Kindling the Moon (Arcadia Bell #1)(76)

The near-full moon that gave us a small amount of dusky light darkened with cloud cover. A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. We were already cold and wet; a storm on the beach was the last thing I wanted. A streak of lightning cracked near the cliffs ahead.

“Good.” Lon picked up speed to head to the next cottage.

“Good? What’s good about it? If it rains, then we just dove into the ocean for no good reason.”

“That masked our body scent. The rain will wipe our trail.”

Whoop-dee-f*cking-doo. I wanted to strangle him, and I hoped like hell he “heard” me; if he did, he didn’t show it. After a few feet, he slowed and headed toward the back of the cottage. A small cypress tree grew in the side of the yard near the driveway. The small beach rental mimicked the old-world storybook architecture back in the Village: wood shingles, gingerbread trim, cheerily painted shutters framing each window. Almost large enough to accommodate a small family of gnomes.

Lon reached over the wiry brush that grew around the house and tried to jimmy the back window open as it thundered again. No luck.

“What if there’s an alarm?” I asked.

“There’s not.” He pounded on the window in demonstration as lightning lit up the night sky. The storm was getting closer. I was betting that Sengal was too.

I shadowed Lon around the side of the cottage, beneath a tiny carport. The door was locked, so he tested the window next to it. The frame protested with a harsh creak, then the window gave way and slid open.

“Hell yeah,” he said with smug grin, pushing the window up as far as it would go. “Come on, I’ll help you.” He held out a hand to me as the sky opened wide and an angry surge of rain fell.

30

“He’s out of range,” Lon said as we stared from behind the curtained window of the cottage. He lowered the blinds and pulled the curtain tight.

Finally. Half an hour had passed while we stood in the dark living room, watching Sengal and his men snake up and down the beach in the thunderstorm. I never would have imagined that shivering from cold and anxiety could be so physically exhausting.

I’d already given the cottage a cursory inspection while we waited. Nothing more than a sparsely furnished living room, open kitchen, one bedroom and bath. And no electricity. Either the storm had killed it, or the rental agency had temporarily shut it off. The house had running water, though it was warm, not hot. “Gas water heater,” Lon had guessed. “Probably on a vacation setting.” The closet door to the water heater was locked, so we couldn’t change it.

Gas water heater, and gas fireplace with tacky fake logs. Now that Lon was certain that Sengal and his goons were long gone, he made a beeline for the fireplace and told me to keep my fingers crossed. I did. It worked.

“Woo hoo!” Instant heat. I’d never been so thankful. We hovered in front of it, trying to get warm. “Is it up as high as it will go?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

I ditched the knitted afghan that I’d stripped from an orange-striped couch. Now that my clothes had soaked through the scratchy yarn, it wasn’t helping my shivering.

“Why don’t you take a shower?” Lon suggested. “It’ll warm you up. We can’t sit around here in sopping wet clothes all night. Are there more towels?”

We’d already used up two of them drying our hair. “Still four more under the sink,” I reported.

“Put your wet clothes outside the bathroom door and I’ll try to rig up something by the fireplace and hang them up to dry,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

“Hey, Lon? What are we going to do?”

He cracked his neck, then started taking off his shoes. “I’ve been thinking about that. There’s a road that leads around the cliffs, but we’re a few miles from one that gets any real traffic. Hitchhiking is a long shot, and we can’t just wander around out there in the storm.”

“Please, no. Your phone?” I asked, remembering that he’d held it out of the water.

“No service.” He glanced down at the coffee table. “We’re at least a couple of miles from the Hellfire caves. The club members usually stay through the night—most people end up passing out around sunrise and leave at noon. If we head back over there after the sun comes up, we can probably sneak our way over to my car while they’re sleeping.”

“What about Jupe?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Holiday are staying in the guest room tonight. I told them I’d be out late. Maybe a little later than I planned, but … what about your charge?”

“Riley? She knows how to use the microwave.”

He nodded, exhaling through his nose. “As far as the talon goes, I figure we can’t just show up at Craig Bailey’s house at this hour anyway. If we can ride this out until morning and get my car, we can go straight over there.”

Thinking that was as good a plan as any, I headed to the bathroom after grabbing a small candle in a glass jar from the kitchen. We had to light it in the fireplace; Lon’s trusty cigarette lighter was sea-logged.

Small hotel soaps and shampoo were stocked inside the bathroom, so I helped myself. The shower halted my shivering until it went cold; I promptly got out at that point. I towel-dried my hair again. No comb or brush. At least I’d warmed up. I wrapped myself in a second towel and gathered up the candle