The wind was at her back as she followed the sandy path back among the pitch pine and juniper to the cottage. She had on a lightweight sweatshirt, shorts and water sandals, her leg muscles getting a good workout in the soft, shifting sand. The cottage was tiny and rustic, classic Cape Cod with its weathered cedar shingles, white trim and blue-painted doors. It sat on what passed for high ground on Shelter Island, its front porch overlooking Nantucket Sound.

Antonia had met Babs Winslow when she was in medical school and Babs was volunteering at the hospital. Despite their age difference, they became friends. Babs was a true blueblood eccentric. Wealthy, but not one for anything flashy. She hadn’t made improvements to her cottage in years—she hadn’t even been down here in years—but Antonia liked its simplicity and lack of modern amenities. A small generator provided limited power for the pump, a pint-sized refrigerator and a light-bulb that hung from a beam in the middle of the cottage’s single room and was turned on with a string. Two ancient kerosene lamps provided supplemental lighting. There was no hot water—she had to heat water in a lobster pot for dishes and her sponge baths.

At least Babs had gotten rid of the outhouse. Antonia didn’t think the cottage would be nearly as romantic without its modest bathroom facilities. Carine wouldn’t have minded an outhouse, she thought. Tyler, either.

When she reached her front porch, Antonia checked to see if the beach towel she’d hung over the rail was dry, then went still.

She’d heard something. Not a bird, she thought. Not the wind, not the ocean.

She didn’t breathe, forcing herself not to panic as she concentrated and tried to block out the sounds of the ocean and birds and listen. Whistling.

Someone was whistling!

“It must be a bird,” she said aloud, hearing her own tension.

But there it was again—and no way was it a bird.

She recognized the tune. It was “Heigh Ho,” the dwarves’ working song from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Her first impulse was to smile at such a cheerful tune, but then she thought—no. You don’t know who it is.

She couldn’t let herself be lulled into a false sense of security.

She slipped into the cottage, careful not to let the door slam, and automatically, without thinking, grabbed a carving knife from the utensils drawer in the kitchen area. Just in case. Most likey, a passing boat had spotted her brightly colored beach towel hanging on the porch and reported the possibility of an inhabitant, and a local official was checking on her, making sure she knew a hurricane was approaching and she had a way off the island.

Surely a stalker wouldn’t announce his presence by whistling a Disney tune.