by Blythe Baker
“Did I not mention that?” Mason asked. “I called Shep right after I stole the boat.”
I threw myself at Mason, wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him. It was a quick kiss, but it was enough for warmth to spread in my arms and legs. I pulled back to look at him. His lips were still puckered, his eyes wide with surprise. “Shout if you find something. If not, I’ll see you on the other side.”
He gave me the smallest smile and nodded. “See you on the other side.”
The island was quite small, completely empty of any manmade structures aside from the dock, but it felt enormous as Mason and I moved in opposite directions. I turned around several times as I followed the curve of the beach, watching as he grew smaller and smaller, and then, finally, disappeared around the curve. Palm trees dotted the shore and turned to a thick forest in the center of the island. Small caves worn smooth by the water from high tide popped up occasionally, as well.
I was nearing the western edge of the island, my legs tired and heavy from trudging through the soggy sand, when another scream erupted, this one closer than any of the others. It felt as though I’d been hit with a bolt of electricity. My fatigue disappeared, replaced by pure adrenaline.
“Page!” I screamed, running further down the beach, following the sound of her scream.
“Piper!”
My heart soared. I’d found her, and she was alive. As long as I could hear her screaming, Page was alive.
Another cave was visible just over a hill and to the left. It sat in the lowest part of the island, and the shoreline was creeping up towards it. The trees near the cave showed water lines several feet off the ground, and I knew we only had fifteen minutes, at most, before the tide came in and the whole stretch of beach would be entirely under water.
“Where are you?” I called, still moving towards the cave. I just needed to know Page was okay. I needed to hear her voice again.
No response.
“Page, where are you?” I asked again, my jog quickly transitioning into an all-out sprint, my heart rate ratcheting up until I thought it would burst.
Still no response.
Tears stung the corners of my eyes, but I held them back. I didn’t have time to cry or worry. I had to find my sister.
As I neared the cave, water splashed around my ankles, inching higher with every step. The cave was surprisingly small once I was up close, the ceiling only a foot taller than me, the mouth of it no more than ten-feet wide. It went deeper than the other cave, though, and the back wall was hidden in shadows.
“Page!” My voice echoed off the stone walls.
Suddenly, a flash of movement in the center of the cave floor caught my attention. A pale hand sticking up from the floor waved from side to side. Page. I was so ecstatic to see her that I didn’t catch the words she kept repeating until it was too late.
“Watch out.”
Immediately, something grabbed the hair at the back of my head and pulled me out of the cave and back into the rain. My feet slid out from underneath me and one of my sandals slipped off and was pulled into the cave by the tide.
I opened my mouth to scream for Mason in case he hadn’t heard me yelling for Page, but a warm hand clamped over my mouth and nose, stealing my breath. I struggled, kicking out with my bare foot and flapping my elbows, but I couldn’t land any hits.
“Stop struggling,” a familiar voice hissed in my ear. “You’re only making this harder on yourself.”
Even as he was threatening me, I couldn’t help but imagine Jude doing the voice over for a car commercial on television or hosting his own radio show where he gave love advice to desperate women. His voice was syrupy sweet and smooth, adding a surreal layer to the situation.
In what little light was offered by the dark gray sky, I could see Page moving weakly in the back of the cave, flinching away from the approaching water as the tide rose. I wanted to shout at her to move, to run while Jude was distracted, but I could barely breathe around Jude’s hand. As he dragged me further from the cave, a break in the clouds allowed a ray of sunshine to drop onto the beach, and I saw why Page wasn’t running. She’d been tied down.
Thick ropes held her arms to her sides and bound her ankles together. She wriggled against her bindings, but to no avail.
Jude dropped me hard in the sand, my back landing on a protruding rock. I scrambled quickly to stand up, but his foot landed on my chest and pinned me to the ground.
A mask of anger wrinkled his brow and turned his kind smile into a grimace. “You might as well lay back and enjoy the show,” he said.
I grabbed at his foot, trying my best to lift it from my sternum if only so I could fill my lungs with fresh air.
“I’d bet we have ten minutes before the tide is full in. What do you think?” he asked, grinding his foot harder into my chest. “Though, your sister will be swallowing water long before then. I’d give her six minutes. Care to make a friendly wager?”
CHAPTER 20
Jude was going to let Page drown.
A pit yawned open in my stomach, consuming me until I could no longer feel my own body lying in the sand. I couldn’t feel the soft rain peppering my cheeks or the rock lodged beside my spine. All I could feel was an achy emptiness where my stomach should be.
“You’re sick,” I said, scratching at the annoyingly thick fabric of Jude’s jeans, using what remained of my strength to try and pry his foot off of me.
He laughed and pushed down harder. Wet sand crept up over my arms and legs, threatening to swallow me whole. It felt as though I’d been encased in cement.
“Under different circumstances, me and your sister would have really hit it off,” he said, smiling as he looked up towards the quickly disappearing clouds, blue sky peeking through the gray. “And I’m sure the two of us would have been thick as thieves. I would have made a nice addition to the family.”
Was this guy insane? He had known Page for a few days, and he was talking about being part of the family while waiting for Page to die?
“We make it a rule not to marry murderers,” I spat.
“A murderer,” Jude said, testing the word out on his tongue. “I suppose I am a murderer now. I never thought that would happen. I only came here to sell a boat.”
“I hate to break it to you,” I said, “but you can’t sell a boat to a dead man.”
He laughed. “You also can’t sell a boat to a man who has no money.”
I wanted to ask what he meant, but at that moment he shifted his weight onto me, practically crushing my rib cage, and I was too busy gasping for air to probe deeper into his motive. Fortunately, Jude decided to continue unprompted.
“As I’m sure you’ve already put together, the dead guy was supposed to be my buyer, but he showed up to the exchange with no money. And things became a little heated. I may or may not have shoved him, and he may or may not have busted his skull open on a rock.”
Jude admitted to murder as casually as if he was admitting to eating the last slice of cheesecake.
“Why not just find a new buyer?” I wheezed.
Jude looked down at me, a question written in the lines of his forehead, as if he couldn’t figure out why I was so short of breath, but he didn’t bother removing his foot from my midsection. “I would have, but there was no more time. Debt collectors wait for no one, and I quite like my legs unbroken, thank you very much. So, once I realized he was dead, I grabbed his wallet. Luckily, he had enough cash in there to buy me a few more days, but not enough to pay for my room at the bed and breakfast. Sorry about that,” he said, wincing.
“All is forgiven,” I said, launching into another attack on his leg, trying to garner enough momentum to lift myself out of the sand.
“I was planning to sell my boat and quietly slip away, but then someone found the body and I had to stay and divert attention from myself,” he said. “Believe it or not, I really did like Page, so I hated doing it to her, but she was the easiest choice. I made some anonymous tips to the
police station, invited her onto my boat so I could claim she killed Theodore and used my boat without my knowledge—though your island’s laughable police force never even got that far—and planted the wallet in her room. It was almost too easy. But then—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know the spiel,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for you meddling kids.”
Jude laughed. “See? This is what I mean. You and I would have become great friends, I’m sure. Ah well,” he said wistfully.
I rolled my head to the side and looked back over towards the cave. I could still see Page, though the tide had risen high enough that she was now straining to keep her head out of the water.
Jude followed my gaze. “It won’t be long now. What did I say it would be? Six minutes?” he looked down at his watch. “Ahh, it’s only been three minutes. I may have overshot by a minute or two. That’s exactly what got me into this problem in the first place,” he said, bending forward to fold his arms over his knee, putting even more weight onto my body. “I should really give up gambling.”
Gambling?
Theodore was dead because of Jude’s gambling debts? Page and I were minutes away from death because Jude couldn’t quit gambling while he was ahead? If I hadn’t been pinned to the ground, I would have hurled myself at Jude. Perhaps even smashed a rock over his head. Seen how he liked it.
As it was, I couldn’t move so I rolled my head in the opposite direction, trying to get my anger under control so I could think of a plan. I needed a clear head. That was when I saw a flutter of movement in the trees along the beach.
Mason. He was crouched low, moving down the beach towards us. He must have heard me calling for Page before Jude attacked me. I felt like I could finally breathe. Despite Jude’s crushing weight on my chest and the wet sand pressing in on me, I felt light as a feather. We were going to be okay. We were all going to get out of this alive. Mason caught my eye and motioned for me to keep Jude talking.
“Why haven’t you thrown me in the cave with Page?” I asked. “Why not kill us both at the same time?”
“I don’t have enough rope,” he shrugged. “Besides, you’d almost certainly find your way out of the ties and save yourself and your sister. It’s better if I kill you separately.”
“How are you going to kill me?” I asked.
Jude smiled. “I’m so glad you asked. Maybe I can get your help with this because I can’t make up my mind.”
I chanced a look over at Mason. He was directly behind Jude now, creeping out of the dense trees as quietly as he could, a large rock held in his hands.
“I was thinking I could untie Page once she succumbs to the water, and use the same rope to string you from the tree. Something about that seems poetic, don’t you think? However, I could also make it easy on myself and just do away with you the same way I did Theodore. Find a large rock and just—”
Jude brought his arms over his head at the same time Mason lifted the rock above his head. As Jude’s arms swung downward, Mason smashed the rock into the back of Jude’s head.
It was almost comical, the look of confusion that flashed across Jude’s face in the moment before he fell forward. He stumbled off of me, and I took a deep breath, finally filling my lungs. Mason jumped over me, bringing the rock down on Jude again as he attempted to crawl away.
I heard the crunch of bone, but I didn’t stay to see the outcome. I scrambled to my feet and ran towards the cave.
Page’s face was half-submerged in the water, only part of her mouth and nose sticking out. Her eyes were wide and panicked.
I splashed to my knees in front of Page and lifted her out of the water, pulling her into my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and stroked her wet hair. The moment we touched her face crumbled into a sob, her shoulders shaking with unspent emotion.
“You’re okay,” I whispered, both to her and to myself. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would break my ribs. “You’re going to be okay.”
EPILOGUE
“Can you tell your stalker to take a hike? He’s scaring away the guests.” Page ruffled Blaire’s hair as she dropped a plate of pancakes in front of her.
Blaire drowned the plate in syrup and shrugged. “I can’t help it that he’s obsessed with me. Once you go Blaire, you don’t go back.”
She waggled her eyebrows at me, sticking her tongue out between her teeth, and I pretended to gag myself with my finger.
“You need to either forgive him or let that boy go before he becomes a permanent lawn ornament,” I said. “The lawn guy actually asked me yesterday whether he should ask Matthew to move or mow around him. It’s becoming a problem.”
Blaire smiled, clearly enjoying Matthew’s groveling. “There’s no rush. I don’t want to take him back if he isn’t truly sorry, and I won’t know if he’s truly sorry until he has spent at least two consecutive months standing outside my bedroom window.”
Then, her eyes lit up. “Hey! That’s what the psychic must have meant! She told me not to rush!”
“Don’t tell me we’re still talking about that psychic,” I said. “She was such a fraud!”
“Cibil is not a fraud!” Blaire shouted, her mouth held open as if I’d insulted her to her very core. “She got both of our predictions right.”
I groaned.
“Groan all you want, Aunt Piper, but she pegged you, too. She said there was violence in your future.”
Page perked up. “What’s this about violence and psychics?”
“Nothing,” I said, glaring at Blaire.
Page had been a touch on the sensitive side since her encounter with Jude. It didn’t matter that Mason had killed Jude on the scene, and Page had been fully exonerated of Theodore’s murder. Page still had nightmares about Jude most nights, and she had firmly shut down the idea of going on any more dates for the foreseeable future. The last thing we needed to do was bring him up at the breakfast table.
“Yeah, nothing,” Blaire said, focusing very intently on her pancakes. Though I saw her throw me one last knowing look, trying to convince me of Cibil’s validity, before she dropped the subject for good.
Even though Cibil’s prediction had technically been right, I didn’t believe she could see into the future. In reality, she had probably seen my face in some of the local papers in connection with the murderous party at Robert Baines’ house and given me a vaguely violent prediction. However, if somehow she was actually a legitimate psychic, I had to wonder whether the encounter with Jude had been the extent of it. Would my life on Sunrise Island finally ease into the life of sunshine and beaches I’d imagined, or was more death and violence in my future? If I wanted to continue on with my life, I had to believe the worst was over. I had to believe life would normalize.
“No way!” Page shouted, her fork clattering to the table next to her.
Blaire and I both jumped at the sudden commotion, looking around for whatever had caused her outburst.
“What?” I asked, my heart racing.
“Do you hear that?” Page asked, her head cocked to the side.
Blaire and I both got quiet, listening. Finally, I heard it. The faint sound of a love song floating through the house.
“I think Matthew is playing music on the front lawn,” Page said, clapping her hands in delight. “He pulled out a boom box for Blaire!”
Blaire groaned. “Okay, that is too much even for me. I’ve got to tell him to get lost.”
Page and I couldn’t hear her, though, because we were too busy belting out the second verse to “Forever Love.”
Find out what mysteries lie ahead for Piper in Book 4, A Secret By The Sea.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Blythe Baker is a thirty-something bottle redhead from the South Central part of the country. When she’s not slinging words and creating new worlds and characters, she’s acting as chauffeur to her children and head groomer to her household of beloved pets.
Blythe enjoys long walks with her dog on sweaty days, grubbing in her flower garden, cooki
ng, and ruthlessly de-cluttering her overcrowded home. She also likes binge-watching mystery shows on TV and burying herself in books about murder.
To learn more about Blythe, visit her website and sign up for her newsletter at www.blythebaker.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Blurb
Newsletter Signup
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
About the Author
