Where had that come from?
“Smart girl. You deserve a break. I would kill to get out of the city right now. Well, listen, darling, you finish up and copy me when you send the final manuscript to Colleen, all right?”
“I will,” Lauren promised. “Thanks so much, Patricia.”
“Don’t thank me. It’s a wonderful story. I can’t wait to read the ending.”
They said the usual things and hung up.
Lauren floated up the hill from the harbor, buoyed by the wind at her back, almost giddy with relief.
Her editor liked—her editorloved—her book.
Her agent loved her book.
All Lauren needed now was a blockbuster ending.
A bubble of panic rose under her breastbone. Her story had no end.
She swallowed hard.One step at a time. A month ago, she couldn’t have imagined getting this far.Enjoy the trip.
The pitched roof of the Pirates’ Rest rose above the trees. Lauren lengthened her stride. She and Jack weren’t at the keep-my-toothbrush-at-your-place stage. She still needed to pull some things together before he picked her up.
The puddles by the side of the road reflected back the windswept sky. Raindrops glittered from the blooming branches of crepe myrtle by the fence, the heavy clusters scattering pink petals on the wet grass.
Lauren pushed open the front gate.
A man waited in the shadows of the porch, sheltered by the eaves from the rain and the heat. A young man in military fatigues. A young, sunburned man with familiar features beneath his buzz cut, standing as she came up the walk.
Her heart pounded. The swing swayed gently back and forth.
Her past, waiting for her.
Lauren stopped, her lungs constricting. “Joel?” she whispered.
***
UP NORTH,JACKwas known as a by-the-book cop. But he was slowly learning that if he enforced every ordinance on Dare Island, he’d have to lock up half the tourists and a quarter of the town into two little jail cells.
The native islanders figured that since they were here before everybody else, including the chief of police, whatever laws they didn’t agree with did not apply to them. The dingbatters moved here because they loved the idea of living at the beach and then complained about the resort town regulations. The tourists believed that their money entitled them to a good time.
Jack figured as long as he kept the peace and no one got hurt, he was doing his job.
But today dealing with one more bored rich kid rebelling against too much family vacation kept him at the station almost an hour past his scheduled shift.
“The merchants don’t want to press charges,” Jack said to the bored rich kid’s dad. “But they don’t want to pay the town for every time the police have been called to respond to a false alarm at their businesses. Marta, here, can give you a total of the fines.”
The father scowled. “That’s extortion.”
“Restitution,” Jack said calmly. “Seems to me you’d want your boy here to take some responsibility for his actions.”
“You can’t prove Cliff set off all those alarms.”
“Yeah, that’s probably what a lawyer would say,” Jack agreed. “The good news is, Cliff won’t be sixteen for another couple weeks, so he can’t be charged as an adult. If you want to go the juvenile court route, there’s just a little paperwork and then I can release him into your custody. Or we can handle things here.”
“You’ll pay for this,” Cliff’s dad said, but he was looking at his son.
Jack left them settling the tab with Marta and drove to the Pirates’ Rest.
