A Stranger on the Beach(62)

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The music was coming from very far away. It felt like a dream. Sinatra, crooning. I’ve got you under my skin. I’ve got you deep in the heart of me. The richness of his voice, the swing of the beat, was muffled by my heavy sleep. But it didn’t stop, and after a minute, my reptilian brain realized that was weird, and my eyes popped open.

The music was real. The power had come back on while I was sleeping. It was still dark outside the windows, but light blazed in the bedroom. I shut my eyes and pulled the blanket over my head, too bleary to get up and turn it off. But, wait a minute. I hadn’t played that song last night. I wasn’t playing any music at all when the power went off. So why would this music play when the power came back on?

My heart turned over in my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. The lights coming back on I could explain. But the music could only mean one thing. Aidan was here.

Slowly, I lowered the blanket, my hand creeping out, reaching for the knife. But it was gone. Of course. Don’t allow the target access to a weapon. That was Stalking 101.

Aidan sat in a chair that he’d positioned right in front of the closed bedroom door. In his lap was the big silver gun I’d seen at his apartment.

He smiled. “Morning, sleepyhead.”





40


Aidan was still in Hannah Stark’s dorm room when he got the text that the bar was closing for the storm, and he shouldn’t come to work tonight. The Red Anchor never closed, not even for blizzards. He scrolled through the weather alerts on his phone. This storm looked serious.

He sat beside Hannah on her bed, keeping a safe distance. He’d been trying for a while to make an excuse to get away. Hannah liked him more than he was comfortable with. She’d offered him vodka (he’d declined), leaned her thigh against his until he’d inched away, taken cute selfies of the two of them. He’d kept things polite, but she was sure to be upset when they met again at some future date, and she learned that he was her mother’s boyfriend. Any points he earned with Caroline for conducting a safety check on her daughter would get erased then. But Aidan would cross that bridge when he came to it. For now, he needed to escape without hurting the girl’s feelings. The storm gave him the excuse he’d been looking for.

“This storm they’ve been making the announcements about?” Aidan said, standing up and pulling on his coat. “It’s a Category Four hurricane. That’s serious. I have to go take care of things at home. You should go, too. I’m not convinced your dorm is safe.”

“It’s so sweet of you to worry,” she said, and came to stand a bit too close to him. “This dorm is brand-new and super well constructed. I’ll be fine.”

“The security isn’t as good as you probably think,” he said. “Anybody could get in simply by following someone with a key.”

“The campus police are everywhere. It’s not a problem, really.”

What more could he do? He’d tried his best to warn Hannah of her vulnerable position. There was nothing else he could say without revealing that he’d followed her father and watched him meet with some street thug to contract hits on his own family. She’d never believe it—at least, not unless he explained why he’d followed Jason Stark, which in turn would reveal his relationship with Caroline. Aidan knew better than to do that. Caroline would never forgive him for telling her daughter about them without her permission. And he could hardly ask permission when she refused to return his phone calls.

“When will I see you again?” Hannah asked.

“I’m not sure. I’ll call you.”

“Can I get a kiss goodbye?” she asked shyly.

He kissed her on the forehead, in a fatherly sort of way.

“Stay safe,” he said.

Then he crossed the campus, bracing himself against stiff winds, to find his truck.

On the LIE, the rain started coming down hard, and visibility was poor. His truck was so big that folks deferred to him on the highway. But it was so old that the brakes acted up in heavy rain. A guy cut him off, and he slammed on the brakes and fishtailed, correcting course at the very last minute. His heart pounded. He kept his eyes on the road, the radio tuned to the weather, but he thought only of Caroline. He worried about her safety, and fought against the urge to call her again. It galled him that he wasn’t allowed to. All he wanted was to help her, but she’d constructed this phony wall between the two of them, making that impossible.

It took Aidan an hour to get to his apartment. He arrived to find Ron, the super, boarding up windows. Ron was an old guy with a big belly and arthritic fingers. When he begged for help, Aidan had a hard time saying no, even though his thoughts were elsewhere. He let himself be dragged into helping Ron secure the apartment complex, getting soaked in the ever-worsening storm. The whole time, thoughts of Caroline’s house in the path of the storm weighed on his mind. She’d be devastated if that house was damaged, or God forbid, destroyed. He’d ridden out lesser storms on his grandfather’s land as a child, and remembered how the wind could howl, how the surf could pound against the dunes. She must be crazy with worry. Maybe she was even driving in this mess right this minute, trying to get there to secure her place. The more Aidan thought about it, the more certain he became that Caroline was out in this evil weather right now, heading to her house. He wouldn’t be able to stand it if something happened to her, something he could have prevented. All he had to do was go take care of her house for her, and let her know she didn’t have to worry. How hard would that be? How terrible would he feel if he didn’t, and then something happened? Aidan lived with so much guilt already, from old wounds. Samantha. Matthew. The worry he caused Tommy on a daily basis. Tommy’s blood pressure was high because of him. If Caroline got into a car accident driving out from the city, when Aidan could spare her the risk by looking after her house for her, he would never forgive himself.