Would she stay the night? What about tomorrow? Joan and Megan would definitely notice if she didn’t make it home this evening.