Obsession Falls (37 page)

Summer noted no one stopped him to retrieve a glass; the flavored water wasn’t nearly as popular as the champagne.

Margaret drained half of her drink. “Johnny Depp is here. He kissed my fingers.” She showed the wrinkled, veined hand. “I can die happy.”

Kateri craned her neck. “Where is he?”

“He’s Captain Jack Sparrow,” Margaret said.

Summer scanned the ballroom. “Which one? I can see three from here.”

“He’s the handsome one.” Margaret’s eyes twinkled beneath her mask.

“Is Elizabeth here?” Kateri asked.

“She’s upstairs. She’s very ill.” Margaret’s happiness faded. “Pregnancy does not agree with her.”

“I am sorry,” Summer said. “Give her my best wishes.”

“I will.” Margaret glanced at the door. “I did think Garik would be here by now. That’s the trouble with having a son who’s the sheriff. He’s perpetually late. That will have to change when the baby’s born. Now, you girls go on.” She shooed them. “Remember, you are required to keep your mask on, visit with as many guests as you can, and have a thoroughly good time. If you need me, I am at your service, and will be at my station by the door.” New guests arrived, and she turned to greet them.

Kateri and Summer moved farther along the perimeter of the room.

A waiter—
the
waiter?—appeared beside Kateri and Summer with a plate of appetizers and a handful of cocktail napkins. After they had helped themselves, he moved off again.

Kateri shivered. “There is an element of creepiness about that guy.”

“That grinning skull. I know. There’s an element of creepiness about
all
the waiters.” Everywhere Summer looked, a stream of people were in constant motion, like a snake slithering around the room, and the mirrors reflected and magnified the motion. “They move as if their movements were choreographed.”

Kateri lowered her voice. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all.”

Summer felt a sense of relief. She had broken out of her shell. She had come to the party. She’d had a drink and a canapé. “So … You want to go?”

At that moment, they heard shouts of, “Commander! Commander Kwinault!” and saw four of Kateri’s Coasties heading their way.

“I’ll check in with them.” Kateri placed her drink between two fingers, leaned into her walker, and promised, “Then we’ll go.”

“Take your time.” Summer moved toward the wall, planted her staff, sipped her water, and watched the dancing. Creepy, yes, but she had to admit that it was fascinating to watch so many people hiding behind their masks, behaving with wild abandon and no thought for tomorrow. This party was Mardi Gras, Prohibition, and the end of the world, all rolled into one.

A man spoke near her right shoulder. “You are, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman here.”

She turned—and took two steps back. She groped behind her, got rid of her glass on a discard tray, and took a solid, two-handed grip on her staff.

This guy was a little over six feet, slender with broad shoulders, and dressed like a romance hero in a white ruffled shirt opened halfway to his waist, black breeches, and tall black boots. His mask was simple, velvet black on one side and shiny white on the other, and it gave his face an oddly half-bulging look.

He could be Michael Gracie.

She thought he
was
Michael Gracie. Except that his hair was pale blond, and Michael’s hair was sun-streaked, and she thought Michael was taller … although she wasn’t sure,… she hadn’t really stood beside him, only for a moment, and all her memories were skewed by terror.

Belatedly, she said, “Hello.”

“Hello?” He smiled rakishly. “I call you the most beautiful woman at a party filled with beautiful women, and all you can say is hello?”

“I could point out I’m covered from head to toe with a voluminous gown, I’m wearing a headdress and a mask, and—”

“And you could take me out with that staff.” He pretended terror.

She grinned. If he was Michael Gracie, he was a very unthreatening Michael. “Thank you for noticing.”

A waiter walked by with a tray of drinks.

The romance hero snatched two and offered one to Summer.

Before she could refuse, another waiter came by—or was it the first waiter?—and offered water in a fluted glass. She accepted and sipped, and wondered if she was nuts to stand in the middle of a vibrant, high-end Hollywood party and think with longing about the isolation of the Sawtooth Mountains.

Mr. Romance moved closer. “When a woman wears a mask, what better time to know that she is beautiful? I judge you by your soul.”

“My soul is not on display, and you do not know it.” No, this man wasn’t Michael Gracie. He was too normal, bantering with typical party inanity.

“I’d like to.” He offered his hand. “Shall we dance?”

She didn’t think twice. “Sure.” Because she’d just spotted Kennedy; with a barrel chest, an impatient air, and a scowl. She wished he didn’t look so dashing in his military officer’s uniform. And she wished he wasn’t headed her way.

She would dance with the devil to avoid Kennedy McManus.

Mr. Romance handed her staff to a waiter—the waiter?—and swept her onto the floor. The band played a waltz. Summer caught a glimpse of Kennedy watching her. She laughed as Mr. Romance swung her in dizzying circles, and thought she could learn to like this uninhibited decadence, especially if her behavior irked Kennedy McManus.

Best of all, she knew it did.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Kateri’s Coasties greeted her with grins, loud appreciation for her costume, and gentle hugs. She hugged them back fiercely, trying to tell them without words that she wasn’t f+ragile and knowing they would never believe her.

Ensign Mark Brown, Ensign Keith Dawson, and Petty Officer Tyler Kovavitch had been assigned to the station during Kateri’s command. Seaman Layla Monroe was new, on her first Coast Guard assignment, but she’d heard about Kateri and acquired the guys’ attitude, a reverence predicated in part on hearing of Kateri’s swift and decisive action that had saved two of the three Coast Guard cutters in port the day of the tsunami, and in part because she had survived the tsunami. Kateri supposed she didn’t deserve that kind of worship. On the other hand, she didn’t deserve being drowned and crippled, either, so she took it all in her stride.

When the greetings were done, she looked around, searching for the rest of the crew. For Luis. “Where are the other guys?”

Silence fell. Looks were exchanged. The four Coasties pulled her into a corner.

Mark pushed up his Frankenstein mask, and in a low voice, said, “Lieutenant Landlubber sent them out on a mission. He waited until they had their costumes on and were ready to come to the party, then he sent them to check out a possible drug-smuggling operation at Catawampus Bay.”

“But there’s a storm coming in,” Kateri said. “They might be needed for a real mission. Like, you know, search and rescue?”

“We know,” Keith said.

Kateri continued, “When the wind’s from the southeast, Catawampus Bay’s got the most treacherous currents on the coast.”

“We know that, too,” Tyler said.

“Is Landlubber trying to get them all killed?”

Everyone looked down at their shoes.

Layla muttered, “He’s the wicked stepsister. He can’t stand the competition.”

Kateri spotted Landlubber in his dress whites, wearing a small blue mask and talking animatedly to a very tall, very curvaceous young woman in a mermaid costume that looked as if it had been spray-painted on. Kateri pushed up her fur sleeves and turned in that direction.

Mark grabbed her arm. “Don’t. Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. He got the promotion, he’s pissed, and he takes it out on us. Every time Captain Sanchez tries to check him, Landlubber punishes
him
. If
you
said something, he couldn’t get to you, so Captain Sanchez would take it in the shorts.”

Kateri stared at these men and women, her friends, her people. She could do nothing to help them. The frustration ate at her guts. “Guys, I am so sorry.”

“Not your fault, Commander,” Mark said.

Everyone said that. Luis said that. But every time one of her guys charged into danger, every time one of them got hurt, she knew again that she should have handled Landon Adams differently, taught him respect for the Pacific Ocean even if it took dunking him in and dragging him behind a cutter.

Of course, what he needed to learn was respect for human life, and if he hadn’t learned compassion in his life before the Coast Guard, she couldn’t have taught him.

“Commander, listen. Ignore Landlubber. I’ve got someone I want you to meet.” Mark reached out a hand and brought into the circle a new arrival, a pretty, smiling young woman. “Kateri Kwinault, this is Sienna Monahan. Sienna, this is our former commander, Kateri Kwinault.”

Kateri shook Sienna’s hand and looked between Mark and Sienna. “How good to meet you. Are you two an item?”

The team hooted.

Mark blushed. “I wish. Sienna was supposed to come with Luis. Instead she’s stuck with us.”

Kateri froze. The Girlfriend? Sienna was the Girlfriend?

Sienna touched Mark’s arm. “I would have said
you
were stuck with
me
. Who wants to haul around someone else’s date when there are a hundred gorgeous women drooling over the Coast Guard?”

“Truth,” Layla said. “I’m tired of women glaring a hole between my shoulder blades. They want a chance with you guys. So go ask someone to dance. Commander Kwinault and I will babysit Sienna.”

The men made protesting sounds that swiftly faded as they surveyed the luscious pickings.

In tones of adoration, Tyler said, “I have never seen so many hot women in one place in my life.” He headed off in one direction.

Keith and Mark split for opposite sides of the room.

The women stood alone in the corner.

And Kateri came back to life, back to normal … if normal was bitterly jealous and thoroughly bitchy. Which, since she was dressed as Cruella de Vil, seemed appropriate.

Sienna wasn’t beautiful. But she was pretty. Really pretty in a wholesome, corn-fed kind of way, with wide blue eyes, clear skin marked by a sprinkle of auburn freckles, roses in her cheeks, and straight red hair so bright it looked like fire. She was thin and petite, with a runner’s body, and she smiled all the time, showing dimples that pressed into her sweet cream cheeks … so from all immediate observation, this woman was young, healthy, and happy.

Kateri wanted to jab her with her Cruella de Vil cigarette holder.

Except that Sienna grasped Kateri’s hand. “I hope you don’t mind me telling you this, but since I arrived in Virtue Falls, I have heard so much about you, and I admire your bravery and your intelligence. Luis thinks the world of you. All the Coasties do. You’re the person I want to be when I grow up.”

“Thanks.”
I guess.
“I look forward to knowing you better.”
Big fat lie.
“How do you two know each other?” Who would have thought she could speak naturally rather than screech like nails on a chalkboard? She should join the Screen Actors Guild.

The girls put their heads together and laughed.

Layla said, “We were roommates our freshman year at Michigan State, and I could not stand her. I mean, I’ve got dark curly hair, flashing brown eyes, and the well-toned body of an athlete.”

“Not to mention an immense ego,” Sienna said.

“A well-deserved immense ego,” Layla said. “I get attention. Then I moved in with her. Guys lined up around the block to ignore me.”

“That is not true.” Sienna fake-fluffed her hair. “Once they got over the shock of my beauty, they crawled all over you.”

“The ones you didn’t want!” Layla was disgusted.

“I didn’t want any of them. Pimple-faced, obnoxious guys with big egos.” Sienna turned to Kateri. “I’m not being mean. They’re all like that at eighteen.”

Kateri felt as if she’d been slapped. Sienna told her that because … because she thought Kateri couldn’t remember that far back. Or, more likely, she could not imagine that Kateri had ever been that young. She had turned thirty, and apparently joined the Older Than Dirt Club. Who knew? Kateri drained her glass. “So you two went to school together … you’re both twenty-three?”

“Sienna’s twenty-two,” Layla said. “She graduated from high school early and started college at seventeen.”

Michigan State at age seventeen … so much for the vague hope Sienna was dumber than a stump. In fact, so much for the vague hope Luis had taken up with Sienna because he was pining for Kateri. The two women couldn’t be more different.

A Phantom of the Opera appeared from the direction of the deck. He smiled at Layla and offered his hand. “Wanna dance?” he asked.

Layla almost bounced with joy. “I thought you’d never ask.” She went prancing off, moving with the rhythm of the band and her joy in life, leaving Kateri alone with the Girlfriend.

Kateri caught a passing waiter, passed off her empty glass, and made conversation. “So what are you doing in Virtue Falls?”

“In June, I came to visit Layla and fell in love with the town.”

“Not just the town, I would guess.” Kateri was being sarcastic.

Sienna didn’t catch the sarcasm, and her enthusiasm was undimmed. “Right! I love the state, the whole peninsula. I mean, the mountains and the hiking! The beaches and the whale-watching! The resort, the people, the healthy food and fresh air…”

“You don’t have to sell me.”

Sienna blushed. “You’re from here?”

“Here. And there.” Kateri had a headache. She glanced around in the hope of seeing Summer signal her to go. Instead, she saw Summer on the dance floor twirling in the arms of a handsome buccaneer.

No escape. Kateri turned back to Sienna. “So you moved to Virtue Falls?”

“My parents think I’m nuts. They’re in South Carolina and they think that’s the only place in the world where it’s fit to live.” Sienna rolled her eyes.