Dead By Dusk (12 page)

They closed. And she felt consciousness . . . fading away.

 

 

Night progressed.

Grant despaired of sleeping. Really sleeping. He'd dozed off several times, only to awaken as if he'd heard a cannon fired, nearly jumping out of bed. And there would be nothing. No reason for him to have awakened at all.

He walked out to the balcony area of his cottage, but the way it was positioned, he could see the ocean, the waves, the beach, the horizon, no more. The view was absurdly peaceful, the sound of the waves, lulling.

Restlessly, he returned to his bedroom, dressed, and exited his cottage via the front door. All the little bungalows seemed still and quiet. Naturally. It was four a.m. Even the barhoppers would be tucked in, sleeping now.

He started out along the beach, recalling the smell of death that had assailed him when he'd taken the same walk with Clay Barton. Arturo had seen to it that the carcass of the dead mammal had been taken away.

There was no smell of death tonight.

He paused on the beach, feeling the breeze wrap around him, watching in the pale light as foam flecked against the sand. How very, very normal. Lovely. From where he stood, he stared back at the scattered assembly of beach houses, cottages, or bungalows. Night-lights glowed on the little paths surrounding them. At most front doors, small lanterns burned as well.

There was nothing . . .

There . . . two down from his own. That was where Giovanni had told him Clay Barton was staying. It was dark, except for a pale illumination that spread from the balcony area. A night-light? Or was the very strange Mr. Barton up and restless as well?

Curious man. He seemed intent on sticking with Stephanie as well, and yet . . .

As cool, attractive, and suave as the man might be, it didn't seem that he was actually coming on to any of the women. Even as he followed Stephanie—watched her ceaselessly—he didn't make any moves that weren't respectable.

Maybe he was gay.

Uh-uh. That was something he was certain he would know. No—in fact, there was something about the guy that seemed to tick off every alpha-male fiber of Grant's being, and he knew that he edged closer to Stephanie every time the guy was around, and that he gritted his teeth during some of their playful scenes together, aware that it was acting. It had best be acting.
Was
acting.

He could have sworn that the man was no actor. Why? He was fine on stage, had a damned good memory for lines, moved easily enough . . .

There was no reason to suspect him.

Yes, there was. Instinct.

Instinct that said what?

He didn't know.

Grant glanced at his watch. Four-forty-five. At least it was getting closer to morning. This was strange as hell, too—he didn't mind being away at the first light. He'd be damned if he'd leave the area of the resort after dark—or before the light.

As he stood there, then, looking back at the field of cottages, he froze suddenly. There seemed to be an odd, sweeping shadow circling over them. There couldn't be. Not beneath the partial moon, with the few stars scattering the night sky. Not with the little lights that shone out from here and there.

But there was. A shadow like . . .

Wings. Immense wings.

Fear clutched his throat. Tension soared through him. He blinked.

The shadows was there . . . high. And then it seemed to settle.

He forced movement into his body, terror gripping him that the shadow had fallen around Stephanie's place. Sand flew up around his feet as he ran, heedless then of sight or sound or anything, he was so anxious to get to Stephanie's.

He arrived by the back and flew up the stairs to the balcony, hopping the little guardrail.

Racing to the glass doors with his hand raised, he noted that her curtain was fully closed. She had gone to bed with a fair amount of light shedding around from the bathroom, and from the hallway and staircase.

He could see her.

She was sleeping. Curled up, with her dark hair spilled over the pillow, hands prayer-fashion, beautiful face toward the glass. She was sleeping peacefully.

He stood there, hand raised, not moving—like an asshole.

Yet it seemed that the strange fear that had gripped his throat had wended its way into his heart and soul. He knew again that no matter what it was that was going on . . .

He loved her. Deeply, passionately. And just watching her, he felt a heat rise in his body, muscles constrict, body contort . . .

He swore at himself, turned, wondered if he should just go and walk into the frigging ocean water and douse himself.

But back on the beach, he paused, looking around again.

There had been a shadow.

And it had oddly settled somewhere.

Where?

Their costume designer was a small woman with a delightful, big smile. Stephanie didn't understand how the woman had managed to make so many things so right, but she had. She'd been worried since the woman had arrived early, and Lena had arrived late. But she knew a few words of English, and Stephanie's growing knowledge of Italian had done well enough as Drew, Doug, and Suzette went through their fittings. Her own was off, but then, the costume had originally been planned for Gema. And there were a few problems with Clay Barton's—the trousers were too short, and the arms weren't long enough.

Leeza D'Onofrio, the costumer, tsked at herself, looked at her notes, and looked at Clay, and shook her head. Stephanie didn't need to be a language expert to know that Leeza was baffled, but still, apparently, she had expected some problems.

She was startled when Clay went into a conversation with the woman—in Italian. Leeza smiled, and remeasured, and apparently seemed charmed, and ready to redo the costume in plenty of time.

“She wants you to know that she'll be back with both costumes by tomorrow afternoon—she's very happy to be working with us, and can do almost anything we want,” Clay told Stephanie.

“Great,” she murmured, staring at him. “I didn't know you spoke Italian. And please don't tell me that you took a Berlitz program two weeks before coming here.”

He shook his head. “Just something I picked up during my lifetime,” he told her.

“But it doesn't even sound as if you have an accent,” Stephanie told him.

“I like languages,” he said.

“You speak others?”

“A few.”

“Like?”

“French.”

“Ah. And?”

“I'm pretty good with Spanish.”

“Well, great,” Stephanie murmured. It
was
great. She wondered why the information made her feel uneasy. Especially when it was just then that Lena walked in, looking pale and ill.

“I'm so sorry!” Lena told Stephanie. “I just couldn't wake up this morning. I was awake, but then fell back to sleep. I must have eaten something . . . except that I'm not sick to my stomach.”

Stephanie, concerned, felt Lena's forehead. She wasn't hot. In fact, she seemed to be too cold.

“Maybe you should take the afternoon off,” Stephanie advised her.

“There's more to run through,” Lena said ruefully.

“Yes, but . . . I think we've already proven that we're a great ensemble. It's going to be hard if you can't stand up on Friday night. Have your fitting, then take your outline scripts and go back to bed. You can study there. Maybe you're getting a flu.”

“I guess it must be something like that,” Lena said. “I am so sorry!”

“You don't need to apologize—just get well,” Stephanie told her.

It was very strange. If Lena had been with the group partying the night before, Stephanie might have understood it better.

She felt good herself that morning. But she'd taken a sleeping aid the night before and been mercifully undisturbed by dreams.

Clay came up as the two women talked. He frowned, looking at Lena with real concern. He, too, touched her forehead. He didn't appeared to be relieved in the least that she didn't have a fever.

“Let me walk you back to your place,” he told her.

She let out a little sigh. “Actually, that would be great. I feel so weak!”

The two of them left, Clay saying they should go through the restaurant and get her something to eat so she could bolster her strength. Lena demurred, but then agreed.

Disturbed, and not at all sure why, Stephanie called to Doug.

“Yeah?”

“Do me a favor. Clay is walking Lena back to her room, but will you go, too? She really doesn't seem to be well at all. Just make sure that everything is all right.”

“Whatever you say,” Doug said. “Hey, now there's a change for you. Suzette is the one who should be down this morning.”

“Oh? We were at the local café, an old place that opened . . . well, centuries ago, I guess. And we had a lot of local wine. But here we are—Drew, Suzette, and myself—hale and hearty.”

“I thought Clay Barton was joining you as well,” Stephanie said.

Doug lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “Yeah, we thought he was coming, too. He never showed up. Anyway, I'll go after them, just make sure they're both all right.”

“Thanks.”

Stephanie watched him go. She glanced at her watch. It was barely eleven; Grant wouldn't be there until one. She'd been fitted; Lena's costume had been left behind, Clay's was already set for alterations as well. They'd worked hard for long hours yesterday, and the rehearsals would go much smoother once Grant showed up.

“Hey, boss lady!” Drew called to her. “I think our costumer is leaving. So what's up next?”

“The beach,” Stephanie said.

“What?” Suzette demanded, coming toward her.

“The beach. We'll break today. I don't think any of us made it in to breakfast. It's eleven now—we'll meet here again at one. Until then . . . get some lunch, get some sun, or run around the local shops.”

“Really?” Suzette said.

Drew nudged her with an elbow. “Hey, yeah, really! I'm hitting the streets. You can come with me if you want. We can wait for Drew and Clay. Two hours of daylight. We need to move fast. Then we can grab food that we can carry—”

“You know, there actually is no McDonald's here,” Suzette said.

“Okay, okay, we sit down, we eat, we run. We dash back to our places, jump into suits, and lie on the sand. Stephanie, are you with us?”

She shook her head. “I'm grabbing bread, cheese, meat, a few bottles of water, and heading straight for the sand.”

“Bread and wine and thee. Maybe we should do the same?” he suggested to Suzette.

“I don't care what we do, but make up your mind. Our minutes are a-wasting!” Suzette said, grinning at Stephanie.

Stephanie started toward the rear of the café.

“Hey, your bungalow is that way!” Drew told her.

“I'm just going to check with Arturo, see if he can't get the local doctor to look in on Lena. Then I'll be out there, okay?”

“Sound decision,” Drew said gravely. “We'll just grab Doug and Clay, and be with you in the wink of an eye!”

 

 

What hadn't seemed at all painstaking or tedious to Grant before now seemed like utmost misery.

He didn't want to give up his work on the dig because of a far-fetched belief that something strange was going on. Something he didn't understand, couldn't figure out, and might be a total fabrication of his imagination. While he dusted bones—with a smaller brush than ever before, now that the forensic anthropologists had arrived—he tried to decide just what it was that disturbed him so deeply. He tried to tell himself that he was in a mid-life crisis, but if so, it was a sad thing, since he was only thirty-three. But it wasn't, and he knew it, and what bothered him more than anything was that he was pretty sure his own bizarre behavior had begun right about the time that the site here had originally been discovered.

All right—maybe, somewhere, he had read about all the activity in the region in the centuries in which the Crusades had taken place. Maybe he'd even heard the legends about the place, and so, in his subconscious, with his love of the ancient, he had come up with some correlation that was so deeply imbedded in his mind that he couldn't tell reality from fantasy.

Man, that was a load of bull!

He paused in his work. He was alone at his particular site, but right around the bend of the cliff, he could hear Carlo Ponti droning on along with some of the new people who had arrived; they were disinterring one of the skeletons, and the work there was being performed by the experts, and only the experts.

Today, he was working on his hands and knees on the very fine task of preparing the next fellow to be lifted and taken to the museum in Naples. This fellow had patches of naturally mummified skin remaining, and many fragments of clothing. Though he certainly hadn't been dressed in the full armor of a knight, he'd owned some kind of metal-and-wood shield, and though in pieces, there were lots of fragments to be delicately worked around. Yet, as he knelt on the ground, taking extreme care as he had been taught, his eyes wandered, and he frowned.

Just beneath the yellow stretch of plastic cord that designated the work area, there appeared to be a mound of dirt. Grant didn't remember the earth rising in that strange fashion before.

He sat back and stared at it.

A cold sensation swept his neck.

He dropped his work brush and came to his feet. Striding over to the area, he knelt down again.

The cold continued.

He began to dig, with his hands alone.

There was something there.

There was
someone there.

Dirt, foliage, and tiny pebbles flew.

He stopped, his breath caught in his throat. The dirt filled his lungs, and he started to cough. He had come upon another body.

Only, this one wasn't centuries old.

The scent of death struck him, and he choked again, then fought down a swift rise of nausea.

Indeed, it was the smell of death.

And he'd not discovered a beached dolphin.

He sank back on his legs, exhausted, overwhelmed by a sense of sadness and despair. Then, after a moment, he managed to rise.

Sweaty, covered in dirt, he walked around to where Carlo Ponti worked.

“You found something else!” Carlo exclaimed.

“I'm afraid so.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes, afraid. I think I've found the missing girl. Maria Britto.”

 

 

Arturo assured Stephanie that he would get a doctor for Lena. “There is a local man, of course. Doctor Antinella. I will make sure that he sees Lena this afternoon. How odd, though! None of our staff or guests has shown the least sign of a flu.”

“Well, she definitely has something,” Stephanie assured him. “Anyway, I'm heading to the sand for a while.”

“The sand?”

“The beach. We're going to take a little break.”

“Lovely, lovely!” Arturo applauded.

“Think we could take some bread and cheese out there, something like that?” Stephanie asked.

“But of course!” Arturo assured her happily. “I will have it sent.”

Stephanie thanked him and returned to her own cottage.

This morning, it looked bright and beautiful. It was amazing what one good night's sleep could do. Usually, she hated taking sleep aids of any kind. They usually left her tired in the morning, or groggy. Apparently, she had simply needed the deep sleep, because she didn't feel groggy at all. Just pleased that the world seemed so . . . normal.

She changed into a bathing suit, grabbed her towel, lotion, and a book. When she went out back, there were a few sunbathers stretched out on towels or resort lawn chairs, and a woman with two young children was watching them as they frolicked in the surf.

She stretched out her own towel, but the water was inviting. She wondered if it would be warm, and decided to find out. Hurrying to the shore, she felt the water trickle over her feet and was delighted.

She plunged in, swimming out, thinking that the salt water was absolutely wonderful. It felt especially delicious, since even at the best of times, the lake water in Illinois was chilly. She floated for several minutes, swam again, enjoying the feel of using her muscles, then headed back into shore.

She paused, a bit out, and saw that the others had arrived. Suzette was fetching in a risqué bikini, Doug and Drew were in shorts, and Clay was there, but he was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved, tailored shirt. He didn't look like he was going swimming.

She swam to the shallow, and stood in water that was about two feet deep and started walking out.

She had just stepped from the water when she heard screaming. Turning quickly to the sound, she was horrified to see one of the two chubby-cheeked children who had been playing in the shallows was too far out, and struggling in stronger waves. She started to run to the water, plunged in, and headed out.

It had seemed a calm day with easy waves, but the water could always be deceptive. The child was being quickly washed southward and away from shore. The woman who had been with him was still screaming.

Stephanie swam as hard and as fast as she could. Though it couldn't have been long, it seemed like forever. Finally, her fingers contacted a little leg. She caught the child across the chest in a lifesaving hold and made for the shore.

As she neared it, hands reached out. Doug had come into the shallows and was reaching for the child. Though he was small, Stephanie quickly gave up her little burden. She was panting.

She rested a moment, then came somewhat awkwardly to her feet and walked against the water to reach the sand.

The boy was down on a towel. Doug had come to her assistance, but it was Clay manipulating the boy to clear his lungs and throat, and giving him mouth-to-mouth. Just as she reached his side, the little boy rocketed out a geyser of water and began to cough and sputter. The woman stepped in then, sweeping him up, patting him on the back. She was crying and laughing at the same time, speaking in rapid Italian. She kept trying to hug and kiss Clay and Doug while holding the child. Stephanie watched, feeling a little under-appreciated, but yet, delighted that the little one seemed fine, and had suffered no serious consequences. The little boy started to cry, clinging to his mother. Doug kept saying in English that everything was fine, and that he'd done nothing, and Clay was saying something to her in Italian.

She saw Stephanie then and rushed over to her, hugging, smashing the child between them, and thanking her effusively again. Stephanie felt ashamed.

The noise had alerted Arturo. He came out with extra towels, and, after a great deal of excitement, he, the woman, and both children left the beach area.