Red Tide (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Tymber Dalton

  What would she have seen?

  The picture hung right at eye level. He carefully recalled her reaction when he entered the office earlier, and realized that once he’d been there, her attention had totally and completely shifted and refocused on the purpose of her visit. Immediately, not as if she’d been thinking about something else.

  Just in case, he took the picture down and replaced it with a different one. After a little subtle rearranging, the wall looked normal. He removed the picture from the frame and ran it through his shredder, putting the frame in his briefcase to take home.

  He sat behind his desk and entered his password into his computer, then logged into the mainframe to check on a shipment due to arrive in Hernando Beach in three days. Right on schedule. He signed off and leaned back in his chair and thought about his options. He decided to leave it alone and called Jenna to let her know what time he’d be over that night.

  Ten minutes later, he told Donna where he’d be and left the office for home.

  * * * *

  Jenna waited thirty minutes before calling John’s office. She wanted to talk to Donna, not him. The secretary sounded pleasant, and after a few minutes, Jenna finally told her what was on her mind.

  “Look, I know you’ve been with John for a few years. I know this is probably wrong of me to ask, but can you tell me something about him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean”—she chose her words carefully—“I feel like he’s hiding something from me. He told me he’s still married, but they’re separated. Is he really separated?”

  “Yes, Mitch left him several years ago. She even went back to using her maiden name. In fact, she brought divorce papers in here today for him to sign. John’s not exactly what I would call perfect.”

  Jenna’s heart sank. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I know in the past he’s had several girlfriends. Although I’m not sure, I think Mitch walked in on him when he was with one.”

  “I know. He told me that. Is he seeing anyone else now?”

  “Oh, I don’t know that. I haven’t had anyone else call here but you for a few weeks now. Usually, if he was, I’d get other calls. I know that’s no guarantee.”

  Donna paused before she continued. “Look, I’m going to tell you stuff I probably shouldn’t, but John’s had a past of being less than faithful. That doesn’t mean that he’s a bad person or using you, but he just doesn’t seem to be able to settle down. My advice to you would be to not risk your heart. Have fun, but don’t let him hurt you. The only reason I tell you this is because I know he hurt Mitch a lot, and I really liked her, and I don’t want to see him do that to anyone else.”

  The conversation struck Jenna as unreal. This kind of “snooping” was totally against everything Jenna believed in. Why not just confront John outright about this?

  For some reason, that thought terrified her on a deeper, visceral level. “Thank you, Donna. I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome. I know I’m speaking out of turn by telling you all this, but this is between you and me, understand? I won’t tell him you called, either. Unless you have a message for him, that is.”

  “No, no message. I really do appreciate it.”

  “No problem.”

  Jenna hung up and wondered what she should do. She wanted a committed, loving relationship. The longer she knew John Tyne, the less likely this result looked. The problem was, she didn’t want to just end the relationship and risk losing him if he was being sincere with her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The rain started around Port Richey. By the time she reached Hudson, Mitch had to slow the Bronco down to thirty-five miles an hour and had the windshield wipers on high. In Aripeka, leaves, small branches, and dead palm fronds littered the wet roadway. The tide had come in higher than normal thanks to the extra push from the westerly winds, and most of the ditches were half full of standing water backed up from the canals.

  When she reached the marina, there weren’t many cars in the lot. She parked close to the shop and made a mad dash for the cover of the building.

  Pete jumped up to greet her when she burst in, his barking bringing Ed out of the back room where he was undoubtedly repairing regulators. She met his steady, inquisitive blue gaze with a halfhearted smile.

  “Well?” he asked.

  She sighed. “It’s almost over. Five years, and it’s almost over.”

  “Five years, my ass. It ended the day you found out what the son of a bitch did behind your back.”

  She dropped her purse onto her desk and collapsed in her chair behind the counter. Ed was right—almost. The marriage was doomed to begin with, considering what she now knew about John. In the back of her mind a thought struggled to surface. She toyed with it, wondering how valid it really was.

  Maybe she knew from the beginning it wouldn’t last.

  Maybe she had actually hoped it wouldn’t last. Why?

  Because of Ed.

  She pushed that thought out of her mind, not wanting to face contemplating its validity.

  Another rain band moved through. The heavy downpour against the store’s sheet-metal roof drowned out further conversation for a few minutes. The potholes in the shell parking lot were overflowing, but to the west, beyond the rear of the storm, she saw patches of blue sky already emerging, betraying the false fury of the downpour. It would be over in less than an hour, plenty of time for her to stop by a U-Haul store to buy some boxes before she went to Tampa.

  She worked at the computer for a while, entering supplier invoices and catching up on paperwork. She hated doing it, but forcing herself to finish it was the only way she could win her lifelong battle against chronic disorganization. It seemed that no matter how hard she tried she was always either forgetting or looking for things such as her keys, her glasses, her cell phone, or her purse.

  Ed called to her from the back room. She went, Pete at her heels. “What’s up?”

  He held out the first stage of a regulator to her. “I can’t get it apart. Not enough hands.” She held it steady on the bench for him as he took an adjustable wrench and finally got it apart. His fingers brushed against hers in the process. She fought the warm blush that expanded to her face. As if reading her thoughts, and perhaps with thoughts of his own, he looked at her, meeting her gaze.

  “Whatcha’ thinking?” he asked.

  I don’t know what I’m thinking, is what she wanted to say. Instead, “About last night.”

  A nervous smile spread across his face. “I hope I wasn’t out of line.”

  “No, no,” she quickly assured him. “Not at all. It just surprised me.”

  Ed returned the wrench to its hook on the pegboard over the bench. “In a good or bad way?”

  She smiled. “Good.”

  He was about to say something else when Dan walked in. “If you don’t need me for anything else today, I’m going to head on out.”

  Mitch nodded. “That’s fine. What time is it?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Almost four.”

  “Oh, heck. I didn’t realize what time it was. I’ve got to go.” It took her a minute to dig her keys out of her purse. She was happy to see that the rain had finally stopped. Ed waited by the front door of the shop for her.

  “What time do you think you’ll be back?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Hopefully by nine.”

  “When you get done, give me a call. I’ll take you out to dinner. My treat.”

  She wanted to kiss him, not just for the offer, but for being him. She didn’t have to, however, as he leaned forward and planted a gentle peck on her lips. “Drive careful, hon.”

  Mitch hugged him, enjoying the feel of his body against hers. “I will,” she whispered, kissing him on the side of the neck before walking out the door. When Pete tried to follow her, Ed called the dog back to him.

  The traffic was light. Her stop to buy boxes and tape only took ten minutes. With most of the t
raffic heading in the opposite direction, she made good time into Tampa. It wasn’t long before she made the turnoff into Carrollwood and a strange sense of displacement settled over her. When the house came into view, she groaned at the sight of John’s Porsche sitting in the drive. Even though she knew he’d be there, she’d still hoped he wouldn’t.

  She backed into the drive. The front door opened as she unloaded her boxes and packing supplies from the rear of the Bronco.

  “Need any help?” he offered.

  She was already halfway to the door with her first full armload when he spoke. “No, that’s okay. I’ve got it.”

  An acute disorientation overcame her when she walked into the doorway. Essentially, the house looked unchanged, but what was that adage about the less things change? John was the essential neat-freak, someone Felix Unger would be proud to room with. She immediately noticed the carpet—not eggshell, not cream, but white—was still white. He had, however, replaced the original Berber she had chosen with a thick, soft pile, one that she loathed due to her neatness-challenged condition.

  Mitch remembered her compromise to John when they were first decorating the house, how she agreed to white, but stood firm about no thick pile.

  From what she saw, there wasn’t a speck of dust on anything. Even the fake ferns on the shelf over the kitchen doorway looked antiseptically clean. There were a few new pictures hanging on the walls, a few unfamiliar knickknacks, but the rest of the decor looked relatively unchanged.

  Fresh vacuum marks bore silent testimony to his daily cleaning habit, regardless of whether or not the carpet needed the attention. Footprints in the plush pile led from his den to the front door. She knew his Hoover upright would get a workout as soon as she left.

  “I’ll be in the den if you need me.” She watched him saunter back to his room, grateful he had taken his leave of her.

  She set up the living room as her headquarters. She assembled several boxes and carried them to the back bedroom. It wouldn’t take long for her to finish. She’d moved most of her things to the Aripeka house after her father died, leaving only articles she didn’t regularly need.

  Memories, good and bad, flooded her mind while the full boxes piled up in the foyer. It was hard to remember the good times with John, but there had been a few, in the beginning. It irked her that a small part of her missed those good times with him, the rare times when he would drop the facade and a charming, kind man would appear.

  The very rare times.

  She finished the bedrooms and pulled down the attic access stairs. The air still felt explosively hot compared to the cool house, but it only took her a few minutes to move the boxes she’d stored up there. Then the kitchen became the next focus of her energies. She quickly packed pots and pans, cookbooks, and assorted small kitchen appliances. It took her five trips through the dining room to the foyer to move all the boxes. It was on the last return trip to the kitchen that her trouble started.

  John had added several pictures to the south wall. Partly from curiosity, and partly to cause John more work, she walked around the dining room table and over to them. Tastefully framed, professionally matted, they could have been hanging on the wall of a photography studio for all the warmth and personality they lacked. Then one in particular caught her eye, raising gooseflesh down her arms.

  It was a picture taken the same time as the one she’d noticed in John’s office. John proudly showed off a bull dolphin and stood next to a boat crewman. Only there was an important difference. This time, the angle of the picture was directly in-line with the fishing yacht’s stern and the name was legible.

  Emmerand.

  Mitch sucked in her breath, now recognizing the crewman standing next to John. It was Barres.

  “How you doing out there? Anything I can do?”

  John’s voice came from the den, but she jumped, her blood running like ice water in her veins.

  Coincidence. That’s all it is, she thought. Just some freaky coinkydink that doesn’t mean a thing.

  Caymans. Bahamas.

  Large amounts of cash on hand.

  She tried to speak, failed, swallowed, and tried again, praying her voice didn’t sound as shaky as it felt. “No, I’m okay,” she called back. “I’m almost ready to start loading the Bronco.”

  “All right.”

  Her eyes never left the photograph. It had to be a coincidence.

  Rick Singer’s words came back to her.

  It was bound for somewhere in Pasco or Hernando.

  John did have working knowledge of the area. He had made a friend or two in Aripeka while their courtship was still active.

  Mitch shook her head and tried to pick her stomach up off the floor. Forcing herself to take several calm, deep breaths, she made herself walk normally, as if she didn’t have adrenaline racing through her bloodstream like a test session of a supercollider.

  The boxes all but filled the back of the Bronco, even with the seat down. She breathed a sigh of relief when she was down to her last chore, hitching the trailer carrying the two WaveRunners to the back of the vehicle.

  She forced herself to stick her head through the door of John’s den. “I’ll be getting out of your way now. I’ve got to hook up the trailer and lights and I’ll be ready to go.”

  The computer was still set up where she had installed it. It was now flanked by a sophisticated copier-scanner-fax machine. John was bent over the PC’s keyboard like a miser over a pile of gold.

  A laugh fought its way to the surface through her anxiety. She stifled it, amazed at the change he’d undergone from total computer illiterate to computer geek.

  He looked up. “Oh, okay. I’ll be right there.”

  The picture practically called out to her when she walked through the dining room to the kitchen. Mitch forced herself not to look at it when she passed by, and she somehow succeeded.

  She stepped out into the garage. Even that was spotlessly maintained and totally devoid of any type of warmth and personality. A white wire rack shelf held car-cleaning supplies, all neatly arranged. The water heater, tucked in the nook behind the kitchen door, looked spotless, totally dust-free. The lawn mower was parked in the far corner, shrouded by a muslin drop cloth. Mitch had no doubts if she looked underneath she would find it clean and ready to mow, without a single stray blade of grass caught underneath its deck.

  A large drop cloth covered the trailer, and she pulled it off, rolling it up fairly haphazardly and dropping it next to the mower. She not only didn’t want to spend the time to fold it, she knew John would be refolding it later. More work for him. The drop cloth was overkill however, because the multicolored canvas covers were firmly lashed to the water bikes.

  Realizing John was close on her heels, she shifted her mind into overdrive, wanting to leave as soon as possible before he suspected what she’d seen. She punched the garage door button, and it smoothly slid up on its track. Within five minutes, the trailer was hitched and she was ready to go.

  John emerged from the house just in time to walk her to the driver’s door and hold it open for her. She felt his eyes boring into hers. She avoided his gaze by working the house keys off her key ring and handing them to him. He took them, his eyes never leaving her.

  “I’ll get those papers back to you in the next few days, Mitch.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  He paused, obviously wanting to add something else. She felt she would scream if she had to spend another minute with him.

  “Any more news on that wreck?”

  Her heart froze, then broke into a thunderous gallop she felt certain he heard.

  “Um, no. Haven’t heard anything else.”

  He nodded, finally closing the door and stepping away from the Bronco. “Good-bye, Mitch.”

  “Bye, John.” The adrenaline shakes hit her about a mile later. She pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot until she recovered. Her fingers shook when she dialed Ed’s number on the cell phone.

  “Hello?
”

  “It’s me.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “Weird.” She happened to glance up and spied the garage door opener still clipped to the sun visor. “Shit.”

  “What? Mitch, are you okay?”

  “Huh? Oh, I’m fine. I just realized I forgot to give him back the garage door opener.” She unclipped it from the visor and stuck it in her purse so she wouldn’t forget to give it to John when she got the papers from him.

  “You don’t sound fine.”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She didn’t feel fine. “It’s…I don’t know. I’ll explain it when I get there. Over dinner.”

  He laughed. “It’s getting close to seven now. Hurry your lovely self home and get cleaned up so I can take you out.”

  “Meet me at the house?”

  “Sure. See you shortly.”

  She ended the call and sat in the parking lot for another minute as the last of the tremors subsided. It had to be just a coincidence, didn’t it? It had to be. By the time she pulled out of the parking lot, she convinced herself that when she told the story to Ed, he would laugh and say she’d been reading too many James Lee Burke novels.

  * * * *

  John watched her taillights disappear down the street. Something was wrong. She had definitely seen something that set her off, the question was, what?

  Something had changed her, something upsetting to her. He could almost hear her jangled nerves screaming in the quiet of the house right before she left.

  The smell of fear. The smell of prey.

  John drove the Porsche inside the garage and closed the door behind him. Italian ceramic tile lined the kitchen floor, with the carpeting starting at the doorway. He saw her footprints in the plush, white pile, and at first, he didn’t see what he was looking for.

  He walked out to the foyer, turning on all the lights along the way. He turned to face the kitchen and then he saw them. Footprints going into the dining room, around the far side of the table, and stopping directly in front of the picture of the Emmerand and Barres.