Beachcomber (18 page)

“I could meet you in the dining room. You name the time.”

“You don’t even know what hotel.”

“You could tell me. It’d be better than eating in your room all alone.”

It was the thought of being alone that was getting to her. He could see it in her eyes. Not that he blamed her, not after last night.

“Christy?” he prompted. “What hotel?”

Their eyes met.

“The Silver Lake Inn.” It was grudging capitulation, but hey, it worked. “But this isn’t a date, you understand. It’s just a friendly dinner.”

“I understand absolutely, and I’ll be there at—what? Six-thirty? Seven?”

“Seven.” From the way she was eyeing him it was clear that she was already having second thoughts.

“Seven.” At the look on her face he had to grin. “Don’t worry, my mama taught me better than to pressure a girl for sex the first time I take her out.” A beat passed. “I always wait until at least the second.”

She laughed. He hadn’t seen her laugh before. The two deep dimples that appeared in her cheeks were
nearly as beguiling as the sudden sparkle in her eyes. His grin broadened in enjoyment of her amusement.

From somewhere close at hand came the muffled sound of a ringing phone.

Just like that she stopped laughing. Her eyes widened. The joy drained from her face as if a plug had been pulled on it. Watching, he felt himself tensing up, too.

“Excuse me.” Snatching up her purse, she jumped to her feet and retreated, moving away from the table, fumbling around inside her purse all the while. She almost dropped her bag getting the phone out. Then she clumsily tucked the purse under her arm while at the same time flipping her phone open and positioning it so that she could talk.

He couldn’t hear a word she said. She was out of earshot, leaning against the gigantic trunk of one of the centuries-old trees as she talked, and he was sure she was keeping her voice carefully low. He couldn’t even read her lips, because she’d turned her back to him. Not that either of those circumstances troubled him particularly. Gary the Geek had lived up to his billing: he was indeed proving to be very, very good at one thing. Using some sort of computer alchemy, he’d managed to rig up a system to monitor every call she made or received over her cell phone.

Luke mentally saluted his partner as he waited for her to finish her conversation. It took him a moment to realize just exactly what he was doing to pass the time until she returned, and then he immediately redirected his gaze. But not before he had reconfirmed something
that he had noted several times previously: Christy Petrino had one very nice ass.

When she came back to the table, her face was every bit as white as it had been when she’d first come barreling out of that rest room, and she was chewing on her lower lip.

“Bad news from home?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.

For a fleeting instant, as their gazes met, her eyes were unguarded. He read fear and desperation in them, and felt his muscles tense in instant, involuntary response. He realized then that his mission had just expanded above and beyond bringing Donnie Jr. to justice: he also meant to keep Christy safe while he did it.

“Something like that.” She smiled at him, but it was a poor, strained effort, not like the glorious, dimpled grin she’d dazzled him with moments earlier. “Look, about dinner: I can’t, okay? I’ve got to go.”

Then without another word she turned her back on him and walked away.

Luke stayed right where he was and watched her go. When she was just about out of sight, he pulled the transmitter out of his pocket and spoke into it.

“Yo,” he said to Gary, who was ensconced in the SUV in the parking lot. “She’s headed your way. I’ve got to hang back here, so don’t let her out of your sight.”

12

S
EEN BY MOONLIGHT,
the Silver Lake Inn was one of the more romantic hotels on the island, a true tourists’ delight. He stood outside it, around by the pool near a sweet spire bush that filled the air with a heady perfume, looking the low-slung, cedar-shake covered building over with appreciation. He wasn’t alone, there were two couples in the hot tub and some kids still swimming in the pool even though it was nearly midnight, but they didn’t bother him. He was in his invisible mode again; he blended in.

Christy was spending the night in room 322.

Her third-floor room posed a little difficulty, but nothing he couldn’t overcome. Unfortunately, she wasn’t in one of the rooms that came with a balcony. A balcony always simplified things. There were ways to gain access to a balcony. But since that option was lost to him, he had to make use of what he had. Enclosed hallways were good, especially as the night wore on. As a general rule, very few people were out and about a hotel after, say, three
A.M.

And the Inn’s clientele tended to be older couples or families with children, so that helped, too.

On the minus side were the security cameras. Almost all the hotels had them now. They were both a selling point to the tourists and a hedge against a lawsuit if anything bad happened on the premises. But the security cameras here, as in most places, had their limitations. Specifically, they thoroughly covered the lobby and the areas around the elevators, while panning only occasionally down the halls where the guest rooms were located. And they didn’t cover the fire stairs.

He’d checked.

So avoiding the cameras was doable and the fire stairs were available for use in making a quick exit.

Where the difficulty arose was in getting into her room. Oh, the lock and chain were no problem. He’d be through them in a minute, tops. But he’d already discovered that she was a suspicious-natured bitch, given to barricading doors and arming herself with Mace. She should feel safe here in the bosom of this nice family hotel. But if she didn’t, if she’d piled furniture against the door again, thus making it impossible for him to get to her quickly, the likelihood of her waking up and screaming or phoning for help was greatly increased.

Or, though it wasn’t an option that he liked, he could always wait for tomorrow.

If he kept following her, sooner or later he would get a chance to grab her. He had almost taken her today. But she’d managed to elude him, not that it was going
to make any difference in the end. Pretty little gazelles always wandered into the wrong place at the right time—for him—sooner or later. The problem was, he didn’t have the luxury of devoting unlimited time to the hunt. Which took some of the fun out of it. After all, he didn’t need her for a plaything. What he needed, urgently, was Christy Petrino dead.

Because sooner or later she was going to remember where she had seen him before. He remembered her perfectly. He could replay their encounter like a first-run movie in his head at will.

With that thought in mind, he swallowed the last dregs of the Yoo-hoo he’d been drinking, dropped the container into the trash and walked purposefully toward the hotel.

13

T
HE NEXT DAY DAWNED
bright and beautiful, one more glorious day in paradise. Christy knew, because she was awake when the sun rose. Standing at her hotel room’s big picture window watching the surf roll in on the deserted beach, she’d been in a perfect position to admire the glowing streamers of pink and purple and gold spinning across sky and sea. Not that she was in any frame of mind to enjoy the sight. Although she’d piled every movable piece of furniture in the hotel room against the door, sleep had eluded her. Every step in the hall outside, every sound of a door being opened or closed, every rattle of a window had brought her awake, her heart thumping a mile a minute.

But nothing had happened. No one had bothered her. She had been left alone.

Not that she allowed herself the luxury of imagining, for even so much as a minute, that it was over. Nothing had changed. She wasn’t safe, and she wasn’t free.

The phone call at the park had made that clear. All these hours later, every word of that conversation ran verbatim on an intermittent loop through her head.

“Hello?” she’d said, all too conscious that Luke was watching her. But she’d walked away, turned her back to him. She was positive that he couldn’t overhear. When she’d run into him, literally, after fleeing from the bathroom, she’d never been so glad to see anybody in all her life. But at that moment she’d found herself wishing that she could just snap her fingers and have him disappear.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing calling Amori? You think he’s running this show? I’m running this show. You don’t call nobody unless I tell you, you got that?”

“Who are you?” Weak-kneed, she’d leaned against the tree for support and forgotten all about Luke. How had this person known she’d called Uncle Vince? she wondered frantically. Had Uncle Vince told him? Or …

“The king of the fucking universe, okay? You hear what I’m telling you? No more calls to Amori.”

“I hear you.”

“You better hear me. This ain’t no fucking game.”

“Somebody tried to kill me last night. Was it you?” She was breathing hard.

There was the briefest of pauses. “If I’d tried to kill you, you’d be dead. Now listen up. There’s been a change in plan. A delay. You’ll be getting a delivery at the cottage in the next couple of days. Then I’ll give you a call, tell you what to do with it. Around the same time as before: one
A.M.
You be there, understand?”

“No, I …” Panic had suffused her voice as she’d started to explain that she wouldn’t, couldn’t, stay in that cottage, on this island, anywhere within a hundred
miles of this place, for another hour, much less a couple of days, that she was terrified that the man who had attacked her was going to come back and finish the job, that all she wanted was to get her life back and go home.

But she hadn’t had a chance.

“Be there, or you
will
be dead,” he’d said, and hung up.

Like the conversation, the voice itself was engraved on Christy’s mind. She was sure that it belonged to the man who had called her twice before, once to tell her to take the briefcase down the beach to the Crosswinds Hotel and the other time to send her to the lighthouse; other than that, she was fairly certain she’d never heard it before in her life. But both times she had followed his instructions she had come into contact with her attacker. Or at least, she thought she had: it was possible that the boot in the ladies’ room had not been his, that she had panicked and gotten things wrong. But she didn’t think so. Her sixth sense had gone on red alert, screaming
run,
and so far her sixth sense had been right on the money. If she was right about the boot, then the caller was either setting her up for the kill or the attacker had to be in a position to observe at least some of her movements and had therefore known she was at the lighthouse. Or maybe, despite his denials, the caller
was
her attacker …

The bottom line was, she was faced with two possibilities: either last night had been a badly botched hit, or really unfortunate timing had made her the target of a serial killer.

Either way, somebody wanted her to die.

Checkout time was noon. Leaving the relative security of the hotel room was hard. Dressed in another gift shop special outfit, this time a cotton-candy pink T-shirt and black shorts, Christy scooped her few belongings into the plastic bag the clothes had come in, checked her cell phone one more time to see if Michael had returned her call yet (he hadn’t), and took the elevator to the lobby to check out. When she finished, there was no further excuse for delay; she had to go. Stepping out of the air-conditioned lobby into the parking lot felt like walking into a solid wall of steamy heat. Instead of spontaneous combustion, she suffered spontaneous glow. Nevertheless, she shivered a little as she headed for her car. Walking quickly, glancing around suspiciously at everyone and everything that moved, she felt almost as if she had a target painted on her forehead. At risk didn’t begin to cover it. The knowledge that someone wanted to kill her was unnerving. So much so that when she reached her car, she paused, keys in hand, before inserting them into the lock. Then, feeling a little foolish, glancing around to make sure she was unobserved, she crouched down to look under it for a bomb. Not that she had a clue what one looked like, but as far as she was concerned at this point anything out of the ordinary qualified. She found nothing suspicious beneath the car, and nothing suspicious under the hood or in the trunk either. What she did find in the trunk was the pistol her mother had given her when she’d first moved into her own apartment, still in its case. To Carmen, who had kept a pistol
in her lingerie drawer and another one in her purse and a third one in the glove compartment of her car for as long as Christy could remember, a gun was a household necessity, like a microwave or an iron. To Christy, who despised guns, a gun was something to be stowed out of sight and forgotten about if possible.