Anna Leonard - The Hunted

“Jinx,” she muttered. Well, she was officially off the clock now. Mother Nature insisted.

In the drawer of her desk there was a flashlight, and she used it to find her way to the store of candles, the sound of thick, heavy raindrops on the roof and windows following her as she went through the house. The linen closet on the second floor was the repository of all blackout supplies—extra gallons of water, a box of protein bars, dry shampoo and soap, and an entire shelf filled with thick pillar candles.

Beth’s practical streak failed her when it came to candles. These were handmade by a local craftswoman, lilac in color and scented with clean, crisp lavender and sea grass. Picking three of the candles off the shelf, along with a book of matches, she closed the closet door and went back downstairs to the main parlor. It had always been her favorite room, aside from the corner bedroom that had been hers all her life, and if the storm was going to go all night, then that was where she would wait it out.

One pillar went on the walnut coffee table, one on the plaster mantel over the fireplace and the third she positioned on the table next to the old cracked leather sofa. Using only one match to light them all, the room was soon bathed in a warm, comforting light. There was something about the flickering of candle flame that she adored; it didn’t fill the room the way artificial light did, but it seemed to illuminate better, somehow. The antiques in the room looked better in firelight: her great-grandfather’s spyglass; the rough but gorgeous little carvings of ivory that dated back to when whaling was the industry on this island; the handmade wooden ships her father had collected, three-and two-masters, all perfect down to the last detail, including the narrow boats lashed to their sides. Neither she nor Tal had ever felt the desire to play with them when they were children. They would watch them for hours, but never once had she taken one down other than to dust or display it for someone else. It was as though it was forbidden to look too closely, to ask too much, although her parents had never forbidden her or Tal anything of the sort.

Now, in the candlelight, she watched the shadows their masts and riggings made on the cream-painted walls, and felt some of her restlessness subside. Those boats were her inheritance, as much as this house; they told the story of her great-grandfather helping to build the fleets that used to ply these waters, her grandfather’s specialization in the carpentry of higher-end boats that put her dad through college, and her own dad’s fascination with boats that never seemed to translate into anything larger than those models. An entire family, tied to the shoreline without ever actually going out to sea. Beth suddenly wondered why she felt no particular draw toward boats, why Tal had actually gotten seasick the one time he went out on a fishing boat when they were in grade school. Maybe it was something genetic, and the further from their shipbuilding great-grandfather you got, the less you cared?

“Maybe it was just the storm,” she said. “Maybe I need a vacation. Get off the island for a little bit. Maybe go inland, see a forest or a mountain.” She had never gone more than a day’s travel inland; there were entire stretches of the country she had never seen except as the backdrop for movies on the television. Maybe she could get a passport, leave the country. See England, or Paris, or …

Her imagination failed her. She didn’t have a passport. She’d never been on a plane. She didn’t even watch the Travel Channel, for God’s sake. “Maybe it’s time to change all of that,” she said. “Do something different.”

A crack of thunder and a flash of lightning directly overhead sounded as though in answer.

“Fine, but is that a yes or a no?” she asked the ceiling, half expecting a reply. But the lights stayed off, the rain came down and no further electrical energy exploded overhead.

“Thanks for nothing,” she said, curling up on the sofa, her arms around her knees. Her attention was drawn, not to the shadows now, or even the fireplace, laid with wood already in case she wanted one last fire before warmer weather came in, but into the next room, where a plate-glass window looked out over the small front yard, over the tops of smaller Cape-style houses, down the road that led to the shoreline.

There were lights flickering outside, on the road heading toward the beach. Most of them were white headlights, but—she squinted—at least one or two were red. Cops. Or an ambulance.

There wasn’t anything she could do, if there had been an accident, either some idiot in a car, or a greater idiot in a boat. She had the basics of CPR, courtesy of a town-wide push last summer, but she wasn’t a paramedic or anything useful. There was nothing she could do at the scene other than clutter it up and get herself soaked. There was no reason she was extinguishing the candles, grabbing the flashlight, an oiled baseball cap and her raincoat, and grabbing the keys to her Toyota.

No reason at all. Except a sudden need to be there, to see what the storm had brought in.

The rain almost knocked her little car to the side of the road a time or two, but she got to the beach without disaster. The rain and clouds made it seem much later in the evening, closer to midnight than 8:00 p.m., and added to the unreality of the entire scene, to Beth. There were dark forms on the sand, over the dunes: people gathered, and a single vehicle with the red lights on top that marked it as belonging to the rescue squad.

Not an accident, then. Not a car, anyway. And no sign of wreckage that you’d expect, if someone were stupid enough to take a boat out with a storm coming in …

She parked and got out, startled by how noisy the rain was, once she was in it. Cold and hard, and even through her rain slicker she was quickly drenched. The cap kept the water off her face, but nothing more than that, and her hair stuck to her scalp unpleasantly.

“Get the stretcher over here!” a man’s voice yelled. “And you people, back off! You’d think you’d never seen a moron before.”

“Never one out of uniform” the retort came back from one of the bystanders, a woman. Beth slowed her steps a little. Obviously, whoever it was was still alive, and not in critical danger, if they were mouthing off over his body. Nobody here was quite hardened enough to crack jokes over a dead body. Something prickled on the back of her neck, like a spider walking there, or the unexpected touch of a warm hand. She flinched, and then looked around, feeling embarrassed, but there wasn’t anything but the crowd gathered, seven or eight people, including herself. And yet, somehow, the feeling remained, like some phantom hand rested just above her collar.

It wasn’t like her to spook at anything, much less nothing. After one last look around, she shrugged off the feeling and turned to the much more real scene in front of her.

“Evening, Beth.” The nearest dark form in rain hat and slicker turned out to be Mrs. Daley, who had taught seventh-grade math to Beth and her cousin, with variable success. She was in her sixties now, but still held students in thrall with a voice of steel and a heart of marshmallow.

“What happened?” Beth asked her.

“No idea. The call went out from the lighthouse about an hour ago—they spotted something in the water. So we came out to search.”

“We” in this case was the self-titled border patrol, a group of locals who came out when a whale or dolphin beached itself, or a ship got into trouble, or any other crisis requiring a pair of hands and a strong back. Mrs. Daley was a charter member.

“And found …”

“One body, male.” Mrs. Daley leaned in, laughter in her voice even if Beth couldn’t see her face clearly in the dusk and rain. “Nude.”