Heat Stroke (Beach Kingdom 2)

Jamie was in the middle of pouring a Guinness pint when Marcus went into the back office. A quick glance at his cell phone clock told Jamie the bouncing shift was over. Usually he hung out until the bar closed, nursing a beer or two. But this time, Marcus emerged with his sweatshirt, throwing an absent wave at the bar before disappearing out the door.

Gone. Just like that.

Jamie swallowed several times, but there was a fistful of nickels in his throat and he couldn’t get them down. He took a fifth shot, but that did nothing to dislodge the heaviness. Was the train ride that bad? Or was it that good?

There. That explained why Marcus’s silence was bothering him so much. Because he didn’t have answers. Jamie thrived on having conclusions to all questions, so obviously being in the dark about what had driven Marcus away was unacceptable.

Thank God. It all made sense now.

Four o’clock in the morning rolled around before Jamie knew it. He wasn’t drunk drunk, but he definitely wasn’t sober, either. But unlike most nights when he had too much…he wasn’t yearning for his bed. No, he wasn’t tired at all. Wired was more like it. Anxious.

Rory had opened the bar that night, so Andrew sent him home to Olive early, leaving Andrew and Jamie to close. They’d just cleared the Castle Gate of all drunken revelers when Andrew came out of the back office, fingers perched on the bridge of his nose. “My keys are gone. Did you pocket them by mistake?”

Already knowing he hadn’t, Jamie went through the process of patting his pockets anyway. “Nope.”

Andrew took out his cell and hit a button. “Rory has the only other set.” He sighed and hung up a moment later. “He’s not answering. How am I going to lock up the bar?”

Jamie winced. “Diesel was back there.”

His older brother groaned. This was not the first time Marcus had walked off with someone else’s shit by accident. In early June, he’d picked up the wrong duffel bag in the Hut, not realizing it belonged to someone else until Jamie pointed out his red lifeguard shorts were riding up his CrossFit-honed bubble butt and the seam was about to burst.

He should have let it happen, Jamie thought wistfully.

Wistfully.

All right, that was quite enough. He needed to build a bridge over Marcus and walk across to the other side. That wouldn’t happen until he got some answers…

And here was his chance.

“I’ll go get the keys.”

Andrew did a double take. “You’re going to wake Marcus up at four in the morning?”

Jamie shrugged, avoiding his brother’s hawk-like scrutiny. “Those are the breaks when you take someone’s keys, right?” He tossed aside the rag he’d been using to wipe the bar, trying and failing to ignore visions of Marcus messy from sleep. “Hang tight. I’ll be back.”

On his way out the door, Jamie paused, watching Andrew climb onto one of the bar stools and rest his face in his hands. They all got their asses kicked in the summertime, working two jobs, so they could manage the mortgage on the house they shared for the rest of the year. Not to mention the mountain of debts their father had left behind. But Andrew bore the brunt of the workload, supervising the lifeguards and overseeing the Castle Gate…and he never let the strain show. Ever. Jamie was catching him in a weak moment, and knowing his stoic brother, he should just leave without prying. But he couldn’t.

“You okay, A?”

A long pause, followed by a measured breath. “Yeah.” Without looking at Jamie, Andrew waved him off. “Go.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Marcus heard the knock on his front door and immediately reached for the baseball bat under his couch. Although a bat would be totally ineffective against a ghost, wouldn’t it?—and it had to be a fucking ghost, man. No one knocked on his door. His father and brother had keys and barged in whenever they felt like it.

Since coming home from the Castle Gate, Marcus had been unable to sleep. A lot like every other night this week, but tonight was worse, because Jamie had been drinking behind the bar. If he wasn’t positive that Andrew would be with Jamie on the way home, Marcus would probably be lurking in the shadows of the boardwalk about now, making sure no one so much as looked wrong at Jamie.

Coming to his feet with the bat poised to swing, Marcus threw a guilty glance at the porn video paused on his computer. Had the ghost heard him ineffectively jerking off?

You’re the idiot everyone thinks you are.

Marcus shook his head at his own ridiculousness and advanced toward the door, one quiet step at a time, fully prepared to move apartments first thing tomorrow if some old-timey ghost from the Great Depression era or some shit was on the other side of the door. “Uh…yeah? Someone there?”