Storm Surge (7 page)

“You okay down there?”

Liam appeared in the open square. “Sorry, bumped the joists. I want to check something farther back. If I yell—”

“I’ll be right there,” Paige said at the same time Dan spoke similar words. Blushing, Paige retreated to the chair and sat. Stupid thing for her to say. She folded her hands between her thighs. Dan lowered himself to his knees next to the trapdoor.

“Is he talking down there?” Paige asked.

Dan waved a hand. “Shhh. To himself.”

She heard Liam say something else, louder this time. Dan shoved his upper body into the opening. Paige tensed. Two seconds later, he was back out and rising. Liam appeared a moment later. He climbed up, brushing cobwebs from his hair, and then flipped the door shut. The crash of wood on wood echoed through the room. He pushed the handle down into the depression. The two men pulled the rug back into place.

“Clear?” asked Dan.

Liam nodded in a manner that made Paige sit up.

“What was down there?”

“Spiders,” said Liam. “Some discarded furniture. A few nests.”

“Nests?” Paige echoed. “What kind of nests?”

“The kind that might be the reason Shadow keeps coming over.”

Paige pictured a dank and dirty subterranean space filled with cavorting mice. Better than rats. And far better than a bearded man in a coat and a knit cap—because that was where her mind had traveled, despite the absurdity. “Thank you both,” she said, “for checking.”

Liam tossed the flashlight to her. Paige snatched it from the air above her head.

“I’ll be heading home, then. You’re safe.” He shot a look at Dan. “I assume.”

Paige stood. “I—”

“It’s all right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Dan followed him outside after telling her he’d be right back. Paige frowned at the closed door, listening to their indistinct voices on the opposite side, Liam’s gravel tones raised. Since she had no interest in an abrupt conversation between two strangers intent on pissing on each other’s shoes, Paige went to the bathroom to rinse the sand from her hands. A few minutes later, Dan returned.

“Paige?”

She stepped out, towel in hand. “I’m assuming you have something to tell me? You came looking for me, after all.”

“Yeah. You need to be more careful with your doors.”

“It was shut—”

“I know it was. When I came around to knock before I saw you on the beach, the lights were all on but the door was closed.”

Paige frowned. “What are you saying? That Liam is lying?”

“He said the door was open and the lights were off, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he lied.” Paige thought a moment. “It could mean that after you were at the door and before Liam came over, someone else came and went.” A light chill fingered its way along her nape.

“That, too,” Dan agreed.

“Why would someone come in here?” Paige heard the shrill intensity in her voice and knocked it back a notch. “I mean, does it look like a place where someone might be stashing big bucks?”

“Nothing’s missing, right? Check your purse, now, will you?”

Paige hurried to the bed. She yanked her bag from the headboard. Her wallet was still inside, along with the cash and all her cards. Her keys rattled, glinting in the light from the bedside lamp when she tipped the purse’s contents for a better look. “Everything’s here.”

Dan shook his head. “Then I don’t know the answer. Use that lock, though, when I leave, okay? Lock it whenever you go out, even if it’s only to the water.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know what to think. Except that Gray guy is probably full of—”

“No,” said Paige. “He’s not.”

“Okay.” Dan started for the door.

“Wait, you did have something to tell me. And not about keeping my door locked.” Paige started after him and paused. “Isn’t that why you came? Did you find out what happened with my father’s boat?”

“Oh. Yeah,” said Dan, turning around. “Got anything to drink? Water? I’m a little dry after that run up from the beach.”

Paige yanked a bottle from the refrigerator and twisted off the cap. She handed the water to him, lobbing the cap into the sink. “Go on.”

He drank half the bottle down before answering. “Yes, your father’s sailboat went down in an unexpected storm. I’m digging into the details. Your father wasn’t alone when the ship sunk. He had crew members. All in all, there may be some things you don’t want to know.”

“Like what?”

“Drowning can be pretty gruesome.”

“Is there something to mark his passing? Like the stone cross on the headland? His name’s not inscribed on the one here in Alcina Cove. I checked.”

“I told you, Paige, I don’t know much yet.” Impatience roughened his tone. “It wouldn’t be, though, if he wasn’t living here anymore.”

Paige lowered her lids, studying him from behind her lashes. “You’re not telling me everything. There’s more you know already.”

Dan finished off the water and lowered the empty bottle to his hip. He exhaled through his nose. “One of the older guys at the station remembered something…about your dad. Remembered going out to your house.” He jerked his head toward Paige’s old home next door. “Responding to a call about a domestic dispute. Not the first time. Things were…not pretty. Your mom refused to press charges, though, and the responding officers left.”

Paige stumbled over to the chair and lowered herself onto the hard wooden seat. Crap.

“And nothing else? Nothing about any other kind of trouble?”

Dan frowned, tilting his head. “What are you asking?”

Paige shrugged. “Bea Hunt implied my father was involved with people she referred to as ‘objectionable,’ so I just wondered.”

“I see.”

“Plus my mom…she said some things before she died. I only want answers, you know?”

“Sometime in the next couple of days, I’ll go down to the archived reports and see what I can find. If you want me to,” he added, taking a shuffling step toward the door.

Compressing her lips between her teeth, Paige gave a quick nod.

“You all right?”

She nodded again.

“I’m going to go. Lock the door behind me.”

Forcing herself to her feet, Paige followed him and threw the deadbolt once he’d stepped outside. Eyeing the rumpled rug, she went over to the bed and yanked the heavy iron frame a few inches at a time until she’d centered a leg over the trapdoor. She threw herself belly first on the mattress, ignoring the sand spattering from her jeans across the coverlet. Dropping her head onto her folded arms, she began to cry.

The keyboard’s clatter filled the room. Liam kept his office sparse. No soft surfaces to deaden sound. No personal mementos. No tennis ball to bounce off the wall when thought processes had stalled. He had his desk, his laptop, an external hard drive for photos, and a stack of books on the floor near the window. He preferred the barren workspace to a place cluttered with distractions. Because the types of distraction he would have chosen would elicit memories, and memories could do nothing at this point but renew guilt and pain. He’d been learning to release in stages the scorching culpability haunting him. Avoidance helped. His unexpected attraction to Paige Waters did not.

In the monitor’s lower right-hand corner the digital clock read three-forty-five. Liam pushed his fingers through his hair and then rubbed his hand down the side of his face, feeling beneath his palm’s calloused flesh the raised cicatrix along his jaw. Paige had asked how he’d received it. Not one to hold back, that woman. Something on her mind, out it came from her mouth. Presumably unedited, but he could be wrong. She might have a lot more rolling around in interior dialogue she didn’t bother to voice.

Liam leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms above his head. When he brought them back down, he tapped through the shortcut on the keys to save his work and shut the laptop, waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust to darkness before rising and moving to the window.

The quarter moon had been a sickle in the sky late in the afternoon but had set some time ago, leaving the sky as black as a crow’s wing spangled with dew. The shipping lanes were empty, making it impossible to discern the sea from the dark dome above. Liam could barely make out the spume against the rocky shoreline. He pressed close to the windowpane, the glass cooling the healed, ridged skin, and recalled how he hadn’t known he’d been cut, how he hadn’t felt the pain, how he had mistaken the blood pouring from the wound to soak his shirt as salt water and sweat.

He thought of Paige then, wondering if her insomnia had worsened after the incident at her cottage two nights ago. He hadn’t seen her, not even a glimpse, and he’d been watching. Did she keep her door locked now? It might not even matter. Her curiosity and all she wanted to know could prove her undoing. The truth would destroy her. It might very well destroy him.

* * * *

Paige had taken to sleeping with the light on over the stove. Before dawn, she rose from bed and crossed the floor, smacking the switch to the off position in defiance. Whatever had taken place the other night, she didn’t understand it, but nothing had been stolen, nothing disturbed. She would much rather forget the whole thing, yet she didn’t plan to move the bed from its position over the trapdoor.

Returning to the mattress, she sat in the gloom with her feet tucked up and her arms around her knees, listening to the first stirrings of songbirds in the bushes outside. When the sun peeked over the horizon, they would be in full form. By that time, she hoped to be climbing into her car and heading north. Dan had called last night with the name of the harbor from which he believed her father’s boat had sailed on its last trip into the wide, blue sea.

Her stomach knotted as she thought about unearthing that part of the puzzle. After what she’d learned about the long ago visit of the police to her home, she wasn’t sure she should bother to try. The fact the authorities had been called only confirmed what she’d always understood about her father’s predilection toward violence. She would be better off not discovering any more. She had been better off not knowing him, hadn’t she?

She ground her teeth together. With effort, Paige relaxed her jaw, drawing and releasing several long breaths through her nose. Her eyes stung with unshed tears. She leapt from bed and snatched clean clothes from the tiny wardrobe. After dressing, she ran a hasty comb through her hair and pulled the curls back into a loose ponytail. No doubt by the time she reached her destination, she’d have to arrange it again since she liked driving with the windows open.

Deciding she would stop along the way for breakfast, Paige grabbed a granola bar and shoved it into the recesses of her purse. On the doorstep, she double-checked the lock three times. The action might be obsessive-compulsive, but the last thing she wanted to do was doubt herself an hour down the road.

In the car, Paige hesitated before turning the engine over, her fingers wrapped around the keys dangling from the ignition. Although it was light enough to see shapes in muted colors, the sun had not yet risen. Looking toward her father’s house, Paige realized she could see the structure from the cottage driveway. The second floor with its steeply pitched roof peeked above the rhododendrons and pines between. Beneath the soffit overhang, a rectangle of radiating light indicated that an upstairs lamp had been turned on.

Paige exited the car. She hadn’t seen Liam since the night she’d found him in her cottage. The hour was too early for visiting, but she found herself walking in the direction of the house anyway. She certainly wouldn’t knock on the door, but if he was up and about and noticed her, she’d make up some excuse for being there. She had wanted to talk to him, to measure his reaction to her since the “event.” Dan had implied Liam had lied to her, to both of them. She only wanted the truth…but perhaps only her version of the truth: the man who’d sparked her interest was a man she could trust.

Fat chance
, she thought, coming to an abrupt halt. If she had an interest, that meant she’d already recognized a fatal flaw in him. Such was her
modus operandi
.

Pivoting on her heel to return to her car, movement in the window caught her attention and she ducked behind the evergreen branches. Illuminated from within, Liam passed the glass panes. From her vantage point, the view of his naked back and his tousled black hair caused an embarrassing flush to heat her skin. Still, she kept her eyes on him for a few seconds longer. Long enough to see a shadow pass along the wall behind him. He wasn’t alone.

Paige hurried back toward her car and slid into the driver’s seat, where she gripped the wheel with both hands and stared through the windshield at the clapboard wall before her. What more fatal flaw could there be than a previous commitment? “You’re a fool, Paige Waters,” she muttered, and started the engine.

As she headed north on the main highway, Paige wondered if everything about her quest would prove to be a blunder. If she had any sense, she’d turn the car around and head back to Nashville. She had a life there. This…this was someone else’s life, not hers. Not anymore.

* * * *

By the time Paige reached her destination, she’d calmed down considerably. The first thing she noted about the town was the tourist factor. That made sense. If her father had earned a living by taking people out on his sailboat, no better place than where vacationers sought a thrill. After parking her car in a five-dollar lot, Paige smoothed her unruly hair back into the band and climbed out, intending to head first to the expansive dock. If she could get the boat owners to open up, they might be a source of decent information. She’d only gone a half-block, though, when she spotted a sign for a local newspaper above a shop door. She walked in expecting to purchase one, but instead found herself in the establishment itself. Through an open doorway in the back, she heard the clatter of printers and smelled the scent of ink.

“Well,” she said to the woman behind the counter, “this is a welcome sight.”

The woman arched her brows.

“So many papers have gone out of business,” Paige explained. “Most people want to read their news online. I like a paper in my hands.”