Free Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel by Joann Ross

her mind. But despite her best efforts, she still jumped when a shutter on an upstairs window suddenly banged.
    “There are no such things as ghosts,” she repeated determinedly, picking up the book she’d dropped onto the rug. The flames of the gas fire she’d turned on to warm up a rainy night were creating tall, flickering shadows on the wall. “It’s ridiculous to even be thinking about one.”
    As she struggled to ignore the wind’s lonely wail, Tess felt like a little girl whistling past a graveyard.

13
    Tess woke the following morning with a splitting headache and the unsettling feeling that she’d spent the night in another dimension. She’d had a dream. A dream of her kidnapping so vivid that she’d awakened time after time unable to discern what was real and what was only the product of an overworked, over-stimulated subconscious.
    She’d been in the dark. Curled up on a rough woolen blanket that scratched her skin and smelled like a wet dog. She’d lost track of the time and would have been unable to tell if it were day or night if it weren’t for the masked man occasionally bringing her food and water.
    An Egg McMuffin was breakfast, which told her she’d survived another night. Chicken McNuggets were another marker, letting her know that a day had gone by and she was still alive.
    But how many days? Time had blurred.
    She’d heard the squeak of floorboards overhead. Seen a rectangle of light as the hidden doorway opened. Then identified the sound of heavy boots pounding down the stairs.
    It was a familiar nightmare. One she’d had at least weekly into her teens, then it had, for several years, suddenly gone away. Until recently, when it had returned from where it had been lurking in the far, darkest reaches of her mind.
    Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, she always woke up before discovering to whom those boots belonged. But because she knew the outcome of the story, she’d always believed it had been her dad and imagined him scooping her up into his strong arms and holding her against his chest, the way he must have held her when she was a baby.
    Did she remember or imagine the tears streaming down her face?
    And if they’d been real, had they been her father’s? Or hers? Or both?
    Not doing anything to ease her unrelenting stress, she’d also received another threat from her anonymous caller sometime in the middle of the night. This time he’d accused her of putting an innocent man in prison and suggested that she watch her step very, very carefully.
    Her head was still pounding when she reached the office, where she poured a paper cupful of water from the cooler and tossed down her third Advil of the morning.
    “Rough night?” Alexis asked sympathetically, handing her a cup of black coffee and a chocolate-frosted donut from a box someone had brought in.
    “Thanks,” Tess said. “I just had too much spinning around in my head to get much sleep.” Even as she vowed to run after work to avoid the donut attaching itself directly to her hips, no way could she resist the aroma of warm fried fat and chocolate.
    “If you’d gone out to dinner with Nate, your night might have turned out a lot better.”
    Despite her friend’s quasi-denial of matchmaking, Tess still believed that Alexis had hoped the lunch would lead to something else.
    Like matching rings, picket fences, and strollers. None of which Tess was interested in. She wasn’t saying never . Just not now. And especially not with a man who was either delusional or a liar.
    “Don’t tell me that Matt is so desperate for work that he’d try to marry Nate off just for the opportunity to update his will and write a prenup.”
    “Did I mention anything about marriage? For the sake of our friendship, I’ll ignore the snark,” Alexis declared haughtily. “Besides, for your information, Matthew just happens to agree with me.”
    “About what?”
    “That, first of all, you are far too much of a workaholic who needs to get out