On the Edge

by Heather Graham, Carla Neggers

  She forced a smile. “I guess there are some things you can still do alone.”

  3

  Follow the wannabe senator.

  Robert didn’t know how he’d manage it without being caught, but he figured with the 156 IQ, he’d find a way.

  How had he let the bitch doctor slip through his fingers?

  Actually he knew. It was the sister’s fault. She’d loaned Dr. Bitch her car so she could sneak out of town.

  Carine Winter, the jilted nature photographer. Robert had slipped into her apartment one afternoon a week ago and borrowed the set of keys she had to Antonia’s apartment, had them copied and returned them. Then he’d checked out her laptop and read some of her sent e-mails. Pitiful. Really pitiful. Except she had a tough streak—man, he wouldn’t want to be the guy who’d given her the boot.

  He’d sent the bitch sister one of the instant messages from the laptop. A stroke of genius, he’d thought.

  He’d debated fire-bombing Miss Carine’s dump of an apartment, but he had to keep his eyes on the prize.

  Antonia Winter, M.D.

  Scared. Sweating. At his mercy, the way he’d been at her mercy with his foot.

  Begging for her life.

  It was the image he came back to over and over as he considered his next move. He knew he should probably have a master plan, but he loved the spontaneity—hell, he didn’t know what he’d do next, never mind Dr. Bitch Winter.

  He honestly didn’t know if he’d kill her. He might, he might not.

  Probably he would.

  He sat cross-legged on Dr. Winter’s soft, pretty bed in her Back Bay apartment. It was kind of a girly room. Elegant, expensive, but Robert hadn’t expected the framed photographs of flowers—the little sister’s work—and the scented candles, the lace-edged sheets. He’d gone through her lingerie drawer. Nice stuff. Silky. But he got to thinking about how she’d treated him in the E.R., how she was so sweet and caring at first, making him think he might have a real chance with her. That he was right about her, and she just needed him to injure himself to give her an excuse to make a move on him, put out the vibes for him to make a move on her.

  Then she turned him in to the cops. She said it was the law, that she had to report any suspected gunshot wound. Bullshit! It wasn’t like he’d committed a crime. He’d shot himself in the foot! Big deal! She could have let it go. It wasn’t as if he’d shot someone else in the foot.

  They’d left him alone for about a half-second in the X-ray room, and he’d pulled out his IV and made a run for it, shot up foot and everything. The cops caught him in the parking lot. Chased him down like he was a runaway dog. If he hadn’t had the limp, he’d have made it to safety. He knew the hospital terrain better than the damn cops did.

  Yeah, thinking about his little trip to the E.R. had pissed him off.

  He’d found scissors and shredded the bitch doctor’s underwear. Bras, panties, slips, camisoles. All of it. In pieces.

  That’d scare the shit out of her if he didn’t catch up with her first and she made it back here. If he decided not to kill her after all.

  It was only his second time in her apartment. He resisted overdoing it. Miss Carine, another loser, didn’t realize the keys had even been missing, never mind that he’d scared the crap out of her sister using her very own laptop.

  Robert grinned to himself. See? That high IQ at work.

  His granny, who’d raised him after his loser of a mother croaked from a drug overdose, said he could do anything he put his mind to, he was just that smart. She’d dropped dead of a stroke when he was sixteen. He’d found her facedown in her rice plate. Poor old thing.

  But Robert didn’t want to think about his grandmother. He stood in the middle of Antonia’s soft, thick rug. Somehow he had to pick up Superman Hank’s trail again. How hard could it be? Figure out where he was making his appearance and follow him from there—Robert had done it before. As a strategy, it made sense. If the major knew where the bitch doctor was, he’d go to her. If he didn’t know, he’d find her.

  Robert snatched up her telephone and hit the redial button. See who the good doctor had talked to last. Why not?

  “Good afternoon, Winslow residence.”

  What was this? Robert cleared his throat and adopted his most polite, kiss-ass voice. “Sorry to bother you. Mrs. Winslow, right?”

  “Yes.”

  He loved old people. Who told shit to strangers over the phone anymore? He kept up with the polite voice. “I was wondering if Dr. Winter is there.”

  “Dr. Winter? No, no.” It was a woman’s voice, but she sounded like she was a million years old. “She was here several days ago. She’s spending a few days at my cottage on Shelter Island. Excuse me, I didn’t catch your name?”

  “I’m a friend from the hospital. It’s okay, Mrs. Winslow, I understand my mistake now. Thanks for your help. Have a good day.”

  He hung up before the old lady could say anything else.

  Shelter Island.

  Robert had never heard of it, but he was a goddamn genius. He could find it.

  4

  Antonia stood on a mound of sand, beach grass and bearberry down a narrow path from her borrowed cottage and, once again, concentrated on trying to relax. A white-crested wave pushed onto shore. The tide was up. The air was warm, decidedly not hot, the wind nearly constant. A lone bird—some kind of raptor, she thought—rode the breeze overhead.

  She exhaled, feeling the tension release in her muscles. She was safe. It’d been a good idea to come down here. She’d bought herself a few days to work, think, rest.

  “It’ll be okay,” she said aloud. “It really will.”

  How could it be otherwise on such an incredibly beautiful day? It was late afternoon, but she’d removed her watch once she’d arrived at the cottage and didn’t know the exact time. Still, there was no mistaking that it was September—the sun was setting earlier and earlier. She’d never been out here in winter.

  She was alone on a beautiful, peaceful island refuge, exactly, she thought, where she needed to be right now.

  Shelter Island was a stopover for migrating birds, and home to shore birds, seabirds, waterfowl. Dozens of different species rested, fed and nested on the small island. Sandpipers, plovers, terns, ducks, gulls, owls, falcons, eagles. Antonia had learned to recognize some of their calls and signs, but she was still a beginner at birdwatching—she didn’t have her sister’s skill or patience when it came to birds. But she recognized that she was the intruder here, and she did what she could to keep her impact at a minimum.

  Only Carine knew where she was. Antonia had sworn her sister to secrecy, probably a bit of unnecessary drama on her part, but it had seemed to make sense at the time. She’d wanted someone to know where to find her in case of emergency, but she didn’t want Carine involved in whatever was—or, more likely, wasn’t—going on with her possible stalker.

  She hadn’t given Hank any specifics. The less he knew, the better. He couldn’t worry about, act on or say anything about something he didn’t know. A few days off on her own—it was all the specifics he needed.

  The wind hinted of the tropics, tasted of higher humidity. It was a reminder that Hurricane Hope remained a danger. Antonia’s crackly National Weather Service radio indicated a hurricane watch could go up for Cape Cod and the islands by morning—meaning hurricane conditions were possible within thirty-six hours. Evacuation orders would no doubt follow for exposed areas like Shelter Island.

  Antonia wasn’t sure she wanted to leave. The storm still could turn out to sea before it reached New England. It was tempting to take her chances, bet on Hope instead of her stalker.

  Three days at her laptop, she thought. Three days going through patient records and thinking, thinking, thinking, and she still didn’t have any answers. Who would want to get under her skin? Who would be so sneaky and relentless about it? She wasn’t even sure herself that anything was going on, never mind had enough to convince anyone else. Strange i
nstant messages. Whispers in a parking garage. What did that prove? Did she really want the police involved at this point, digging into her life on every level? What could they do? There was nothing to go on.

  And that didn’t even take Hank into consideration.

  After dinner on Saturday, they’d almost ended up at her apartment together, but she was aware of how distracted she was, still preoccupied with the whispers she thought she’d heard in the garage. She knew Hank didn’t understand. But she’d rationalized to herself that she was doing him a favor by not telling him. Figure out what, if anything, was going on. Then talk to him.

  She’d trudged upstairs to her Back Bay apartment and fought back tears as she’d walked into her bedroom.

  There, to her immediate disbelief, she found her bedroom curtains billowing in the evening breeze.

  She was positive she hadn’t left the window open—but there was no sign of a break-in, nothing in her apartment missing, nothing disturbed. Her window was cracked, and she knew she hadn’t touched it. She never left her windows open when she wasn’t home.

  She’d grabbed her phone and dialed the 9 for 9-1-1, but stopped. She was on her way out of town. She could add billowing curtains to the instant messages and whispers in the garage and try to figure out who, if anyone, might be obsessed with her. Do her own investigation from the safety and isolation of Shelter Island. Away from her possible stalker. Away from her sister. Away from her work. And, perhaps most of all, away from Hank.

  If given half a chance, the media would dig their teeth into her stalker story and not let go.

  With any luck, while she was away, whoever was trying to scare her would pull himself together and give up his campaign against her.

  But breaking into her apartment—if it was her stalker, it was crossing the line. It couldn’t be explained away. It was black and white. A crime.

  She referred to her stalker as “he” to herself and believed it was a man, but she supposed it could be a woman.

  Or no one.

  When she got back to Boston, she’d change her locks.

  The wind was at her back as she followed the sandy path back among the pitch pine and juniper to the cottage. She had on a lightweight sweatshirt, shorts and water sandals, her leg muscles getting a good workout in the soft, shifting sand. The cottage was tiny and rustic, classic Cape Cod with its weathered cedar shingles, white trim and blue-painted doors. It sat on what passed for high ground on Shelter Island, its front porch overlooking Nantucket Sound.

  Antonia had met Babs Winslow when she was in medical school and Babs was volunteering at the hospital. Despite their age difference, they became friends. Babs was a true blueblood eccentric. Wealthy, but not one for anything flashy. She hadn’t made improvements to her cottage in years—she hadn’t even been down here in years—but Antonia liked its simplicity and lack of modern amenities. A small generator provided limited power for the pump, a pint-sized refrigerator and a lightbulb that hung from a beam in the middle of the cottage’s single room and was turned on with a string. Two ancient kerosene lamps provided supplemental lighting. There was no hot water—she had to heat water in a lobster pot for dishes and her sponge baths.

  At least Babs had gotten rid of the outhouse. Antonia didn’t think the cottage would be nearly as romantic without its modest bathroom facilities. Carine wouldn’t have minded an outhouse, she thought. Tyler, either.

  When she reached her front porch, Antonia checked to see if the beach towel she’d hung over the rail was dry, then went still.

  She’d heard something. Not a bird, she thought. Not the wind, not the ocean.

  She didn’t breathe, forcing herself not to panic as she concentrated and tried to block out the sounds of the ocean and birds and listen.

  Whistling.

  Someone was whistling!

  “It must be a bird,” she said aloud, hearing her own tension.

  But there it was again—and no way was it a bird.

  She recognized the tune. It was “Heigh Ho,” the dwarves’ working song from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

  Her first impulse was to smile at such a cheerful tune, but then she thought—no. You don’t know who it is.

  She couldn’t let herself be lulled into a false sense of security.

  She slipped into the cottage, careful not to let the door slam, and automatically, without thinking, grabbed a carving knife from the utensils drawer in the kitchen area. Just in case. Most likey, a passing boat had spotted her brightly colored beach towel hanging on the porch and reported the possibility of an inhabitant, and a local official was checking on her, making sure she knew a hurricane was approaching and she had a way off the island.

  Surely a stalker wouldn’t announce his presence by whistling a Disney tune.

  But she wasn’t taking any chances. Taking her knife with her, she darted out the back door, making no noise as she tiptoed quickly down the rickety steps, thinking only that she needed to get to a place where she could see but not be seen.

  She ducked behind a sprawling beach rosebush that grew close to the back steps and, mindful of its thorns, crouched down. She held her knife as if it was a surgical instrument, not something she might use to defend herself against attack.

  The whistling had stopped.

  Maybe it was Gus. If Carine had even hinted about Cape Cod and a hurricane, Antonia obviously unnerved, their uncle would get in his truck and head south, without stopping to consider that she was thirty-five, an experienced physician capable of making her own decisions.

  And who’s hiding behind a rosebush with a carving knife?

  She groaned to herself. Sometimes Gus did have a point.

  It wasn’t Carine, that was for sure. Carine couldn’t whistle worth a damn.

  Heavy footsteps sounded on the front porch on the other side of the cottage. “Antonia? It’s me, Hank. Hank Callahan.”

  As if there were other Hanks in her life. She almost collapsed to her knees in relief. How had he found her? Carine? It had to be, but not voluntarily—Hank must have tripped her up. Charmed her. Used Ty North to throw her off balance. He and Hank were unyielding when they thought they were in the right and someone was trying to thwart them, keep them from getting done what they meant to get done.

  What did Hank mean to do?

  Belatedly, Antonia realized that her own behavior must have aroused his suspicions. She supposed she hadn’t done a good job of concealing how upset she was at dinner, and then she’d taken off without telling him where she was going. Even if he hadn’t seen her agitation, Hank would wonder what was going on with her. She’d hoped he’d be too busy to act on it. Then there was Carine—she’d recognized Antonia’s jumpiness for what it was and had asked what was wrong. Antonia hadn’t told her, which probably only fueled her sister’s concern.

  And now, for whatever reason, Hank had tracked her down.

  He wouldn’t regard crouching behind a rosebush with a knife as the ordinary precaution of a woman alone on an island. Innocent. Unsuspicious. If he wasn’t already on alert, finding her right now would do it.

  She stabbed the knife into the sand and stood up, easing out from behind the bush. Her sleeve caught on a thorny sprig. As she freed herself, she pricked her index finger, drawing blood.

  “I’m out back,” she called, thinking she sounded reasonably composed. “How on earth did you find me?”

  She heard him inside the cottage. He hadn’t bothered knocking or waiting for her to let him in, which made her wonder just what Carine had told him. But, Hank wasn’t one to stand on ceremony when he set out to do something.

  The screen door creaked open, and he walked down the back steps to the small yard that was mostly overgrown with bearberry and beach roses, with a few patches of juniper, foot-tall doomed pine and oak saplings. Lilacs, long out of bloom, grew along one side of the cottage. An invasive, nasty patch of poison ivy swarmed up a stand of pitch pine that marked the yard’s far border.

  Ant
onia noticed she’d pushed through a cobweb on her way out from behind the rosebush. She brushed it off her arm and picked it out of her hair. “Hank, what a surprise.”

  His blue eyes raked over her, and he didn’t smile. “You’re looking a little pale there, Doc.”

  “Am I?”

  “Did I startle you?”

  “A little.” It wasn’t an outright lie. “I’m supposed to be alone out here. Don’t you have campaign appearances?”

  “I canceled them.”

  His tone was difficult to read. Was he angry? Worried? She’d piqued his curiosity—that much she could see. “I haven’t heard the latest report on the hurricane. Anything new?”

  “It’s not looking good.” He sounded calmer, his tone less abrupt. The sun hit his eyes, which seemed as blue as the sky and sea. “It’s picking up speed. It could hit the Cape after all before it makes its turn east. That would put you in the bull’s-eye.”

  The bull’s-eye. She’d hoped being out here would take her out of the bull’s-eye, at least her stalker’s bull’s-eye.

  What was the saying? Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Out of the way of a stalker who might not be real, into the path of a hurricane that was very much real.

  “I’ve got plenty of time to evacuate if a watch goes up,” she said.

  “How did you get out here?”

  “Kayak—a new one. I bought it just for this trip. I know I shouldn’t kayak alone, but there were enough boats out in the inlet when I paddled over here that I wasn’t worried. I had a water taxi bring my supplies.”

  “Quite the adventure.”

  She ignored the bite—the hurt—in his tone. She hadn’t told him she was coming down here. It was that simple. She shrugged, giving up on any attempt to smile. “It’s been fun.”

  His eyes stayed on her. “Seas could get rough fast for a kayak.”

  “It’s not that far to the mainland, and I’m a pretty good kayaker. I’d wave down help if I needed it.”

  “Would you?”

  He didn’t seem to expect her to answer. He stepped down onto the grass, browned from the long summer, and it struck her that he looked taller than she remembered. He had on khakis, a dark polo shirt and running shoes, but there was nothing casual about him. He had that straight spine of a military man and the power demeanor of a U.S. senator, even if he wasn’t one yet. He wasn’t a man who took a lot of b.s. From anyone. Ever. And he had to know, she thought, that that was exactly what he was getting from her. She was skirting the truth, hedging, dodging, lying. And she didn’t much like herself for it, no matter her excuses and rationalizations.