“Yes.” She looked past him, then said, “What if I call him and it just spurs him to come after us? Speeds up the timetable.”
“That’s a risk.”
“I don’t know if I can do it,” she admitted.
Harrison looked at her. Really looked at her. As a man eyes a woman. She felt a blush start beneath her skin. Embarrassed, she turned away. What was wrong with her? Good Lord. She’d met him yesterday, the day she’d learned she was pregnant, and she was thinking these kinds of thoughts?
It wasn’t right. It was downright wrong.
There was an awkward silence between them. Then he said, “Tell you what. Let’s take five. I’ve got another story I’m working on. One that’s popping. You want to help me with that one tonight?”
“What story?”
“It’s a project I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks. In Seaside. My Deadly Sinners.”
“Your what?”
“Get your coat. I’ll tell you on the way.”
“So now you’re cryptic.”
“So now I think we need to get going.” Glancing outside, he added, “This damn fog’s making everything hazy and cold, but it’s perfect for their purposes. It’s probably reached Seaside.”
She looked at him, mystified.
“Come on. It’ll get you away from Deception Bay for a few hours,” he went on. “Give you some time to think about what to do about Justice. Grab your hoodie. It’s bound to get colder tonight.”
“Okay,” she said uncertainly.
“You help me, and I’ll help you,” he said. “Maybe all the stars will align and we’ll get my Deadly Sinners tonight, and Justice Turnbull tomorrow.”
She snagged her coat from a hook by the back door. “Dreamer!”
“Always,” he said, his gaze searching her, and ridiculously, Laura’s heart did another little flip.
She walked to the back door and told herself that Harrison Frost was trouble.
Right now she had more than enough.
The last thing she needed was this reporter with his strong jaw, knowing eyes, and quick wit. But like it or not, for the rest of the day, it seemed, she was stuck with him.
The problem was, she did like it. She liked it far more than she should.
CHAPTER 17
It was like she’d been transported from one life to another, Laura thought as the miles spun beneath the tires of Harrison’s brown Impala while they traveled north to Seaside. Yesterday morning she’d been a nurse at Ocean Park Hospital just getting over a divorce; today she was a source, companion, and possible sidekick to an investigative reporter who was bent on dragging a story from her. A pregnant source, companion, and possible sidekick to an investigative reporter who was bent on dragging a story from her. And she was a willing participant in his plan. More than that, she was half counting on him to keep her safe from a killer focused on a mission of evil.
Less than twenty-four hours earlier she hadn’t known him. Hadn’t known that she was pregnant. Hadn’t known Justice had escaped and had her and her family in his sights again.
Now, as she cracked open the side window, she closed her eyes, turning her face to the rushing wind that swept inside. She was worried about Catherine and her sisters, though she knew they were probably as safe as they could be behind their locked gates and with the sheriff’s department—the whole damn state—alerted to Justice’s escape. It was certainly no secret whom he was targeting. There was nothing to do to help them. She was the one in the most danger.
So, it was with a feeling of relief that Harrison was taking her away from Deception Bay. She hadn’t wanted to come back to the town, anyway, and now her fears had been proved right. She shouldn’t have listened to Byron. Ever.
But she couldn’t leave now. She had to see this thing through and do what she could to protect herself, her family, and her baby from Justice.
She wondered if she should tell Harrison Frost that she was pregnant. Was it germane to anything they were dealing with? Only in the fact that Justice was doubly focused on her because she was carrying a child, one of their kind, and he was determined to send them all to their doom. She knew that much. She’d heard it in his mental ravings, and it scared her to the bone.
Sliding a look Harrison’s way, she examined his profile and felt a flutter of interest, a quickening of her own breath.
Good. God.
“Clean up the beach!” he muttered as they encountered vehicles parked in every view point, turnout, and parking lot all along the way and everywhere as they entered Seaside’s outskirts. Harrison drove through the clogged town, his frustration mounting as he tried and failed to find a parking spot to save his soul. After a few slow trips down crowded side streets clogged with pedestrians, bikers, and trams, as well as the usual cars and trucks, he finally got lucky and nosed into a lot behind a Space Age gas station, just as an older couple in a Buick pulled out.
Laura, lost in thought, wondered if the intensity of the situation was sending her nerve endings into overdrive and she was ascribing something more, some deeper emotion and desire, to the man she was currently with because of fear. Out of desperation? Was her own susceptibility in this cat and mouse game with Justice making her think she wanted Harrison?
She was in a strange, strange place, all right. A thrum of fear ran beneath her skin, and it was jangling up her thought process, turning random emotions into desire.
Or was it something more?
After switching off the ignition, Harrison yanked out a tin of breath mints from the glove box, opened it, popped one in his mouth, then offered the tin to her. Her stomach twisted in minor revolt at the thought, and she shook her head.
“You okay?” he asked, glancing over at her.
“Yeah. Why?”
“You keep making little sounds.”
“I do? What kind of sounds?”
He let out his breath in a weary sigh a couple of times, and Laura faintly smiled. “I’m . . . thinking,” she said.
“Overthinking. Try to forget about Justice for a while.” He grabbed her hand, gave it a squeeze.
“Oh, yeah. That’s going to happen.”
“No more messages today?”
She shook her head as he let go of her hand. “I think he has the ability to block me out, too. At least he does now.”
“You think he knows you’re outside of Siren Song?”
“Oh, yeah. He knows it,” she stated positively. “But okay, I’ll try to put him aside. Tell me what’s on your mind for the Deadly Sinners.”
On the ride to Seaside Harrison had explained to Laura about the group of teens burglarizing their wealthy classmates’ homes, had related his subsequent conversations with Lana and Jenny, and had explained about their leader being N.V., like Envy. Now he added, “I want to catch them in the act, maybe tonight.”
“Why tonight?”
“It’s a Saturday. They seem to be escalating. They like what they’re doing and feel smarter than everyone else. Then there’s the fog,” he said, gesturing to the thick mist hovering through the streets, like an ethereal curtain. “It makes it harder for them to be seen. I figure they’re not going to let an opportunity go by.”
“Don’t the police have any idea?”
“Oh, yeah. The Seaside police know about the burglaries and have been patrolling some of the nicer residential communities around, but they can’t be everywhere, and summer weekends in Seaside have their own problems. Brawls. Public drunkenness. Domestic disputes. Other theft. You name it.”
“So, are you going back to the ice cream shop?”
“Only if Jenny’s still on duty. More likely I’ll find one of them along the main street and follow after them.”
“But they know what you look like.”
“I’ll have to be careful.”
“If they see you, the jig’ll be up, so to speak.”
“I’ll wear a hat. Big overcoat.” He shrugged. “I’ve got clothes in the back.” He gestured with his th
umb to the rear seat, where she had also tossed her own hoodie.
“Let me follow them,” Laura said. “You point them out, and I’ll go.”
He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “No way.”
“They don’t know who I am, and I’m a woman. Less likely for anyone to worry about if I get too close to them.”
“Forget it.”
“Why?”
“It’s . . .” He trailed off, but Laura knew what he’d been about to say.
“Dangerous? More dangerous than calling Justice Turnbull, a psychotic killer, to me?” She almost laughed. “Give me a break!”
“Well, no. I’m just not letting you do it.”
She felt her hackles rise. “I see. You don’t believe I can call Justice, so that doesn’t count. But this . . .”
“I can’t have you be the collateral damage to my story,” he stated flatly.
“I’m choosing to do it,” she informed him coolly.
“No.”
She went on. “If you find one of them, I’ll just meander around after them and see if they lead me anywhere.”
“They’ll meet on the beach,” he said. “In this fog, I’ll be invisible.”
“Not if you need to get close enough to hear them.”
“No eavesdropping,” he declared. “Too risky. All I want is a head count.”
“So, that’s a yes?” she asked and saw him shake his head.
“No.”
She sensed this was going against everything he believed in. Every male fiber of his being. But she wanted to help. Needed to think about something other than Justice Turnbull and his deadly obsession with her and her unborn child. “Listen, you can be a few feet behind me in your disguise.”
“No . . .”
“In this beach-cleaning crowd, in the fog, nobody’s going to be looking at either one of us.”
“You’re a nurse. Not Mata Hari.”
“I’m a young woman in jeans and a hoodie who’s ridding the beach of debris and garbage, so bent on my task that I might just stumble over a group of teenagers by mistake in the fog. I’m just trampling around in a zealous quest to make the world a better place. The worst thing that’ll happen is they’ll glare at me and go quiet until I disappear.”
“Jesus . . .”
She grabbed the aforementioned hoodie from where she’d tossed it into the backseat and put it on. “Now I look like everyone else.”
He reached in the back next and grabbed his coat and a baseball cap, jamming the cap on his head. “I don’t want you to do this.”
He was so serious that Laura found the whole thing strangely funny. “This doesn’t scare me,” she assured him. “This is . . . therapy.”
It was the truth. For the last twenty-four hours she’d lived in gut-shaking fear, and the thought that she could be proactive on something else, something that might actually do good for someone else, made her feel as if she were on a head-spinning high.
He frowned. “I don’t like it.”
“This is child’s play in comparison to calling Justice,” she said soberly.
“Just because these guys are kids doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. They’re thieves, but they’re one bad situation from being something worse. You corner them, they’ll come out fighting.”
“You say they’ll meet on the beach?”
“You’re not listening, Lorelei. There’s no script, but there is danger.”
“Look, if I can do this, I can contact Justice. How’s that? One for the other.” She threw open the door, and he was forced to scramble from his side of the car to keep up with her.
“I’m not bargaining with you!”
“Oh, come on. Seriously, let me help.” She pulled the hoodie over her head and smiled at him.
“Damn it.”
She laughed at the way he looked so helpless, surprising them both. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed. “I’m half-hysterical,” she admitted.
“Fully hysterical,” he rejoined.
Laura stepped away from him into the June gloom. She’d taken two steps when she felt him by her side. “If they see you with me, this will all be a big waste of time.”
“So be it,” he muttered, but he didn’t try to stop her, or send her back to the car, and Laura saw that as a win.
They walked down Broadway together, passing people who were coming from the beach, moving toward them like gray ghosts who disappeared into the gloom behind them. CLEAN UP THE BEACH!! T-shirts peeked from jackets and overshirts and hoodies like Laura’s own.
In an uneasy partnership Harrison pointed out the ice cream shop, which Laura gazed at with interest. She started to cross the street toward it, then felt his hand clasp down hard on her shoulder, stopping her forward progress. Leaning into her ear, he whispered through his teeth, “Okay, look. There are rules. Don’t get too close. Don’t do anything. Just recon. You got that?”
She nodded.
“That’s Lana standing in front. The first girl I talked to. Jenny’s not behind the counter, but—” He cut himself off, then swore softly. “There she is. Coming from around the back. She must be just getting off work. What time is it?”
Laura pulled back her sleeve and checked her watch. “Four thirty.”
“Okay. C’mere.” He swiveled her toward him beneath a hard grip until her gaze was leveled on the three-day stubble of his chin, which was apparently part of his look. “I’m going to kiss you,” he said. “Try to be into it.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but his lips crashed suddenly on hers. Warm. Supple. Moving gently. A slight wintergreen taste lingering from his earlier breath mint. Her knees, stupidly, wanted to buckle. She tried to speak, but he held her a little tighter, and she slid him a look from the corner of her eyes and saw that while he kissed her, his eyes were open and staring across at the ice cream shop.
The kiss went on, but once she knew he was detached, that this was all a damned act, she felt both relieved and a little deflated. And embarrassed. Still, it gave her a long moment to assess her situation, and she felt a shiver of anticipation mixed with fear. She was pregnant. She was kissing a man she found attractive. She was running from a man who wanted to kill her. She—
Sisssterrr . . . ! With your filthy incubus growing inside you . . .
Laura jerked in shock, causing Harrison to break the kiss and gaze down at her with a frown. She slammed the door in her brain shut with finality.
“What is it?” Harrison asked.
“Nothing. Nerves.” Her teeth were chattering.
“They’re on the move,” he said, glancing across the street. “In this fog I can follow them without them recognizing me.”
“No. I want to do it.” She pulled herself from his embrace, immediately regretting the loss of heat.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
“Then I’ll follow after you in thirty seconds. I’ll be at the end of the turnaround. Don’t approach them. Just hang around, if you can.”
She held up a hand in goodbye and headed toward the beach, in the direction the two girls had gone.
CHAPTER 18
Harrison tried counting to twenty but stopped at nine. It was all he could stand before he moved in the same direction. West. Where a watery sun could be barely discerned through the layers of smoky gray.
He sensed he was making a lot of mistakes. A lot of mistakes. He sensed there was something going on here with Lorelei that was more than just pumping a source for information. Something even more than roping in an accomplice, something he almost never did, yet here he was, doing it.
What the hell are you doing? he asked himself.
Getting a story.
He made a sound of disgust directed solely at himself. Oh, sure. That was all this was. Immediately, he sought to interview himself. A trick he used to make certain he wasn’t fooling himself about anything.
She’s pretty, his mind pointed out.
Yes.
&nb
sp; She’s serious but has a sense of humor.
Yes, again.
She’s adventurous, even though she believes she isn’t.
Right-tee-o.
You like her way more than you should. You have bad luck in relationships. You should keep this on a professional level, or else someone gets hurt. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.
“Bingo,” he said quietly.
And she can kiss with a passion that sets your mind reeling and your damned cock to start rising to attention.
Oh, hell. He pushed the unexpected, runaway thoughts aside.
For now.
He couldn’t see more than six feet in front of him, though he could hear the surf, a buzzing roar with the occasional crash of a wave breaking on the rocks. People’s voices sounded like dull mews in the soft, fuzzy light. The whole world was surreal.
Be careful, he thought with a strange twist of his heart.
Laura stopped to grab a black garbage bag from a table where two middle-aged women in CLEAN UP THE BEACH!! baseball caps and oversized sweatshirts collected donations and passed out information. She nodded to the women, then followed a safe distance behind the girls, who walked ever closer to each other as they neared the sand. Harrison had been right; they went straight to the beach.
She found her thoughts divided between the task at hand and the kiss that still lingered on her lips. Justice was locked into another room in her mind entirely, and she was happy to leave him there for now. More than happy. She wanted to live in the moment.
The kiss had been knee-weak spectacular, and Harrison Frost hadn’t been affected in the least. This would have sent her into paroxysms of self-flagellation if she hadn’t been able to keep her own cool, at least in front of him. As it was, she found herself in a kind of mild shock, wondering at herself.
The girls reached the beach and slogged through the softer sand near the road, turning right rather than toward the packed beach and dull, roaring surf. They were trudging purposely northward, avoiding the crowd closer to the water. Laura drifted along behind them, sometimes closing the gap when the fog swallowed them up, sometimes shifting to the right or left to give the illusion that though they were traveling in the same direction, they weren’t going to the same place. They met other beachcombers, parents with toddlers, dog walkers, and cleanup people along the way, but no one stopped to talk.