Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel) (13 page)

It was like a maze here in the dunes, but she seemed to know
where she was going.

And then she stopped, looking ahead at a spectacular vista
of beach and ocean, perfectly framed by dunes and the grasses, swaying slightly
in a breeze.  A scrappy rugosa rose grew here, the blooms single-petalled, a
soft pink. 
Hell
, he thought, his eyes stopping on a couple of clumps of
lupine.  Not, thank God, in bloom yet. 

 In that moment, he knew she was right.  This was the scene
Elias Burton had painted.  He must have set up his easel right over…  Daniel’s
head turned.  There.

“That’s where she was.”  Sophie pointed, and having seen the
photos he knew she was right.  That’s exactly where her mother’s body had
lain.  “The fog had thinned,” she continued after a minute, her tone far away. 
“As if the breeze had pulled it into ribbons.  One of them seemed to…to curl
around her.  That’s when I started to scream,” she added, in a small, almost
matter-of-fact voice.

A raw sound seemed to tear its way out of his throat.  He
spun her to face him, so she was no longer looking at the place her mother had died. 
“I’m a goddamn idiot,” he said hoarsely.  “I shouldn’t have made you do this.”

She shook her head.  “No.  You were right.  I want…”  Maybe
she couldn’t help the small hitch of her voice, but as if in defiance she
lifted her chin in unspoken determination and finished more strongly.  “I want
to go to the beach.”

His chest hurt with everything he felt, but after a moment
he nodded.  “We can circle around…”

“No,” she said again.  “Mom hasn’t been here in a long
time.”  And she took the first step forward, toward the ocean.

Sophie couldn’t believe she’d done that.  One minute, the
ghastly sight of her dead mother was all she’d been able to see, and then
suddenly she’d smelled the ocean and had a flash of remembering what it felt
like to slither down dunes, the sand so hot and silky flowing over her bare
feet.  She was always careful to avoid the plants, especially the wildflowers. 
Mr. Billington had talked to her about how fragile the ecosystem was.  She’d
asked why he didn’t build fences and keep people off the dunes, but he sighed
and said fences wouldn’t do any good anyway, and, besides, look what fun she
had.

And she saw the beauty of the scene, and wondered how she
could possibly have lived for twenty years without once stepping foot on this
beach she’d so loved.

So now she and Daniel stood right where the dunes opened out
onto flat beach, and she stole a glance at him, hoping he didn’t think she was
crazy.

But he only grinned and said, “Let’s take our shoes off and
get our feet wet.”

So they both sat and took off shoes, stuffing their socks
inside them, and rolled up their jeans, then first walked and finally ran down
to the water’s edge.  Fingers of foam caught her almost immediately, and she
squeaked at the surprise of how cold it was – how could she have forgotten? –
and then laughed and curled her toes into the wet sand.  It felt so good.

Daniel smiled at her, held out his hand, and said, “Let’s
walk.”

They turned in concert away from the river and Cape Trouble,
and simply walked the arc of the beach, right where waves rushed over their
feet.  The sandpipers with their quick, darting movements delighted her.  She
hadn’t seen them in so long.  How many generations separated these from the
ones she remembered?  Gulls floated overhead, calling hoarsely.  On the far
horizon she saw a ship, but no whales today.  Once in a while, those long-ago
summers, they’d been lucky enough to see a humpback spouting, far out from
land.

They must have walked for a quarter of a mile before either
spoke.  Then it was her.  “Why did you take the job in Cape Trouble?” she
asked.

She felt his quick, startled look.  He kept walking without
saying anything for long enough, she thought he wasn’t going to answer.

“I was burned out,” he said finally.  His eyes were trained
on the distant curve of the earth.  “Or maybe I just don’t have the
constitution to work homicide.  One hideous scene after another.  The victims
are mostly scum, no better than their killers, and you start getting callous. 
Then you get a call and go out to find a woman who was raped and her throat
slit, or, God, a child killed by some sick fuck.  Or, maybe worse, by her own
parent.  I told myself finding justice for the victims was what I was meant to
do, and maybe it is, but one day I got out of bed and thought, there’s got to
be something else.”

“You could have applied for a transfer,” she said
tentatively.

He stopped walking, and she did the same, turning to face
him.  He’d dropped her hand, and now rotated his shoulders but as if he were unconscious
of his need to loosen muscles.  “Yeah.  To what?  Vice?  Sex crimes?”  He shook
his head.  “But you’re right.  I could have gone to Fraud or, hey, back on the
street.  Trouble is, I didn’t know what I did want to do.  I needed a break, I
guess.  Time to think.  I had this probably deluded idea that small towns are
different.  Hey, worse thing that’s going to happen is some domestic violence,
right?”

Reacting to his self-mockery, she said, “Not so peaceful,
huh?”

He grunted.  “Actually, I was mostly right.  Since I got
here, we’ve only had one rape, when a twenty year old woman used fake I.D. at a
bar, then left to walk back to her hotel alone at two in the morning.  Never
made an arrest, although we have some DNA and are still hoping the creep will
pop up somewhere else.”

“You don’t plan to stay in Cape Trouble, then?”

“Forever?  Probably not.  I’m sleeping better at night,
though.”

“I’m glad,” she said softly.

They looked at each other then, without the usual filters. 
She could see his discomfiture – he hadn’t liked telling her as much as he had,
admitting he’d been traumatized by too much violence.  But she was touched to
know he’d bared himself, his doubts and what he probably saw as his weaknesses,
because she had trusted him enough to do the same.  The fact that he wanted
there to be balance between them meant—  She wasn’t quite sure.  That he felt
something more than a cop’s interest in her.

She shied away from analyzing that too thoroughly.  However
long he meant to stay, he lived in Cape Trouble.  Her life was in Portland, too
far away for them to practically have any kind of lasting relationship.

She was bothered to realize how her original objection to
him had faded.  She’d felt such certainty, even repugnance - he represented
this place she intended to turn her back on and never, never think about
again.  Only now…  Now she stood on the beach with the wind tossing her hair
and she had seen the place her mother died and knew it would never hold quite
the same horror to her again.  Thanks to him, she could think about that day as
the adult she was, not the child she’d been.

“Shall we start back?” Daniel suggested.

Sophie nodded, but didn’t move.  Neither did he.  Instead,
they kept looking at each other.  She drank in every detail of a face she knew
objectively wasn’t handsome, but still fascinated her.  His nose was not only a
little too large, she suspected it had been broken at some point.  She knew now
how those care-worn lines had formed.  His dark hair was disheveled.  Those
dark blue eyes studied her as intensely as she studied him.

“Sophie.”

He was going to kiss her, and she wanted him to, as she
hadn’t wanted anything in a long time.

He lifted a hand and cupped her cheek.  His thumb skated
over her lips, and she heard herself give a little moan, her head turning to
follow that touch.  Daniel groaned then, and took the half step to close the
distance between them.  Even as his other arm went around her, she flattened
her own hands on his chest and let them slide upward until they closed over the
powerful muscles that connected his neck to his shoulders.  She couldn’t help
squeezing a little, reveling in the way his eyes darkened.

Rather than immediately capture her mouth, he nuzzled her a
little, then his lips brushed hers, came back to do it again.  That was all it
took to have her body melting like candlewax.  Her lips parted, but still he
took it slowly, sucking gently on her lower lip before his tongue slid along
the damp flesh just inside.  She touched his tongue with hers, and that’s when
a rumble vibrated through his chest and abruptly the kiss deepened.  His hand
splayed on her back brought her hard against him.  His fingers were now tangled
in her hair, allowing him to tug enough to tilt her head so he had the best
angle to gently devour her.

Dazed and unthinking as she was, she was still aware of his
astonishing combination of unmistakable hunger with a tenderness that took care
not to hurt her in any way.  He had such…restraint.  She felt his arousal in
the rigid bar that pressed into her belly, but he wasn’t shoving his hips at
her, or groping her.  Only holding her close, and kissing her as if she was the
best thing he’d ever tasted in his life.

A cold slap of water made them both jump.  A wave had surged
in farther than its predecessors, up to their shins.  He swore and she giggled
as they beat a retreat.

“Damn it, now I’ll have to change,” he muttered.

“This was your idea,” she pointed out.

He gave her a half-amused, half-smoldering look.  “I know it
was.”

His voice was deeper than usual, making her wonder whether
he was talking about the walk or the kiss.

“We should go back,” she said, self-defense kicking in
belatedly.  “I really should get some work done this afternoon.”

“You and me both.”  His head turned, his sharp eyes scanning
every direction, but they were still mostly alone.  Way down the beach, she
could see two people with a dog racing ahead of them, but they were too far
away to have identified Daniel or her.  She had no idea who they were.  Not
that it would matter to her if anyone saw her kissing him, but it might to him.

Without another word, they began to walk back the way they
had come, staying a little higher on the beach, beyond the reach of waves.  The
longer the silence stretched, the more she began to wonder whether he was
regretting having kissed her. 

“Thank you for persuading me to do this,” she said finally. 
“You were right.  I’d let that one moment when I found Mom loom larger and
larger in my life.  At least now maybe I can remember some of the fun we had.”

“I’m glad.”  He sounded gruff, and somewhat remote.

“You think someone killed her, don’t you?”

At least now he flicked a glance at her.  “Would you rather
leave it alone?”

They veered toward the dunes, leaving the hard-packed wet
surface for the loose, dry sand, where walking was so much harder.  Sophie
tried to think seriously about his question.  He’d been frank enough to tell
her he wouldn’t be able to get any real answers for her, so was there any point
in even speculating?

A rush of outrage surprised her. 
Yes!  Yes!
  

“As horrible as finding her was,” she said slowly, “I think
the worst part was having everyone tell me she’d done it on purpose.  That
she’d wanted to die.  To leave me.”  She eyed him.  “I know that sounds
egocentric.”

Daniel shook his head.  “That’s probably the worst part even
for an adult, when someone you love kills herself.  For a child, it has to be
huge.  Maybe made worse for you because she’d have known she was leaving you
alone here in Cape Trouble.”

“If I heard her voice, she had to have heard me calling for
her.”

A muscle jumped in his cheek.  “Yeah.  I thought about
that.”  He gave her an unreadable look.  “The voices you heard.”

She waited.

“Was the tone conversational?  Two people just talking?  Or
an argument?  Did you hear any distress?”

Sophie quit walking.  Had she?  She let herself go back to
that morning.  She had been distressed, and now she wondered why.  Mom did get
up before her sometimes.  They had plenty of neighbors in the other cabins. 
She often found her mother talking to one of them, or a resort employee. 
Sophie didn’t think she’d been upset when she first set out to look for her
mother.  It was after she realized Mom was with someone, and…

“They were fighting.”  It was hard to say, past the
constriction in her voice.  “I think they must have been.  The voices were
rising as I got closer.  I could tell something was wrong.  That’s why…why I
felt so panicky.”

He was rubbing his hands up and down her arms.  She hadn’t
even been aware of him reaching for her.  Sophie realized she was trying to hug
herself, the frightened child again.

She looked at him.  “Who could it have been?”

He only shook his head.  “You know who was around.  Staying
at the other cabins, living at the lodge.  Your mom might have made friends
from town.  Was it really so early in the morning?”

Sophie frowned.  “I think it must have been, because people
were still asleep in the other cabins.  I told you that, didn’t I?”  She went
quiet for a moment.  “I want to meet the artist.”  She was surprised at how
hard she sounded.  “Why did he paint that exact spot?”

“It’s a beautiful place.”

“You think that’s the only reason?”

His eyes were grave.  “No.  I want to meet him, too.”

“You don’t know him?”

“Of him.  I hear he’s a loner, although I know he does shop
in town.”

“Elaine Terwilliger said he has lunch a lot at Naomi’s
café.  She implied it was to see Naomi, but Naomi says no.”

“I get the feeling Naomi goes out of her way to stay
unnoticed.”

“Except she did volunteer to work on the auction,” Sophie
pointed out.

“Did she?”  His mouth quirked.  “Or did Doreen bludgeon her
into it?”

“Um…that’s possible.  And I gather mostly she’s been
responsible for dealing with the hotel in Portland where the auction is to be
held.  She’s choosing the menu, dealing with the audio visual department,
choosing table linens, that kind of thing.”

“In other words, nothing that brings her any notice here in
town.”

“I suppose that’s true,” she said reluctantly.  “Except she
does come to auction meetings.”

“You’re the one who pointed out that the committee is almost
entirely made up of women,” Daniel said.

She made a face at him.  “That’s usually the case.  Women
seem more inclined to give their time.”

“Or they have more time to give.”

“Because we’re all housewives?”

His grin told her he’d set her up.  “No, you were right the
first time.  Maybe men are programmed to believe bringing home the bread is
what counts.”

She sniffed.  “Maybe.”

In unspoken agreement, they resumed their trudge back to
where they had left their shoes, and sat side by side to put them back on.  Her
gaze strayed to his feet, though, as she used a sock to try to wipe the sand
off her own.  She’d never paid much attention to a man’s feet before, but she
liked his, long and bony, with a few dark hairs curling on his toes.  Hers were
partially tanned, lines showing where the straps of the flip-flops she wore so
much of the time fell.  In contrast, his feet were white enough to suggest he
rarely wore sandals or went barefoot.

Suddenly she realized he was looking at her feet, too, and
her toes curled in an involuntary response.  She glanced at him to surprise a
flash of heat in his eyes.

“Long toes,” he said, a little huskily.

“Long fingers, too.”  She spread out her hand.

“Yeah.  I’ve noticed.”