“Who uses it?” Kelsey asked.

“The people who live there don’t really use the beach that much ’cause they have swimming pools. But they still want a lifeguard around for security.”

“Which beach do you work on?”

“We switch off. East Beach only needs one lifeguard. It’s small, and there’s never much going on.” He crossed to the French doors and stared out into the rainy darkness. “Three lifeguards…and not one of us helped Beth…”

Kelsey was silent, turning the note over in her hand.

“They found some of her things at the cove,” Justin said quietly. “Beth liked to take walks by herself…go off alone and think.” He smiled, remembering. “Sometimes she’d come back with these stories—she wanted to be a writer—so half the time you never knew if what she said was real or imaginary.”

Kelsey’s throat ached, and she looked away.

“I don’t know why she went there when she knew how dangerous it was.” Justin lowered himself onto the other bed. “They think she probably fell, that she was hurt so bad, she never had a chance.”

“What do you mean?”

“The cove. It’s—” Justin broke off abruptly as a squeal of tires sounded beneath the windows, followed by the slamming of a car door. “There’s Neale—maybe he’s heard something—”

Kelsey followed slowly as Justin raced downstairs. Now she heard a new voice—deep and authoritative—cutting off the questions as they tumbled from Justin’s mouth.

“They’ve called off the search till tomorrow, Justin, that’s all I know.”

“But—it’ll be so cold out there again and—” Behind Justin’s rising panic came the thud of a cabinet door, the chink of a coffee cup.

“Justin, why the hell are you worrying about the cold? You know as well as I do that she’s dead.”

Kelsey, frozen in the hall outside the kitchen, felt the sudden, suffocating silence…heard the gurgle of coffee being poured.

The deep voice sighed, gathering patience. “Look. You know what the cove’s like. The tide comes in like a flood. Even if she didn’t get smashed on the rocks, any one of those underwater caves could have sucked her down.”

“I’m not giving up yet.”

“Fine,” the voice replied. “Where’s Dad?”

“With Marjorie.”

“Oh, hell, are they here?”

There was no mistaking the disgust in the voice, and Kelsey cringed back against the wall. She had never heard such coldness, such lack of feeling, and an inexplicable stab of fear went through her. She had no desire to meet Neale, but before she could leave, Eric and Mom rushed through the door.

Kelsey, slipping in after them, got her first look at Neale Connell and felt her heart squeeze into her throat.

He was much taller than Justin—so lean and tan in just the faded jeans he wore that he seemed like a shadow lurking in the far corner of the kitchen. He tipped his coffee cup to his lips, casual and unhurried, yet from across the room Kelsey knew he had seen her. He was watching her even now, she could feel it—those dark, dark eyes in cool appraisal over the rim of his cup; the peculiar light they had, like some cat, calmly assessing his prey…