Beachcomber Reckoning
Beachcomber Investigations Book 7
By Stephanie Queen
Sample Chapters
Chapter 1
In Dane’s experience—and he had plenty—whenever someone told him that it was their decision, their call to do something dangerous, that’s when he worried most.
Because then he had to work ten times harder to make sure nothing bad happened to them.
Dane would feel responsible no matter what they said.
Because he was responsible. It was really all on him.
Dane’s mother had insisted it was her decision to visit him on Martha’s Vineyard. No matter how dangerous it might be.
He hung up the phone and had no idea how the conversation with his mother had gotten so out of control. But how could he stop her? He stared out the back door at the old Jeep-heap in his driveway and pushed a hand through his unruly hair. The salty air had stiffened it on his evening beach run. The day had been breezy and pleasant.
He wished he gave a damn about the weather. If the sunshine mattered to him, that meant there were no problems on the horizon.
Today if hurricane hell blew into town he wouldn’t have cared.
Realistically, there was only one way to stop his mother, but it was too late for him to catch a plane to Hyannis then drive two hundred miles to her house in the Berkshires. Then he’d likely get in trouble for locking her in a closet.
She was already on her way. His mother was coming to Martha’s Vineyard to visit him.
“Shit.”
“What’s your problem?” Shana said as she brushed past him where he leaned against the kitchen sink. She reached for the freezer door handle. Pulling it open, she grabbed the bottle of tequila by the neck.
“I’ll have a shot of that.”
“No kidding.” She rolled her eyes.
He’d need Shana to help him.
“Want to do me a favor?”
“You mean besides pouring you a shot?” She went to the upper cabinet and removed two short glasses.
“I mean professionally.”
She stopped what she was doing and took a closer look at him. He could hold up under Shana’s scrutiny. There was only one person who could rattle him with a look. And she was on her way.
“What do you need?”
“I need you to sit second chair protecting my mother.”
“Someone threaten her?”
“Not lately.” A bolt of pain shot through his shoulder blades. He’d have to tell Shana about the threat. Even with all the hell he’d been through since he left home for West Point after high school, there was no memory that struck more fear in his heart than the threat against his mother.
His mouth was clenched shut as he shut the memory out of his head.
She waited, leaned against the opposite counter with her arms folded across her chest, not hiding her ample breasts because that would have been impossible, but pushing them up, making them more prominent. The glint in her eye told him she was teasing, trying to distract him.
His man-parts told him it was working.
* * *
Shana should have been used to Dane having secrets, but she still hated it.
“What haven’t you told me?”
Worry edged into her chest, taking up space where air should be. She’d invited Dane’s mother for the visit. It had seemed the right thing to do. Her own mother was visiting. Why shouldn’t Dane’s mother come, too?
She should have known better—that there’d be a reason Dane’s mother had never been here, that he’d barely seen her over the years, from what he’d told her. Nothing was simple or easy with her partner Dane Blaise. But she knew he loved his mother.
If Dane had kept some deadly secret about a threat to his mother, then it was on him.
Unconvinced by her own logic, she watched his blank face. He was his usual sphinxlike self.
“Spill it, Dane. Professionally, I need to know.” She needed to know personally even more, but this wouldn’t be a wise time to go there.
It was a skill she’d developed out of a need for survival, speaking as if nothing was amiss, as if all was perfectly normal, as if she was calm. All while her gut twisted into knots fueled by her imagining the worst.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be concerned,” he said. She knew it was a lie.
“About what?”
Again, she managed to sound cool while anxiety flared through her veins. Then when her imagination got around to the worst possible thing, the horrible thing that had happened to him and that baby, her insides felt like she’d downed dry ice, like her insides were so cold she would turn to vapor.
“Is it Dag?”
His eyes flared and sharpened.
“What do you know, girlie?”
He hadn’t called her girlie in a long while. She’d kind of missed it, if the blip in her pulse was a clue. Then she realized she was right about Dagmar Hunt and her blood went from frozen cold to pumping wildly in near panic.
“I know he’s your worst nightmare. He’s your only enemy connected to your past and your mother.” She heard the bump in her otherwise calm voice.
She eyed the kitchen drawer where she kept her Glock and itched to hold it, to feel it in her hand. She needed something to grip. Sweat formed on her upper lip as her cool deserted her. Dane’s sharp eyes spotted it.
Or he could have just been staring at her mouth like he sometimes did. Wishful thinking.
He picked up his glass and knocked back the Patron. The damn man’s eyes didn’t even glisten with the sting. Still no sign that he was bothered. Except she knew he was bothered, more than bothered. He was afraid. That would be the only reason for him to go into shut-down mode now. With her.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
He turned and walked to the back door, pushed it open and stepped outside into the cool twilight. She thought he was going to ignore her, avoid or put off telling her, but he waved his arm, motioning for her to follow.
Probably because he knew she would anyway.
* * *
The ocean breeze smelled of autumn leaves and it cooled him. Cool was good. He could barely contain his emotions. He hadn’t felt like this since the last time he’d encountered Dagmar Hunt in person. When he was in high school.
Shana followed him. He walked across his lawn to the dock that jutted a short way into the harbor. His feet thudded on the wood planks until he reached the end. Maybe he ought to jump in to keep himself cool. As if he’d been in a pressure cooker, his insides boiled over. The cool breeze did little to calm him, but he took a lungful of salty air and closed his eyes, concentrating on his breathing. Slow and steady.
“I have your back, Dane.”
Shana spoke the words, but in his head, he was hearing his old friend, surfer boy Jake, saying the same thing too many years ago to want to remember. After one more useless deep breath, he turned to face her, to tell her. To relive the second worst nightmare from his past.
“Just before I graduated high school, on the night of the senior prom, Dagmar Hunt and a couple of sidekicks and one mean-ass buddy from the state pen kidnapped my… date.”
He still couldn’t think about Sarah. She’d been more than a date, but he didn’t want to remember that she’d been his first love. He heaved a sigh and looked into Shana’s waiting, warm green eyes.
“Then he beat her, cut her, and raped her before I caught up to him.”
He watched Shana’s mouth open, but he didn’t stop.
“Me and my friend Jake. We took him down. Got him thrown in jail for a long time. And his jailhouse friend—Baggage—went away for a while too.”
“Baggage?”
“Yes.”
“Of motorcycle gang fame?”
“The same. He and Dagmar headed a California branch of the Mongols motorcycle gang for years.”
“Until you—”
“Until Baggage murdered my baby on Dag’s orders.”
