Dangerous Waters (Lantern Beach Book 4)

by Christy Barritt

He’d push aside his apprehension about the future. He’d worry about that when the day came. For now, he’d stay focused on keeping the woman he loved safe.

  Chapter Ten

  Cassidy stared at her phone. She’d been trying to find any new information on Orion with no success. Nothing online indicated where he was or what he was doing now.

  She’d figured that much, but it had been worth a try. And at least she’d been doing something, which beat sitting around wasting time. This day was almost over, the sun was beginning to set, and she was no closer to finding answers than she had been earlier.

  No, she just had more questions.

  She leaned back in the rickety kitchen chair and froze as a noise caught her ear.

  What was that sound? A howl echoed in the background, the sound wispy and drawn out.

  She reached for her gun, her heart pounding in her ears.

  Another howl whispered throughout the building.

  The wind, she realized. It was just the wind slicing through the open window and circling up the lighthouse.

  She scolded herself for being on edge. But who wouldn’t be in this situation?

  The sound was so eerie—almost otherworldly. Yet she didn’t believe in ghosts.

  Lantern Beach might start making her a believer.

  For that matter, Elsa and this lighthouse should get along just fine.

  Just as the thought hit her, something banged behind her.

  Cassidy jumped, gripping her gun and ready to fight.

  She twirled around and saw . . . Ty standing there.

  Of course.

  She bit back a laugh and lowered her gun. “Sorry.”

  “Didn’t mean to scare you.” Ty stepped closer and put his hands on his hips as he observed her. “The wind caught the door and slammed it shut.”

  Cassidy turned to face him and saw the sheen of sweat across his face. The smudge of grease on his hand. The heavy breathing of someone who’d been doing a laborious job.

  He looked perfect. Just perfect.

  She cleared her throat. “I don’t usually say stuff like this, but this place is kind of freaking me out.”

  He chuckled and washed his hands in the kitchen sink. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the wind keeps whipping through here making this howling sound. I’m not superstitious. I’m really not. But this place feels a little eerie.”

  “Yeah, well there’s a lot of history here. But this place has saved many lives.”

  “I know it has.”

  “My mom always says that God’s Word is our lighthouse as we try to navigate the seas of life.”

  Cassidy smiled at the imagery. “I love your mom. She’s very wise. And I agree with her assessment—more and more every day.”

  “That makes me happy.” He hooked his arm around her neck and pulled her into a hug. “Listen, Mac said we could stay with him tonight. And since he has AC and a working bathroom, I figured that was a good idea.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Twenty minutes later, they pulled up to Mac’s house, a little bungalow located four houses from the ocean. They’d picked up Kujo on the way—the dog was always welcome at Mac’s.

  Cassidy had decided before she arrived to tell Mac the truth—all of it. If he was going to be involved, then he deserved to know the details of what he was getting into. More than that, she knew she could trust him.

  Mac paused and stared at Cassidy when she stepped inside. The worry and concern in his expression made it clear he’d come to think of her like a daughter.

  He stepped closer and squeezed her arm. “I’m glad you’re here, Cassidy.”

  “Thanks for letting us come.” Funny how these people she’d only known for a couple months seemed to care about her more than people she’d known her entire life.

  She glanced around his house, partially to discern if they’d interrupted anything. She nodded toward a row of small personal safes on his table. “You’ve been keeping yourself busy.”

  The man loved to polish up his police skills, sometimes going to the extreme. “What can I say? You never know when it might come in handy to crack a safe. Have a seat. Would you like a drink?”

  “Some water would be great.”

  A few minutes later, they had their drinks and sat on the couch near each other. Cassidy told Mac everything she’d told Ty earlier, starting with her being a detective, moving to her undercover assignment, and concluding with how she’d ended up here.

  Mac’s eyes narrowed when she finished. “I knew there was more to your story and have been looking forward to the day you felt comfortable enough to share. God bless you, Cassidy, for everything you’ve done.”

  “Thank you.” She nearly choked on her words. No, not her words. At Mac’s words and the sincerity behind them. Her job had often been thankless. Her parents certainly hadn’t admired her choices. She hadn’t even realized how much she craved a pat on the back. But she had.

  “So now we need to figure out a way to keep you alive,” he continued. “I can do that. First of all, are you sure this is the guy?”

  Cassidy shook her head, replaying everything in her mind. “No, I’m not certain. I mean, he looked like Orion, but he wasn’t dressed like him. Didn’t walk like him. From what Lisa said, he didn’t talk like Orion either.”

  “So that’s the first thing we need to figure out,” Mac said. “Is this really your guy?”

  “I agree,” Ty added. “If it’s not Orion, then we resume life as normal. If it is Orion, then we need to keep in mind that he may not know for certain that you’re here or where you live. He may have come here looking on a hunch.”

  “If it is him, then what?” Cassidy asked. “We ask him to leave?”

  “We make him leave,” Mac said. “I’m sure the police can find a reason to arrest him and put him away for a while.”

  “Can they find something provable?” Cassidy said, feeling like the solution was too simple. “That’s the question. These guys are good at covering their tracks. As you both know, you can’t be arrested for being in a gang. He’s had his hand in drug deals, thefts, and even murder. But without evidence, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Once a criminal, always a criminal,” Mac said. “Not in every case, but it’s true for someone like Orion. We’ll keep our eyes on him. He’ll mess up. Believe me.”

  Cassidy nodded. “I get that.”

  Mac looked around on his phone and then held it up. “This is what you really look like?”

  Cassidy looked at the picture. She had dark hair. Straight. Pulled back in a bun. Pale skin and a professional-looking outfit.

  It was quite the contrast to her current wavy blonde hair, sun-kissed complexion, and tank top.

  “That’s me,” she said.

  She almost didn’t recognize whom she used to be. Even the look in her eyes in that photo . . . it was emptier somehow.

  “You look different. That’s good. I’d hardly recognize you.”

  “That’s what I was aiming for.”

  “That should buy you some time,” Mac said.

  Ty’s phone buzzed, and he glanced at the screen. “It’s Wes. I sent him a picture of Orion a few minutes ago—he asked me to. He says he worked on a hot tub for a rental house. The guy staying there looked like Orion.”

  Cassidy’s heart raced. “Where? Where is this house?”

  Ty typed back and waited. A few seconds later, he had his answer.

  “We need to go there.” Cassidy rushed to her feet. “Now.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “We can’t do anything rash,” Ty said, standing and moving toward the door, almost like he was preparing to stop her from doing anything foolish.

  “We won’t—we’ll observe,” Cassidy said. “Watch. Verify.”

  Ty’s phone buzzed again—this time over and over. Someone was calling.

  He frowned when he saw the screen this time. “I forgot they were calling about the grant today.”

  C
assidy had forgotten too, but she knew how important this was. “You’re going to have to hop online and do some paperwork during the call.”

  His jaw flexed. “I need to go with you.”

  “I’ll go,” Mac said. “I won’t let her get in trouble. You can use my computer. I left it online.”

  Ty still hesitated. His phone continuing to ring. He was going to miss the call soon.

  “You should answer,” Cassidy told him. “This is important, Ty, and I promise I’ll be careful.”

  Finally, he nodded. “Fine. But call me at the first sign of trouble.”

  Before he could change his mind and argue more, Cassidy started toward the door.

  Maybe she’d figure out some answers. She could only hope.

  She climbed in Mac’s truck. Twilight had fallen, and the sky was the easy gray that came before the darkness of deep night surrounded them fully. Crickets chirped and frogs sang their strange songs from a pond not far away.

  “Seattle detective, huh?” Mac said, stealing at glance at Cassidy from the corner of his eye as he headed down the road.

  “I’m sorry I kept it from you.”

  “Oh, I get it. With investigation sometimes comes deceit. This couldn’t have been easy on you.”

  She glanced at her hands, at the once pale skin now tinged an amazing shade of sun-kissed tan. She wished it was easier to put into words everything she was feeling. Her life had been turned upside down over these past few months, and she was only beginning to realize the emotional impact of that.

  “It hasn’t been,” she said. “I don’t like lying to the people I care about.”

  “Ty seems understanding.”

  “He’s been amazing.” She paused, her thoughts unsettled. “Were you ever married, Mac?”

  He nodded. “Twelve years. Her name was Carol. Love of my life.”

  “Do you mind if I ask what happened?” The street blurred past around them, the darkness bringing a certain stillness with it.

  His face tightened, and he frowned. “I lost her.”

  Cassidy instantly knew she’d crossed a line. “I’m sorry, Mac. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  Instead of responding, he pointed to a house in the distance. “There it is.”

  He pulled to the side of the road. The cottage was located right off the highway. If they pulled in front of the house, they’d be too suspicious. But vacationers often parked on the side of the highway and walked to the beach.

  Thankfully, the darkness concealed them.

  Cassidy stared at the house. It was two stories. Probably twenty years old, if she had to guess, based on the style and upkeep. The outside appeared clean and neat.

  A white, mid-sized SUV sat in the driveway. It looked classy and . . . normal.

  Another moment of unease churned in her gut. The pieces just weren’t fitting together. She was more desperate than ever to learn the truth.

  “Now we just watch,” Mac said. “If this is your guy, we don’t want to show our hand.”

  “I agree.” She crossed her arms. “Did you bring the coffee and donuts?”

  Mac chuckled. “I like the way you think, Cassidy. But I didn’t.”

  “Oh, man. Stakeouts are the worst.” It felt good to say it, to speak truth and drop the pretenses.

  “Aren’t they, though? They always look so interesting on TV. In reality, it’s hours and hours of doing almost nothing except attempting to stay awake.”

  “Amen.”

  “It is where I taught myself to recite the alphabet forward, backward, and skipping every other letter.”

  “I tried to memorize pi,” she admitted.

  “I think mine is better for entertaining folks.”

  “Good thing I never strove to be an entertainer.” She smiled.

  The lighthearted moment faded.

  “Cassidy, it’s good having someone like you around here,” Mac said, sticking one of his signature toothpicks in his mouth. He kept extras in his shirt pocket, apparently. “Lantern Beach could use your expertise.”

  “They have you to guide them when Bozoman messes up.” She glanced at him.

  “Some new blood would be nice, though.” There wasn’t even a hint of teasing in his voice.

  “I don’t know, Mac. I always assumed I’d resume life in Seattle.”

  “It’s never too late for your life to take a different direction. In fact, that’s exactly what we need sometimes. We need to recalculate and reevaluate. We’ve only got one chance to make this right.”

  “You’re right.” What did that look like for Cassidy? She wasn’t sure any more.

  “Besides, I don’t think Ty is prepared for you to leave. You’ve been good for him.”

  “I have a lot to think about, that’s for sure.” She leaned back and stared at the house. “I need to figure the Orion situation out before I worry about that.”

  “He’s a pretty bad guy, huh?”

  “Mac, I’d never seen such evil until I went undercover with DH-7. They have no regard for human life. Just thinking about them, about my time undercover . . . it chills me to the bone. And that means a lot coming from an urban detective.”

  “Here’s a little known fact. I worked for eight years as a cop in Atlanta.”

  “Did you? I had no clue.” Mac didn’t talk about his past much—mostly in jest. But she’d been curious about his history.

  “I did. I thought I would get bored around here in such a small town. But it helped restore my faith in humanity. There are good people. And troublemakers. Of course. But I don’t need excitement surrounding me to make life interesting. We’re in charge of choosing what’s interesting. Boring people think it’s an external thing, and they try to hide just how boring they are by doing interesting things.”

  She smiled at his apt description. “I like the way you think.”

  Silence ticked between them a minute.

  “I met my Carol in Atlanta.”

  Cassidy sucked in a quick breath, grateful that Mac trusted her enough to share. “Did you?”

  “She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on.” His gaze took on a glow Cassidy hadn’t seen before.

  “I bet she was special if she fell in love with you and vice versa.”

  “Hey—what’s that mean?”

  “It was a compliment. No offense.”

  “No offense taken. Just giving you a hard time.” He chuckled again but the sound faded, and he drew in a deep breath. “Marrying her was one of the happiest days of my life.”

  Cassidy’s heart warmed. She hoped that whomever she married some day would say the same about her. And she was increasingly thankful she hadn’t married Ryan and perpetuated a cycle of workaholism combined with lackluster passion in her life.

  Ty’s image came to mind instead. Could he be the one? She supposed it was too early to tell.

  “I wish I could have met Carol,” Cassidy said finally.

  “It was actually her idea to come here, you know,” Mac said. “I was involved in a case. The bad guy grabbed me, put the gun to my head, and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of the situation alive.”

  “Sounds scary.”

  “It was. Carol didn’t like the thought of losing me and becoming a widow. So we came here when I was thirty. We were still newlyweds. Wanted to start a family, but we didn’t think it was going to happen. She finally got pregnant. We were over-the-moon happy.”

  Cassidy braced herself for the outcome of this story. Based on the wistfulness in his voice, it wasn’t a happy one. “I bet.”

  “She died in childbirth.” His voice went placid with grief. “They tried to save the baby. Baby Grace. She survived for forty-nine whole minutes. That girl was a fighter.”

  “Just like her dad.” Cassidy’s voice broke as she said the words.

  “Yeah, just like her dad.” His voice trailed with emotion, as the past surfaced and his words swept him back in time.

  “I’m sorry, Mac.”

 
He seemed to snap from his grief and pull himself together. “That was a long time ago. Life goes on. As hard as it was, I was blessed with the years I had with Carol. I was blessed by the forty-nine minutes Grace lived, and the nine months her mother carried her in the womb. Life is full of different chapters, and the sooner we learn to accept that, the better.”

  “I can’t deny that,” Cassidy said. “Sometimes you have to read through to the end, even the chapters you don’t like.”

  Del’s voice sounded in Cassidy’s head. As believers, we know the ending, though. Don’t we?

  Cassidy was so glad she’d met people who weren’t afraid to let her explore the idea of faith in her own life. She’d always been curious about it, but her family had marked off religion as nonsense. The more Cassidy prayed and read her Bible, the more she realized it was far from nonsense. She also realized that church was more than a gang of Bible-believing folks who came together every week for a social club. Faith and the actions that followed were things that sustained you through your darkest days.

  Mac straightened and nodded across the street. “There’s our guy, Cassidy.”

  Her eyes zeroed in on the man leaving his house and climbing into the SUV. “We’ve got to follow him.”

  Chapter Twelve

  They pulled to a stop at the General Store, parking several spaces over from Orion’s white SUV. Cassidy sat back, hating the uncertainty of who this man really was and what he was doing here.

  “You should go in,” Cassidy said.

  “I can’t leave you.” Mac’s eyes never left Orion.

  “I’m watching the man from here. I’ll lock the doors. Everything will be fine. Grab some donuts and coffee while you’re in there.”

  He chuckled. “There’s that humor again. You want me to talk to him?”

  “I want you to follow your instincts—whatever that leads you to do.”

  He sat silently a minute before grabbing the silver handle beside him. “Okay. Let me see what I can find out. Lock the doors.”

  As soon as Mac was out, Cassidy did as he’d asked. And then she sat back and waited, watching everything through the big glass windows at the front of the store.