Lantern Beach Mysteries Box Set

by Christy Barritt

  A baseball? Had some kids been playing back here in this dark, dirty alley? She couldn’t think about it now.

  Her throat went dry at the daunting possibilities facing her. Attack or be attacked.

  Raul drew his gun.

  Now or never.

  This baseball was the only weapon she had.

  She pulled her hand back, pretending she was on the pitcher’s mound again.

  “What do you think you’re doing, sweetheart?” Raul chuckled, as if she was cute. “Trying to get a home run?”

  Every minute felt suspended, like she was swimming through an alternate universe. Through muck. Through a world composed of bad dreams.

  The gang closed in behind her. In front of her. Beside her.

  Her backup wasn’t here. She was the only person she had to depend on right now.

  “No, I’m trying to strike you out.” She wounded her arm back and fast-pitched the ball at Raul as hard as she could.

  The ball hit him squarely in the chest.

  Cady held her breath.

  Raul’s eyes went dull. His gun dropped.

  And he collapsed to the ground.

  Still hardly able to breathe, Cady peered down at Raul. He wasn’t moving. Looked lifeless.

  Was he faking it? What had happened? Was he . . . dead?

  The gang members around her began muttering.

  This was far from over.

  She grabbed the gun Raul had dropped and swirled around, wondering whom she could take out on the first shot. It was the only chance she had. Because as soon as she fired, they’d start beating her until there was no life left in her body.

  Sirens sounded in the not so distant distance.

  Her backup. They were here. Finally.

  The thugs around her began to scramble. They hated cops with a vengeance. When they found out she was one, they’d hate her even more.

  She couldn’t let them get away.

  She pulled the trigger. Hit one in the knee. Hit another in the thigh.

  The leaders. Raul’s right-hand men.

  She had to stop them.

  They moaned. Fell to the ground. Muttered curses.

  In the distance, cop cars appeared. Stopped at the entrance of the alley. Feet rushed. Police appeared.

  As she realized the danger was over, her knees gave out. Cady sank to the ground.

  “Cady, what happened?” Samuel Stephens found her and knelt beside her.

  “Things went wrong,” she whispered. She was unable to believe how things had gone down.

  “Come on. We’ve got to get you out of here.” He ushered her to a police car. Past the men she’d shot. Officers arrested them as they muttered death threats at her.

  These guys knew her face. Knew who she was.

  She may have survived, yet she hadn’t. Not really.

  Because nothing would ever be the same, not as long as members of DH-7 knew who she was.

  Chapter 1

  Today’s Goals: Survive. Blend in. Resist the ice cream.

  “Are you sure the line is secure?” Cady’s voice cracked.

  The fear still hadn’t left her. No, it haunted her day and night. Waking and sleeping. While thinking and while feeling.

  Her days were numbered, but there was finally a touch of hope on the horizon. All she had to do was lie low for a while and hold her frustration at bay. The last thing she wanted was to sit back and do nothing. She’d worked hard to get where she was in her career, and now everything was on hold.

  “Of course the line is secure.” Samuel Stephens’s deep voice rumbled through the phone’s speaker. “No one’s tracing this number. So, you got there okay . . . Cassidy? Cassidy Livingston?”

  He’d used her alias on purpose—to help her get acclimated to hearing it. Answering to it. Living it. She needed to think of herself as Cassidy now.

  She found irony in the last name and kept mentally changing it to Livingstill. That seemed more fitting. After all, the fact that Cad—Cassidy—was alive was a near miracle.

  From her perch atop the massive sand dune, she gripped her new cell phone and glanced over the waters of the Atlantic, at the angry gray waves that admonished her, that taunted that she should go away and that she didn’t belong.

  Cassidy wished she could heed their warning. But she was stuck here on this island just as much as the tide was stuck rendezvousing with the shoreline.

  “I arrived late last night,” she finally told Samuel.

  “The place okay?” Samuel had overseen this move, helping secure the details.

  He was the only one who knew where she was. Cassidy didn’t want to get the marshals involved, and she definitely didn’t want to go into witness protection. No, the fewer people who knew, the less chance she had of being found.

  Besides, she feared someone on the inside had turned on her. There had to be someone. It was the only thing that made sense. She just had no idea whom.

  “The place does have a killer view,” she said. “If it wasn’t for the sand, it might be bearable.”

  Yes, sand. It got caught between her toes and behind her ears, and she was sure to find it for weeks after any walks on the beach. She’d hoped for a cabin in the mountains. But she had bigger problems than sand.

  “Make sure you appreciate the view for the sand.”

  “I’ll do my best.” She knew what Samuel was saying: some people couldn’t see the forest for the trees. She couldn’t be one of them.

  As a self-proclaimed self-help junkie, Cassidy knew all the pithy phrases. She rattled them off with ease or admonished herself when things went wrong.

  Like now. Be patient with all things, but especially with yourself.

  “The place is like Mayberry,” Samuel said. “You’ll be safe there until this trial.”

  Lying low seemed like an easy enough goal out here in the middle of nowhere. Cassidy had covered her tracks. Changed her name. Taken nothing but the clothes she’d been wearing.

  She’d stopped one town over to buy some new beach duds. She’d also got some hair color, makeup, and a few groceries to hold her over. It would have to suffice for a while as she transformed into someone she wasn’t—a laid-back, beach-loving free spirit.

  “You didn’t tell anyone where you went, right?” Samuel asked.

  “I didn’t tell anyone,” she said. “Not even my parents or Ryan.”

  Her boyfriend. The man she would probably marry one day. The one who was everything she wanted in a man. Almost everything, at least.

  “Good,” Samuel continued. “You heard about the bounty they put on your head?”

  “It’s hard to forget the one-million-dollar price tag. I don’t know whether I should be honored or insulted.” How could she forget? The harsh reality of her situation haunted her every waking minute. Most of her sleeping ones as well.

  “We think you’re invaluable, but that amount does double up their motivation to find you.”

  “I know.” The sun glared down on her, urging Cassidy on her way. Reminding her that she was an outsider here in this land of rugged magnificence. She started back toward the cottage she’d call home for a while—a little one-story bungalow complete with hurricane shutters and a deck facing the ocean.

  “Okay, we’ve talked long enough,” Samuel said. “Call me if you need anything. Understand?”

  “I do.” She lumbered toward the sandy, desolate path leading away from the ocean. “Oh, and one more thing, Samuel. An ice cream truck?”

  “I knew you’d go crazy sitting around doing nothing, so I gave you a job. And don’t worry. I took care of all the licensing, and the woman selling the vehicle said she even left it stocked and at your place. She seemed anxious to make the sale.”

  Cassidy glanced over the dune at the bright pink truck in the distance. “She did. It was waiting for me when I got here.”

  “I thought you might enjoy the change of pace.” His voice held an edge of amusement, the first hint of humor she’d heard in months.
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br />   “It will be a change of pace all right.” Her breath caught as she heard sirens in the distance. Sirens? Here on Lantern Beach? She supposed even small towns had crime of some sort.

  “Cad—Cassidy?”

  “Yes?” She paused and let the sun beat down on her.

  “I’m really proud of you for doing this. I know what you’re sacrificing.”

  She remembered Samantha. What DH-7 had done to her. Was Cassidy really giving up anything? Or was she hoping to eventually gain something—mostly her life? Either way, she had more of a chance than Samantha.

  “Thanks, Samuel.” She hit End and turned back to stare for another minute at the water.

  Lantern Beach, North Carolina, was not her home. Not the place she wanted to be.

  But life sometimes dictated a person’s future in surprising ways.

  She turned and walked to the top of the dunes one more time. It felt so surreal to be here. She’d experienced the rocky beaches along Washington’s shores. But this area was so different. Maybe the ocean really could fix anything. Her self-help mumbo jumbo was doing no good.

  She squinted when she saw flashing police lights the next street over.

  Whatever had happened, it was close.

  She moved up higher and saw a crowd had gathered farther down the beach.

  Her heart raced. Immediately, she was sucked back into her old life. Her old life where she was always in the middle of the action. Where she was a part of law and order. Where she felt like she had purpose.

  The incident going on now was probably nothing more than a tourist whose personal items had gotten stolen when Mr. or Mrs. Vacationer had left them unattended while taking a dip in the water. There was no reason for concern. Cassidy just needed to go back to her cottage, unpack, and figure out life for the next two months. The authorities here could handle law and order just fine without her.

  But police work, once it had bitten Cassidy, had bitten hard and deep until it was in her blood. The girl everyone had called a spoiled rich kid had taken a blue-collar job and never looked back. The world needed justice.

  Her best friend, Lucy, needed justice.

  She’d been murdered by a home intruder ten years ago, and her killer had never been caught. Cassidy had been honing her skills and trying to track down the perpetrator ever since.

  Going against her inner voice, she gravitated closer to the commotion on the beach. The sun burned against her legs, its rays unobstructed here on the island where the tallest trees appeared to be gnarled live oaks. Cassidy was seeing more UV action here in one day than she usually got in an entire year in Seattle.

  She swallowed hard as she crested the next dune and saw the scene more clearly.

  Two officers stood on the shore, staring at . . . a body in the surf.

  Chapter 2

  A crowd had gathered, some stepping entirely too close to the dead body being tousled by the waves. A perimeter should have been set up, Cassidy mused. This scene needed to be contained and basic procedure needed to be followed.

  The waves continued to lap over the victim, most likely carrying away precious evidence with each draw of the tide. Cassidy’s stomach clenched in horror as the cops just stood there.

  Every instinct in her wanted to jump in and take over.

  But she couldn’t do that.

  Cassidy was a mere ice cream lady, one who needed to keep a low profile. Have patience. All things are difficult until they become easy.

  Another piece of the self-help advice that she could spout as easily as she could breathe. Her parents certainly hadn’t taught her much about ethics, so she’d turned to books, to education, to podcasts. Anything to fill the void.

  But it was Lucy’s old Day-at-a-Glance calendar filled with a new inspirational quote each day that stained Cassidy’s memory. It was like Lucy was reaching from the grave to guide her sometimes.

  Since no one was in control of this scene, Cassidy continued to walk until she reached the edge of the crowd. She wound her way through the beachgoers, trying to get closer. No one stopped her.

  A man had washed ashore. He was probably in his early forties, and his body appeared fresh, like it hadn’t been in the water terribly long. Sea creatures hadn’t begun to eat him yet, and the water had only begun to swell each of his features.

  Cassidy wasn’t sure—she’d need to get closer to know—but there appeared to be a gunshot wound to his chest.

  A gunshot wound? In a place like Lantern Beach? The thought seemed so foreign, like the two didn’t mix. They were like vinegar and milk. Lantern Beach should be the perfect place to disappear. But maybe the perfect place didn’t exist.

  Cassidy would guess that the man had been murdered within the past twenty-four hours and that the crime had most likely happened nearby. They were surrounded by miles of ocean. If this had happened on another island, the body wouldn’t be nearly as intact.

  Based on his clothing—khakis and a polo—the man could have been out boating. Something about him screamed yuppie, like he was the type who’d be engaged in business, not drug running.

  But people had surprised her over the years. And by years, she meant six years. She’d become an officer of the law at twenty-two, had been promoted to detective at twenty-five, had worked narcotics at twenty-seven, and had a bounty put on her head at twenty-eight.

  Which led her to today.

  The officer’s voice caught her ear. “Riptide? Wasn’t someone pulled out to sea over on Hatteras last week?”

  Riptide? Someone dressed like this wasn’t likely to be pulled out in a riptide. Usually those people were wearing a bathing suit because they’d first been in the water. Besides, there was a gunshot wound.

  What did the police think that was? A shark bite? An encounter with a rusty crab pod? And if the body had been in the water for a week, it would look nothing like this.

  “Guess we should get Clemson over here to check him out.” A stout middle-aged man, probably the chief if she had to guess, stepped back. “Take some pictures first.”

  They hadn’t taken pictures yet? At the rate they were going, this man was going to be washed back out to sea before Clemson—whoever he was—arrived.

  Cassidy couldn’t watch anymore, not without blowing her cover.

  She started to step away when a man in the distance caught her eye. He stood on the periphery of the scene, atop a nearby sand dune, wearing aviator sunglasses and a baseball cap.

  He didn’t look beach ready. His body was too stiff, like he could be called to work at any minute. Plus, he wore jeans and a black T-shirt.

  No one in their right mind wore black T-shirts on days as hot as today. She was a beach newbie, and even she knew that.

  He seemed to be assessing the scene before stepping away.

  This man was at this scene for a reason. Was it to survey his deadly work?

  Cassidy rushed back toward her house, determined to mind her own business and fully embrace her alias.

  Right after she followed that man.

  It was hard to be subtle while driving a clunky, pink truck that was playing “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” The music had come on when Cassidy started the truck, and she couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.

  In fact, this vehicle was designed to get attention, which would make following a suspect all the more complicated. But she’d had the keys for that truck in her pocket, and not the keys to her car. Time was of the essence when following someone. Even a rookie would know that.

  Wasting no time, Cassidy pulled onto the main artery that cut through the island. She craned her neck, looking for the mystery man. A black sedan pulled onto the road just ahead, coming from the same area where she’d seen the man. That had to be his car.

  She strained to see the plates, but he was too far away and too many cars were between them.

  You shouldn’t do this Cassidy, she reminded herself. You need to put your real life behind you.

  Yet she couldn’t stop herself.

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bsp; I’ll just check him out and that will be it. End of story. I won’t get involved.

  She tried to maneuver between the vehicles, but the road was only two lanes with no area to pull off—only big ditches filled to the brim with water, most likely from a recent storm. And the traffic was surprisingly heavy. What was today? Sunday? Was this when everyone checked in and out of their weekly rentals? It must be.

  If Cassidy could just get out from behind this oversized SUV, maybe she’d stand a chance at successfully following the sedan.

  As oncoming traffic broke for a minute, Cassidy saw her opportunity. Just as she started to pull around the SUV, a truck sped out from a side street and cut her off.

  She laid on her horn, trying to make her displeasure loud and clear. Only, this stupid ice cream truck didn’t have a real horn. No, a little toot, toot filled the air.

  Seriously, it was an embarrassingly sweet sound, like the cry of an injured bird when Cassidy wanted something that would roar like a tiger.

  The driver of the truck in front of her had the nerve to wave.

  To wave. As if she’d allowed him to merge.

  Some people . . .

  The truck was painted army green and had jacked-up tires, a loud exhaust, and a gun rack at the back window. Her eyes narrowed when she saw the stickers on the back.

  A silhouette of a woman with a large chest and practically no clothes. A bumper sticker advertising a strip club. Another one saying—

  Cassidy’s mouth dropped open.

  People should not be allowed to put those things on their vehicles. In fact, they seemed like something Raul would put on his SUV—the one his minions escorted him around in, as if he were royalty. The thought turned her stomach.

  She instantly disliked the driver of this truck. She didn’t need to meet him to know he was a first-class jerk.

  Cassidy tried to peer around the oversized truck. It was too late. She couldn’t see anything, which made it really hard to follow the black sedan. She’d lost the man, she realized. In her state of distraction, the man from the beach must have turned onto a side street.