Page 122 of Our Little Secret
Damn it!
When he didn’t answer Brooke slid her burner phone from the back pocket of her jeans and texted:
I’m here.
On your boat.
We need to talk.
Face-to-face.
That should do it.
Throw his own demands back at him.
Water dripped on the screen, but it remained dark.
The seconds ticked by.
Come on, damn you, answer!
Minutes passed.
No response.
She blinked against the rain.
Checked her watch.
Obviously he wasn’t going to answer and she couldn’t stand out here all night, bracing herself against the storm.
But his bike is here.
He must be somewhere.
Fine.
She eased around the deck, shouting his name, peering into the dark, shivering from the cold.
Where are you?
The surrounding boats undulated with the ripple of the water. Tall masts, spindly and skeletonlike, knifed upward to the roiling sky.
But all aboard theMedusawas quiet.
Circumnavigating the wet deck, she stepped carefully, bracing herself in case he was hiding, involved in a sick game, ready to pounce from some hiding place. Carefully, shoulders soaked, she made a full rotation.
Nothing.
Just the wind battering the boats, rain pattering the deck.
Was he in the dark cabin?
Asleep at this early hour?
Or lying in wait? The hairs on the back of her neck prickled upward, her pulse jumped, but she clamped down on her rising sense of panic. She hadn’t come all this way for nothing. Now that her nerve was up she wanted to end it.
Setting her jaw, she started for the stairs to the dark cabin below.
