Still Waters: The Island / Below the Surface

Amber frowned. “Oh, come on! Just because—”

“How do you do, Mr. Henson,” Beth said, cutting off her niece’s words. She stepped forward quickly, away from their find. “Nice to meet you. Down here on vacation? Where are you from?”

Oh, good, that was casual. A complete third degree in ten seconds or less.

“Recent transplant, actually a bit of a roamer,” he told her, smiling, offering her his hand. It was a fine hand. Long fingered, as bronzed as the rest of him, nails clipped and clean. Palm callused. He used his hands for work. He was a real sailor, definitely, or did some other kind of manual labor.

She had the most bizarre thought that when she accepted his handshake, he would wrench her forward, and then his fingers would wind around her neck. The fear became so palpable that she almost screamed aloud to the girls to run.

He took her hand briefly in a firm but not too powerful grip, then released it. “Amber, Kim,” he said, and shook their hands as he spoke.

“So are you folks are from the area?” he asked, and looked at the girls, smiling. Apparently he’d already written Beth off as a total flake.

She slipped between the two girls, feeling her bulldog attitude coming on and setting an arm around each girl’s shoulders.

“Yep!” Amber said.

“Well, kind of,” Kim said.

“I mean, we’re not from the island we’re standing on, but nearby,” Amber said.

Henson’s smile deepened.

Beth tried to breathe normally and told herself that she was watching far too many forensics shows on television. There was no reason to believe she had to protect the girls from this man.

But no reason to trust him on sight, either.

“Are you planning on camping on the island?” Beth asked.

He waved a hand toward the sea. “I’m not sure yet. I’m with some friends...we’re doing some diving, some fishing. We haven’t decided whether we’re in a camping mood or not.”

“Where are your friends?” Beth asked. A little sharply? she wondered. So much for being casual, able to easily escape a bad situation, if it should prove to be one.

“At the moment I’m on my own.”

“I didn’t see your dinghy,” Beth said. “In fact, I didn’t even notice another boat in the area.”

“It’s there,” he said, “the Sea Serpent.” He cocked his head wryly. “My friend, Lee, who owns her, likes to think of himself as the brave, adventurous type. Did you sail out here on your own?”

It might have been an innocent question, but not to Beth. Not at this moment.

She had been swearing for years that she was going to take kung fu classes or karate, but as yet, she hadn’t quite done so.

She always carried pepper spray in her purse. But, of course, she had been wandering inland with the girls, just walking, and she wasn’t carrying her purse. She wasn’t carrying anything. She had on sandals and a bathing suit. Like the girls.

“Are you alone?” Keith Henson repeated politely.

Politely? Or menacingly?

“Oh, no. We’re with my brother. And a whole crowd.”

“A whole crowd—” Amber began.

Beth pinched her shoulder.

“Ow!” Amber gasped.

“Lots of my brother’s friends are coming in. Sailors...boat people...you know, big guys, the kind who can twist off beer caps with their teeth,” Beth said, trying to sound light.

Amber and Kim were both staring at her as if she’d lost her mind.

“Oh, yeah, all my dad’s friends are, like, big, tough-guy nature freaks,” Amber said, staring at Beth. “Yeah right, the kind that open beer bottles with their teeth.”

“They are?” Kim asked, sounding very confused.

“At any rate, there will be a bunch of us. A couple of cops, even,” Beth said, realizing immediately how ridiculous that sounded.

Time to move on!

Tugging at the girls’ shoulders, she added, “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. We’d better get back to my brother before he misses us. We’re supposed to be helping with the setup.”

“We’ll see you, if you’re hanging around,” Kim told him cheerfully.

“Yes, nice to meet you,” Amber said.

“Bye, then,” Keith Henson said.

A plastic smile in place, Beth continued to force the girls away from the man and toward the beach where they’d come ashore in the dinghy. And where they would find her brother, she prayed. Surely he hadn’t gone wandering off.

“Aunt Beth,” Amber whispered, “what on earth is the matter with you? You were so weird to that man.”

Kimberly cleared her throat, “Um, actually, you were pretty rude,” she said hesitantly.

“He was alone, he appeared out of nowhere—and we had just found a skull,” Beth said, after glancing back to assure herself that they were out of earshot.

“You said you weren’t sure if it was a skull or not,” Kim said.

“I wasn’t sure—I’m not sure.”

“But it looked like he just got here, too,” Amber said. “And the skull—it is a skull, isn’t it?—had been there a while.”

“Criminals often return to the scene of the crime,” Beth said, quoting some program or other, and anxiously moving forward.

Amber burst out laughing. “Aunt Beth! Okay, so you got the heebie-jeebies. But puh-lease. Did you see a gun on him?”

“Or anywhere he could have stuffed one?” Kim asked, giggling.

They weren’t such bad questions, really.