Beachcomber (16 page)

The one thing she was sure of—well, fairly sure of—was that the voice on the phone had not belonged to Castellano.

The only thing to do, she told herself, was keep putting one foot in front of the other and see if she couldn’t find some way out of this chamber of horrors before it killed her.

A glance in the rearview mirror told her that he was standing stock-still on the sidewalk watching her drive away. Friendly concern or something more sinister? She didn’t know. She couldn’t tell. Heck, who knew anything anymore?

Turning various possibilities over in her mind, she drove past families in shorts and sandals pedaling along on their bikes, past picturesque buildings lavishly trimmed in gingerbread, past sleepy-looking horses pulling carriages full of tourists through the winding streets of Ocracoke Village, without really seeing any of it. The laid-back charm of the island was basically wasted on her; it was impossible to settle in to the nineteenth-century atmosphere when she was in a near-constant state of mortal fear. The antiques shops, the restaurants with their chalkboard signs that all seemed to advertise fresh seafood, the picture-postcard beauty of the harbor, where sailboats and houseboats
and cabin cruisers of various sizes skimmed the waves on their way out to sea, were lost on her. When she found herself eyeballing the squat white lighthouse through her windshield, she was surprised to find herself already at her destination. Visitors were as thick as dandelions on an early summer lawn in the park surrounding the lighthouse, Christie saw as she parked. It occurred to her as she got out of the car that she didn’t know who or what she was looking for.

Not that it mattered. She felt fairly confident that whoever or whatever it was would find her. The thought made her heart lurch.

Now that she was out of the car, the steamy heat planted itself on her like a big wet kiss. Christy felt herself glowing again before she had taken more than two steps across the gleaming black macadam. Her shorts hung no longer than mid-thigh, and her T-shirt was a thin cotton knit. She couldn’t have been any hotter if she’d been wrapped in the ankle-length wool winter coat left behind in the closet of her apartment. Summoning up mental images of glaciers and penguins in an effort to beat the heat, Christy walked slowly through the parking lot and then across the grassy park to the white picket fence that kept tourists from actually touring the lighthouse, which, according to a brochure thrust into her hand by a helpful Park Services employee, dated back to 1823. With the dazzling azure of the cloudless sky and the deeper turquoise of the ocean for a backdrop, the lighthouse was still disappointingly prosaic in appearance. What popped into Christy’s mind when she stood in front of it was that it
looked like nothing so much as a saltshaker. A saltshaker standing in a scraggly patch of green grass.

Okay, so maybe her appreciation for the romance of history was a little lacking today.

But at least her sixth sense was working. She realized that as she felt the uncomfortable little prickle of awareness that told her someone was looking at her. Clutching the brochure as if it were her lifeline to the future, she glanced quickly around. Nothing and no one leaped out at her as the obvious source. But still, it was unmistakably there—this feeling of eyes boring into her back.

There were people everywhere she looked. None of them were paying the least attention to her.

She was breathing erratically, she realized, and her heart was doing a weird little tap dance in her chest. Glancing down, she saw that she’d shredded the brochure without realizing what she was doing. Fear had its own metallic taste, she’d learned over the last few days, and as she wet her dry lips she tasted it again in her mouth.

Restlessly she started walking, dumping the program into a waste can, following the line of the picket fence as it led toward the observation deck overlooking the sea. Near the observation deck were a small open-air snack bar, a museum devoted to Blackbeard, a souvenir shop largely featuring Blackbeard, and a set of stone steps leading down to the rock-strewn beach where a reenactment of Blackbeard’s epic final battle was under way. Tourists milled about in small chattering clumps, taking pictures, posing with the lighthouse in the background, scarfing down hot dogs and soft pretzels and fries. The
smells wafting past her nose made Christy feel queasy. The heat and lack of sleep combined to make her head pound. She hadn’t eaten yet today, she realized, and guessed that was partly responsible for the churning of her stomach. The feeling that she was being watched persisted, but she could not locate the watcher. Casting quick glances around, she wandered through the park, doing her best to make like a tourist without really registering anything she saw, waiting for the tap on her shoulder or other ah-ha moment that would tell her that she had been contacted.

She did this for an hour and a half. Nothing, except she was accidentally clobbered by a plastic sword, courtesy of a passel of shrieking kids in pirate hats engaged in what appeared to be a reenactment of the reenactment. Also, an elderly man asked her to take a picture of him and his family in front of the lighthouse, and approximately two dozen mosquitoes decided to dine out on her unprotected flesh. Calling the management company about the repairs to the cottage kept her occupied for all of five minutes, and then she was at loose ends again. Finally, she gave up scanning the assorted multitudes for some sort of sign and retreated to the snack bar, where she ordered a large Diet Coke and a small packet of aspirin. It was too hot and she was too nervous for anything else.

Sitting disconsolately at one of the metal tables, she swallowed the aspirin, drank the Coke, and read one of the ubiquitous brochures, which had been left behind by some other, apparently equally unappreciative, visitor.

In the midst of all that tiny print, the fact that jumped out at her was that on Sundays the lighthouse closed at five
P.M.

A little more than an hour to go. Her fear having been blunted by the heat and the lack of action, Christy was not eager to move out from beneath the corrugated aluminum awning into the blaze of the sun again. If someone was looking for her, she wasn’t that hard to find. No bloodhounds required. Her T-shirt was neon orange, for heaven’s sake, and she was one of the few people wandering around alone.

What happened if no one got in touch? That was the thought that was starting to loom large in Christy’s mind as she made a quick pit stop in the ladies’ room. Did that mean that she was free to pack up and go home?

“You wish,” was her reluctant conclusion. Through the mirror, she met the gaze of a woman washing her little girl’s hands at the sink and realized that she had spoken aloud.

Ducking into a stall, she did her business and was fighting with the plastic dispenser over toilet paper when she happened to glance down, under the door.

What looked like a man’s black work boot walked past. Even as she registered that with instant, skin-prickling horror, the door of the stall next to the one she was in opened with a near silent swish.

11

H
AVING DISCREETLY TRAILED
Christy to the rest rooms, Luke took a calculated risk and ducked into the men’s room for a lightning-quick visit of his own. He was just exiting, moving fast as he sought to get away from the dual entrances into a position where he could watch Christy emerge without being observed himself, when she catapulted out of the ladies’ room at what looked like warp speed and literally ran smack into him.

Shit.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing her elbows as she recoiled with a startled squeal. Having her fall flat on her hot little tush was not on today’s agenda if he could help it; he felt bad enough about not having prevented the hurt she’d suffered last night. But he hadn’t foreseen that someone would break into her cottage and try to take a hatchet to her. His expectations had been more along the lines of her boyfriend hooking up with her there. In the kind of lucky break that had been few and far between lately, the Starbucks cup had yielded pay dirt: a partial thumbprint belonging to Michael DePalma.
There was still a slight possibility that he was wrong—the cup might have remained in the car after DePalma had exited it elsewhere, and been thrown out by one of his stooges—but Luke was willing to bet that Donnie Jr. was on the island.

“L-Luke.”

For some unknown reason, she cut her eyes to his feet. Then her head snapped up, and her eyes met his. Even as he watched a whole kaleidoscope of emotions play across her face, he realized that those Bambi-sized eyes were dark with fear. His muscles tensed. So far, with this girl, the news had uniformly tended to be not good.

“What’s up?”

Her lips trembled, and she cast a haunted glance over her shoulder.

“I think—I think he’s in the bathroom. The man from last night.”

She was shaking, clearly scared half to death. He glanced past her at the door through which she’d just exited.

“Wait here,” he said sharply, and left her standing there while he strode into the ladies’ room. No scandalized shrieks greeted him, which was a relief, but there was a reason for that: the rest room was empty. A quick check of the facilities confirmed that no one was hiding in a stall, and also revealed that there was a back door. Conscious of having left Christy outside alone, he turned on his heel and headed out the way he had entered. Just as he pulled the door open, a sixtyish woman started to walk in. She stopped dead, gaping at him.

“Sorry, wrong rest room,” he muttered, exiting quickly while the woman stared indignantly after him.

Christy had backed up against the yellow-painted concrete wall that shielded the rest rooms from view. His gaze raked her, absorbing in the space of about a heartbeat how terrified she looked—and how sexy. Automatically he registered details: straight brown hair tucked behind her ears; skin damp from the heat; a worried line between her brows; soft pink lips parted to allow for quick, shallow breaths that also caused her chest to rise and fall in a way guaranteed to attract the attention of any man who liked women. Unwillingly he noticed how her T-shirt molded her full breasts and clung to her closely enough to reveal both the bandage on her shoulder and the round little nubs of her nipples jutting against the cloth; how her shorts made her truly gorgeous legs look about a mile long; how slim she was, and how pretty. He also saw that her face was white as a tube sock and her eyes near black with fear.

“Empty,” he said in response to the tense look she greeted him with.

“It can’t be.”

“There’s a back door. Come on.”

In a hurry and unwilling to leave her behind, he caught her wrist and pulled her after him as he strode around the building to get a fix on anyone who might at that very moment be hastening guiltily away. She went with him without hesitation, and he got the impression that she was glad to no longer be alone. Glad of his company.

He felt a flare of protectiveness toward her. Whatever
she had or hadn’t done, she was definitely in over her head now.

“What are you doing?” she asked when he stopped in the lee of a Dumpster to shield his eyes from the sun and look carefully around. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but her fingers were twined with his now, satin-skinned fingers that reminded him irresistibly of how she had felt in his arms last night. Her bare legs had been satiny-smooth too, and her body had been warm and firm and way too feminine in that slithery red robe… .

Don’t go there,
he warned himself. What he needed to keep in mind was that in this game of cat and mouse he and Donnie Jr. were playing, her primary function was to serve as bait for the mouse.

“If he came out the back, we should still be able to spot him.”

“He’s not here.” She said it as if she were positive.

Scanning the available suspects, he had to concede that she was almost certainly right. A gaggle of headphone-wearing teenage girls had their backs to them as they bebopped toward the snack bar. An elderly couple licking ice-cream cones stopped at one of the half-dozen picnic tables under the nearby trees and sat down to finish their treats. A delivery man wheeled a dolly loaded with boxes along the concrete sidewalk that led to the souvenir shop. At first glance, the delivery man seemed like a possibility, but he was a black guy and according to Christy her attacker had been white.

“Could he have gone into the men’s room?” Christy
was looking back at the building. Glancing around, Luke saw that there was a rear entrance to the men’s room, too.

“I’ll check.”

Even as he disengaged his hand from hers, even as he went back inside the rest room to look for a bulky, dark-complected guy of medium height—her description of the psychopath from last night—Luke realized that he was almost certainly too late. If the guy had indeed followed Christy into the ladies’ room, and if he had then come out the back and gone into the men’s room, it was a sure bet that he was long gone. From the way she had been running, he would have known she’d spotted him. What he wouldn’t have done was hang around waiting to be caught.