Under His Skin. Rita Herron

so peaceful. She craved the lulling sound of the ocean in the background, the warm fall air, the smell of the marsh and the sway of the palm trees in the late-night breeze. During the summer months when most of the cottages were inhabited, either by homeowners or renters, the island came alive with bikers, joggers, walkers and children. But fall sent vacationers home, and the island felt isolated, even deserted and eerie at times.

      Especially at the end of the street tucked back into the cove where she lived.

      Tonight, in light of the ghouls and goblins hanging on door fronts and trees, the recent wave of vandalism and stories of missing corpses, she felt on edge, as if someone was watching her. Someone who was waiting in the shadows, ready to leap out and grab her.

      Maybe she shouldn’t have returned to her parents’ home. It had stirred all kinds of memories. But pleasant ones mingled with the sad. The rare times when her father had taken vacation days, rented a fishing boat and taken her and Bruno fishing in the inlet. The crabbing expeditions in the marsh. The long walks on the beach searching for sea turtles and shells. Building sand sculptures and flying kites in the spring.

      Although her parents hadn’t died in this house, she thought about them more and more since she’d returned.

      She parked in the clamshell drive, lifted her hair off her neck to let the breeze brush her skin as she let herself in the cottage. The wind chimes on the front porch tinkled, and inside, lavender and cinnamon scented the air. Remembering the figure running into the woods the night before at the graveyard, she paused in the doorway, listening for an intruder. What if the man in the woods thought she had seen him?

      What if he came looking for her?

      Chapter Three

      Shivering, Grace flipped on the TV and checked the news while she ate a salad. Maybe they’d found the culprit and he was in jail now.

      The report was already midway: “Tonight, we’ve had another case of what the police believe to be vandalism.” The camera panned to a cemetery outside of town. “Someone flooded the graveyard by Shiloh Church, saturating the ground so badly that several feet of dirt washed away and caskets have risen to the surface. A Halloween prank or is someone robbing graves now?”

      Grace frowned and waited to see if they mentioned the corpse from the night before, but the reporter spent most of the segment on interviews at the church scene. Sighing, she chided herself for worrying, took her salad plate to the sink, rinsed it and stuck it in the dishwasher, then stepped outside on the back patio. The smell of the marsh assaulted her, and the sound of the ocean crashing against the shore filled her ears. But thunder rattled her nerves, and the wind brought the whisper of her brother’s voice.

      “Help me…”

      She froze. She must have imagined the words, had been thinking about Bruno too much lately because of these missing corpses.

      That and the fact that his killer had never been caught.

      Suddenly exhausted, she went back inside, stripped her clothes and slipped into a cool, cotton nightshirt. For a brief moment she allowed herself to think about Parker Kilpatrick, and imagined him beside her, watching her undress. Imagined him smiling as he ran his hands over her bare breasts. Imagined him erasing thoughts of dead bodies and replacing them with an erotic night of lovemaking.

      But the image of his frown when he’d told her to leave returned, drowning out the fantasy, and she crawled into bed, reminding herself that nothing could happen between them.

      He was a cop. She’d lost her mother and the two most important men in her life, everyone she had ever loved, to the job, and she refused to take the chance on that again. Besides, he wasn’t interested in her.

      Feeling claustrophobic, she left the window open so she could feel the breeze and hear the waves during the night and soon fell into a deep sleep.

      But rest didn’t come. Instead nightmares of her childhood did.

      THE STORM RAGED outside, shaking the walls and beating the thin windowpanes. She was seven years old, huddled in bed with her teddy bear, trying to drown out the noise by covering her ears with her hands. Her little brother had gone to a friend’s for the night, and she wanted to climb in bed with her parents, but her daddy told her earlier she had to be a big girl.

      Her chin wobbled as she fought tears. Suddenly a loud boom split the air. The storm?

      It sounded like thunder. No…someone had screamed.

      Her heart pounding, she slipped from bed and padded toward the door to the den. Mommy would hold her and make everything all right. Would keep her safe from the storm, and tell her the screams were all in her head.

      But when she peered through the crack in the door to the den, she saw her parents hovering together on the sofa. Her mommy was crying.

      Then she saw the other man. A big guy in black clothes with a ski mask over his face. He was waving a gun at her parents.

      Another streak of lightning fell across the room and he shoved her father back onto the sofa and pointed the gun at his head.

      Her mother screamed, then a gunshot blasted the air. Blood splattered the floor and walls. Grace closed her eyes and sank to the floor in horror, then covered her ears as a second shot blasted.

      Without looking she knew her parents were dead.

      TIME TO GO under the knife.

      Parker grimaced as the first strains of daylight stole into the hospital room. In spite of his resolve not to get involved with Grace Gardener, he searched the faces of the nurses for her sea-blue eyes. Another nurse prepped him for surgery and when she started to give him a shot to relax him before they transported him to the operating room, he finally accepted that Grace wasn’t coming.

      She had given up on being his friend. He’d driven her away.

      Good. He didn’t need or want her hovering over him. Doing him any favors. Smiling at him like he meant something special to her when she probably treated all her patients the same way.

      Besides, he knew she wanted answers about her brother’s death. Answers he didn’t have. As soon as he’d joined the precinct, the serial arsonist had struck and he and his partner had been swamped with the case.

      But when he got back on track, he’d investigate and see what he could find out about Bruno’s death. All he’d heard when he’d replaced the investigating cop was that Bruno had committed suicide, although some of the locals suspected he hadn’t killed himself. He’d been found with a bullet in his head and had fallen over a cliff. They wouldn’t have a body if a storm hadn’t washed it back in. Which made him suspicious.

      That was probably the only reason Grace had been so friendly. She wanted his help.

      Still, he felt a tug of disappointment in his chest that she hadn’t dropped by to see him this morning. Hadn’t he learned? People only used you when they needed something. Promises were only words that were broken.

      The medicine kicked in and his head became fuzzy, the room a kaleidoscope of beige on white that swirled in a drunken haze.

      Suddenly two blue circles appeared in the haze. Grace’s smiling eyes. Then her angelic voice penetrated the fog, calling his name.

      “You’re going to do great, Parker,” she whispered. “And when this is over, you’ll heal just like you want. One day you’ll walk out of here and we’ll never see you again.”

      He smiled, or at least he thought he did. His face felt funny, as if it was melting clay, and his lips seemed gluey, his tongue thick as if it was swollen inside his mouth.

      “I’ll see you when you wake up.” She squeezed his hand and he tried to squeeze back to let her know he heard, that he appreciated her visit, but he didn’t know if he’d actually moved his fingers.

      Then they were rolling him into a room with bright lights. The operating room. A mask slid over