Still Waters: The Island / Below the Surface

She still felt so ridiculously awkward.

“We’ll talk soon,” he said.

She nodded, hoping she looked casual, carefree.

“I will find you,” he said softly.

“Finding me won’t be very difficult,” she murmured.

“Strange timing, huh?”

She didn’t know exactly what he meant. And she couldn’t ask him. She couldn’t stand being so close to him any longer, with so very much unsaid.

She had to escape, and she did, reaching her brother’s dinghy before the others.

As Ben revved his little motor to life, he laughed with the girls as they raved about the Sea Serpent. She was grateful she didn’t have to speak. She kept a smile plastered to her face as she lifted a hand in farewell to the men standing on deck.

Soon Ben had set their course for home. She reflected that she hadn’t even said goodbye to the others—any of the Masons, or Brad and Sandy. The Masons she would see again, and as for Brad and Sandy...

Thinking of the pair still gave her an uneasy feeling.

She looked away from the yacht at last and turned her gaze westward, toward the Florida coast. It would all come into perspective, she told herself.

She would get home. She would believe she had been silly, that she couldn’t have seen a skull. That nothing had been going on during their stay on the island. No one had lurked around with evil intent.

And as for Keith...

She would stop thinking about him eventually. In her mind, he would lose the charismatic appeal that had all but obsessed her. She would remember him as a man. As someone special she had once met. Handsome, virile, exciting...but too laid-back, too ready to enjoy good times with his friends, too lacking in ambition.

It would all come into perspective....

But things always came back around to one fact.

She was certain she had seen a skull.

Just as she was certain there was something about Keith. No matter how appealing the man might be, he simply wasn’t what he seemed.

There had been an honesty in the way he’d touched her, but only lies had fallen from his lips.

7 (#u4fb49ff0-0a38-5ef7-adfe-d67986476231)

“I admit to still being confused,” redheaded Ashley Dilessio said, easing back in her chair at Nick’s, her uncle’s restaurant on the bay.

Nick’s was everything good about the area, Beth thought. Boats came in to dock, houseboats were moored nearby, and anyone was welcome. The tables were rough wood, an overhang sheltered the outside seating from the sun, and it felt like a continuation of island living in the midst of a hectic, overpopulated, multicultural community.

Not to take anything away from the yacht club, she decided a little defensively. The two establishments were just different. And of course part of Nick’s appeal was that she’d known Ashley most of her life.

Now Ashley was with the police force, in the forensics department, and her husband, Jake, was a homicide detective.

“Okay, you got to the island. You walked with the kids. You thought you saw a skull. A man showed up—you hid it. You went back with Ben, and there was no skull,” Ashley said, her green eyes studying Beth with a slight frown wrinkling her forehead.

“That’s the gist of it, yes. Ben thinks I saw a conch shell,” Beth said, her tone a little sheepish. “It might be nothing, it might be something. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Ted and Molly Monoco.”

“I remember the story, but... I thought they were sailing around the world,” Ashley said. “No wonder no one’s seen them.”

“But what if it was a skull?”

“You said that whatever you saw was gone when you went back.”

“Maybe I just couldn’t find it,” Beth persisted.

Ashley stirred her straw around in the large glass of iced tea in front of her. “This isn’t my jurisdiction, or even Jake’s, you know.”

“But you have contacts,” Beth reminded her.

Ashley nodded thoughtfully.

Beth let out a deep sigh. “Shouldn’t someone check it out?”

“Yes,” Ashley agreed. “We can get the Coast Guard out there to take a look, if nothing else. But...why would the skull—if it was a skull—have disappeared? Did any of the other boaters seem suspicious?”

Beth groaned. “All of them.”

Ashley smiled. “Okay, tell me.”

Beth began describing the other campers on the island: the Masons, who Ashley knew casually, Brad and Sandy, and the three men in the exquisite yacht.

“Three hunks, huh?” Ashley teased.

“Um. They looked the part.”

“What part?”

“Oh, you know, the type who would be out fishing, diving...boating.”

“You mean they had beer bellies and could open the bottles with their teeth?”

“Ashley!” She flushed slightly, remembering the way she’d described Ben’s mythical “friends” who were due to arrive on the island.

“Sorry, just kidding. But they don’t sound like modern-day pirates. Not if they already had such a fantastic boat themselves.”

“So there really are pirates out there?” Beth asked, keeping to herself the thought that maybe Lee hadn’t been the legitimate owner of that boat after all.

“You bet. There’s lots of money—and very little law—once you’re out on the ocean,” Ashley said seriously. She was doodling idly on a napkin. “Describe your guy.”

“Which one?”

Ashley grinned. “The one you’re talking about the most, seem the most suspicious of—and the most attracted to.”