She always showered at night to wash the sea off of her, but after a particularly bad nightmare, the spray of the water on her skin felt like a healing wash across her soul. The water in the shower was already running, calling to her, and she stepped into the stall. Instantly the water soothed her, soaking into her pores, refreshing, her personal talisman. The drops on her skin felt sensual, nearly mesmerizing her with the perfection of shape. She was lost in the clarity and immediately zoned out, taken to another realm where all chaos was gone from her mind.

Things that might ordinarily hurt—sounds, textures, the everyday things others took for granted—were washed away with the sweat from her nightmares or the salt from the sea. When she stood in the water, she was as close to normal as she would ever get, and she reveled in the feeling. As always, she was lost in the shower, disappearing into the clean, cool, refreshing pleasure it brought her, until, abruptly, the hot water was gone and her shower turned ice cold, startling her out of her trance.

Once she could breathe without a hitch, she toweled off and dragged on her sweats, not looking at the scars on her calves and feet. She didn’t need to relive those moments again, yet night after night the fire was back, looking at her, marking her for death.

She shivered, turned up her radio so she could hear it throughout the house, and pulled out her laptop, taking it through the hallway to her kitchen. Blessed coffee was the only answer to idiocy. She started the coffee while she listened to the radio spitting out local news. She dropped into a chair, stilling to concentrate when it came to the weather. She wanted to know what her mistress was feeling this morning. Calm? Angry? A little stormy? She stretched as she listened. Calm seas. Little wind. A freaking tsunami drill?

Not again. “What a crock,” she muttered aloud, slumping dejectedly. “We don’t need another one.”

They’d just had a silly drill. Everyone had complied. How had she missed that they had scheduled another one in the local news? When they conducted drills of this magnitude, it was always advertised heavily. Then again . . . Rikki sat up straight, a smile blossoming on her face. Maybe the tsunami drill was just the opportunity she’d been looking for. Today was a darned perfect day to go to work. With a tsunami warning in effect, no one else would be out on the ocean—she would have the sea to herself. This was the perfect chance to visit her secret diving hole and harvest the small fortune in sea urchins she’d discovered there. She had found the spot weeks ago, but didn’t want to dive when others might be around to see her treasure trove.