The Guardian (28 page)

It was past midnight and they were still in bed. Julie was watching as Mike made small circular motions on her belly with his fingers. When she couldn't take it anymore, she wiggled and laughed, reaching to stop his hand."That tickles," she protested.

He kissed her hand and looked at her. "You were great, by the way."

"Oh, are we stooping to that level now? Like I'm some one-night stand and you want to pad my ego so you don't feel guilty for taking advantage of me?"

"No, I mean it. You were great. The best ever. I never knew it could be this way."

She laughed. "Cliches, cliches."

"You don't believe me?"

"Of course I do. I was great," she said. "The best ever. You never knew-"

Mike started tickling her before she could finish, and Julie squealed as she writhed away from his grip. Then, lying on his stomach, Mike propped himself up on his elbows.

"And by the way," he said, "I didn't take advantage of you."

Julie rolled on her side to see him better, then tugged at the sheet.

"Oh, no? All I knew is that one minute I was getting ready to have dinner, and the next minute our clothes were flying all over the bedroom."

"I was pretty seductive, wasn't I?"

"You were very seductive." She reached down and ran a finger over his cheek. "I do love you, you know."

"Yeah, I know."

She pushed him away. "And here I was trying to be serious for a change," she said. "The least you can do is tell me, too."

"Again? How many times do you want me to say it?"

"How many times do you want to say it?"

Mike looked at her, then reached for her hand again and kissed each fingertip. "If I had my way," he said, "I'd say it every day for the rest of my life."

Ah, that was sweet.

"Well, since you love me so much, would you mind getting us something to eat? I'm starved."

"Sure."

As he leaned over to grab his pants, the phone started ringing on the end table beside him.

Once. Twice. On the third ring, Mike answered it.

"Hello?" he said. He paused. "Hello?"

Julie closed her eyes, hoping he wouldn't say the word again.

"Hello?"

He hung up the phone. "No one was there," he said. "I guess it was a wrong number or something." He looked at her. "You okay?"

She forced herself to smile. "Yeah," she said. "I'm fine."

The phone rang again. This time, Mike glanced at her with a look of puzzlement before answering.

The same thing happened again.

Julie crossed her arms. Though she told herself it probably meant nothing, she couldn't shake the sense of dejr vu that suddenly washed over her, the same feeling she'd had when she'd visited Jim's grave.

Someone, she thought, was watching her.

The changes in Julie's life began that night.Most of them were wonderful. Mike spent Saturday with Julie and they made love once in the morning and again before they went to sleep. On Sunday, she and Mike went to the mall in Jacksonville and she bought a new bathing suit, as well as some new shorts and sandals. When she modeled the bikini for him after she got home, Mike stared with boggling eyes, then bolted from the couch to chase her. She ran through the house, laughing and screaming, before Mike caught her in the bedroom. They tumbled to the bed, giggling, only to find themselves buried in the sheets a few minutes later.

Other than being naked a lot, she was surprised-and thankful-that making love hadn't altered the friendship between them. Mike still joked and made her laugh, she still teased him, he still held her hand as they watched movies on the couch.

But as much as she wanted to deny it, what would stand out most in her mind in thinking back on that week were the phone calls. The two calls late on Friday night. On Saturday, there were two more. On Sunday, the phone rang four times, and on Monday it was five, but on those two days, Mike had stepped out of the house for a moment and she'd been the one to answer. On Tuesday, after she'd gone to bed-Mike had gone back to his place for the night-there were four calls before she'd finally unplugged the phone. And on Wednesday, when she stepped into the kitchen after a day at work, she noticed her answering machine was full.

She remembered hitting the button for the first call, then skipping to the next message. Then the next. One right after another, the calls had come. The recorder had noted the time; each new call had been placed the moment the previous call had been disconnected. On the fourth message, her breath quickened; by the ninth, her eyes had begun to well with tears. By the twelfth, she was hitting the delete button almost as fast as she was hitting the play button, in an almost frantic attempt to stop what was happening.

When she'd finished, she sat at the table trembling.

All in all, twenty calls had been made to her machine that day, each lasting two minutes.

In none of them did the caller say anything.

And on Thursday and Friday, there were no calls at all.

It sounds to me like everything's going great," Emma said on Saturday.Earlier that day, Mike and Julie had met Henry and Emma at the boat launch on Harker's Island. They'd loaded the boat with coolers of food and beer, sunscreen, towels and hats, tubs of ice, and enough fishing gear to hook anything that might happen to cross the stern, including Moby Dick, Orca, and Jaws himself. By midmorning, in the sound near Cape Lookout, Mike and Henry were standing next to each other, reels in hand, engaged in a competition that could only be described as profoundly juvenile. Every time either one of them caught a fish, he'd get to shake a bottle of beer and point it at the other. One of the tubs was already filled with enough mackerel and flounder to feed a waddling army of starving seals, and both men had removed their beer-soaked shirts and hung them on the rail to dry.

Julie and Emma were sitting in small lawn chairs near the cabin, acting a little more grown-up. The sun beat down on them steadily. Because it wasn't yet summer, the humidity was bearable, though their cans of beer were coated in condensation.

"It is," Julie agreed. "Better than great, actually. This last week makes me wonder what I was so afraid of all this time."

The way she said it made Emma pause.

"But?"

"But what?"

"There's something bothering you, isn't there."

"Is it that obvious?"

"No. But it doesn't need to be obvious. I've known you long enough to recognize the signs. So what is it? Something to do with Mike?"

"No. Not at all."

"Do you love him?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Then what is it?"

Julie cautiously set her beer on the deck. "I've been getting some strange phone calls lately."

"From whom?"

"I don't know. No one ever says anything on the other end."

"Heavy breathers?"

"No, not even that. No sound at all."

"And you don't know who they're from?"

"No. When I dialed star sixty-nine, the recording said it was a private number, so I called the phone company. All they can tell me is that the calls are coming from a cellular phone. But the number isn't registered, so they can't trace it."

"How is that possible?"

"I have no idea. They explained it, but I wasn't really listening. After they said they couldn't help me, I sort of tuned out."

"Do you have an idea who they might be from?"

Julie turned and watched Mike cast his line again. "I think it might be Richard. I can't prove it, but it's just a feeling I get."

"Why?"

"The timing, I guess. I mean, I can't think of anyone else it could be. I haven't met anyone new besides him and . . . I don't know . . . I just think he's the one. The way he acted when I told him it was over, the way he keeps popping into my life."

"What do you mean?"

"It's just little things. I bumped into him in the grocery store, then he came into the salon for another haircut. And whenever we do see each other, it's like he's trying to find out how he can have another chance with me."

Emma looked at her. "What does Mike think?"

"I don't know. I haven't told him yet."

"Why not?"

Julie shrugged. "What's he going to do? Go after the guy? Like I said, I don't even know for sure that Richard's the one who's calling."

"Well, how many calls have there been?"

Julie closed her eyes for a moment. "On Wednesday, there were twenty messages on the machine."

Emma sat up. "Oh, my God. Have you told the police about this?"

"No," Julie said. "It wasn't until then that I even admitted what was happening. I guess I was just hoping that it was a mistake of some kind, like some sort of computer malfunction with the phone company. I was just hoping it would stop. And maybe it has. My phone hasn't rung at all the last two days."

Emma reached for Julie's hand. "People like that don't stop. You read about this kind of stuff in the papers all the time: Ex-boyfriend wanders in and settles the score. This is stalker kind of stuff. Don't you realize that?"

"Of course I do. And I've thought about it. But, again, what am I going to say to the police? I can't prove it's Richard calling and neither can the phone company. He hasn't threatened me. I haven't seen his car parked on my street or near the salon. He hasn't been anything but polite when we do run into each other, and even then, there have always been other people around. All he'd have to do is deny it." She made the points like a lawyer summing up a case. "And besides," she said, "like I told you, I don't know for sure that it's him. It could be Bob for all I know. Or someone I don't even know."

Emma watched her before squeezing her hand.

"But you're ninety-nine percent certain it was Richard."

After a moment, Julie nodded.

"And no calls last night? Or the night before? When Mike was there?"

"No. It was quiet. I guess he stopped."

Emma frowned, thinking about it.

Or wanted her to believe that he'd stopped?

She wasn't about to say that. "Strange," she said instead. "And kind of scary. It gives me the creeps just thinking about it."

"Me too."

"So what are you going to do?"

Julie shook her head. "I have no idea."

An hour later, Julie was standing at the bow when she felt Mike slip his arms around her and nuzzle her neck. She leaned into his grip, feeling strangely comforted as he moved to stand beside her."Hey there," she said.

"Hi. You looked lonely up here."

"No. Just enjoying the breeze. I was getting kind of hot in the sun."

"Me too. I think I got sunburned. The beer must have washed off my sunscreen."

"So did you win?"

"I don't want to brag, but let's just say he got a lot more sun than I did."

She smiled. "So what's Henry doing now?"

"Probably pouting."

She glanced behind her. Henry was leaning over the side, beer can in hand, filling it with seawater. When he saw Julie looking, he stood and brought a finger to his lips, begging for silence.

"So, are you ready for tonight?" she asked. "At the Clipper?"

"Yeah. I knew most of the songs already."

"What are you gonna wear?"

"Probably just jeans this time. I think I'm getting a little old to dress like a kid."

"And you're just realizing this now?"

"Sometimes it takes me a while."

She leaned into him. "Like with me?"

"Yeah, like with you, too."

In the distance, assorted boats had dropped anchor near the beach at Cape Lookout. On the first warm weekend of the year, it was crowded with families. Kids splashed and shrieked in the water, parents sprawled on towels. Behind the crowd, the lighthouse rose eighty feet into the air; painted white with black diamonds, it looked like a folded checkerboard stood on end.

"You've been kind of quiet today," Mike said, squeezing her.

"Just thinking."

"About something Emma said?"

"No. Just the opposite. It's something I mentioned to her."

Mike could feel the wisps of her hair as they feathered his face. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Julie took a deep breath before recounting the things she'd told Emma. As he listened, Mike's expression shifted from confusion to concern, then finally to anger. When she was finished, he reached for her hand and turned her around.

"So you think it was him when I answered the phone that night?"

"I don't know."

"Why didn't you tell me about this before?"

"There wasn't anything to tell. Not until a couple of days ago, anyway."

Mike glanced away, frowning, then looked back at Julie. "Well, if it happens again, I'm gonna put a stop to it."

Julie seemed to study him, then slowly broke into a smile. "You have that sexy look in your eyes again."

"Don't try to change the subject," he said. "This is serious. Remember what we talked about in Tizzy's?"