Dark Harbor (Stone Barrington 12)

“What’s going on?” Dino asked.

“I heard a noise in the house,” Stone said. “What woke you up?”

“The phone. I had just gotten up to piss, and I heard it ring. I wasn’t sleepy, anyway, so I came over.”

Stone closed the door. “Come in the study. You want a drink?”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Dino said. “Keep out the cold night air.”

“Oh, let me show you something.” He led Dino into Dick’s little office and showed him the array of weapons. Dino picked up the officer’s .45. “I like this,” he said. “I’ll sleep with it under my pillow.” He checked and found a full magazine in the gun.

Stone pointed to a shelf that held a lot of gun leather. “Find yourself a belt and holster.” He went to the bar and got down a couple of glasses. As he was about to open the door to the ice machine, he heard the noise again.

Dino approached. “Is that the noise you heard?”

“Yes,” Stone said sheepishly.

“The ice machine, making ice?”

Stone sighed. “Yes. I wonder why I’ve never heard it before.”

“I think you’re a little too tightly wound,” Dino said. “Sit down and drink that bourbon.”

Stone followed orders.

Chapter 24

STONE WENT BACK to bed and tried to retrieve the dream with Arrington, but it wouldn’t come back. He overslept, not waking until after ten, and he felt fuzzy around the edges. He wasn’t accustomed to drinking in the middle of the night.

He sat up in bed and called Arrington’s home in Virginia. A maid answered.

“She’s not here, Mr. Barrington. She’s in New York, she and Peter. You can reach her at the Carlyle.”

“Thank you,” Stone said. He called the Carlyle and asked for Mrs. Calder.

“Hello?” she said, sounding chipper and cheerful.

“It’s Stone.”

“Oh, hi. I was about to call you. I’m in New York.”

“I know; I just called you.”

“Oh, that’s right. Sorry. You want to have dinner tonight?”

“I’d love to, but it’s a plane ride.”

“What?”

“I’m in Maine.”

“Why? What are you doing in Maine?”

“I have a new house on an island called Islesboro. Why don’t you summon up the Centurion jet, and you and Peter come up here for a few days?” As the widow of Centurion Studios’ largest stockholder, she had access to their jet.

She was silent for a moment. “All right, but it will have to be tomorrow, maybe the next day. I have some shopping to do here.”

“Tell the flight department at Centurion that you’ll be landing at Rockland. I’ll meet you there in my airplane. It’s only another ten minutes of flying, but the strip on the island is too short for a jet.”