Beachcomber (42 page)

“That serial killer thing is starting to creep me out. A man spending the night in the house would probably be a good thing.”

“At a guess, I’d say he’s spending the night.” Just not in her bed. Although she couldn’t tell Angie that.

“You got hot and heavy with him pretty fast, didn’t you?”

Christy cut her a glance. “What, you don’t like him?”

“I like him. What’s not to like? He’s gorgeous, he’s nice, he’s got a cat. He looks like he’d be the bomb in bed.”

“So what’s your problem?”

“No problem. Shacking up with him so soon after you broke up with Michael just doesn’t seem like something you’d do.”

“It’s been kind of intense down here. And like you said, he’s the bomb in bed.”

“Nice distraction.” Angie grinned knowingly at her. Christy changed the subject.

“How’s Mom?”

“She’s okay. She’s been spending a lot of time with
Nicole. That shit Franky is six months behind on his child support, and now nobody seems to know where he is.”

A cold little finger of dread slid down Christy’s spine.
She
knew where he was. Or at least, she knew what had become of him. But telling her family would put them at risk. Franky would just have to turn up—or not—in his own good time.

“Franky’s crapola,” she said. She was sorry—a little—that he was dead, but being dead didn’t change the truth.

“Yeah.”

If there was one thing the sisters agreed on, it was Franky.

“You know, knowing there’s a serial killer around kinda ruins the beach,” Amber said as she, Maxine, and Gary reached them.

“And the guys,” Maxine chimed in. “I couldn’t even get into the hunky ones because I started thinking any one of them might be him.”

“Except for Gary here.” Amber ruffled Gary’s hair. His eyes went wide. Christy had to smile. He looked like a deer that had just heard gunshots in the distance.

“Not that you’re not welcome or anything, but if I were you guys I’d head back home. A serial killer is nothing to mess with.” Christy stood up, brushing sand off her jeans.

“We decided we’re not going to mess with the guys,” Maxine said. “We’re just going to work on our tans.”

“Except for Gary here.” Amber gave Gary a big, flirtatious smile and headed for the door, tracking sand
across the patio as she went. Gary shot Christy an imploring look. She smiled mockingly at him.

The wages of sin are … Maxine and Amber.

“Luke’s spending the night,” Angie informed her friends in a comforting tone as she, too, stood up.

“Lucky you.” Maxine rolled her eyes around to Christy. “Just looking at him makes me hot.”

“Everything makes you hot,” Angie said in disgust. “And you keep your hands off. He belongs to my sister.”

“What about Gary?” Amber asked. “Is he spending the night, too?”

“Uh—not enough room,” Gary croaked, looking hunted.

“Oh, too bad.” Amber reached the patio door first and slid it open. The TV blared.

“—suspect that a serial killer is stalking the Outer Banks. A federal-state task force is being assembled to track down the man, who is described as a Caucasian male, five feet nine to six feet, with a dark complexion and a husky build. The description was provided by an unidentified woman who survived an attack by the man authorities are calling the Beachcomber.”

“Oh my God,” Angie gasped. “Christy, it’s on TV! That witness—it has to be you!”

They were all crowded around the TV now, watching with mouths agape. It was the ten o’clock news, Christy realized, and by the time the segment concluded with a brief interview of a bathing-suit–clad woman standing on a beach in Nags Head, she was sick to her stomach.

“We’ve all been looking over our shoulders,” the woman said into the camera. “We’re just absolutely terrified.”

Then the shot blinked away, and the anchor’s face filled the screen. “In other news …”

“Did anybody lock the patio door?” Maxine squeaked.

Angie stepped over to it and locked it, then pulled the curtain, blocking out the night.

Christy took a deep breath. The news continued, but she didn’t register so much as a word of it. There was a hard arm circling her waist, she realized after a few moments. She didn’t need to glance around to know it belonged to Luke. He was supporting her weight as she leaned back against him. He must have stepped up behind her while she was watching the report. Even as she’d leaned on him, she hadn’t even realized he was there.

“Does this suck or what?” Amber wailed. “First time I’ve been to a beach since spring break my senior year of high school, and what happens? It’s got a serial killer!”

“You know, maybe we should go back home,” Maxine said unhappily.

“Good idea,” Gary said.

“Ready to call it a night?” Luke whispered in Christy’s ear while the others debated the advantages of going versus staying. She was still leaning against him, breathing too fast, her legs as wobbly as rubber bands.

She nodded.

“You okay, Christy?” Angie surfaced from the argument
to ask. Christy realized from Angie’s expression that she must be looking as pale as she felt.

“I’m fine.”

“She’s practically out on her feet,” Luke said, his arm still snug around her middle. “So am I. We’re going to bed.”

“And I’m heading out.” Gary moved toward the patio door. “See you guys tomorrow.”

He lifted a hand in farewell and was gone despite the chorus of protests.

“I told you you were coming on too strong,” Maxine said to Amber as Angie moved to relock the patio door. “Now you scared him off. And we
need
him.”

“He’s cute.” Amber defended herself. “Geeky, but cute.”

“Is that all you guys think about—sex?” With the curtain now closed behind her, Angie turned to regard her friends with disgust.

“No,” Amber said.

“Sometimes I think about winning the lottery,” Maxine added.

“Okay, we’re going to say good night now.” Luke’s glance encompassed Maxine and Amber as well as Angie. “If you ladies stay inside the house with the doors locked, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. You need me, all you have to do is give a shout.”

The three girls were still arguing animatedly as Christy, with Luke right behind her, headed off to bed.

30

“J
UST SO YOU KNOW,
you’re not sleeping with me,” Christy said in a low voice as the bedroom door closed behind them. She was so tired her vision was blurry and so anxious that her heart was sneaking in strange little double beats every now and again, but she wasn’t giving an inch in that regard. Her emotions were still too raw and the state of her heart still too uncertain where he was concerned. The only thing she could be sure she felt toward him was anger. Fortunately, under the circumstances, anger worked. Back militantly straight, she moved toward the small chest that held the oversized T-shirt she planned to sleep in specifically in his honor. With him as her roommate for the night, her usual sleeping attire was definitely out.

“Honey, I hate to burst your bubble but you don’t have anything to worry about here. I’m going into a coma the minute my head hits a pillow.”

A glance over her shoulder showed that he was standing just inside the door with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Your head’s going to have to hit a pillow on the floor.”

“You want me to sleep on the floor? Fine. Throw me a pillow and a blanket, and I’ll sleep on the floor.”

Christy pulled the requested objects from the bed, bundled them up, and thrust them into his arms as she passed him on her way to the bathroom. When she came back, with her face freshly scrubbed and her teeth Pepsodent clean, he was sprawled flat on his back on the carpet with the blanket covering him to his armpits and his head resting on the pillow. From the broad bare shoulders above the blanket, she assumed he’d stripped down to his underwear. At least, she hoped he was still wearing his underwear.

The thought of Luke sleeping in her room in or out of his underwear was enough to send an electric little thrill shooting along her nerve endings, but she ignored it. Clearly her body was not yet up to speed on the fact that he was a lying snake.

A quick visual sweep of the bedroom located his clothes piled in the chair in the corner. Jeans and shirt, socks, with sneakers beside the chair. Christy frowned, and looked more closely. Protruding from beneath the shirt was a black nylon—she crossed the room and lifted the shirt to be sure—shoulder holster. Complete with a businesslike black gun.

Her stomach lurched. Her heart skipped a beat. Staring down at the thing, Christy dropped the shirt back down over it and told herself that experiencing such a reaction was stupid. Of course he had a gun; he was an FBI agent, for heaven’s sake. The only reason
she hadn’t seen it before now was because the dirty dog had been deliberately hiding it from her—along with his true identity.

Her own gun, along with her purse and its contents, was now in the hands of the sheriff’s department. After hearing her story, Castellano had carted everything away as evidence; his only concession had been to let her keep the contents of her wallet: cash, driver’s license, and credit cards, and only because she had pleaded with him and her wallet didn’t appear to have been touched.

Probably she should be glad to know that she and Luke weren’t going into danger unarmed.

She was glad, sort of, and yet she wasn’t. Guns scared her. The idea of Luke as an FBI agent scared her more. And the reason it scared her so was something she hated to acknowledge even to herself: knowing that he had lied about everything didn’t just make her so mad she could spit. It hurt.

Way too much for what she felt for him to be characterized as mere sexual attraction.

Earlier he’d said he was crazy about her; whether she believed him or not, the sad truth was that
she
was crazy about
him.

But she wasn’t going to think about that. Especially not tonight, when she was so tired nothing made sense.

What she was going to do was go to bed.

Skirting Luke, she cast his long, blanket-covered form a narrow-eyed glance. If having deceived her was causing him pain, he was doing a great job of hiding it. His eyes were closed, his hands were folded across his
chest, and his breathing was deep and regular. He looked asleep.

Her lips compressed. At least he was between her bed and the door.

Christy eyed him more closely. He really did look asleep. If he was going into a coma, as he’d claimed, he wasn’t going to be much protection if the psycho killer decided to pay her a return visit. Unless, of course, the guy tripped over him and knocked himself out.

Knowing that she wasn’t going to be able to sleep a wink, Christy headed for the dresser and began wrestling it into place in front of the door.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Glancing around, Christy discovered that Luke’s eyes were open a slit.

“What does it look like? Barricading the door.”

“What, you don’t trust me to keep you safe?”

“No.”

With that bit of brutal honesty, she went back to work on the dresser, expecting that at any moment the task would be made easier by the addition of his strength to hers. It didn’t happen. He didn’t move. By the time the dresser was finally in place, he appeared to be asleep again.

Huffing and puffing now with exertion, feeling a bit of a glow despite the air-conditioning, she cast him a less-than-friendly look, walked around him, and climbed into bed. And turned out the light.

And heard a snore. And another. And another.

Okay, at least while he was snoring she knew he was there and alive.

Despite her exhaustion, sleep didn’t seem to be in any hurry to claim her. She was too wired, too anxious, on edge waiting for the doorknob to turn, or the phone to ring—

“Oh my God!” She sat bolt upright in bed.

“What? What?” She couldn’t see him, but from the tension in his voice she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he’d sat bolt upright on the floor.

“What if the phone rings, and Angie or Amber or Maxine answers it?”

“Jeez Louise, you scared the crap out of me.” She heard sounds that made her think he was lying back down. “Go back to sleep. I fixed it.”

“You fixed what?”

“The phone.”

“You fixed the phone? What do you mean, you fixed the phone?”

“The house line only rings through to your bedroom. The other phone’s on a different line now.”

“When did you do that?”

“While you and your sister were yakking on the patio.”

“How did you do that?”

“Hey, that’s what us federal agents do, all right? Would you please go back to sleep?”

Christy’s lips thinned. Fine. He wanted to sleep, that much was clear. Well, so did she. She took deep breaths, and concentrated on relaxing her muscles. First her feet, then her calves … Another terrifying thought surfaced through the maelstrom that was swirling through her brain, and her eyes popped open.

“If you’re in here, I may be safe, but what’s preventing that guy from doing something to Angie, or Amber, or Maxine?”

A beat passed. She heard him sigh.