designed.
Just ahead was the land barrier that separated this section of beach from the part below the big estate. At low tide you could make your way around the outthrust of granite, but the footing looked precarious now. Better not risk it.
She went back past the cliffside steps and on up the beach to the north. The shoreline was sandy in places here, but there were also the large jumbled rocks she’d seen from the platform and a series of smooth, upswept limestone shelves. She climbed over one of the larger shelves, where a runnel from an underground freshwater stream poured out of an opening in the cliff wall. When she hopped down on the other side, she was facing a pair of high, rounded boulders like nippleless breasts with a narrow cleavage between them. She squeezed through the passage—and came to an abrupt standstill.
A woman was sitting hunched on another shelf a short distance ahead, staring out to sea.
Even in profile, Shelby recognized her immediately: Claire Lomax.
Either she made a noise or the woman sensed her presence. Claire turned, saw her, and twisted around onto one hip, her body hunched and one hand flat on the rock, like a startled cat about to run. Past her, in the distance, Shelby could see the seaward quarter of the Lomax house against the backdrop of the headland above. The beach in between was mostly open; there was nobody else in sight.
Claire held her startled-cat pose for three or four seconds, then she seemed to sag a little, as if with resignation. She slid her body around so that she was facing Shelby.
No choice then but to go ahead and approach her. Claire wore a sheepskin jacket with the collar pulled up and a tie-dyed scarf tied around her blonde hair, so that her face was a pale oval in between. Only not completely pale: there were discolored marks on it today—marks that took on definition as Shelby neared and that explained the woman’s apparent impulse to run away. Split upper lip. Inch-long abrasion on her right cheek, and above that a yellowing bruise that would soon darken and spread and blacken the eye.
S E V E N
W HOEVER OWNED THE SEACREST grocery store had made maximum use of a small space: It was packed to the brim with shelves, bins, racks arranged in a mazelike fashion, the aisles so narrow that one of any two people passing with handbaskets would have to turn sideways. A heavyset, gray-haired woman stood behind the checkout counter; the only other occupant, a skinny man in a soiled apron, presided over a meat and deli section.
Macklin smiled and nodded at the woman; she gave him a blank-faced stare in return. Her eyes followed him as he picked up a basket and moved around the store. So did the man’s when he passed by the meat counter.
Wariness again. Mistrust of strangers. Or was he just imagining it? No, dammit, he could see it and he could feel it, just like last night with that deputy. What was the matter with people around here? Sparsely populated rural area, yes, but it was also a tourist destination in better-weather months. And this was the Christmas season. Hard to believe holiday cheer and goodwill had become a lost concept on this part of the coast.
He located matches, picked out vegetables, ordered a fresh crab cracked and cleaned from the reticent counterman. The woman watched him set the basket down on the checkout counter, then quit making eye contact as she rang up the items. Frustration more than anything else prodded him into breaking the silence.
“Some storm last night.”
It was a few seconds before she said, “Worse one on the way.”
“Really? When?”
“Sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
“Long-range weather forecast was for light rain.”
“Wrong as usual. Big storm—high winds, heavy rain.”
“Do you think it’ll last long?”
“Depends. No way to tell until it gets here.” Eyes the color of milk chocolate briefly met his. “You staying in the area?”
“My wife and I, yes.”
“Seacrest?”
“No. A friend’s