Heroes are My Weakness (10 page)

“You’re lucky to still have all your grandkids here,” Marie said.

Judy’s cheery expression faded. “I can’t imagine what I’ll do if they leave.”

Louise, the octogenarian, hadn’t commented, but Tildy reached over and patted her frail arm. “Johnny won’t leave. You’ll see. He’d divorce Galeann before he’d let her talk him into going.”

“I hope you’re right,” the old lady said. “Lord knows, I hope you’re right.”

As the evening came to an end and the women gathered their coats, Barbara gestured Annie away from the door. “I’ve been thinking about you ever since our visit, and I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t warn you . . . A lot of people believe we’re all one big family out here, but the island has its dark side.”

Tell me about it,
Annie thought.

“I’m not talking about Marie and her obsession with Regan Harp’s death. Nobody believes Theo was responsible. But Peregrine’s a place for people who want to slip off the radar. The captains hire sternmen from the mainland without asking too many questions. Your mother had vandals break in a couple of times out there. I’ve seen fights, knifings. Tires get slashed. And not all our full-timers are stand-up citizens. If you drop your traps in somebody else’s fishing area once too often, you might find your lines cut and all your equipment on the ocean floor.”

Annie started to point out that she had no intention of dropping lobster traps anywhere, but Barbara wasn’t done. “That kind of trouble spills over onto the land. I love most everybody here, but we do have our share of drunks and undesirables. Like Jaycie’s husband. Because Ned Grayson was good-looking and his family went back three generations, he decided he could do whatever he wanted.”

Just like Theo,
Annie thought.

Barbara patted her arm. “All I’m saying is, you’re cut off out there. You’ve got no phone, and you’re too far away from town to get help fast. Keep your guard up, and don’t let yourself get complacent.”

No worries about that.

Annie left the house with a serious case of the scaredy-cats. She checked the backseat of her car twice before she got behind the wheel and kept one eye on the rearview mirror as she drove home. Other than a few minor skids and nearly losing her front end in a pothole, she made it back without incident. That gave her the confidence to make a return trip to town three days later to borrow some books.

When Annie entered the tiny library, Lisa McKinley was manning the desk while one of her red-haired daughters raced around the room. Lisa greeted Annie, then gestured toward a list mounted in a Plexiglas frame propped on the corner of the desk. “These are my recommendations for February.”

Annie scanned the titles. They reminded her of the heavy, depressing books Mariah had forced her to read. “I like books that are a little more entertaining,” she said.

Lisa’s shoulders sagged with disappointment. “Jaycie’s the same way. When Cynthia was here, we organized book recommendations for every month of the year, but hardly anybody pays attention.”

“I guess people have different tastes.”

Just then Lisa’s daughter knocked over a stack of children’s books and Lisa hurried off to clean up the mess.

Annie left town with a stack of paperbacks and Lisa’s disapproval. She was halfway to the cottage when a crater of a pothole loomed in front of her. “Shit.” She barely tapped the brakes, but the Kia began to slide, and she was off the road again.

She tried to rock her way free and was no more successful this time than she’d been the last time. She got out to look. She wasn’t dug in as deeply as before, but she was deep enough that she needed help. And did she have a way of getting help? Did she have an emergency kit packed away or a couple of bags of sand stashed in the trunk like any sensible islander? Not her. She was completely ill-equipped to live in a place that depended on self-sufficiency.

Loser,
Leo whispered.

Peter, her hero, stayed silent.

She gazed down the road. The wind that never seemed to stop blowing lashed her. “I hate this place!” she yelled, which only made her cough.

She started to walk. The day was overcast as usual. Did the sun ever shine on this godforsaken island? She shoved her gloved hands in her pockets and hunched her shoulders, trying not to think about her warm, red knit cap lying on her bed at the cottage. Theo was probably staring at it right now through his telescope.

Her head shot up as she heard branches snap followed by the pounding that could only come from the hooves of a very large animal. It was a sound that didn’t belong on an island with nothing larger than a cat or dog. And a midnight-black horse.

Chapter Six

H
ORSE AND RIDER EMERGED FROM
a patch of old-growth spruce. Theo reined in as he saw her. She tasted cold metal in the back of her throat. She was alone on a lawless island at the end of a deserted road with a man who had once tried to kill her.

And just might have it on his mind again.

Eeek! Eeek!
Crumpet’s silent shrieks matched the rhythm of Annie’s heartbeat.

Don’t you dare wimp out,
Scamp ordered as Theo came toward her.

Annie wasn’t generally afraid of horses, but this one was huge, and she thought she detected a crazy look in his eyes. She felt as if she were revisiting an old nightmare, and despite Scamp’s orders, she took a few steps back.

Wimp,
Scamp taunted.

“Going someplace special?” He wasn’t dressed as he should be for such cold weather. Only a black suede jacket and gloves. No hat. No warm muffler wrapped around his neck. But at least everything was comfortably twenty-first century. She still didn’t understand what she’d seen that first night.

Marie’s words at the Bunco game came back.
“All I’m saying is that Regan Harp was as good a sailor as her brother. And I’m not the only one who thinks it’s strange that she took that boat out with a squall blowing in.”

She beat back her trepidation by channeling her favorite puppet. “I’m heading for a soiree with my many island friends. And if I don’t show up, they’ll come looking for me.”

He cocked his head.

She hurried on. “Unfortunately, my car’s in a ditch, and I could use some help getting it out.” Being forced to ask him for help was worse than her worst coughing fit, and she couldn’t leave it like that. “Or maybe I need to find someone with a little more muscle?”

He had more than enough muscle, and it was foolish of her to goad him.

He gazed along the road toward her car, then peered down at her. “I don’t think I like your attitude.”

“You’re not the first.”

His eyelids flickered in one of those facial tics she imagined psychopaths developed over time. “You have a strange way of asking for help.”

“We all have our quirks. How about a push?” Turning her back on him gave her the willies, but she did it anyway.

Dancer’s hooves struck the gravel as Theo trotted alongside her toward the car. She wondered if he’d started to believe Harp House was haunted. She hoped so.
Ticktock goes the clock.

“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “I’ll help you if you help me.”

“I’d be glad to, except I have trouble cutting up dead bodies. All that bone.”
Damn it!
This was what happened when she spent too much time alone with her puppets. Their personalities took over.

Our personalities come from you,
Dilly pointed out.

Theo pretended to look mystified. “What are you talking about?”

She backtracked. “What kind of help do you need?”
Other than psychiatric?

“I want to rent the cottage from you.”

She came to a dead stop. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this. “And where am I supposed to stay?”

“Go back to New York. You don’t belong here. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Did he really think she was that stupid? She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets. “Do you really think I’m that stupid?”

“I’ve never thought you were stupid.”

She picked up her steps, but kept her distance. “Why would I leave before my sixty days are over?”

He looked down at her, at first pretending to be puzzled and then acting upset, as though he’d finally remembered. “I forgot about that.”

“Sure you did.” She stopped walking. “Why do you want to rent the cottage? You already have more rooms than you know what to do with.”

He sneered just like Leo. “To get away from it all.”

I’d punch him for you,
Peter said uneasily.
But he’s awfully big.

He studied her Kia, then dismounted and tied Dancer to a branch on the other side of the road. “A car like this is useless around here. You should know that.”

“I’ll buy another one right away.”

He gave her a long look, then opened the car door and slid in. “Give it a push.”

“Me?”

“It’s your car.”

Jerkoff.
She wasn’t strong enough to do the job, as he very well knew, but he kept her shoving away at the rear end as he called out orders. Only when she began to cough did he relinquish his spot behind the wheel and push her car out on his first try.

Her clothes were a mess, her face smudged, but he’d barely gotten his hands dirty. On the bright side, he hadn’t dragged her into the trees and slit her throat, so she had no reason to complain.

S
HE WAS STILL THINKING ABOUT
her encounter with Theo the next day as she hung her coat and backpack on the hooks by the back door of Harp House and exchanged her boots for sneakers. Just because he hadn’t tried to harm her physically didn’t mean he wouldn’t do it. For all she knew, he’d left her unharmed only because he didn’t want the inconvenience of a potential police visit caused by a dead female body washing up on the beach.

Just like Regan . . .
She shoved the thought aside. Regan was the only person Theo had ever cared about.

She rounded the corner into the kitchen and saw Jaycie sitting motionless at the table. She wore her customary jeans and sweatshirt—all Annie had seen her in—but those casual clothes never looked quite right on her. Jaycie should be wearing flirty summer dresses and big sunglasses as she drove a red convertible down an Alabama road.

Annie set her laptop on the kitchen table. Jaycie didn’t look at her but said wearily, “It’s over.” She rested her elbows on the table and rubbed her temples. “He sent me a text this morning after he got back from his ride. He said he had to drive into town, and when he got back, we needed to talk about making another arrangement.”

Annie suppressed the urge to launch into a diatribe. “That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to fire you.” That was exactly what it meant.

Jaycie finally looked at her, a long piece of blond hair falling over her pale cheek. “We both know he’s going to. I can stay with Lisa for a couple of days, but what do I do after that? My baby . . .” Her face crumpled. “Livia’s already been through so much.”

“I’ll talk to him.” It was the last thing Annie wanted to do, but she couldn’t think of any other way to offer Jaycie comfort. “He’s . . . still in town?”

Jaycie nodded. “He took the recycling in because I couldn’t do it. I can’t blame him for wanting to get rid of me. It’s impossible for me to do what I was hired to do.”

Annie could blame him, and she didn’t like the wistful softening in Jaycie’s eyes. Was being attracted to cruel men her pattern?

Jaycie pushed herself up from the table and reached for her crutches. “I need to check on Livia.”

Annie wanted to hurt him. Now, while he was away from the house. Send him back to the mainland. She grabbed a bottle from the refrigerator and went upstairs, entering the turret through the door at the end of the hallway. She made her way to the turret’s only bathroom, where a damp towel hung next to the shower stall.

The sink looked as though it had been wiped clean since his morning shave. She turned the ketchup bottle she’d brought with her upside down and squirted a few drips in her hand. Not a lot. Only a trace. Spreading her fingers, she ran them down the bottom left corner of the mirror leaving the faintest red smudge behind. Nothing too obvious. Something that might or might not look like a bloody handprint. Something so faint he’d have to wonder if he’d overlooked it that morning or, if he hadn’t, what had happened since then to put it there.

It would be so much more satisfying to leave a knife plunged into his bed pillow, but if she went too far, he’d stop suspecting ghosts and start suspecting her. She wanted to make him question his sanity, not look for a perpetrator, exactly what she hoped she’d accomplished when she’d sabotaged his grandmother’s clock last week.

She’d made the trek back to Harp House in the dead of night, a treacherous trip she’d had to talk herself into. But her trepidation had been more than worth it. Earlier that day she’d checked the hinges on the turret’s outside door to make sure they wouldn’t squeak. They hadn’t, and nothing had given her away when she’d let herself in shortly before two in the morning. It had been a simple task to creep into the living room while Theo slept upstairs. She’d pulled the clock just far enough away from the wall to slip in the fresh battery she’d brought to replace the dead one she’d removed earlier. Once that was done, she reset the time so the clock would chime midnight, but only after she was safely back at the cottage. Pure genius.

But the memory didn’t cheer her. After everything he’d done, these pranks felt more juvenile than menacing. She needed to up her game, but she couldn’t figure out how to do that without getting caught.

She heard a noise from behind. Sucking in her breath, she spun around.

It was the black cat.

“Oh, my god . . .” She fell to her knees. The cat stared at her out of golden eyes. “How did you get in here? Did he lure you in? You have to stay away from him. You can’t come in here.”

The cat turned its head and flounced off into Theo’s bedroom. She went after him, but he’d gone under the bed. She got down on her stomach and tried to convince him to come out. “Come here, kitty. Here, kitty.”