Her Fifth Husband?. Dixie Browning
thoughts, she willed silently. Think of bittersweet chocolate melting on your tongue. Alan Jackson singing softly in your ear. Nordstrom’s and a no-limit charge card.
Here she was in a beachfront cottage—if a six-bedroom, seven-bath house complete with two hot tubs and a swimming pool could be called a cottage—and her blasted sinuses refused to allow her to enjoy it.
She was still attempting to talk herself into relaxing before her headache got any worse when a shadow passed over her. Without opening her eyes, she frowned. A shadow of what? According to Katie, this entire row of cottages was empty until Memorial Day weekend.
Opening her eyes, she blinked against the late-afternoon sun. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, not even a vapor trail. Yet even with her eyes closed, she could’ve sworn a shadow had just passed over her.
Probably a pelican, she thought, and relaxed again. Sasha hadn’t grown up in this part of the state, but she did know that long before the developers had taken possession, these dunes had belonged to sea birds, sand fiddlers, a few hardy fishing families and a herd of wild ponies.
Sighing, she let her eyes drift shut again, conscious now of the reddish-brown color of sunlight seen through mauve-shadowed eyelids. She was almost asleep when it happened again. Reddish-brown briefly turned dull black and then back again. Warily, she opened her eyes, lifted her head and looked around.
Nothing moved. Not even a mosquito.
More curious than afraid, she tried an experiment, closing her eyes, she passed a hand over her face, just to be sure.
There it was again—that momentary darkening. Something had definitely blocked the sun for one split second. A fast-moving airplane? Flight-seeing tours were common in the area, but usually not until the season got underway. Besides, unless it was a glider, she would have heard it.
She struggled to sit up, because whatever it was, it wasn’t her imagination. There was simply nothing up there to cast a shadow. No birds, no planes—not even a flying superhero. Whatever it was that had passed between her and the sun was gone.
And dammit, so was any chance of relaxing.
She was still struggling to get up off the low chaise longue when she heard a soft thump and what sounded like a muffled exclamation. Pulses pounding, she glanced over her shoulder. Sunlight reflected off the sliding-glass doors behind her, blocking her view of the interior. Logic told her that no one inside could have cast a shadow over the outer deck, but logic was the first victim when a woman was truly spooked.
Had she locked the lower door when she’d let herself in? With her mind on so many things at once, details occasionally escaped her attention. Katie could have seen her car and dropped by to check on her progress. Maybe one of the cleaning crew had left something behind. Or maybe they hadn’t finished, which would explain the stained bedspread and the cigarette smell.
But that still wouldn’t explain a shadow crossing over the upper deck.
Gripping the sides of the low chaise, Sasha called out, “Dammit, who’s there?” Bracing her feet, she readied herself to dash inside and lock the sliding doors. “Listen, whoever you are, I’m tired, my feet hurt and I’ve got a killer headache. You don’t want to mess with me!”
Okay, so she’d been reading a lot of thrillers lately—crime was a sad fact of life, even here in an oceanfront paradise. Like most of the upscale cottages, Driftwinds had a state-of-the art security system.
Which she hadn’t bothered to re-arm….
Well, shoot. She had the instructions written down somewhere—what numbers to punch in and how long to wait and what to do next. But she hadn’t planned on being here long today, so it simply hadn’t seemed worth the effort.
Uneasiness gave way to alarm. Oh, God—what if she had to run for it? She wasn’t exactly one of the kick-ass heroines that were so popular now. As much as she abhorred exercise, she had to admit there were times when physical fitness came in handy.
Crossing to the nearby wooden rail, she peered down at the paved parking below. The only car there was her own red convertible.
So it wasn’t Katie, and it wasn’t one of the cleaning crew. Warily, she glanced over her shoulder toward the outside stairs, half expecting to see someone step out onto the upper deck. The lack of logic didn’t bother her—she’d figure out later how someone downstairs could cast a shadow upstairs.
What was it everyone said? Get real?
Real fact number one: a work crew armed with pneumatic hammers had invaded her skull.
Real fact number two: she’d just finished her period, so her hormones were probably involved, too. Which didn’t help matters.
Real fact number three: she had probably imagined the whole thing.
Sighing heavily—again—she turned to go inside. That’s when she saw the figure silhouetted against the sunset on the upper deck of the cottage next door. The cottage that was supposed to be empty.
They stared at each other across the fifty or so feet of beach sand that separated the two elaborate cottages. He was holding something in his hand—something that was aimed directly at her.
A gun?
She swallowed hard and forgot to breathe. It was impossible to tell what it was from this distance. The only gun she’d ever met up close and personal was the old .410 her father used to use for squirrel-and rabbit-hunting.
The thing she was staring at now was small and squarish. Actually, it looked more like some kind of a camera than a gun, but then, there were all sorts of weird weapons in use these days. Tapers—tasters—something like that.
Common sense—admittedly not her greatest strength—said that if he’d meant her any harm, he would have made his move when she’d been lying there half-asleep and helpless. He was probably just taking pictures for one of the rental agencies. She would never even have noticed him if his shadow hadn’t passed over her.
Against the low-angled sun, she couldn’t make out his features, but his silhouette indicated broad shoulders that tapered to narrow hips before his body disappeared behind the deck railing. Before she could clamp down on it, her imagination supplied a few more details, and she turned away in disgust.
“It has to be these flaming hormones,” she muttered. For all she knew he could be an escaped prisoner who’d spent the winter hiding out in a closed cottage, which was a whole lot more comfortable than hiding out in the mountains like Eric whatsisname, that guy who had eluded the FBI for about a dozen years. Only now that the season was about to get underway, he had to get out and find another hiding place. As for those shoulders, he’d probably developed them busting rocks on a chain gang. Maybe that thing he was holding was one of those gizmos that broke glass or read the combination on a wall safe, or—
She simply had to stop reading so much romantic suspense!
What was that old saying about the better part of valor? In the stress of the moment it escaped her, but right now the better part of valor was slipping inside where she’d left her purse and dialing 911 on her cell phone, just in case. Like any sensible woman, which she devoutly hoped she was, but secretly suspected she wasn’t, Sasha had the emergency number on speed dial.
Pretending nonchalance, she crossed to the sliding doors, slipped inside and looked around frantically for her purse, breathlessly watching over her shoulder for someone to burst through the door.
“Hello? Yes, this is Sasha Lasiter. I’m at Driftwinds cottage in Kitty Hawk.” She gave the milepost and the street number—at least she remembered that much. “Look, there’s a man in the cottage next door that’s supposed to be closed, and either he’s pointing a weapon or taking pictures of me. Yes, I’m sure!” she replied indignantly when asked. “Well, whatever that thing is he’s holding, he was aiming it at me.”
Maybe he was—maybe he wasn’t, but if she wanted help she needed to make out a worst-case scenario. “Look, I know—”