“I know a lot about you.”
Amazing how the guy could kill the mood with a few simple words. Her history—her life—was one big disaster. The thought of him figuring out her secrets shook her more than she wanted to admit. “That isn’t very comforting.”
“Back to the point of my tracking you down.” He stared at her fingers where they wrapped around the coffee cup. “Let Ben handle this.”
“I thought there was no this.”
He looked ready to launch into a lecture sure to annoy her when something even more annoying slinked into her peripheral vision. Ellis and Arianna Wells. On an island where people tolerated a lot of nonsense from their odd and secretive neighbors, these two pushed the boundaries.
They lived on a boat in the marina. He taught high school history and everyone agreed he sucked at it. She helped out at the marina office. And they had this nasty habit of—
“We just came from the Yacht Club,” Arianna said as her opening volley.
There it was. The Yacht Club. A phrase the two of them managed to work into every conversation. Then there were the clothes. Arianna always wore long, flowing dresses, no matter the weather. Ellis looked one step away from putting on a navy blazer and captain’s hat. Never mind the fact the club they loved so much consisted of half the residents of Whitaker and all the ones who owned a boat. These two acted like membership to the club, which pretty much anyone could get, made them super special.
“Of course you did,” Hansen mumbled under his breath as he stood up.
“Did you hear about the stranger walking around the island?” Ellis asked. “No one is claiming to know him.”
Before Tessa’s mind could unscramble long enough to respond, Arianna jumped in again. “We heard he had some sort of accident.”
As usual, the Whitaker gossip circle ran at bullet-train speed. Equally unsurprising, the information had gone sideways. That’s what happened when people tried to cultivate a mysterious air.
Unless someone knew more than she did about the boat—and Tessa really doubted that since she’d been watching it nearly nonstop since it appeared—the story had blossomed into a full-fledged fairy tale. “Accident?”
Ellis nodded. “The boat is destroyed.”
“Since when?” Hansen’s voice didn’t even rise.
A pretty impressive talent as far as Tessa was concerned.
“That’s what Cliff said,” Arianna said as she looked from Tessa to Hansen and back again.
Hansen made a noise that sounded like guh. “Cliff, as in the older guy who sits on his front porch all day and grumbles at anyone who walks by?”
Now that he mentioned it, Tessa noticed the resemblance. “Are you guys related?”
He didn’t even spare her a glance. “Not funny.”
Arianna blustered forward as if Hansen hadn’t said a word. “Cliff has a view of the boat from his house.”
This time Hansen snorted. The sound drew more than a few looks from the customers at nearby tables. “No, he doesn’t.”
Since the conversation felt as if it were galloping out of control, Tessa tried to reel it back in. She put her cup down and stood next to Hansen. “The boat is off Throwaway Beach, which is on the other side of the ridge and not within Cliff’s view.”
“That’s not what we heard.” Arianna ran a hand over her short spiky hair.
Ellis nodded. “Someone said there was blood all over the beach.”
Hansen glared at both of them. “What is happening right now?”
“I think it’s a messed-up game of Telephone or Whisper Down the Lane or whatever it’s called.” That was the only explanation Tessa could come up with on such short notice.
Now Hansen glared at her. “What?”
As far as she was concerned he could take that look somewhere else. She wasn’t the one spreading crappy information across the island.
“We’ll leave you two to it.” Ellis slid his hand under his wife’s elbow and guided her away from the bar and toward a nearby table. “Let us know if you hear anything.”
“Right.” Hansen nodded. “That sounds like something I’d do.”
Tessa waited an extra minute for them to sit down and settle in with the menus Sylvia dropped on their table as she sped by before talking to Hansen again. “You didn’t have to be rude to them.”
“Agree to disagree.”
Since it looked like Hansen planned to continue glaring at the Wellses, Tessa shifted. She grabbed her cup and put her back to the bar. The move forced Hansen to focus on her and not them, which was good because he had a friendship errand to run. “You should let Ben know the news is out. If he doesn’t do something about this stranger, Ruthie Tottenridge will threaten to fire him. Again.”
“I’d think you’d be on Ruthie’s side.”
“I don’t want Ben fired.” She didn’t. She really liked Ben and his comforting style. The way he put people at ease. She’d never felt a zing with him despite the fact he had the tall, dark, and handsome thing down, but he was ticking her off right now. His calm affect had backfired on her and her innocent car. “I want him to take me seriously.”
“Oh, he does. Trust me.”
She glanced at Hansen’s lower half, which was no hardship and in the general area of his back pocket, where she assumed he kept his cell phone. “Call him.”
His eyes narrowed. “What are you going to do?”
“Go home.”
“Straight home?”
He was not a stupid man. Looks, deep hottie voice, and a brain. If he were a tad less grumbly, he’d be perfect . . . and then she’d be in trouble. Harmless flirting? Fine. Letting him get wrapped up in her life? Nope.
“I’m not a child, Hansen.” But her voice didn’t hold any heat. A part of her appreciated that he cared, even if it was only a little and likely because he didn’t want law-enforcement strangers and the media all over the island.
“I am well aware that you are a full-grown woman.” His gaze did a little bounce. Not far down, and not in a creepy, he-deserved-a-good-punch way. No, this was more of a smooth glide that heated a trail through her.
Damn him.
She smiled because, despite the fact she didn’t want to go any further down the flirting road, he did make her happy. Sometimes. Certainly not always. “You’re getting better.”
“At what?”
“Flirting.” But she was sure he’d screw it up in no time.
Chapter 4
Talking Tessa into going home until Ben could do a quick check of the island took every ounce of Hansen’s communications skills. He threw in some charm and tried very hard not to think about her comments about flirting. He did not flirt. He stayed aloof for a reason. His past was not something he wanted dug up and passed around. Flirting led to dating, which led to sharing, which led to him running far away.
All of those thoughts and a flash or two of her smile ran through his mind as he stepped off the rotted wood of Cliff’s front porch step later that night. Hansen and Ben had been searching the island, keeping in touch via cell, and had not found any stranger, wet or dry, lurking about.
By the time they met back at Ben’s office around nine, the sun had gone down and a steady driving rain fell from the dark sky. Sheets of water pounded the ground, transforming every inch of the island into a slick, muddy surface.
Hansen dumped his drenched jacket over the back of a rickety steel chair Ben kept in the corner for just this purpose. Water ran down the side of his face from his hair. A reminder of his time outside dripped off his shirt and pants until a puddle formed at his feet.
“Find anything?” he asked as he grabbed a bottle of water from the small dorm-size refrigerator Ben kept next to his desk.
“Some missing laundry from the Taylor backyard over on Sunset. Otherwise, nothing.” Ben frowned at him. “You’re making a mess.”
“You afraid I’ll ruin the expensive carpet that you don’t have?”
Ben lounged in his chair, tapping hi
s fingers against the edge of his desk with not a drop of water in sight. “Do you need a towel?”
“Is there a reason you’re still dry?” Hansen shook his head, letting the beads of water scatter over Ben’s desk blotter. “Because I’d think the person who volunteered should be more dry than the one who gets paid to do this shit.”
Ben pointed at the coatrack. “Raincoat and umbrella.”
“You didn’t think to offer me one?”
“No.” Ben flattened his hand against the desk. “So, what did Cliff say?”
“He insists he heard a noise in his front yard and that his motion sensor light clicked on last night.” Hansen shook his head. “He talked about voices and a fight, but who knows what he actually heard. I had to yell his name four times before he opened the door to let me in.”
“Despite that, we both know Cliff is telling his version to everyone, getting them riled up. This is no longer about some guy showing up in town. Cliff’s created some story about a fight and an accident.”
Neither of which Hansen actually believed happened, but it’s not as if he could find the mysterious stranger, drag him into Berman’s Lodge, and make him tell the truth. “You didn’t expect Cliff to keep the Whitaker news of the decade all to himself, did you?”
“By the time I talked to people at the marina, the story had escalated to where you would have thought a serial killer was wandering around the island.” Ben’s head fell forward. “I really hate gossip.”
“Then you’re living in the wrong place.”
“Haven’t you heard? The residents here mind their own business.” Ben snorted. “Right.”
This was Hansen’s least favorite topic, so he switched to another. “The rain is making things messy out there. Checking on the boat and doing a serious door-to-door search will need to wait until tomorrow.”
As soon as Hansen finished the comment, he heard the thump of sturdy rainboots behind him. A not-so-subtle throat clearing came next. “Gentlemen.”
Ruthie Tottenridge. The only person on Whitaker that Ben went to ridiculous lengths to avoid, and here she was, alternating between dripping and scowling in his doorway.
“Great.” Ben coughed over the word but anyone could still make it out.
“Mr. Clifford, I need to see you about the dangerous stranger you’ve failed to apprehend.” Ruthie walked into the room like she owned it. As the head of the Whitaker board, she kind of did. Not the island, because a private and very mysterious individual, who most thought didn’t even live on Whitaker, owned every single inch of land and rented it out to all of them. But Ruthie wielded a great deal of power. She ran the board that made the rules. At least, for now.
She ran for the seat years ago after her father, the previous head, died, and she’d held on to the position ever since. No one else wanted the trouble or the paperwork, and despite her dictatorial tendencies, she kept everything running without trouble. But over time she’d made enemies. While she might have thought the position amounted to a for-life kind of thing, some residents thought it was time to cut back on her power. More than a few pushed Sylvia into thinking about challenging the matriarch who acted like a one-woman judge, jury, and dream-killing machine.
Hansen half hoped he still lived here when the next election came around.
Ben stood up, but he took his time doing it. “As we’ve discussed, you may call me Ben.”
“I’m not sure such informality is the best under the circumstances, hmm?” With that, Ruthie continued past them both and headed for the small conference room to Ben’s left.
Hansen watched her move, head held high and rubber boots squeaking against the cheap linoleum floor with each step. When she closed the door behind her, Hansen looked at Ben again. “Are you supposed to answer her question?”
“No idea.”
“You going to be okay meeting with her alone?” If Ben said no, Hansen wasn’t quite sure what he’d do. It wasn’t as if he knew how to handle Ruthie or wanted to, but he could stand there and stare. He’d gotten pretty good at that sort of thing.
“She needs a vote of the entire board to fire me, so I should be safe tonight.” Ben fidgeted with his belt. “I’ll also remind her that firing the only law enforcement on the island while a stranger is on the loose is not great optics.”
The town’s hysteria was starting to rub off on him. “On the loose? That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
Ben shrugged as he slipped from behind the safety of his desk. “Blame Tessa.”
Yeah, about her. “I usually do.”
“Going to pay her a visit, are you?” The office phone rang. Ben stared at it and seemed satisfied when it cut off after a few rings. “Looks like the answering service still works.”
The answering service consisted of one person—Maddie Rhine. Hansen thought she was the only person on the island more reclusive than he was. He’d met her exactly twice and both times she’d been in the middle of going somewhere else in a rush and couldn’t stop to say more than hello. People felt as if they knew her because hers was the voice they heard if they called Ben’s office with an emergency or even a question . . . and they called on every subject, most unrelated to law enforcement, which Ben chalked up to general island boredom.
The result was that everyone smiled when they said Maddie’s name but no two people gave the same description when talking about what she looked like. Hansen almost envied her ability to move in and around Whitaker and still maintain complete privacy. He’d lost his soon after landing on the island when he agreed to help an older woman named Winnie get her dog, Mr. Higginbotham, out from where he was hiding under her car.
Hansen circled back to the one topic he couldn’t avoid. “I want Tessa to know we didn’t find anything. Further, that we plan to go out and check the boat after the storm blows out again.”
Ben smiled. “Uh-huh.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Right.” Ben nodded and kept nodding. “You’re a loner and don’t spend your days dreaming about her. Got it.”
Was he wearing a fucking sign? “Try shutting up.”
Some of the amusement left Ben’s face as the office phone rang again. “It’s going to be a long night. We really do need to find this guy tomorrow and straighten this out before we get a front-row seat to a lot of panic.”
“I’m trying to imagine all two hundred and eleven residents panicking at the same time.”
“Don’t even joke about that.” Ben shuddered. “And I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for the guy in the water, not that I know what it could be.”
“Nothing is going to happen in this weather.” Or at Tessa’s house. Hansen already decided he’d knock on her door, deliver the status, then go on home and find warm clothing. Simple. “We’ll head out again tomorrow.”
Ben didn’t move. “Enjoy your date.”
Hansen refused to take the bait. Instead, he nodded in the general direction of the conference room. “You, too.”
WHEN TESSA HEARD the clanking noise outside her living room window for the third time, her heart started to race. It zoomed right up her throat and lodged there. She tried to inhale and calm down her senses, but an endless round of shivers coursed through her.
The summer heat had faded for the night. The satellite television blinked out five minutes before the electricity. Now it was just her and the candlelit darkness and the steady beat of rain against the roof of her artist’s cottage. Not hers, actually. She rented it but did not design it. As much as she liked bold colors, that didn’t mean she would have picked a flashy new shade of blue for each wall in the bedroom and variations of purple for the family room. The kitchen cabinets were painted and awash in stenciled designs she couldn’t identify.
Her place could best be described as eclectic, which was why she grabbed it for such a low rent. She was a big fan of cheap.
Glass doors led out to the small lawn. Towering trees lined up about twenty feet behind her house, giving it a p
rotected, closed-in feel. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed off the gravel area and hill that dipped down to the water out front.
She knew every patch of grass and planted flower out there. Right now she couldn’t see any of it because the rain made everything blurry. Sounds muffled.
Clink.
That was a new one. Softer but still not the normal creaks and groans of the wooden structure that she’d grown accustomed to during her last six weeks of living here. She blamed the wind and rain. This wasn’t a light summer storm. This blew in and thrashed.
This was the perfect night to stay inside. She huddled under a blanket in the corner of her small L-shaped sectional. Curled her legs under her and pulled the soft material tight against her chest. Sank right down until she rested in a cocoon of cushions. Here she could work through her theories about the man in the water.
Some said she was nosy by nature. She preferred the words inquisitive and caring. Whenever something felt off to her—like a man walking out of the ocean without seeing people right there who could help him—she tried to fix it. She feared this mysterious guy might have gotten hurt or became disoriented and needed someone, so she couldn’t just ignore the situation. She had to jump in.
Bang. Bang.
She jerked at the sound and sat up taller, trying to separate the random noises and come up with a reasonable explanation for each one. The rapid thuds made her think a shutter blew free and danced against the side of the house.
Yeah, a shutter. That was as far as she allowed her mind to wander.
She’d gone to camp as a kid outside of Washington, D.C., and had ridden out summer after summer of thunderstorms. But now a choking sensation swamped her. She never obsessed about the worst thing that could happen but now her imagination threatened to run wild. People might get off on the adrenaline rush. Not her. She liked life quiet and peaceful. Fixed, explained, safe, and without surprises.
She yelped when the doorknob rattled and turned—back and forth, back and forth—as if someone would do anything, break through a wall, if necessary, to shelter inside with her. She lifted her head to call out and ask who was out there, but the sound died in her throat. A second later, tiny rows of goose bumps broke out on her arms. She felt frozen from the inside out and stuck to that spot.
Her Other Secret Page 3
