girl. “You can’t keep following me.”
“I wasn’t. I was making—” She cut herself off by slapping shut the tablet.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“I don’t tell strangers my name.”
He nodded. “Do you live on the island?”
“For now.”
“Will you stop bothering me if I tell you my name?” She weighed the question, so he added an extra tidbit to tip the scales. “It’s not Potter.”
Her eyes got big. “Then you’re a renter.”
“More or less. The name’s Sean Rafferty. I’m from Worcester, Massachusetts, originally, but now I live in Holden. It’s a small town.”
The girl smiled. “I was guessing Boston, ’cause of the accent.”
“I’ve lived there, too. I’m on vacation for two weeks. And that’s all you need to know.” He made the shooing motion again, but it worked about as well on little girls as it did on his elder neighbor’s cats. He pointed at the path, doing his best imitation of his first duty sergeant. Or his father, a decorated trooper who’d run a tight outfit at home. “Go. Now.”
She went, reluctantly, looking small and alone.
Sean waited a couple more minutes, debating with himself while pine siskins hopped from branch to branch, nattering in chirps that punctuated his thoughts. A couple of teenagers came barreling down the path on mountain bikes, whooping back and forth harmlessly enough, but that settled it. Sean took the path to the right. He could just as easily walk down-island as up.
The girl soon realized she was being followed. She sped up, not liking it any more than he had.
In a short while, the path emerged from the woods and they were on the hard-packed dirt and gravel of Cliff Road. Beyond an ancient post-and-beam fence, sheer cliffs dropped into the booming surf.
After another quarter mile, the road veered inland again, losing the ocean view to a copse of pines. The girl scurried past gates guarding a couple of the larger island estates before turning between a pair of mossy stone pillars. A heavy iron gate that bore a scrolled initial S stood open. A plaque on one of the pillars read Peregrine House.
A poor little rich girl? Sean hadn’t figured her for that.
The estate’s gravel driveway led into a thick forest. The girl had already disappeared, but he could’ve sworn she’d turned off too quickly, into the woods. Maybe she was fooling with him, planning to double back.
He strode through the pillars, looking off into the woods, trying to pick up the girl’s trail.
“Hey!” a woman shouted.
Sean halted at the start of a woodsy path so narrow it was almost grown in by the crowded foliage. He saw the peak of a red-roofed cottage among the trees.
A woman charged down the main driveway, spewing pebbles in her wake. Corkscrew curls of dark red hair bounced around her face, which was suffused with color.
He lowered his sunglasses, taking a good long look.
“Hey, you, mister,” she accosted him. One fist raised. “What do you think you’re doing, following my daughter home?”
CHAPTER TWO
SEAN SURRENDERED WITH his hands up. “Uh, hey. It’s not what you think.”
“Pippa?” the woman called. “Pippa, are you all right?” She aimed a finger at Sean before heading toward the overgrown trail. “Don’t you dare move. I want to talk to you.”
Sean remained frozen. She said talk the way his mother used to, when he and his brothers had been raising hell in the neighborhood and she’d resorted to threatening them with a talk from their father. The talk was usually a scolding, sometimes followed by a licking when the crime had been particularly heinous.
The girl had reappeared. “Jeez, Mom. Why are you yelling?”
So her name’s Pippa, Sean thought, but his gaze was on the mother. With the wild red hair and the fighting attitude, she was the spitting image of her daughter. Except that the chubbiness around Pippa’s middle had migrated in different directions in the mother, giving her an hourglass figure on a petite frame.
The woman gripped her daughter’s shoulders. She bent to stare into the child’s downcast eyes. “Are you okay, Pippa? Did this man try to hurt you?”
Pippa looked up with an owl-eyed blink. Her lower lip stuck out. “No, Mom.”
“We only talked,” Sean said.
“You talked?” The mother wheeled on him. “What are you doing, talking to a ten-year-old girl in the middle of nowhere? There’s something fishy going on here.” She looked ready to tear his head off with her hands, but she swallowed hard and turned back toward her child. “I’m warning you right now, buster. Stay away from my daughter.”
“That’s fine.” Sean flicked his chin toward the girl. “You be sure to tell her to keep away from me, too.”
The mother had Pippa in a headlock, crushed to her bosom. She threw him a look. “You can bet on that. And I’ll also be talking to the Jonesport police about strange men who prowl the woods looking for…” She snorted. “Conversation.”
Sean was running short on patience, but he jammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and retreated a few steps so he wouldn’t appear threatening. “I only followed her because—”
“Then you admit it.” The mother clutched Pippa even tighter before abruptly releasing her. “Run up to the house now, Pip. I’ll be along in a minute.”
Pippa hesitated, grimacing as if she wanted to speak up. “Okay,” she finally whispered, then turned and ran off.
The mother advanced on Sean, her hands clenched and her chest heaving. He couldn’t help admire her ferocity, even if it was directed at him. He was Irish; he liked a woman with spirit. And the flaming hair didn’t hurt, either.
“Do I get to explain before I’m condemned?” he asked.
She tossed her head back. “Go ahead. Try and worm your way out of it. I know what I saw—you creeping after my little girl, glancing around to be sure no one was watching.”
He supposed he might have appeared furtive, although he was positive he hadn’t crept. “I followed her only to see that she got home safely. I swear on my honor, that’s all there was to it. No harm intended.”
“Right.” The woman folded her arms, regarding him skeptically. “And what about the ‘talk’?”
“I caught her following me through the woods. She was lurking around my cottage, too, yesterday and this morning.”
The woman’s eyes flickered, betraying the slightest hesitation. “I’m sure. So you’re blaming
