do you think killed the girl? Who do you believe has come to kill you?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She touched the fingers of her free hand to the bruises on her neck. “I just know that he tried to before and almost succeeded.”
Some of the blankness faded away. Her green eyes were steady and focused as they stared into his, and she spoke again.
“He’s going to try again.”
A few hours later, Kayla was alone in the house again. Officer McGregor had left after he’d gotten the basic story of her attack. He’d promised to contact the Seattle Police Department for the official report in case the incident truly was related to the murder of the girl on the beach, but he had assured her that a connection was unlikely.
Cape Churn was a three-hour drive from Seattle, and by her own report, hardly anyone in Seattle knew where she had gone. The odds were very slim that her attacker would know how to find her. And yet, as Kayla stood barefoot at the window overlooking the road, she felt like a bird trapped in a gilded cage.
The scenery out the front of the cottage wasn’t quite as picturesque as out the back overlooking the ocean, but she could see when people drove up or passed by on the road.
For now, the ocean view had lost its appeal. Her easel stood beside the back window, the view as glorious as the day before, the sun high in the sky, casting brilliant light over rocky cliffs and steely gray water speckled with white-capped waves. But Kayla couldn’t find the right colors on her palette to start, an image of a body floating in the current swimming through her mind, taking away from all the glory of nature.
A woman had died pretty much outside her cottage the night before and she had heard her cry for help.
She couldn’t stop thinking about what would have happened to her if someone had not heard her cries for help back in Seattle. What if her attacker had finished her off, taking her life—and her baby’s life—the way someone had taken the life of the woman found on the beach?
“I messed up, Baby,” she murmured. “Maybe I could have helped that girl if I’d just realized …” She squeezed shut her eyes, pain twisting in her gut. “I let her down, and I’m so afraid of letting you down, too.”
She reached down to stroke her belly. “This place was supposed to be safe, a place where no one could hurt either of us, but now I’m not so sure. The worst part is that I just don’t know where that place would be.”
Her stomach rumbled, serving as a reminder to save her introspection until later and get to work on eating for two right now.
As she rattled around in the kitchen, she forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand. She couldn’t let herself dwell on her fears. It wouldn’t accomplish anything. Officer McGregor was probably right, anyway, that the attack was in no way related to hers. It was a tragedy—a horrible, senseless tragedy—but it wasn’t her fault. It had nothing to do with her at all.
So why couldn’t she believe that?
On the other side of town, Gabe McGregor pulled his police cruiser up next to the teenager walking his bicycle, slid the passenger-seat window down and leaned over so that he could see the boy’s face. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where were you?”
The teen shrugged. “Around.” He pushed his bike up one of the many hills surrounding Cape Churn.
Gabe kept pace, while tamping down his frustration. “We’ve been over this before. I don’t mind if you visit your friends, I’d just like to know when you do, where you’re going and when you’re headed home.”
“Kinda stalker-like, if you ask me.”
“Not the way I look at it.” Talking through the open window wasn’t any way to get through to a troubled teen. Gabe pulled ahead of Dakota and parked on the side of the road, blocking the boy’s path. He climbed out, smiled and waved at a passing car before resuming his conversation with the stranger who was his son.
He’d known about Dakota for only a matter of months. The boy’s mother hadn’t bothered to tell him that a son had resulted from his brief fling with the older woman back when Gabe was a teen. Siena had been twenty-five, Gabe had been a naive eighteen-year-old, flattered by an older woman’s attentions. He’d even imagined himself in love with her. She’d been on vacation with friends at Cape Churn. When she’d left, he hadn’t heard from her again, until four months ago.
Siena had shown up at Gabe’s apartment in Seattle long enough to tell him that he had a son. She’d pushed the boy carrying a single suitcase in front of her, stating she couldn’t handle him anymore. Then she’d left.
After the initial shock wore off, he realized he couldn’t raise a kid in downtown Seattle, especially not with the crazy hours he kept serving on the Seattle police force. He quit his job and moved home to Cape Churn. But nothing had prepared him for the difficulties of raising a teenage boy—a troubled one, at that. Apparently Dakota had gotten into a little legal trouble. It was nothing too serious, but he was on probation, and that had apparently been the straw that had broken the camel’s back when it came to Siena’s patience with their son.
Gabe pushed his hand through his hair, rather than pulling it out, and stood in front of Dakota. He needed instant dad lessons. “I don’t ask you to keep me informed because I want to stalk you. I ask you because I care.”
“Could you care a little less? I’m not a baby. I don’t need a keeper.” The words he didn’t say, but Gabe felt, were I don’t need you.
He let the implied meaning slide off his back. Whether or not Dakota thought he needed his father, he needed someone. And since Gabe was the only one he had, Dakota was stuck with him until he finished high school. Gabe didn’t give up easily. “No, I can’t care a little less. You’re my son.”
Dakota snorted.
Gabe’s lips pressed together to keep from saying something about the boy’s attitude. He remembered having a similar one when he was Dakota’s age. Thank goodness his parents hadn’t given up on him. “As I’ve told you before, I didn’t know about you until recently, or I would have been more involved as a parent all along. But I know about you now—you’re here, I care and we’re going to figure out this father-son thing if it kills us.”
Okay, so that wasn’t quite what he’d meant to say, but so be it. He’d tried all the textbook suggestions on getting through to a teen and they had worked no better.
“I want to know where you go so that I know you’re safe.”
“Really?” Dakota’s brows rose into the shaggy hair hanging down over his brow. “Like, this town has nothing goin’ on. Why wouldn’t I be safe?”
Gabe sucked in a deep breath, last night’s victim surfacing much too quickly. “I take it you haven’t heard.”
“Heard what?”
“About the woman found strangled on the beach this morning.”
That got his son’s attention. Dakota stared up at Gabe, his eyes narrowing. “You’re not pullin’ my leg just to get me to call, are you?”
Gabe’s lips pressed together into a thin line. “Wish
