CHAPTER 17
It was like she’d been transported from one life
to another, Laura thought as the miles spun beneath the tires of
Harrison’s brown Impala while they traveled north to Seaside.
Yesterday morning she’d been a nurse at Ocean Park Hospital just
getting over a divorce; today she was a source, companion, and
possible sidekick to an investigative reporter who was bent on
dragging a story from her. A pregnant
source, companion, and possible sidekick to an investigative
reporter who was bent on dragging a story from her. And she was a
willing participant in his plan. More than that, she was half
counting on him to keep her safe from a killer focused on a mission
of evil.
Less than twenty-four hours earlier she
hadn’t known him. Hadn’t known that she was pregnant. Hadn’t known
Justice had escaped and had her and her family in his sights
again.
Now, as she cracked open the side
window, she closed her eyes, turning her face to the rushing wind
that swept inside. She was worried about Catherine and her sisters,
though she knew they were probably as safe as they could be behind
their locked gates and with the sheriff’s department—the whole damn
state—alerted to Justice’s escape. It was certainly no secret whom
he was targeting. There was nothing to do to help them. She was the
one in the most danger.
So, it was with a feeling of relief
that Harrison was taking her away from Deception Bay. She hadn’t
wanted to come back to the town, anyway, and now her fears had been
proved right. She shouldn’t have listened to Byron.
Ever.
But she couldn’t leave now. She had to
see this thing through and do what she could to protect herself,
her family, and her baby from Justice.
She wondered if she should tell
Harrison Frost that she was pregnant. Was it germane to anything
they were dealing with? Only in the fact that Justice was doubly
focused on her because she was carrying a child, one of their kind,
and he was determined to send them all to their doom. She knew that
much. She’d heard it in his mental ravings, and it scared her to
the bone.
Sliding a look Harrison’s way, she
examined his profile and felt a flutter of interest, a quickening
of her own breath.
Good. God.
“Clean up the
beach!” he muttered as they encountered vehicles parked in
every view point, turnout, and parking lot all along the way and
everywhere as they entered Seaside’s outskirts. Harrison drove
through the clogged town, his frustration mounting as he tried and
failed to find a parking spot to save his soul. After a few slow
trips down crowded side streets clogged with pedestrians, bikers,
and trams, as well as the usual cars and trucks, he finally got
lucky and nosed into a lot behind a Space Age gas station, just as
an older couple in a Buick pulled out.
Laura, lost in thought, wondered if the
intensity of the situation was sending her nerve endings into
overdrive and she was ascribing something more, some deeper emotion
and desire, to the man she was currently with because of fear. Out
of desperation? Was her own susceptibility in this cat and mouse
game with Justice making her think she wanted
Harrison?
She was in a strange, strange place,
all right. A thrum of fear ran beneath her skin, and it was
jangling up her thought process, turning random emotions into
desire.
Or was it something more?
After switching off the ignition,
Harrison yanked out a tin of breath mints from the glove box,
opened it, popped one in his mouth, then offered the tin to her.
Her stomach twisted in minor revolt at the thought, and she shook
her head.
“You okay?” he asked, glancing over at
her.
“Yeah. Why?”
“You keep making little
sounds.”
“I do? What kind of
sounds?”
He let out his breath in a weary sigh a
couple of times, and Laura faintly smiled. “I’m . . . thinking,”
she said.
“Overthinking.
Try to forget about Justice for a while.” He grabbed her hand, gave
it a squeeze.
“Oh, yeah. That’s going to
happen.”
“No more messages today?”
She shook her head as he let go of her
hand. “I think he has the ability to block me out, too. At least he
does now.”
“You think he knows you’re outside of
Siren Song?”
“Oh, yeah. He knows it,” she stated
positively. “But okay, I’ll try to put him aside. Tell me what’s on
your mind for the Deadly Sinners.”
On the ride to Seaside Harrison had
explained to Laura about the group of teens burglarizing their
wealthy classmates’ homes, had related his subsequent conversations
with Lana and Jenny, and had explained about their leader being
N.V., like Envy. Now he added, “I want to catch them in the act,
maybe tonight.”
“Why tonight?”
“It’s a Saturday. They seem to be
escalating. They like what they’re doing and feel smarter than
everyone else. Then there’s the fog,” he said, gesturing to the
thick mist hovering through the streets, like an ethereal curtain.
“It makes it harder for them to be seen. I figure they’re not going
to let an opportunity go by.”
“Don’t the police have any
idea?”
“Oh, yeah. The Seaside police know
about the burglaries and have been patrolling some of the nicer
residential communities around, but they can’t be everywhere, and
summer weekends in Seaside have their own problems. Brawls. Public
drunkenness. Domestic disputes. Other theft. You name
it.”
“So, are you going back to the ice
cream shop?”
“Only if Jenny’s still on duty. More
likely I’ll find one of them along the main street and follow after
them.”
“But they know what you look
like.”
“I’ll have to be careful.”
“If they see you, the jig’ll be up, so
to speak.”
“I’ll wear a hat. Big overcoat.” He
shrugged. “I’ve got clothes in the back.” He gestured with his
thumb to the rear seat, where she had also tossed her own
hoodie.
“Let me follow them,” Laura said. “You
point them out, and I’ll go.”
He looked at her as if she’d lost her
mind. “No way.”
“They don’t know who I am, and I’m a
woman. Less likely for anyone to worry about if I get too close to
them.”
“Forget it.”
“Why?”
“It’s . . .” He trailed off, but Laura
knew what he’d been about to say.
“Dangerous? More dangerous than calling
Justice Turnbull, a psychotic killer, to me?” She almost laughed.
“Give me a break!”
“Well, no. I’m just not letting you do
it.”
She felt her hackles rise. “I see. You
don’t believe I can call Justice, so that doesn’t count. But this .
. .”
“I can’t have you be the collateral
damage to my story,” he stated flatly.
“I’m choosing to do it,” she informed
him coolly.
“No.”
She went on. “If you find one of them,
I’ll just meander around after them and see if they lead me
anywhere.”
“They’ll meet on the beach,” he said.
“In this fog, I’ll be invisible.”
“Not if you need to get close enough to
hear them.”
“No eavesdropping,” he declared. “Too
risky. All I want is a head count.”
“So, that’s a yes?” she asked and saw
him shake his head.
“No.”
She sensed this was going against
everything he believed in. Every male fiber of his being. But she
wanted to help. Needed to think about something other than Justice
Turnbull and his deadly obsession with her and her unborn child.
“Listen, you can be a few feet behind me in your
disguise.”
“No . . .”
“In this beach-cleaning crowd, in the
fog, nobody’s going to be looking at either one of
us.”
“You’re a nurse. Not Mata
Hari.”
“I’m a young woman in jeans and a
hoodie who’s ridding the beach of debris and garbage, so bent on my
task that I might just stumble over a group of teenagers by mistake
in the fog. I’m just trampling around in a zealous quest to make
the world a better place. The worst thing that’ll happen is they’ll
glare at me and go quiet until I disappear.”
“Jesus . . .”
She grabbed the aforementioned hoodie
from where she’d tossed it into the backseat and put it on. “Now I
look like everyone else.”
He reached in the back next and grabbed
his coat and a baseball cap, jamming the cap on his head. “I don’t
want you to do this.”
He was so serious that Laura found the
whole thing strangely funny. “This doesn’t scare me,” she assured
him. “This is . . . therapy.”
It was the truth. For the last
twenty-four hours she’d lived in gut-shaking fear, and the thought
that she could be proactive on something else, something that might
actually do good for someone else, made her feel as if she were on
a head-spinning high.
He frowned. “I don’t like
it.”
“This is child’s play in comparison to
calling Justice,” she said soberly.
“Just because these guys are kids
doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. They’re thieves, but they’re
one bad situation from being something worse. You corner them,
they’ll come out fighting.”
“You say they’ll meet on the
beach?”
“You’re not listening, Lorelei. There’s
no script, but there is danger.”
“Look, if I can do this, I can contact
Justice. How’s that? One for the other.” She threw open the door,
and he was forced to scramble from his side of the car to keep up
with her.
“I’m not bargaining with
you!”
“Oh, come on. Seriously, let me help.”
She pulled the hoodie over her head and smiled at him.
“Damn it.”
She laughed at the way he looked so
helpless, surprising them both. She couldn’t remember the last time
she’d laughed. “I’m half-hysterical,” she admitted.
“Fully hysterical,” he
rejoined.
Laura stepped away from him into the
June gloom. She’d taken two steps when she felt him by her side.
“If they see you with me, this will all be a big waste of
time.”
“So be it,” he muttered, but he didn’t
try to stop her, or send her back to the car, and Laura saw that as
a win.
They walked down Broadway together,
passing people who were coming from the beach, moving toward them
like gray ghosts who disappeared into the gloom behind them.
CLEAN UP THE BEACH!! T-shirts peeked from
jackets and overshirts and hoodies like Laura’s own.
In an uneasy partnership Harrison
pointed out the ice cream shop, which Laura gazed at with interest.
She started to cross the street toward it, then felt his hand clasp
down hard on her shoulder, stopping her forward progress. Leaning
into her ear, he whispered through his teeth, “Okay, look. There
are rules. Don’t get too close. Don’t do anything. Just recon. You
got that?”
She nodded.
“That’s Lana standing in front. The
first girl I talked to. Jenny’s not behind the counter, but—” He
cut himself off, then swore softly. “There she is. Coming from
around the back. She must be just getting off work. What time is
it?”
Laura pulled back her sleeve and
checked her watch. “Four thirty.”
“Okay. C’mere.” He swiveled her toward
him beneath a hard grip until her gaze was leveled on the three-day
stubble of his chin, which was apparently part of his look. “I’m
going to kiss you,” he said. “Try to be into it.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but
his lips crashed suddenly on hers. Warm. Supple. Moving gently. A
slight wintergreen taste lingering from his earlier breath mint.
Her knees, stupidly, wanted to buckle. She tried to speak, but he
held her a little tighter, and she slid him a look from the corner
of her eyes and saw that while he kissed her, his eyes were open
and staring across at the ice cream shop.
The kiss went on, but once she knew he
was detached, that this was all a damned act, she felt both
relieved and a little deflated. And embarrassed. Still, it gave her
a long moment to assess her situation, and she felt a shiver of
anticipation mixed with fear. She was pregnant. She was kissing a
man she found attractive. She was running from a man who wanted to
kill her. She—
Sisssterrr . . . ! With
your filthy incubus growing inside you . . .
Laura jerked in shock, causing Harrison
to break the kiss and gaze down at her with a frown. She slammed
the door in her brain shut with finality.
“What is it?” Harrison
asked.
“Nothing. Nerves.” Her teeth were
chattering.
“They’re on the move,” he said,
glancing across the street. “In this fog I can follow them without
them recognizing me.”
“No. I want to do it.” She pulled
herself from his embrace, immediately regretting the loss of
heat.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
“Then I’ll follow after you in thirty
seconds. I’ll be at the end of the turnaround. Don’t approach them.
Just hang around, if you can.”
She held up a hand in goodbye and
headed toward the beach, in the direction the two girls had
gone.