The girls were in their own world. They never looked at Laura. About a half mile from the turnaround they started slowing down and looking around. They were arguing with each other, and Laura had to pull closer, bending down to pick up an imaginary something in the sand, to hear them.
“We went too far!” Lana complained.
Jenny snapped, “No, we didn’t. They’re around here. Noah!” she called. “Noah!”
“Shut up,” Lana responded. “Jesus. You want to just call the cops while you’re at it?”
Jenny stomped forward, and a figure materialized from the fog. A male. He grabbed Jenny’s arm and pulled her down toward the sand and farther away from Laura. Lana followed with a snort of disgust. “Well, geez, leave me out, why don’t you?”
“Shut the fuck up.” The disembodied male voice filtered toward Laura, who had stopped short and stood still and quiet in a cocoon of gray. She couldn’t see anything, but she was close enough to hear. She bent down again, this time actually finding an old soda bottle, which she tossed into the garbage bag, but her ears were trained on the ongoing conversation.
“Noah,” a female voice said.
“It’s Envy,” he hissed back.
Another male voice hacked out a short laugh, which caused Noah/Envy to snarl, “Stupid fucks. Pay attention. We’re going back for seconds.”
“What do you mean?” the unidentified female voice asked.
“I’m gonna change your name from Pride to Dumbass,” he barked. “Anybody else got a stupid question?”
“We’re going to hit one of the places we already did?” Jenny guessed.
“Yeah, baby. Lana’s favorite.”
“Lust!” Lana hissed. “My name is Lust. You called Ellie Pride, so call me Lust!”
“Give it a rest,” Ellie/Pride said. “Ian doesn’t even like his name,” she added tauntingly.
“Who gives a shit?” Noah demanded. “Did you hear what I said? Don’t you want to know who?”
“I’m losing weight!” another male voice protested. “Jesus! I don’t want any stupid name!”
“Ummm . . . ? My favorite?” Lana questioned. “I don’t know what you mean, Noah . . . Envy.”
He snapped back, “Both names start with a B, moron. Know who now?”
“Oh . . . you mean . . . Britt . . . Berman?” she asked, unsure, and there was a flurry of scuffling as Noah/Envy must have clapped his hand over her mouth and gotten them all to go quiet. Laura was afraid to move yet worried maybe Noah/Envy might materialize in front of her. Time to leave.
Carefully she took a step backward, heart pounding, then a second step, then a third toward the surf. She wanted to run but she forced herself to move slowly, though her ears were practically buzzing with fear.
“Hey!” Noah/Envy’s voice was suddenly right in front of her. “You. What are you doing?”
Laura couldn’t see through the fog, and then an angular boy of about seventeen materialized. He wore a dark scowl and his mouth was a snarl. He looked dangerous and determined and deadly, and she couldn’t help the zip of a chill that ran through her. “What?” she asked. “Are you talking to me?” She looked around.
“Yeah, bitch. I’m talking to you. What are you doing here?”
“Cleaning up the beach!” she said, holding up her bag and ignoring a tiny niggle of fear in her brain. “And my name isn’t bitch. You got that?”
He stepped closer, menacingly. “You listening in on something you shouldn’t?” he demanded.
She forced herself not to back up. “I said I was cleaning up the beach, the public beach, with my family,” she lied, hoping he’d think she was with a group. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“Don’t be stupid!”
“Don’t be insulting.” She wasn’t going to let this teenaged punk push her around.
“Shit!” He grabbed her arm and shook it once, hard. She saw the group of them then, moving toward her, a dense wall of youth that was definitely frightening in that mob way. There were seven of them, all right. Three girls and four boys, all scowling at her.
She stared hard at the leader. “Let go of me,” she said with the same calm, determined voice she used on unruly patients and tried to yank her arm back. His fingers only tightened.
One of the guys glanced around, uncomfortable. “Oh, come on. We don’t need to scare people,” he said.
“There are a ton of people around,” Ellie, the third girl, reminded.
Noah/Envy was having none of it. He moved closer, glaring into Laura’s eyes with pure fury. His hand held her arm fast.
She caught a whiff of something minty and earthy. “Chewing tobacco causes mouth, tongue, and throat cancer,” she said rotely. “You should be careful.”
“What the fuck do you care?”
“Hey, man,” the worried guy said as voices approached from behind her. A child’s laughter and a man’s deeper baritone.
Noah/Envy dropped her arm reluctantly.
She heard, “Lorelei? You there?” in a disguised, almost unrecognizable voice that she nevertheless knew to be Harrison’s. She turned toward the sound and melted into the fog, blindly moving in his direction. Relief washed over her as he materialized, and she slid easily into his arms, as if he were, indeed, her disgruntled husband. The kids were swallowed up behind drifting wisps of gray smoke. She half turned, expecting Noah/Envy to keep coming for her, but they were gone in an instant, invisible behind the shifting curtain of fog.
Silently, Harrison pulled her away from them. She was half lost, aware only of the sound of the surf, which kept her oriented enough to know they were walking south, quickly, back toward the turnaround. They reached it in silence and then were among the other beachgoers and cleanup volunteers, walking up the street in the direction of his car. She dropped off her small, nearly forgotten bag of garbage at a collection site, where a woman offered her a starfish sticker that said I CLEANED UP THE BEACH.
Not really. But she wasn’t going to quibble.
Harrison shepherded her along the promenade that ran the length of the beach in Seaside, then opened the door of a small deli, where he guided her to a two-person table toward the back of the room, away from the door. He seated them both with their backs to the windows before he said a word.
“I heard him,” Harrison told her grimly, his lips flattened over his teeth, his jaw clenched. “I was going to jump out and kill him if he threatened you further.”
“That’s a little over the top.”
“They’re dangerous.”
“So am I,” she said, then flashed a bit of a smile. “I deal with belligerent patients all the time, and then there’s that communicating with a killer thing.”
“Yeah, that,” he said but seemed to lighten up a bit.
“They’re kids.”
“JDs.”
“Even so, a few punk kids don’t scare me . . . well, not much.”
“They should.”
“Maybe.” She leaned closer to him but had to wait until a bored-looking girl popping her gum walked through the tables to take their order.
“What can I getcha?” she asked.
Laura glanced at the menu, a huge blackboard that hung over a counter. “Turkey sandwich, with the cream cheese and cranberry sauce,” she said, spying the first thing that looked good.
“Clam chowder and a hot tuna melt,” Harrison said.
“Anything to drink?” the girl asked on a sigh.
“Coke,” Harrison said and glanced at Laura.
“Water’s fine.”
The girl turned and wandered to another table, where a young mother was struggling to keep her three-year-old in a booster chair. Once the waitress was out of earshot, Laura kept her voice low and said, “So, from what I could tell, there were seven of them. His name’s Noah and he calls himself Envy. They didn’t say his last name. Lana is Lust. Ellie is Pride. There was another guy, who was obviously Gluttony, though he didn’t like it much. Ian. I don’t know Jenny’s ‘sin??
? name, but they’ve got Greed, Wrath, and Sloth left. They’re planning to re-hit the Bermans’ house.”
His brows shot skyward. “You heard that for sure?”
“He said they were going for seconds at Lana’s friend’s house. He gave her one guess and said it was two Bs. She came up with Britt Berman before he stopped her from saying more.”
Harrison made a sound of disbelief, or wonder, or something; Laura couldn’t be sure. “Sometimes, things just happen,” was all he eventually said. Grabbing his cell from his pocket, he looked at it for a moment, his mind calculating. Then he stuffed it away and said, “C’mon,” and he grabbed her hand. “I’m gonna write a story,” he said. “Then we’re going to see the Bermans and give them a little heads-up.” He paused at the counter. “Our order,” he said to the girl, “we’ll take it to go.”
Hours later, sunk low in the passenger seat of Harrison’s Impala, her butt numb from inaction, Laura watched as the Deadly Sinners appeared like a dark horde and spread out around the Bermans’ house like a plague. Harrison, seated behind the wheel, slid the binoculars to his eyes and smiled. “Just like clockwork. If only Envy realized how predictable he was, he might be dangerous.”
Thirty seconds later an alarm sounded. Not the Bermans’ house, whose alarm had been smashed in the previous burglary and hadn’t yet been replaced. The next door neighbors’ alarm was the one blaring through the melting fog, the same neighbors where the Berman family had since taken refuge after Harrison had alerted the Seaside police about the pending target.
Harrison loved it. He waited, observing for a while, then stepped out of the car to confer with one of the officers. Laura found herself feeling detached and oddly content. Spending all day with him had given her insight to the man. Observing him in action, whether interviewing her, chasing down the Seven Deadly Sinners, writing his story, or sitting with her on the stakeout, she’d learned far more about the man than she’d expected.
Trouble was, she was starting to feel like she’d known him for years, which was ludicrous. Studying him now, as he stood under the lamplight, his shoulders broad, his waist and hips slim, his hair dark in the fog, she felt it strange to think a few days ago they hadn’t met.
He turned, as if he felt her gaze on him, and started jogging through the wisps of fog to the car. Moments later he slammed back into the Chevy. “His name’s John Mills,” he said, referring to the young officer. “I’ve talked with him before. Some of the cops are hard-asses, but Mills talks to me, so he’s the one I called about this.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m writing up the story so far, and then I’m gonna talk to him tomorrow, see if I can learn anything else.”
“Where are we going now?” she asked, intrigued with how animated he was just talking about his work.
“My apartment. I’ve got the notes and most of the story on my laptop. Just need to write it down and send it off. It’ll be front page of the Breeze tomorrow.”
“Let’s go,” she said, still intrigued as he jammed the car into gear and did a three-point turn.
They drove to his bare second-story apartment, where she found a single director’s chair and sat. “Still working out the details of the interior design,” he joked as she took in the lack of furnishings.
“Easier to keep clean.”
“Hmmm.” He barely noticed as he was so into his story. He snapped open his laptop, pulled up the file, then added a few final words about the capture of the Seven Deadly Sinners. “No names,” he said. “They’re all underage.” Then he e-mailed the changes to his editor and said, “Good copy,” as he closed the lid on his laptop. “Wanna get a dinner? We can drive back and get some chicken strips and fries at Davy Jones’s. Then I’ll tuck you in.”
“I’ll take the drive back, but I’ll skip the bar food,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Davy Jones’s twice in one day might be more than I can handle.”
“You don’t like fried food?”
“I like fried food as much as the next woman.”
“No woman likes fried food. Or admits to it. It’s all about salads and nutrition and weight loss. There’s no fun to it. The fun level is directly related to oil/fat consumption, and you’re not going there,” he teased.
“I had huevos rancheros this morning,” she reminded. “With you.”
“That’s baked, I think. Minimal fat content.”
“Maybe.” She smiled. “But I’ll take a rain check on dinner, thanks.” She’d spent way too many hours with him already, she determined, and yet she wanted to be with him longer, and though she could tell herself it was because she was nervous about Justice, that Harrison Frost made her more comfortable, less anxious, it was something more.
Something she couldn’t even consider right now.
“You have to eat, don’t you?” he pressed.
“I’ve got stuff in the fridge.”
“How much stuff?”
“You wangling for an invitation?”
“Maybe. What have you got in the fridge?” When she didn’t immediately respond, he added, “Salad?”
“And other things.”
“Other healthy things.”
“Don’t you eat healthy things?”
He half smiled. “If you invite me to, I will.”
He was blasting her with a kind of irrepressible charm that she sensed could be a real pain in the ass. “Okay,” she said, relenting not only to him but to her own secret desires as well. “Take me home and I’ll dig up something for us to eat. But you’re not tucking me in.”
He offered her a lazy, self-deprecating smile. “What if I just stay at your house, say, on the living room couch?”
“What if I say no?”
“Might not work,” and he was serious again. She knew that their time ignoring the real threat that menaced her was over. The exhilaration of being instrumental in catching the Deadly Sinners was fading. She couldn’t escape her own problems forever, though she’d done an admirable job of it today.
“The couch has saggy cushions.”
“You’re a nurse, right? Maybe you can fix me if I . . . need help.”
“Maybe.” She ignored the tiny voice inside her head that nagged at her. What do you think you’re doing, Lorelei? This is crazy. Nuts! But it was a little thrilling to think of him spending the night.
He locked the front door, and they headed down the outside stairs to his car. The scent of the sea reached her nostrils, and the night was cold. Raw. Deep. As they climbed inside the Impala, Harrison said, “Hey, I heard you diagnose Noah with future mouth cancer. That one of your woo-woo predictions?”
“No.” Laura almost laughed. “I was just trying to distract him. I could tell he’d been chewing. And it doesn’t really work that way, anyway.”
“Can you tell if there’s something wrong with me?” He turned toward her, eyeing her with amusement, his hand on the keys in the ignition, the gloom outside the car thick.
“No.”
“How does it work? Do you see my aura, or something?” God, his eyes were dark, sexy in the night.
“There you go, making fun of me again.” She tried to be annoyed. She wanted to be annoyed. Instead, she was amused and managed to break his gaze. Instead, she stared out the front windshield, willing herself not to look at him, her fingers curling over the armrest.
“Well, how does it work?” he insisted.
“I don’t really know.”
“You must have some idea.”
“Well,” she said reluctantly. “It’s better if I touch you. Maybe I could see something, then.”
“Bullshit.”
“Total truth.” She turned back toward him, smiling.
“Okay.” He left the keys dangling in the ignition and held out his hand, clasping her fingers. He gazed at her penetratingly, and she found herself mesmerized by the warmth of his skin.
After a moment she frowned and ripped her hand away.
“What?”
“I don??
?t really want to say.”
“Oh, come on!”
“All right.” She shook her head. “You’re on the way to serious digestive problems. The kind with . . . unpleasant surgeries.”
“Is there a pleasant surgery?”
“But this problem is just a small possibility. Not a reality, yet. I think you might be able to avoid it, given some changes.” She rubbed her hand where he’d touched her. He stared at her hard, and she could tell he was wondering if, just maybe, she was really, just possibly, for real. “I’m sorry to say, Mr. Frost, but you need to give up fried food.”
“Oh, hell!” His fingers twisted the keys, and the Impala’s engine roared to life. “Like I said. Bullshit.”
“Total truth,” she rejoined; then they both started laughing.
Forty minutes later they’d pulled into her driveway, their jovial mood disappearing with each mile that passed beneath the tires of Harrison’s car. She thought of the maniac who was related to her and his thirst for blood. Her blood. Her sisters’ blood. Her unborn child’s blood.
Could she do it?
Call to the maniac?
Dance with the devil?
She stared out the window into the inky night, over the cliffs to where she knew the ocean rolled in restless waves. She closed her eyes and remembered him as a child. Small. Blond. Blue-eyed. And filled with hate. He was pale and lean, and the few times she’d seen him, there had been a weirdness evident. Even then his intense gaze curdled her blood, but now . . . with his vicious hissing voice, she couldn’t imagine facing him.
But she would . . . if she had to.
She didn’t even realize they’d reached her home until she heard the crunch of the Chevy’s tires on gravel, saw the arc of its headlights wash up against the siding of her little house.
It was now or never.
Harrison, alone with his own thoughts, switched off the ignition and turned to her, ready to ask her what was next. Before he could open his mouth, she said, “Let’s do it. I’m ready.”