Beachcomber (48 page)

Luke was so scared now he was practically jumping out of his skin. “Where is it? The boat?”

Castellano told him.

In the cell
beside Christy, Terri started keening. The high-pitched wailing sound was like terror given voice, and it made the hair stand up on the back of Christy’s neck. Uncle Sally looked around sharply.

“Shut that noise up!” He banged on the bars. Terri choked the sound off instantly, but it was too late. His attention turned to her.

“You wanna go first? Sure, you can go first. It doesn’t make no difference, I’m gonna do you both anyway. I’m going to California. The Beachcomber is going to California.”

His voice was starting to go high-pitched, and Christy’s heart speeded up until it felt like it would pound clear through her chest. That high-pitched voice—that was the voice he had used both times he had attacked her. It must be a sign that he was getting psyched up to kill… .

“But they found the Beachcomber,” she said loudly, hoping to throw him off, hoping to keep him relatively sane for as long as possible. She would have been missed by now, she calculated, and they’d be looking for her. Searching frantically for her. Luke. Angie.

How could they possibly know where she was?

Don’t think about that,
she told herself fiercely.
You need to stay calm. You need to stay cool.

“It was on the news,” she continued as he stopped and glanced back at her. “The Beachcomber killed himself.
They found him, along with the remains of some of his victims, in a house in Nags Head.”

Uncle Sally made a
tch
-ing sound. “They’re stupid,” he said. “I set that up. The guy was a pervert named Andrew Madden. Used to go around peeping in windows. I just took some of my girls over there—their remains, that is—planted some evidence, made it look like a suicide. They may figure it out—that damned DNA shit stinks—but they may not. Even if they do, by that time I’ll be long gone.” He headed back toward Christy again. “And I won’t ever have to worry about you anymore.”

He stopped in front of the door to her cell, and slid the key into the lock.

As she heard it go home, Christy trembled with fear.

Terri began to keen again.

By the time
they reached the rickety old dock that Castellano directed them to, Luke was sweating buckets. He was sick with fear, light-headed with it, crazed at the idea that somehow they’d got it wrong, that he’d be too late, that Christy would be dead.

Even the thought of it made him feel like he was going to pass out.

Please, God, let her be all right.

He wasn’t a praying man, but he was praying now, praying like he’d never prayed for anything in his life as he raced along the dock with the others—Gary, Castellano, Sheriff Shultz, the deputies—pounding after him. It was at the end of the dock, the only boat there, a ramshackle old houseboat that looked about as seaworthy
as a tank. He checked himself as he reached it, afraid to leap aboard, afraid of making it pitch, of alerting Castellano to the fact of his presence.

Stepping lightly onto the deck, making a shushing gesture to the people behind him, he saw faint glimmers of light around the edges of a door. Creeping toward it, he turned the knob, eased it open, and started cautiously down the stairs, gun held stiffly at his side.

Christy screamed. The sound was muffled, distant, but so loaded with terror that it pierced the air like a blade.

Terror grabbed him by the throat, and he took the rest of those stairs in great leaps. There was another door at the bottom, and he opened that, too, not bothering to be cautious but flinging it open, and the scream hit him in the face.

Sweating, panting, he leaped down the stairs.

And saw Christy. She was bent back over a table with the bastard leaning over her tying her hands down, while she kicked and twisted and screamed and did everything she possibly could to fight for her life.

“Freeze, FBI!” he yelled.

Christy shrieked. The bastard looked around, grabbed a handful of her hair, and lifted a knife. The crazily swinging light caught the blade, making it gleam shiny silver.

Luke dropped him with a single shot as the cavalry came thundering down the stairs after him.

Then his leg gave out and he had to sit down.

35

J
UST AFTER NOON
the following day, Luke opened his eyes, glanced at the glowing numbers on the bedside clock, and groaned. Loaded with painkillers administered when his leg had been cleaned and stitched up the night before, he had fallen into bed shortly before five
A.M.
and immediately passed out. That meant he’d had—what?—something in the nature of seven hours of sleep. Then it occurred to him that he was alone: Christy was gone. He rolled onto his back to make sure, and a stab of pain in his thigh made him wince. It also brought a flood of memories with it.

With the rescue complete and Gary for an escort, Christy and Terri Miller had been taken immediately to the clinic to be checked over. Starved and traumatized but with no life-threatening injuries, Terri had been helicoptered to a hospital on the mainland, where she was to be reunited with her overjoyed parents sometime today. Except for assorted bumps, bruises, and scrapes, and a whole heck of a lot of wear and tear on her nerves, Christy had been pronounced fine. Having stayed on the
Lorelei
long enough to debrief
the agents from the serial killer task force who had arrived to take over, he had arrived at the clinic just as Christy was being released. Christy had stayed with him while his leg was treated, and then, since he’d been woozy as hell, she and Gary had driven him back to her cottage and put him to bed. He’d gone out like a light, but he retained the distinct impression of her warm body having been curled at his side while he slept.

She was gone now. He was alone in her bed in the shadowy bedroom with the door firmly shut.

Residual fear caused his heart to skip a beat. He had to deliberately remind himself that it was all over: she was safe. There was nothing in the world to stop him from closing his eyes and going back to sleep.

Yeah, right.

“Christy!” He had to get up and find her.

His bandaged thigh ached like a sore tooth, but he managed to pull on his trunks and hobble into the living area, where sunlight poured in through the patio doors. Except for dancing dust motes and a smug-looking Marvin, the cottage was deserted.

Where was everybody?

Marvin went to the patio doors and meowed.

Don’t tempt me, cat,
he thought, as he joined him in front of the glass. Looking out, he saw that the sky was a beautiful, cloudless azure. The sea was a frothy indigo. And the sand sparkled like white sugar beneath a butterscotch candy sun. Happy vacationers crowded the beach, sunning and playing. More happy vacationers romped in the surf. And at least one happy vacationer
soared high in the sky, dangling from a parasail being towed by a boat bouncing over the waves.

For no particular reason, his eyes were drawn to a bodacious blond babe in an itty-bitty black bikini standing with her back to him, waving at someone he couldn’t see. A bodacious blond babe with a bootylicious ass.

Christy.
That’s
why he’d felt that magnetic pull. Edging Marvin aside with his foot, Luke managed to get outside while keeping the cat in, and limped down the path toward the beach.

She was standing barefoot on the sand just beyond the dunes, watching as her sister, the Barbie twins, and Gary paddled out to sea on brightly colored polyurethane floats. She must have sensed his presence just as he’d sensed hers, because as he came up behind her she looked around.

“Hi,” he said.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, her eyes running over him from head to toe.

“Never better.”

She grinned at him like she knew that he was lying through his teeth.

Luke felt his mouth curve at her.

For someone who had just survived a harrowing ordeal, she was looking mighty fine, he thought. Eyeing her appreciatively, Luke decided that he had a previously unrecognized jones for women with choppy blond hair and purplish rings around their eyes and the faintest of bruises on their cheeks.

Or maybe just a jones for Christy.

“You ready to make the most of your last few days at the beach?” he asked.

Christy made a face at him. “To tell you the truth, I think I’ve had about enough of the beach for a while.”

“Me, too,” Luke said. “I’m kind of thinking about packing up and heading back to Philly. Want a ride?”

“Can I bring Marvin?”

Luke narrowed his eyes at her. Wasn’t that the way life worked? A fly for every ointment. “Sure. But I’m putting both of you on notice: if he takes a dump in my car, he’s hitchhiking the rest of the way home.”

Christy laughed.

Watching, Luke felt his heart swell exactly like the Grinch’s when he woke up to the meaning of Christmas Day.

“You had a chance to think about that falling-in-love thing yet?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’ve had a chance to think about it.”

“Well?”

“I’m for it,” she said, and, being careful not to jostle his injured leg, she stepped right up to him and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Then she kissed him.

And when she was done kissing him, her fingers found his, and they walked hand in hand off the beach.

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