Sanctuary

by Nora Roberts

  blossoms.”

  She went on and on, chattering out suggestions without giving father or daughter a chance to interrupt. When Brian trooped in the back door and stared, baffled, at the cozy family group, Kate beamed him a smile.

  “We’ll be out of your way in just a shake, sweetie. Jo and Sam were just deciding which route they were going to take around the island today for Jo’s pictures. Y’all better get started.”

  Kate got up quickly, gathering Jo’s camera bag. “I know how fussy you are about the light and such. You just tell your daddy when it strikes you as right. I can’t wait to see what kind of pictures you get. Hurry along now, before Brian starts to fuss at us. Sam, you get a chance, you take Jo down to where those baby terns hatched a while back. Goodness, look at the time. You two scoot.”

  She all but dragged Sam to his feet, kept nudging and talking until she’d shoved them both out the door.

  “Just what the hell was that, Kate?” Brian asked her.

  “That, with any luck at all, was the beginning of something.”

  “They’ll go their own ways when they’re five feet from the house.”

  “No, they won’t,” Kate disagreed as she started toward the ringing phone on the wall. “Because neither one of them will want to be the first to take that step away. While they’re each waiting for the other one to back off first, they’ll be heading in the same direction for a change. Good morning,” she said into the receiver. “The Inn at Sanctuary.” Her smile faded. “I’m sorry, what? Yes, yes, of course.” Automatically, she grabbed a pencil and began scribbling on the pad by the phone. “I’ll certainly make some calls right away. Don’t worry now. It’s a very small island. We’ll help in every way we can, Mr. Peters. I’ll come on down there to the cottage myself, right now. No, that’s just fine. I’ll be right along.”

  “Mosquitoes getting in through the screen again?” Brian asked. But he knew it was more than that, much more.

  “The Peterses took Wild Horse Cove Cottage with some friends for the week. Mr. Peters can’t seem to find his wife this morning.”

  Brian felt a quick stab of fear at the base of his spine. He couldn’t ignore it, but told himself it was foolish overreaction. “Kate, it’s not quite seven A.M. She probably got up early and took a walk.”

  “He’s been out looking for almost an hour. He found her shoes down by the water.” Distracted, she ran a hand through her hair. “Well, it’s probably just as you say, but he’s terribly worried. I’ll run down there and calm him down, help him look around until she comes wandering home.”

  She managed a thin smile. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but this means I’m going to have to wake Lexy up so she can take the breakfast shift in my place this morning. She’s liable to be snappish about it.”

  “I’m not worried about Lexy. Kate,” he added as she headed for the door, “give me a call, will you, when Mrs. Peters gets home?”

  “Sure I will, honey. Like as not she’ll be there before I make it down to them.”

  BUT she wasn’t. By noon Tom Peters wasn’t the only one on Desire who was worried. Other cottagers and natives joined in the search, Nathan among them. He’d seen Tom and Susan Peters once or twice during their stay and had a vague recollection of a pretty brunette of medium height and build.

  He left the others to comb the beach and the cove while he concentrated on the swath of land between his cottage and Wild Horse Cove. There was barely an eighth of a mile between them. The verge of his end forested then, giving way to dune and swale. He covered the ground slowly and saw, when he reached the stretch of sand, the crisscrossing footprints of others who had come that way to look.

  Though he knew it was useless, he climbed over the dunes. The cove below was secluded, but anyone there would have been spotted half a dozen times by now by others who were searching.

  There was only one figure there now, a man who paced back and forth. “Nathan?”

  He turned and, seeing Jo mounting the incline between the dunes, held out a hand to help her up.

  “I went by your cottage,” she began. “I see you’ve heard.”

  “That must be the husband down there. I’ve seen him a couple of times before.”

  “Tom Peters. I’ve been all over the island. I was out working this morning, from about seven. One of the Pendleton kids tracked us down an hour or so ago and told us. He said her shoes were down there, by the water.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “People are thinking she might have gone in to swim, and . . . The current’s fairly gentle here, but if she cramped or just swam out too far . . .”

  It was a grim scenario, one that had already occurred to him. “Shouldn’t the tide have brought her in by now if that’s what happened?”

  “It may yet. If the current carried her along for a while, they could find her down the island at the next tide change. Barry Fitzsimmons drowned like that. We were about sixteen. He was a strong swimmer, but he went out by himself one night during a beach party. He’d been drinking. They found him the next morning at low tide, half a mile down.”

  Nathan shifted his gaze to the south, where the waves were less serene. He thought of Kyle, sinking under blue Mediterranean waves. “Where are her clothes, then?”

  “What?”

  “It seems to me if she’d decided to go swimming, she’d have stripped down.”

  “I suppose you’re right. But she might have come down in her bathing suit.”

  “Without a towel?” It didn’t quite fit, he decided. “I wonder if anyone’s asked him if he knows what she was wearing when she left the house. I’m going down to talk to him.”

  “I don’t think we should intrude.”

  “He’s alone and he’s worried.” Nathan kept her hand in his as he started down. “Or he had a fight with his wife, killed her, and disposed of her body.”

  “That’s horrid and ridiculous. He’s a perfectly decent, normal man.”

  “Sometimes perfectly decent, normal men do the unthinkable.”

  Nathan studied Tom Peters as they approached. Late twenties, he decided, about five ten. He looked fit in wrinkled camp shorts and a plain white T-shirt. Probably worked out at the gym three or four mornings a week, Nathan thought. He had a good start on his vacation tan, and though the stubble on his chin gave him an unkempt appearance, his dark blond hair had been cut recently, and cut well.

  When he raised his head and Nathan saw his eyes, he saw only sick fear.

  “Mr. Peters. Tom.”

  “I don’t know where else to look. I don’t know what to do.” Saying the words out loud brought tears swimming into his eyes. He blinked them back, breathing rapidly. “My friends, they went to the other side of the island to look. I had to come back here. To come back here, just in case.”

  “You need to sit down.” Gently Jo took his arm. “Why don’t we go back up to your cottage and you can sit down for a while? I’ll make you some coffee.”

  “No, I can’t leave here. She came down here. She came down last night. We had a fight. We had a fight, oh, God, it’s so stupid. Why did we have a fight?”

  He covered his face with his hands, pressing his fingers against his burning eyes. “She wants to buy a house. We can’t afford it yet. I tried to explain to her, tried to show her how impractical it is, but she wouldn’t listen. When she stormed out I was relieved. I was actually relieved and thought, Well, now, at least I can get some sleep while she goes out and sulks.”

  “Maybe she took a swim to cool off,” Nathan prompted.

  “Susan?” Tom let out a short laugh. “Swim alone, at night? Not hardly. She’d never go in water past her knees anyway. She doesn’t like to swim in the ocean. She always says she hears cello music the minute it hits her knees. You know,” he said with a faint smile, “Jaws.”

  Then he turned back, staring out at the water. “I know people are thinking she might have gone swimming, she might have drowned. It’s just not possible. She loves to sit and loo
k at the ocean. She loves to listen to it, to smell it, but she won’t go in. Where the hell is she? Goddamn it, Susan, this is a hell of a way to scare me into buying a house. I’ve got to go somewhere, look somewhere. I can’t just stand here.”

  He raced back toward the dunes and sent sand avalanching down as he rushed up and over them.

  “Do you think that’s what she’s doing, Nathan? Putting a scare into him because she’s angry?”

  “We can hope so. Come on.” He slipped an arm around her waist. “We’ll take the long way back to the cottage, keep our eyes peeled. Then we’ll take a break from this.”

  “I could use a break. From just about everything.”

  The wind was rising as they headed through the trough between the surfside dune hummocks and the higher, inland dunes where beach elders and bayberry stabilized the sand. Tracks scored the ground, the scratches from scudding ghost crabs, the three-toed prints from parading wild turkeys, the spots where deer had meandered to feed on seeds and berries.

  Human tracks had churned up the sand as well, and the wind would take them all.

  Despite the grazing, thousands of white star rush and fragile marsh pinks spread their color.

  Would she have walked this way, Jo wondered, alone, at night? It had been a clear evening, and a lonely beach drew troubled hearts as well as contented ones. The wind would have been stiff and fresh. And even after the tide receded, leaving the sand wet, the wind would have chased it along in streamers that scratched at the ankles.

  “She could have left her shoes down there,” Jo considered. “If she’d wanted to walk. She was angry, upset, wanted to be alone. It was a warm night. She might have headed down the shoreline, just following the water. That’s more likely than anything else.”

  She turned, looking out over the low hillocks to the sea. The wind lifted sand and salt spray, sending the sea oats waving, sifting a fresh coat over the pennywort and railroad vines that tangled.

  “Maybe they’ve found her by now.” Nathan laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll call and check when we get to the cottage.”

  “Where else would she have gone?” Jo shifted, to stare inland where the dunes crept slowly, relentlessly, toward the trees in smooth curves. “It would have been foolish to wander into the forest. She’d have lost the moonlight—and she’d have wanted her shoes. Would she be angry enough with her husband to stay away, to worry him like this because of a house?”

  “I don’t know. People do unaccountable things to each other when they’re married. Things that seem cruel or indifferent or foolish to outsiders.”

  “Did you?” She turned her head to study his face. “Did you do cruel, indifferent, and foolish things when you were married?”

  “Probably.” He tucked the hair blowing across her face behind her ear. “I’m sure my ex-wife has a litany of them.”

  “Marriage is most often a mistake. You depend on someone, you inevitably lean too hard or take them for granted or find them irritating because they’re always there.”

  “That’s remarkably cynical for someone who’s never been married.”

  “I’ve observed marriage. Observing’s what I do.”

  “Because it’s less risky than participating.”

  She turned away again. “Because it’s what I do. If she’s out somewhere, walking, avoiding coming back, letting her husband suffer like this, how could he ever forgive her?”

  Suddenly she was angry, deeply, bitterly angry. “But he will, won’t he?” she demanded, whirling back to him. “He’ll forgive her, he’ll fall at her feet sobbing in relief, and he’ll buy her the fucking house she wants. All she had to do to get her way was put him through hell for a few hours.”

  Nathan studied her glinting eyes, the high color that temper had slapped into her cheeks. “You may be right.” He spoke mildly, fascinated that she could shift from concern to condemnation in the blink of an eye. “But you’re heaping a lot of blame and calculation on a woman you don’t even know.”

  “I’ve known others like her. My mother, Ginny, people who do exactly what they choose without giving a damn for the consequences or what they do to others. I’m sick to death of people. Their selfish agendas, their unrelenting self-concern.”

  There was such pain in her voice. The echo of it rolled through him, leaving his stomach raw and edgy. He had to tell her, he thought. He couldn’t keep blocking it out, couldn’t continue to shove it aside, no matter how hard he’d worked to convince himself it was best for both of them.

  Maybe Susan Peters’s disappearance was a sign, an omen. If he believed in such things. Whatever he believed, and whatever it was he wanted, eventually he would have to tell her what he knew.

  Was she strong enough to stand up to it? Or would it break her?

  “Jo Ellen, let’s go inside.”

  “Yeah.” She folded her arms as clouds rolled over the sun and the wind kicked into a warning howl. “Why the hell are we out here, worrying ourselves over a stranger who has the bitchiness to put her husband and friends through this?”

  “Because she’s lost, Jo. One way or another.”

  “Who isn’t?” she murmured.

  It would wait another day, he told himself. It would wait until Susan Peters had been found. If he was daring the gods by taking another day, stealing another few hours before he shattered both their lives, then he’d pay the price.

  How much heavier could it be than the one he’d already paid?

  When he was sure she was strong, when he was sure she could bear it, he would tell her the hideous secret that only he knew.

  Annabelle had never left Desire. She had been murdered in the forest just west of Sanctuary on a night in high summer, under a full white moon. David Delaney, the father he had grown up loving, admiring, respecting, had been her killer.

  Jo saw lightning flash and the shimmering curtain of rain form far out to sea. “Storm’s coming,” she said.

  “I know.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE first drops hit the ground with fat plops, and Kirby quickened her pace. The search group she’d joined had parted ways at the fork of the path. She’d chosen the route to Sanctuary, and now she shivered a bit as the rain fell through the overhanging limbs and vines to soak her shirt. By the time she reached the verge it was coming down hard, wind-whipped and surprisingly cold. She saw Brian, hatless, shoulders hunched, trooping up the road to her right.

  She met him on the edge of the east terrace. Saying nothing, he took her hand and pulled her onto the screened porch. For a moment they simply stood dripping as lightning stabbed the sky in pitchforks and thunder boomed in answer.

  “No word?” Kirby shifted her medical bag from hand to hand.

  “Nothing. I just came over from the west side. Giff has a group that took the north.” Weary, Brian rubbed his hands over his face. “This is getting to be a habit.”

  “It’s been more than twelve hours since she was seen.” Kirby looked out into the driving rain. “That’s too long. They’ll have to call off the search until the storm passes. God, Brian, we’re going to find her washed up after this. It’s about the only explanation left. Her poor husband.”

  “There’s nothing to do now but wait it out. You need a dry shirt and some coffee.”

  “Yeah.” She dragged her wet hair away from her face. “I do. I’ll take a look at your hand while I’m here and redress it for you.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I’ll decide that,” she said, following him in, “after I take a look.”

  “Suit yourself. Go on up and get something out of Jo’s closet.”

  The house seemed so quiet, isolated in the violent rain. “Is she here?”

  “As far as I know, she’s out too.” He went to the freezer, took out some black bean soup he’d made weeks before. “She’ll take shelter, like everybody else.”

  When Kirby came back fifteen minutes later, the kitchen smelled of coffee and simmering soup. The warmth eased away the l
ast of the tension in her shoulders. Leaning against the doorway a moment, she indulged herself by watching him work.

  Despite his bandaged hand, he was neatly slicing thick slabs from a loaf of brown bread he’d undoubtedly baked himself. His wet shirt clung to him, displaying an attractive outline of muscle and rib. When he looked over at her, his eyes were a cool, misty blue that made her stomach flutter pleasantly.

  “It smells wonderful.”

  “Figured you hadn’t eaten.”

  “No, I haven’t—not since a stale Danish this morning.” She held out the shirt she’d taken from his closet. “Here, put this on. You