Excerpt of Beachcomber by Karen Robards

Prologue

Right after I was elected governor of Texas, we were in turmoil trying to put things together, hire staff, move into the capitol office, and move from my house to the Governor's Mansion. In the midst of all this, we got a notice that the Queen of England was coming to Austin. It is a real undertaking to entertain the queen. We had to go to "entertain the queen school" to learn how to act around her. Secret Service flew in from Washington to tell us where we could and could not go and what we could and could not do. On the day she was to arrive, I was in my office at the capitol when I got the call saying the queen was at the airport. I went tearing down the stairs and running across the rotunda to meet her on the capitol steps and my mother's voice went through my head as clear as a bell saying, "Where do you think you are going, to see the Queen of England?" And I thought, Yes, Mama, I am!

Chapter 1

Two weeks later...

Sometimes in life, when one thing goes wrong it triggers another and another until disasters end up multiplying around you like horny rabbits. Unfortunately, Christy Petrino was getting the nasty suspicion that this just might be one of those times.

She was being followed as she walked along the moonlit beach. She knew it. Knew it with a certainty that made her heart pound and her breathing quicken and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickle to attention. Someone was behind her. She felt eyes on her, hostility directed at her, the intangible vibes of another presence, with a sense that was more trustworthy yet less dependably there than the usual five. Tonight, as it typically did when it hit her, this sixth sense of hers made a mockery of sight and sound, smell, touch, and taste. She'd learned in a hard school to trust it implicitly.

Please, God...Fear curled inside her quicker than a coiling snake. Like any other good Catholic girl trembling on the brink of danger, she turned to a higher power for help even though it had been an embarrassingly long time since she had actually been inside a church. Hopefully, God wasn't keeping score.

I'll go to Mass this Sunday, I swear. I mean, I promise. Just let this be my imagination.

Clutching the slender can of Mace that was her next line of defense against the dangers that lurked in the night, she did her best to dismiss what her sixth sense was telling her even as she brought her other five senses to bear. The rush and hiss of the ocean as it lapped practically at her feet filled her ears. It drowned out all other sounds, not that it was likely that she would have heard any pursuing footsteps anyway, given the sound- deadening properties of the beach, she realized as her own steps faltered. Casting a compulsive glance over her shoulder, she saw nothing behind her but an empty seascape barely illuminated by dusky moonlight. Considering that it was after one in the morning and a drenching summer squall had done its bit to add to the suffocating humidity only an hour or so earlier, the fact that there was absolutely no one around could not be considered sinister: the family types that populated this particular stretch of Ocracoke's ocean frontage during August were doubtless all sound asleep inside their snug summer cottages. Except for those darkened cottages, set well back from the beach and barely visible over the rolling dunes, there was nothing to see but the lighthouse in the distance, willowy sea oats blowing in the rising wind that pushed a rippling line of whitecaps toward shore, and the pale narrow curve of the beach itself as it crooked like a bent finger out into the midnight blue of the Atlantic.

She was alone. Of course she was alone.

Letting out a sigh of relief, she cast her eyes skyward. Thank you, God. I'll be there front row center on Sunday, I sw -- promise.

Then her pesky sixth sense reared its unwelcome head again.

"Are you being paranoid or what?" Christy muttered the question aloud. But accusing herself of paranoia didn't help. She started walking back to the house with -- okay, she'd admit it -- mounting fear.

She didn't like being afraid. Being afraid ticked her off. Growing up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on the wrong side of I-5 in the less-than-aptly named neighborhood of Pleasantville, she'd learned early on that if you showed fear you were liable to get your butt kicked, or worse. A girl whose father was dead and whose mother worked all day and partied all night had to be able to take care of herself -- and, in Christy's case, her two little sisters as well. She'd learned to be tough and she'd learned to be confident in her ability to handle anything life threw her way. Now, at twenty-seven, she was five feet seven inches tall, rendered fashionably slim and fit by dint of much effort, with medium brown hair that just brushed her shoulders, cocoa brown eyes, and a face that wasn't exactly beautiful but wouldn't send grown men screaming for the exits either. She was, in other words, all grown up, a lawyer -- of all unbelievable things -- with a life that until three days ago had been as close to perfect as she could make it.

Now it was blown to smithereens. And she was afraid.

"Wimp," she said under her breath as she walked on. There was nothing -- well, probably nothing -- to be afraid of. After all, she'd done what they wanted. She'd come here to the beach house on Ocracoke and stayed put, waiting for a phone call. When the call had finally come half an hour ago, she'd done exactly as she'd been told: take the briefcase down the beach to the Crosswinds Hotel and put it in the backseat of a gray Maxima parked by the pool. What was in the briefcase she didn't know. Didn't want to know. All she wanted to do was get rid of it, which she had just done. In doing so, she'd purchased the keys to her prison.

It was over. She was free.

God, she hoped so. The truth was, if she was really, really lucky, and said her rosary fifteen times and buried a statue of St. Jude, patron saint of impossible causes, upside down in the surf, then maybe she would be free.

Or maybe not.

So call her a pessimist. Some people got visited by the blue bird of happiness. The bird that fluttered periodically through her life was more like the gray bird of doubt. Doubt that sunshine and roses were ever going to be a permanent fixture in the life of Christina Marie Petrino. Doubt that a pink Caddy with Happily Ever After written on it was ever going to pull into her own personal parking space. It was that doubt that kept suspicion percolating through her brain now, that made her imagine bogeymen in the shadows and threats in the whisper of the wind as she trudged back along the beach.

They had no reason to come after her. She had done nothing to them.

Except know too much.

Despite the humid warmth of the night, Christy shivered.

"Do this one thing for me," Uncle Vince had said. Remembering how she had been intercepted on the way to her mother's house and pushed into the backseat of a car where he'd been waiting, she swallowed. For the first time in her life, she'd been afraid of Uncle Vince, who'd been her mother's off-and-on boyfriend for the last fifteen years. Christy hadn't grown up in Pleasantville for nothing. She recognized a threat when she heard it. Uncle Vince had been a made man when Tony Soprano had been no more than a gleam in his daddy's eye, and his "request" had been on the order of one of those offers you didn't want to refuse.

But now she'd done what he'd asked, she reminded herself, walking faster now, in a hurry to get back inside the house even though she was (almost) sure there was no real reason to do what her instincts were screaming at her to do and get the heck off the beach. She'd delivered the briefcase. They knew now that she was loyal, that she wasn't going to go running to anybody, much less the cops. So she'd quit her job. Big deal. People did it all the time. So she'd said buh-bye to her fiancé. People did that, too. All over the world, employees quit and engaged couples broke up and nobody died. Just because Michael DePalma, who had been her boss at the up-and-coming Philadelphia law firm of DePalma and Lowery as well as her fiancé, had said Don't you know you can't quit? After what Franky told you, do you really think they're going to let you just walk away? did not mean that she was now first in line to get whacked.

Did it?

Maybe Uncle Vince, or somebody else, had decided that something more was needed in the way of ensuring her continued silence. Something permanent. Because she could still feel someone behind her in the dark. Watching her. Waiting. The picture that popped into her mind was of a hunter carefully stalking his prey.

The idea of herself as prey did nothing for Christy's blood pressure.

Drawing a deep breath, trying not to panic, Christy tightened her hold on the Mace can, and strained to identify shadowy shapes rendered spooky by darkness. Oh God, what was that -- and that -- and that? Her heart skipped a beat as she spotted possible threats. Only slowly did it resume a more even rhythm as she realized that the motionless rectangle that lay ahead of her that she'd first thought might be a man squatting in the surf was, on more careful inspection, a lounge chair left close by the water's edge; while the towering, swaying triangle - - a man's head and shoulders? -- rising menacingly over the top of a nearby dune was nothing more than a partially furled beach umbrella in its stand; and the round object -- someone hunkered down? -- just visible beside a patio fence was the protruding rear tire of a bicycle left trustingly outside.

Nothing but harmless, everyday, island-variety objects as far as the eye could see. As Christy told herself that, her alarm faded a little but refused to disappear entirely. The niggling sense of being watched, of another presence -- of danger -- was too strong to be routed by lack of visual confirmation. Wrapping her bare arms around herself, she continued to warily probe the darkness with every sense she could bring to bear. She stood very still, with the loose, ankle-length green gauze dress she had pulled on for her beach adventure blowing tight against her legs and her toes burrowing into the sand. Stars played peekaboo with drifting clouds overhead; a fingernail moon floated high in the black velvet sky; frothing with foam, waves slapped the sand, withdrew, and rolled in again, beach music with a never-ending rhythm that should have been comforting but under these disquieting circumstances was not. She listened and watched and breathed, tasting the salt tang on her lips as she wet them, smelling the briny ocean in the deep, lung- expanding breaths she deliberately drew in an effort to steady her jangled nerves.

"Okay, Christy, get a grip." Talking to herself was probably not a good sign. No, she realized glumly, it was definitely not a good sign. If she was getting a little crazy, she thought as she quickened her pace toward the small, single-story house that was now beckoning like an oasis, that should fall under the category of Just One More Big Surprise. She was up to her neck in disasters, and there was no telling where another one of those horny little rabbits was going to pop up next. Ordinarily she loved Ocracoke; she'd vacationed here at least half a dozen times in the past. Use of the beach house was an occasional perk of her mother's special friendship with Uncle Vince. But now this tiny beach community in North Carolina's Outer Banks was starting to feel like it had been ripped right out of the pages of a Stephen King novel. A vision of Blackbeard's ghost -- the notorious pirate was said to haunt Ocracoke's beaches, his severed head tucked under his arm -- shadowing her along the water's edge popped into her mind, raising goose bumps on her arms. Which was ridiculous, of course. Who believed in ghosts? Not she, but -- the phrase that kept running through her head was, something wicked this way comes.

Dear God, I'll go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of my life if you'll just get me safely out of here.

She had to calm down and think this through.

If someone truly was behind her, if this terrifying sense of a hostile presence stalking her through the night was not just a product of overabundant imagination and overwrought nerves, then, clearly, it behooved her to get the heck off the beach. If she ran, anyone who happened to be back there would know she was on to them. If she walked, anyone who happened to be back there just might catch up.

That was the clincher. Yanking her skirt clear of her knees, she ran.

The sand was warm and gritty underfoot, dotted with puddles and strewn here and there with webs of stringy seaweed. Moonlight glinted on the clear blob of a jellyfish as it came tumbling toward her, rolling along on the outer edges of the inrushing tide. Fighting bubbling panic, gasping for breath, her heart beating a hundred miles a minute, her straining legs only wishing they could pump as fast, she pushed everything from her mind but the urgent need to get off that beach. The sound of the surf effectively deafened her; blowing strands of her hair whipping in front of her face all but blinded her. She couldn't hear so much as the slap of her own feet hitting the beach; she could barely see where she was going. But she could feel -- and what she was feeling terrified her.

Her five senses be damned: at the moment only the sixth one mattered. And it was telling her that she was in imminent danger. There was someone behind her, giving chase -- hunting her.

In the very act of casting what must have been the dozenth in a series of frightened glances over her shoulder, Christy tripped over something and went down.

She hit hard. Her knees gouged twin pits in the sand. Her palms thudded and sank. Her teeth clinked together with a force that sent pain shooting through the joint that connected her jaws. Salt spray hit her in the face as a large wave broke with particular enthusiasm just yards away.

Stunned to have been so abruptly catapulted onto all fours, she registered all that in an instant. She'd tripped. What had she tripped over? A piece of driftwood? What?

He's coming. Move.

Heart leaping as her own personal early warning system went off in spades, Christy obeyed, scrambling to her feet and at the same time instinctively glancing back to see what had felled her. Not that it mattered. Whoever was out there was closing in fast. She could sense him behind her, almost feel him....

A slender arm, inert and pale as the sand itself, lay inches behind her feet. Realizing just what had tripped her, Christy was momentarily shocked into immobility. Then her widening gaze followed the limb down to the back of a head covered with a tangle of long, wet-looking dark hair, narrow shoulders and waist and hips, rounded buttocks, long legs. A woman lay there, sprawled facedown in the sand. She was wet, naked as far as Christy could tell, with one arm stretched out across the beach as if she had been trying to crawl toward the safety of the houses. She didn't move, didn't make a sound, didn't appear to so much as breathe.

She looked dead.

Then her hand moved, slender fingers closing convulsively on sand, and her body tensed as if she were trying without success to propel herself forward.

"Help...please..."

Had Christy really heard the muttered words? Or had she just imagined them? The pounding surf coupled with the frantic beating of her own pulse in her ears was surely enough to block out even much louder sounds. But...

"I'm here," Christy said as she crouched, touching the back of the woman's hand with equal parts caution and concern. As her fingertips made contact with cold, sand- encrusted skin, a swift rush of pity tightened her throat. Poor thing, poor thing...

The woman's fingers twitched as if in acknowledgment of her touch.

"La...law..."

There was no mistake: she really heard the broken syllables, although this time they made no sense. The woman was not dead, but she seemed not far from it. Something terrible must have happened. Some kind of terrible accident.

"It's all ri -- " Christy began, only to break off as her peripheral vision picked up on something moving. She glanced up, beyond the woman, to see a man perhaps three hundred yards away, slogging past the dunes that had concealed him up until that point, headed inexorably toward her, head down as he followed the footprints -- her footprints -- that even she could plainly see in the sand. Her pursuer! For vital seconds she had forgotten all about him. Terror stabbed through her now, swift and sharp as an arrow. Her heart leaped into her throat. He was little more than a bulky shape in the uncertain moonlight, but this was no ghost, no figment of her imagination. He was unmistakably there. Unmistakably real. The Mother of All Rabbits in a dark jogging suit with the moonlight glinting off something shiny in one hand.

A gun?

Even as she gaped at him, he lifted his head. It was impossible to see his face, his features, anything more than the sheer bulk of him. But she could feel his gaze on her, feel the menace rushing toward her as he looked at her and realized that she was looking back. For an instant, a dreadful, blood-freezing instant, they connected, hunter and prey zeroing in on each other through the imperfectly concealing darkness.

All thoughts of trying to help the woman were instantly forgotten as that sixth sense of hers went haywire, signaling bad news and screaming at her to move! Propelled by an acute attack of self-preservation, Christy leaped to her feet. Letting loose with a scream that could have been heard clear back in Atlantic City, she ran for her life.