Deadline

em there.” He pointed to the jute doormat. “Then I got in my car and drove to the village. When I got to Mickey’s, I couldn’t have been more than five minutes behind you.”

“You saw us leave Mickey’s parking lot. I dropped Bernie at his back door. As we were getting out of the car, I asked Stef to take the boys upstairs and start the bedtime ritual. I came straight out here and looked beneath the mat.”

“Somebody took them while we were all in the village.”

“But who?” She wet her lips. “Maybe someone on the beach saw you leaving something and—”

He was shaking his head even before she finished. “The beach was deserted. I checked.”

“But someone must have seen you.”

“Exactly. Someone saw me because someone is watching.”

“Other than you.”

“Other than me. Tell me about the beach ball.”

She remembered his bewilderment when she’d mentioned it earlier. “It was nothing.”

“Then why not tell me?”

She did.

“It miraculously reappeared after being thrown away,” he said. “Patched and inflated.”

She shifted uneasily in her seat. “I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

“There is. Someone is making it his business to know everything that’s going on in your life.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I think you do. Yesterday, when you were flaying me alive, you told me that you’d been feeling afraid, that you’d sensed—”

“Yesterday, I was upset and angry, talking out of my head, trying to make you feel bad for spying on me.”

“You were just spouting nonsense?”

“Yes!”

“Amelia.”

She shot from her chair and escaped to the railing as he had earlier. He followed, coming to stand close to her, close enough for her to feel his body heat.

“You’re afraid he’s still alive, aren’t you?”

She turned to him. “No!”

“Denying it to me won’t make you fear it any less. Nor will it make it untrue.”

“He was killed by Willard Strong.”

“His body was never found.”

“But there was forensic evidence.”

“Of what kind?”

“His blood on the ground inside the dog pen. A piece of scalp…” She buried her face in her hands. “God, what that man is accused of is too horrible to think about.”