Storm Surge. Celia Ashley

nodded again.

      “I’m going to go. Lock the door behind me.”

      Forcing herself to her feet, Paige followed him and threw the deadbolt once he’d stepped outside. Eyeing the rumpled rug, she went over to the bed and yanked the heavy iron frame a few inches at a time until she’d centered a leg over the trapdoor. She threw herself belly first on the mattress, ignoring the sand spattering from her jeans across the coverlet. Dropping her head onto her folded arms, she began to cry.

      Chapter 7

      The keyboard’s clatter filled the room. Liam kept his office sparse. No soft surfaces to deaden sound. No personal mementos. No tennis ball to bounce off the wall when thought processes had stalled. He had his desk, his laptop, an external hard drive for photos, and a stack of books on the floor near the window. He preferred the barren workspace to a place cluttered with distractions. Because the types of distraction he would have chosen would elicit memories, and memories could do nothing at this point but renew guilt and pain. He’d been learning to release in stages the scorching culpability haunting him. Avoidance helped. His unexpected attraction to Paige Waters did not.

      In the monitor’s lower right-hand corner the digital clock read three-forty-five. Liam pushed his fingers through his hair and then rubbed his hand down the side of his face, feeling beneath his palm’s calloused flesh the raised cicatrix along his jaw. Paige had asked how he’d received it. Not one to hold back, that woman. Something on her mind, out it came from her mouth. Presumably unedited, but he could be wrong. She might have a lot more rolling around in interior dialogue she didn’t bother to voice.

      Liam leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms above his head. When he brought them back down, he tapped through the shortcut on the keys to save his work and shut the laptop, waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust to darkness before rising and moving to the window.

      The quarter moon had been a sickle in the sky late in the afternoon but had set some time ago, leaving the sky as black as a crow’s wing spangled with dew. The shipping lanes were empty, making it impossible to discern the sea from the dark dome above. Liam could barely make out the spume against the rocky shoreline. He pressed close to the windowpane, the glass cooling the healed, ridged skin, and recalled how he hadn’t known he’d been cut, how he hadn’t felt the pain, how he had mistaken the blood pouring from the wound to soak his shirt as salt water and sweat.

      He thought of Paige then, wondering if her insomnia had worsened after the incident at her cottage two nights ago. He hadn’t seen her, not even a glimpse, and he’d been watching. Did she keep her door locked now? It might not even matter. Her curiosity and all she wanted to know could prove her undoing. The truth would destroy her. It might very well destroy him.

      * * * *

      Paige had taken to sleeping with the light on over the stove. Before dawn, she rose from bed and crossed the floor, smacking the switch to the off position in defiance. Whatever had taken place the other night, she didn’t understand it, but nothing had been stolen, nothing disturbed. She would much rather forget the whole thing, yet she didn’t plan to move the bed from its position over the trapdoor.

      Returning to the mattress, she sat in the gloom with her feet tucked up and her arms around her knees, listening to the first stirrings of songbirds in the bushes outside. When the sun peeked over the horizon, they would be in full form. By that time, she hoped to be climbing into her car and heading north. Dan had called last night with the name of the harbor from which he believed her father’s boat had sailed on its last trip into the wide, blue sea.

      Her stomach knotted as she thought about unearthing that part of the puzzle. After what she’d learned about the long ago visit of the police to her home, she wasn’t sure she should bother to try. The fact the authorities had been called only confirmed what she’d always understood about her father’s predilection toward violence. She would be better off not discovering any more. She had been better off not knowing him, hadn’t she?

      She ground her teeth together. With effort, Paige relaxed her jaw, drawing and releasing several long breaths through her nose. Her eyes stung with unshed tears. She leapt from bed and snatched clean clothes from the tiny wardrobe. After dressing, she ran a hasty comb through her hair and pulled the curls back into a loose ponytail. No doubt by the time she reached her destination, she’d have to arrange it again since she liked driving with the windows open.

      Deciding she would stop along the way for breakfast, Paige grabbed a granola bar and shoved it into the recesses of her purse. On the doorstep, she double-checked the lock three times. The action might be obsessive-compulsive, but the last thing she wanted to do was doubt herself an hour down the road.

      In the car, Paige hesitated before turning the engine over, her fingers wrapped around the keys dangling from the ignition. Although it was light enough to see shapes in muted colors, the sun had not yet risen. Looking toward her father’s house, Paige realized she could see the structure from the cottage driveway. The second floor with its steeply pitched roof peeked above the rhododendrons and pines between. Beneath the soffit overhang, a rectangle of radiating light indicated that an upstairs lamp had been turned on.

      Paige exited the car. She hadn’t seen Liam since the night she’d found him in her cottage. The hour was too early for visiting, but she found herself walking in the direction of the house anyway. She certainly wouldn’t knock on the door, but if he was up and about and noticed her, she’d make up some excuse for being there. She had wanted to talk to him, to measure his reaction to her since the “event.” Dan had implied Liam had lied to her, to both of them. She only wanted the truth…but perhaps only her version of the truth: the man who’d sparked her interest was a man she could trust.

      Fat chance, she thought, coming to an abrupt halt. If she had an interest, that meant she’d already recognized a fatal flaw in him. Such was her modus operandi.

      Pivoting on her heel to return to her car, movement in the window caught her attention and she ducked behind the evergreen branches. Illuminated from within, Liam passed the glass panes. From her vantage point, the view of his naked back and his tousled black hair caused an embarrassing flush to heat her skin. Still, she kept her eyes on him for a few seconds longer. Long enough to see a shadow pass along the wall behind him. He wasn’t alone.

      Paige hurried back toward her car and slid into the driver’s seat, where she gripped the wheel with both hands and stared through the windshield at the clapboard wall before her. What more fatal flaw could there be than a previous commitment? “You’re a fool, Paige Waters,” she muttered, and started the engine.

      As she headed north on the main highway, Paige wondered if everything about her quest would prove to be a blunder. If she had any sense, she’d turn the car around and head back to Nashville. She had a life there. This…this was someone else’s life, not hers. Not anymore.

      * * * *

      By the time Paige reached her destination, she’d calmed down considerably. The first thing she noted about the town was the tourist factor. That made sense. If her father had earned a living by taking people out on his sailboat, no better place than where vacationers sought a thrill. After parking her car in a five-dollar lot, Paige smoothed her unruly hair back into the band and climbed out, intending to head first to the expansive dock. If she could get the boat owners to open up, they might be a source of decent information. She’d only gone a half-block, though, when she spotted a sign for a local newspaper above a shop door. She walked in expecting to purchase one, but instead found herself in the establishment itself. Through an open doorway in the back, she heard the clatter of printers and smelled the scent of ink.

      “Well,” she said to the woman behind the counter, “this is a welcome sight.”

      The woman arched her brows.

      “So many papers have gone out of business,” Paige explained. “Most people want to read their news online. I like a paper in my hands.”

      “Gotcha,” the woman said with a grin. “Can I help you with something?”

      “I