and Kim were both staring at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“Oh, yeah, all my dad’s friends are, like, big, tough-guy nature freaks,” Amber said, staring at Beth. “Yeah right, the kind that open beer bottles with their teeth.”
“They are?” Kim asked, sounding very confused.
“At any rate, there will be a bunch of us. A couple of cops, even,” Beth said, realizing immediately how ridiculous that sounded.
Time to move on!
Tugging at the girls’ shoulders, she added, “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. We’d better get back to my brother before he misses us. We’re supposed to be helping with the setup.”
“We’ll see you, if you’re hanging around,” Kim told him cheerfully.
“Yes, nice to meet you,” Amber said.
“Bye, then,” Keith Henson said.
A plastic smile in place, Beth continued to force the girls away from the man and toward the beach where they’d come ashore in the dinghy. And where they would find her brother, she prayed. Surely he hadn’t gone wandering off.
“Aunt Beth,” Amber whispered, “what on earth is the matter with you? You were so weird to that man.”
Kimberly cleared her throat, “Um, actually, you were pretty rude,” she said hesitantly.
“He was alone, he appeared out of nowhere—and we had just found a skull,” Beth said, after glancing back to assure herself that they were out of earshot.
“You said you weren’t sure if it was a skull or not,” Kim said.
“I wasn’t sure—I’m not sure.”
“But it looked like he just got here, too,” Amber said. “And the skull—it is a skull, isn’t it?—had been there a while.”
“Criminals often return to the scene of the crime,” Beth said, quoting some program or other, and anxiously moving forward.
Amber burst out laughing. “Aunt Beth! Okay, so you got the heebie-jeebies. But puh-lease. Did you see a gun on him?”
“Or anywhere he could have stuffed one?” Kim asked, giggling.
They weren’t such bad questions, really.
“No,” Beth admitted.
“So why were you so rude?” Amber persisted.
Beth groaned. “I don’t know. I guess when you think you might have found a skull, you become very careful about your own health and well-being, okay?”
“Okay,” Amber said after a moment. “He looked like a decent guy.”
“He probably is.”
Kim giggled suddenly. “He was hot.”
“He’s way too old for you guys,” Beth replied a little too sharply.
“So is Brad Pitt, but that doesn’t mean he’s not hot,” Amber said, shaking her head as if it was a sadly difficult thing to deal with adults.
“Right,” Beth murmured.
A thud sounded from behind. Beth jumped, ready to cover the girls with her own body against any threatened danger.
“Aunt Beth,” Amber said, “it was a palm frond.”
Beth exhaled. “Right,” she murmured.
The girls were looking at one another again. As if they had to be very careful with her.
As if she were losing her mind.
“Come on, let’s find your dad,” Beth said to Amber.
THE WOMAN HAD TO BE ONE OF the strangest he’d ever come across, Keith decided, watching as the threesome walked away.
She’d acted as if she’d been hiding something.
As if she was guilty of…something.
He shook his head. No, not with those two teens at her side. They were far too innocent and friendly for anything to have been going on. Not that teens couldn’t be guilty of a lot. But he had learned to be a pretty good judge of character, and those two were simply young and friendly, like a pair of puppies, fresh and eager to explore the world, expecting only good things from it.
But as for the woman…
Beth Anderson. She and the tall girl were obviously related. Both had the same very sleek dark hair. Not dead straight, but lush and wavy. And Beth had the kind of eyes that picked up the elements, that could be dark or light, that held a bit of the exotic, the mysterious. Very nicely built, which was more than evident, since all three were in two-piece suits. She appeared to be in her mid to late twenties, naturally sensual and sexy, though not in an overt way. Athletic. With shapely legs that went forever…
She was compellingly attractive.
And a little crazy.
No. Frightened.
Of him?
This was his first trip to Calliope Key. But he surely looked the part. So why had he appeared so menacing to her?
She wouldn’t ever have come to the island with the girls if she had been afraid of something from the get-go. So…?
They must have found something.
He looked quickly around the clearing. There was nothing immediately evident that would have disturbed anyone, whatever they’d found had to be right around where they had been standing.
For a moment everything in him seemed to tighten and burn; his jaw locked. The heat of anger filled him, the raging sense of fury that the world was never just, and no effort on his part could change that.
And that was part of the reason he was here, he reminded himself, though he kept that fact private. Keep your eye on the prize—that was the standing order. There was one objective. Find what they were seeking, and do it discreetly. Then the rest would fall into place. He hoped. He wasn’t certain anyone else really believed that, and he would be damned if he even knew what he believed himself.
He heard his name called. It was Lee.
He forced a deep breath, aware that he had to tamp down his emotions over his current situation.
He shouted back, “I’m over here.”
A minute later, Lee Gomez and Matt Albright appeared in the clearing. “What’s going on?” Lee asked him. Half-Ecuadorian and half-American mutt, Lee had brilliant blue eyes and pitch-dark hair, and skin that never seemed to mind the sun.
“Not much. Met a woman and two girls—they’re
