Beachcomber (17 page)

He was right. The only person in the rest room was a skinny teenager using the urinal. Luke stuck his head out the front door and cast a quick glance around, but saw nothing suspicious. Then he headed back out to rejoin Christy.

She was standing near the Dumpster with her arms crossed over her chest, glancing cautiously around.

“Nothing,” he said as he walked up to her. “You want to call the sheriff?”

She seemed to hesitate, then shook her head. Then she looked up at him with something that seemed ominously close to suspicion.

“So what are you doing here?” she asked. He could feel her barriers going up, feel her mentally distancing herself from him, feel her wariness.

She wasn’t dumb, this girl.

“Same thing you are, I guess. Checking out the lighthouse. Hey, a tourist has to do what a tourist has to do, right?” He gave her a smile that was, hopefully, both innocent and charming. It wasn’t a great answer, but he couldn’t tell her the truth: that after striking out with the ferries, this meeting at the lighthouse was the best lead he had left. He’d been watching her since she’d arrived, in hopes that someone—with luck, Donnie Jr. himself or someone who could lead them to him—would show up. But he’d missed the guy in the rest room—if indeed there had been a guy in the rest room and she hadn’t just gotten freaked out—which made him antsy. What else might he have missed?

She didn’t look totally convinced, which wasn’t all that surprising. He wouldn’t have bought that answer, either. He got her attention refocused in another direction by adding quickly, “So you want to tell me exactly what happened in the ladies’ room?”

That did the trick. Christy’s eyes flickered and she glanced around, looking scared all over again.

“I saw his boot—at least, a boot that could have been his. A black work boot with a scuffed toe. I was in a stall and I saw his boot walk by.”

She shivered. Now Luke knew why she’d looked down at his feet as soon as she’d run into him. She’d been checking out his shoes, which were a pair of rubber flip-flops. Gray sweat pants hacked into knee-length shorts and a navy T-shirt with the slogan Divers Do It in the Deep completed his ensemble. Not exactly regulation Bureau attire, but he couldn’t have looked more like a tourist if he’d tried.

“You sure?”

“That I saw a black work boot? Yes. That it was his …” She hesitated, clearly thinking it over. “No. Not one hundred percent sure. It looked like it could be.”

“Hmm.” That was the best response that occurred to him. His gaze swung around, and he rechecked the previous subjects for footwear. The delivery man was out of sight, but the old couple was definitely in the clear. One of the girls, though, was wearing black combat boots with her shorts.

“Could those be the boots you saw?” He nodded in the direction of the teen’s shoes. Christy looked, and frowned.

“I guess it’s possible,” she said after a moment, but he could tell she wasn’t convinced.

“You sure you don’t want to call the sheriff?”

“What’s the use? What would I say, that I saw a suspicious boot?”

At her weary tone, Luke looked at her sharply. Where they were standing, on a stretch of concrete sidewalk behind the brick building housing the rest rooms, the sun beat down on them unmercifully. It didn’t bother him, possibly because he’d gotten used to being out in it for hours during the diving vacation he hadn’t gotten to finish. But the blazing heat coupled with the situation she was in seemed to be sapping Christy’s strength. Though a little of the color had returned to her face, she was still far too pale, and there were definite dark shadows beneath her long-lashed eyes. Of course, he’d had maybe an hour of sleep, and she couldn’t have had much more. The difference was,
he was used to it. Going without sleep was an all-too-frequent part of his job.

That inconvenient protectiveness she seemed to effortlessly rouse in him surfaced again.

“You had lunch yet?”

She shook her head.

“Breakfast?”

She shook her head again.

“Anything to eat whatsoever?”

“A Diet Coke. And a couple of aspirin.”

“How about I buy you an ice-cream cone?”

It was an impulsive suggestion, made basically because she looked like she could use a boost in her blood sugar as well as her spirits, but she hesitated before she answered as if considering what her reply should be. He could practically read the thoughts running through her mind: if someone was planning to make contact with her, then having him around was probably a bad thing. From his point of view, too, taking a chance on scaring the guy off was not wise, since following whoever contacted her was his current best hope for nabbing Donnie Jr. But she looked so tired and scared and alone, and yes, face the truth, so knock-your-socks-off sexy, that she kept throwing him off his game plan.

“Well?” His prompt was a little testy because he didn’t like having to face the fact that he was sufficiently attracted to her to cause himself problems.

“Sure,” she said, and smiled, a quick flash of radiance that lit up her face. To his dismay he felt his heart give a little kick.

“Come on, then.”

That was downright grudging, and he was careful not to touch her as they headed toward the snack bar. She didn’t talk, and he didn’t either, because he was busy reminding himself that she was Donnie Jr.’s girlfriend, that she was in trouble up to her neck, and that he was probably going to end up arresting her right along with her boyfriend before this was all over. It didn’t matter. Call him a sick fuck, but he couldn’t get the way she’d looked last night in her sexy pink panties and skimpy top out of his head. And never mind the fact that she’d been covered in blood at the time.

“Flavor?” he asked with way more gruffness than the question called for when they reached the counter.

“Vanilla, single scoop, on a waffle cone,” she said to the girl waiting on them. He ordered a double scoop of Rocky Road, paid, and then they headed toward the picnic tables, which were scattered beneath a stand of live oaks that provided an island of cooling shade in the middle of the sun-baked park. The old couple had left, but two middle-aged women sat at another table chatting and sipping soft drinks while they watched a group of kids running around in the grassy open space beyond the picnic area. With the lighthouse for a backdrop and nothing but sea and sky beyond that, it was an idyllic setting. Too bad he wasn’t there to enjoy it.

“So how’s the shoulder?” he asked, focusing on the bandage creating a small but discernible bulge in her T-shirt rather than looking at any other part of her, such as her ass, as she walked ahead of him.

Shrugging, she threw a glance over her shoulder at him. “I’ll live.”

They settled down at the table farthest from the playing children. A slight breeze brought the smell of the sea with it and seemed to bring the temperature down maybe a couple of degrees. Above their heads, silver-gray festoons of Spanish moss decorated the trees. Insects buzzed, birds chirped and children yelled, reminding him of why he was still firmly single despite the best efforts of several past girlfriends.

“How many stitches did you end up with?”

“Three. And a tetanus shot.” She made a face as a rivulet of ice cream ran down onto her finger. He watched, unwillingly fascinated, as she lifted her hand, cone and all, to her mouth to lick it off. The sight of her tongue lapping up the melted ice cream sent his mind shooting off to places it didn’t need to go. He dragged it back, and refocused on the task at hand, which was to pry out of her any relevant information he could.

“I’m surprised you’re out doing the tourist thing after an injury like that. Shouldn’t you still be in bed?”

Her eyes flicked down to her ice cream. “The sheriff wanted me to come by and look at mug shots. Since I was out anyway, I decided to visit the lighthouse.” She met his gaze then and gave a little shrug. “Like you said, a tourist has to do what a tourist has to do.”

Yeah.

“So you planning to cut your vacation short now?”

“I haven’t really thought about it.” She licked up another dribble of ice cream, then swirled her tongue
around the glistening white top. “How did your appointment go?”

Appointment? For a moment, as his gaze stayed riveted on that swirling tongue, her meaning did not register. Then he retrieved his mind from the gutter long enough to remember the lie he had told, and forced himself to concentrate. Oh yeah, the purported reason he’d abandoned her to the tender mercies of the doctor and sheriff that morning.

“Good,” he said amiably, and took a bite of his own ice cream. “Sheriff have any theories about what’s going on?”

“He was talking about a possible serial killer.” She lapped at her ice cream, then met his gaze so suddenly that it was all he could do not to respond with a guilty start. “Look, do you mind if we don’t talk about what happened? I’d really rather just try to forget about it for a little while if I could.”

He translated that to mean that, like himself, she didn’t wholly buy into the serial killer theory. The more he thought about it, the more he was beginning to wonder if she’d somehow managed to tick off the mob.

“No problem.” He concentrated on eating his own cone, and watching her eat hers. No, that last part wasn’t good. Catching himself in the act, he forced his gaze away. “So tell me something. What made you decide to come down to a place like Ocracoke all by your lonesome anyway?”

Her eyes flickered. A good liar she was not. He’d noticed that flicker before, and now that he was on to it he
saw that she did it every time she was about to tell something less than the truth.

“I just felt like getting away.”

“Boyfriend couldn’t come with you?”

“What makes you think I have a boyfriend?”

He grinned. “A girl as pretty as you always has a boyfriend. Guaranteed. If not a husband. But you’re not wearing a ring, so I’m assuming you’re not married.”

She wrinkled her nose at him, which he interpreted as her way of acknowledging the compliment, and licked the top off the cone. And swallowed. Luke had to direct a hasty look at the kids again to keep from getting a boner the size of a baseball bat.

Christ almighty, when was the last time he’d gotten laid?

“You’re right, I’m not married. And for the record, I don’t have a boyfriend. Not anymore.”

“Oh yeah?” This was news, if she was telling the truth, and from the lack of flickering eyes he thought she was. “Sounds like something upsetting happened.”

His teeth crunched into his cone as he oh-so-casually waited for the answer. He was absolutely not going to watch what else she did to hers.

There it went. Her eyes flickered. “Not really. We just … broke up.”

“Recently?” Okay, so looking no lower than her nose was not doable. Glancing down at his cone, he finished it off.

“Very recently.”

News indeed. She nibbled on the edge of her cone, straight white teeth crunching through the sweet
brown waffle. Her mouth would taste like ice-cream cone… . He mentally pulled himself up short:
Focus on the investigation, you jerk.

“That explains it, then. Came down here to mend your broken heart, did you?”

She glanced down, and was silent for just long enough to confirm that the answer was no. “Something like that, I guess.”

Despite his best intentions, watching her swirl her tongue deep into the cone as she went after what ice cream remained almost did him in. He did a quick cutaway to the kids, only to discover that they and their mothers had disappeared. He hadn’t even noticed them leaving, which was nothing short of astonishing, considering how loud the little rugrats had been. But then, he’d been focusing on other things.

“This boyfriend—is he a lawyer?”

Her eyes narrowed at him. Thank God, she was almost done with her cone. Watching her pop the last bit into her mouth, it was all he could do not to let out a sigh of relief.

“What makes you think that?”

“You’re a lawyer. It makes sense that your boyfriend might be one, too.”

“You know, you ask a lot of questions.”

“Hey, I’m interested.”

“Is that what it is?” She wiped her fingers on a napkin, then planted both hands flat on the tabletop and looked up suddenly to meet his gaze with unmistakable challenge in her eyes. “All right, so let’s have it: what are you
really
doing here?”

To say that she had taken him by surprise was an understatement. He considered it a testament to his training that his eyes didn’t widen.

“Sitting at a picnic table talking to you?” he ventured with a lopsided smile in an effort to buy time.

Her lips thinned. “Not cute. And don’t give me that stuff about being a tourist and wanting to look at the lighthouse, because I don’t buy it. It’s way too much of a coincidence that we’re both here at the same time. And I’m not a big believer in coincidence anymore.”

The bad news was, he’d always been a sucker for a babe with brains. The worse news was, he seemed to have found one.

“You got me.” He grimaced, then gave her a deliberately guilty smile. “Okay, I admit it: I saw you in town earlier and followed you out here.”

“You
followed
me here?” Her eyes were suddenly dark with suspicion and her spine appeared to have gone rigid. “Why?”

“Jeez, Louise, do I have to spell it out for you? I think you’re cute, okay? I think you’re hot. I followed you out here to ask you to dinner, but then it occurred to me that you might be planning to meet someone, so I kind of hung around to see.”

“You followed me out here to ask me to dinner?” She was still suspicious, but she was giving his answer due consideration. Clearly the woman was no stranger to being pursued. He wasn’t in the clear yet, he could tell, but he was getting there.

“Why not? You’re unattached, I’m unattached, and we’ve both got to eat.”

She eyed him. “Hmm.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

Her expression softened fractionally. “You know, I’d really like to, but—”

“Then say yes. What else are you going to do? Eat all by yourself? Go back to your house and order in pizza?”

“I have a hotel room for the night.”