Beachcomber (29 page)

H
E
’
D FOUND THEM.

Heart in throat, Christy levitated about three feet in the air, yanking her arm free. She would have screamed like a steam whistle, too, but unfortunately her throat had closed up so tight from fear that the only sound that emerged was a terrified squeak.

“Be quiet,” a voice whispered, and the hand touched her arm again. Christy jerked her arm free, looked desperately around, and started backing away.

More figures flitted through the trees, surrounding her, dark shapes closing in—

Oh my God, he’d multiplied. Serial killer times six. No, seven.

“L—Luke,” she choked out, still with considerably less volume than the situation required. The figures were closer now, crowding in on all sides, making eerie little shushing sounds as they ringed her.

“Keep still,” one of the figures breathed. “You’ll scare them.”

Them who? Christie wondered wildly, as visions of
The X-Files
danced in her head. This was definitely not
her attacker, but that did not necessarily mean the situation was good. Had they stumbled upon a satanic cult? A coven of witches? An alien landing?
Survivor Forest?

“Wh—who are you?” Christy got out as Luke heard or saw enough to make him realize that something was wrong and came loping back through the trees.

“We’re here for the turtles,” came the whisper, at the same time as a louder, sharper, “I think we’ve got eggs!” had the group dispersing faster than mist in the sun.

“What the hell is this?” Luke reached her seconds after the group surged past him on urgent, silent feet.

“No clue, but they think they’ve got eggs,” she whispered with semi-hysterical humor. Whatever these extremely odd people were up to, they at least did not seem intent on causing her or Luke bodily harm, which made them top of the trees in her book.

“Let’s see if they can help us. They’re bound to have a car. Or a cell phone.” Luke caught her hand, dragging her ruthlessly after him when her tired legs threatened to balk. Only the dazzling thought that help was at hand enabled her to keep up.

The group was crouched behind a tangle of bushes and vines at the very edge of the trees. Christy looked past them to discover that the thick woods gave way to a narrow beach that sloped down toward the ocean. Beneath the trees, it was so dark that she could barely see. Beyond them the sand was a creamy curve sandwiched between the charcoal shadows of the forest and the gleaming onyx sea.

“Listen, we need help,” Luke said, crouching down behind the group. Christy, with some vague feeling that
being the tallest living creature in the vicinity might not be a good thing, crouched too.

“Shh, you’ll scare them.” The testy whisper was thrown over the speaker’s shoulder. He was male, but that was about all Christy could tell about him.

“Them who?” Luke sounded impatient, but he had obligingly dropped his voice to a whisper.

“The turtles. Could you be quiet, please? We’ve been waiting here for three days to witness this.”

“Yes, do be still,” another voice seconded in an irritated whisper.

Having been thus thoroughly chastened, Luke fell silent. Christy could feel his seething impatience in the tension of his body, but it was clear that at the moment nothing short of a shout was going to distract this group from their purpose. And, while Christy was not opposed to a shout on general principles, interrupting such concentrated focus at a crucial moment might not endear them to their newfound fellow humans. That it might also attract the attention of the human they most wanted to avoid was the deciding factor. On the theory that being near more people was better than being near fewer people, Christy inched so close to the huddled group that she could practically inhale their carbon dioxide. They all seemed to be riveted on the beach. Looking past them, Christy tried to fathom exactly what was going on.

For a moment she saw nothing but pale beach and surging sea and night sky occasionally illuminated by the moon and a few stars. Then she spotted what looked like a dark circle in the sand. It was about the size of a hula hoop, and as Christy watched, it moved,
shifting, seeming to settle itself. Then, farther down the beach, she saw another.

“Look, this is an emergency.” Patience was apparently not one of Luke’s virtues.

One of the group made an exasperated sound and turned around.

“If you must talk, come back here,” he whispered, and, still crouching, led them away from the group. At what he apparently judged was a safe distance, he straightened. Luke and Christy, who had followed, straightened too. They were well back from the beach now, but not so far away that Christy couldn’t see the creamy stripe of the sand through the trees. With the rain gone, the forest was suddenly alive with the sounds of insects and tree frogs and various other night creatures. Glancing around distrustfully, she pressed close to Luke and slid her hand into his.

“If we could just use a phone, we’ll get out of your way,” Luke said, his hand squeezing hers comfortingly.

“A phone? There are no phones out here. This is a protected conservation area, and …”

“A cell phone,” Luke specified.

“We don’t have cell phones. We’re here watching the turtles.”

Christy could practically hear Luke grinding his teeth.

“There’s someone chasing us,” she burst out, careful to keep her voice down on the off-chance that said someone should be within earshot. “If he catches us he’ll kill us. He wrecked my car and locked us in my trunk and …”

“We need to borrow a car,” Luke interrupted firmly.

“We don’t have a car. We hiked out here. We’re a
conservation group
here to watch for turtles laying eggs. We’ve been camped here for three days observing this beach, and it’s happening
right now.
And I’m missing it.”

He sounded so anguished that Christy felt compelled to apologize. “I’m sorry.”

“Where are we?” Luke asked. “Is there anywhere around where we could find a phone? Or help?”

“The nearest place I know of is the convenience store at the ferry dock, and that’s to the west. Probably take you four, maybe five hours to get there on foot. You need to go back the way you came, through the forest.” He pointed.

Christy shuddered at the thought, and pressed closer to Luke.

“Where does the beach go? Can we hike out along the beach?” Luke asked, his voice tight with barely concealed impatience.

“It doesn’t go anywhere. This is just a little protected cove with a little protected strip of sand
where the turtles come.
”

“Christy …” Luke’s hand tightened on hers. She knew what was coming.

“Can’t we just stay with them? Just till morning?” she asked. The thought of trudging back through the forest made her want to collapse where she stood. It also scared her silly. Her attacker was probably still searching for them. If he found them in the forest she and Luke would be on their own. At least if he found them here there were other people around.

“We just have the one tent. There’s no room.” Their
would-be benefactor’s voice turned grudging. “I could let you have a couple of blankets, and maybe some food. But you have to be quiet and stay out of the way.”

“That would be great,” Christy said fervently.

Luke was silent for a couple of beats. Then he said, “Yeah. Great.”

“Good. Fine. This way.” He turned and headed off through the trees. They followed. A tent had been pitched at the edge of the beach a couple of hundred yards down from where the group was observing the turtles.

“Shh,” their benefactor warned, and went inside the tent. He was back within minutes, thrusting a bundle into Luke’s arms. “I wish I could be more help, but …” He was clearly anxious to get back to his turtle watching.

“This is fine. Thanks.”

“If you’re going to sleep on the beach, go
that
way.” He pointed away from the turtles. “We’ll be here all night. If you have trouble, give us a shout.”

Then he was gone, hurrying to rejoin the others.

“Come on.” Luke started walking in the opposite direction, and Christy followed. They skirted the edge of the beach, staying close to the trees but walking on sand. She could still see no more than shapes, but visibility was marginally better now that they were out of the trees. A salty smelling breeze blew in from the sea, ruffling Christy’s hair, making her aware that her clothes were still wet from the rain. The pounding of the surf had replaced the animal chorus, which in Christy’s opinion was a good trade. Moonlight broke through the clouds intermittently.

“Not too far away,” Christy said, catching Luke’s arm. The idea of being able to give seven other people a shout if the need arose made her feel a little better. Then she thought of something, and her hand fell away from his arm as she stopped in her tracks. “Oh my God, what if he finds us and kills them too?”

“Unless he’s packing a machine gun, that’s going to be hard to do. Anyway, whoever this guy is, he doesn’t want mass casualties. Both times he’s come after you, you’ve been alone.”

That was true. Christy nodded, relieved. At least, sort of relieved.

Luke finally stopped in the lee of a pair of waist-high rocks a couple of dozen yards farther on. They jutted up out of the sand like dark teeth, forming a kind of crude V, with the apex pointing toward the trees. He squatted, putting the bundle down in the sand. Christy didn’t so much squat as collapse onto her knees. She was just drawing a deep breath when she heard a click, and the faintest of glows suddenly illuminated their small area. Her eyes went wide. She glanced quickly at Luke, who was just inches away checking out the contents of the bundle. His hair was damp and the ends curled in cute little ringlets around his ears and neck, a soggy, mud-splattered gray T-shirt clung to his shoulders, making them look about a yard wide, and faded jeans that were equally soggy and muddy molded the powerful muscles of his thighs. His jaw was set, there was a smudge of mud on one bronzed cheekbone, and a network of fine lines around his eyes gave silent testimony to just how tired he was. She also saw that the
bundle consisted of what looked like two blankets, both beige; a couple of bottles of water; and a pack of peanut butter crackers.

More to the point, though, she saw as she sought the source of the illumination, he was holding a small flashlight in one hand. His other hand covered the lens so that only a tiny fraction of the light it would normally emit escaped through his fingers.

Under the circumstances, even a smidgen of light was too much for her. Luke might think their attacker was nowhere in the vicinity, but there was no point in giving him the opportunity to be proved wrong.

“Turn it off! He might see!”

Luke looked around at her and snorted. “Honey, believe me, you should be more worried about scaring the turtles. Tracking us at night over the kind of terrain we covered would be almost impossible.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Christy muttered.

“We’re safe enough for now. I think.”

On that reassuring note, he shifted his grip on the flashlight so that the hand holding it also covered the lens, and turned the flashlight on her.

“Hold still a minute.”

He took hold of her chin and turned her face to one side. Christy realized that he was looking at the place where the object had been shoved into her neck. Whatever he saw, he didn’t like. His eyes narrowed and his lips compressed.

“Yep, stun gun,” he said, and released her chin.

Christy compulsively reached up to rub the tender cord in question. Meanwhile, his gaze moved over the
rest of her with an almost clinical detachment. She ran self-conscious fingers through her hair, pushing the damp strands back from her forehead and tucking them behind her ears. A glance down at herself revealed that her wet white T-shirt and navy shorts clung to her like a second skin, her bare legs and arms were scratched and dirty, and her sandals were caked with mud and sand.

Not that, under the circumstances, she should care a particle about what she looked like, she told herself sternly, but the annoying part was that she did. And face the truth: the reason she cared was because of Luke. His blond surfer-dude looks had grown on her to the point where she now found him distractingly handsome, and her pride required that he should think she was hot, too. It rankled to remember that the last time they’d gotten this good a look at each other, she’d been begging him to sleep with her. It rankled more to recall what his response had been.

Basically,
Thanks, but no thanks.

If she hadn’t been so tired, the memory would have been humiliating in the extreme. But she wasn’t just tired, she was exhausted, so exhausted that collapsing flat on her face in the sand had seemed like a real possibility just a few minutes ago. The exhaustion factor reduced her humiliation to no more than an uncomfortable niggle. Anyway, the memory didn’t seem to be troubling him, so she did her best to push it out of her mind.

“What happened to your eye?” There was a hard edge to his voice as his gaze fixed on her left eye.

“My eye?” Christy quickly lifted a hand to the eye in
question. The flesh around it felt slightly swollen and tender, now that she was paying attention. It said a lot for the trials she’d endured over the last couple of hours that she was just this moment getting around to noticing. “What’s wrong with my eye?”

“You’ve got a bruise right here.” He gently rubbed his thumb over the tender area.

“Oh, it must have been the air bag.” Christy tried not to find that feather-light touch disturbing. “When the car crashed it went off and hit me in the face.”

His hand dropped.

“You’ll be lucky if you don’t have a black eye tomorrow.”

“I’ll be lucky if I’m not dead tomorrow,” she said glumly. “And that goes for you, too.”

Something about that made him smile. The sudden twinkle in his blue eyes made her heart skip a beat.
Okay, so he’s a hunk. Get over it.

“There goes that optimistic streak of yours again.”