LITMIR.BIZ

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sliding his body atop hers, blue eyes slow and sensual.

      “Good,” she breathed, pushing all thoughts aside except for him.

      Chapter Ten

      Renee’s eyes narrowed as she pulled into the small coastal town of Deception Bay the following evening. The night before the drive had been stalled by a phone call from Tim, an excruciatingly nasty fight, then a stop to pick up a few groceries at a twenty-four-hour Safeway store, and finally the slow drive through mixed rain and snow on twisting mountain roads. She’d stayed in the cabin all day today just unwinding.

      The sensation that she was being followed had hung with her all the way through the Coast Range and south along this winding stretch of Highway 101 that cut into the steep hillsides overlooking the Pacific. She’d had to creep to keep the damned car on the road. All the while she’d kept checking her rearview for the glowing headlights that had loomed behind her like the eyes of some great, feral beast.

      “Puh-leeze,” she told herself now as the few streetlights of the small town emerged from the fog. She was still thinking about her fight with Tim. Jesus, he was a piece of work. He somehow thought that he could have an affair with a coworker and expect Renee to (a) understand, and (b) forgive him. Now, he insisted, he didn’t want a divorce, that he’d thought things over and decided it was better for “everyone” if they stayed married.

      Like it was that easy.

      Renee didn’t figure adultery was something she could get over very quickly though she herself had been tempted to step over that invisible marital line a time or two. But she hadn’t. She’d come close but had stopped short. Not that it mattered now. Tim could rant and rave, remind her that she was “his” until kingdom come. It was over. O-V-E-R, and she’d told him so tonight in no uncertain terms.

      He’d been in a rage, and for the first time she’d seen the extent of his temper and had been glad there hadn’t been a gun in the house. Not that she thought he would ever really physically harm her…

      Still, he’d lost it. Really lost it. His face, once boyishly handsome, had turned tomato red, and his big hands had clenched into hammy fists. He’d even gone so far as to punch through the entry hall wall. That’s when she’d left. In a hurry. Only pausing to pick up a few essentials in Hillsboro.

      Had he followed her?

      Decided to have it out again?

      He wouldn’t, would he?

      She returned to the gravel drive of the small cottage she used on her weekend getaways. Three blocks off the beach and within walking distance of town, the cabin was owned by a friend of her father’s, a man who, since his wife had died, rarely spent any time here. His kids were flung to the winds, one son in Miami, another in Denver, his daughter trying to make it as an actress in LA. No one spent any time at the cabin he’d renovated with his own hands sometime in the early eighties.

      Renee nosed her Camry beneath the carport. She hurried through the fog to the porch where the exterior light, always illuminated, had burned out. “Damn it all,” she muttered, fumbling with her keys and the old, rusted lock.

      She heard the sound of footsteps and turned quickly, her heart in her throat, to see someone appear through the mist. She nearly screamed until she spied the large dog ambling beside a man, out for their evening constitutional.

      Get a grip, she told herself just as the lock sprang and she let herself inside. She dropped her things on a futon with a faded print cover that served as a couch, then returned outside for her two bags of groceries.

      She was back in the cabin within seconds. After locking the door behind her, she flipped on the lights, lit the gas fire, and told her heart to stop its ridiculous knocking as she tossed her suitcase into the single bedroom on the main floor, then flipped open her laptop computer and waited for it to boot up.

      She was lucky enough to jump onto a neighboring family’s wireless Internet as this little cottage was barely equipped with electricity, let alone anything as technologically advanced as a router; there wasn’t even a phone line. The owner refused to take any money from Renee and only asked that she “spruce the place up a bit” when she came, so she didn’t argue with him and accepted the tiny abode as her retreat away from Tim and her disintegrating marriage.

      It was also here where she had first decided to do her story on the missing Jezebel Brentwood.

      And Jessie Brentwood was the reason she felt such overwhelming persecution. As if she were being watched and followed. And it was all because she’d taken that first trip to Deception Bay.

      Jessie’s adoptive parents, the Brentwoods, had been reluctant to talk to Renee when she’d first posed the idea to them for a story about their missing daughter. They knew Renee and liked her. She’d been a tenuous link to Jessie, the one friend who’d kept in contact with them off and on over the years, but they’d balked at the idea that Renee would drag it all up again. They still believed Jessie might walk through their door. Stranger things had happened.

      Renee had been quietly persistent and when she asked about Jessie’s birth parents, they both clamped their jaws shut as if afraid of revealing government secrets. Renee had asked them point-blank why they seemed so—scared—to talk about the adoption, but neither would open up to her. The one piece of information she gleaned was that the adoption—a private one—had taken place in the small coastal town of Deception Bay. The Brentwoods had a cabin there, although it appeared they hadn’t returned there in a long time. Renee asked if Jessie knew about the cabin. Had she been there before, on previous occasions? Could that be where she went as a runaway? The Brentwoods assured her that no, Jessie never went to the cabin. It was one of the first places they always looked for her, but she was never there and certainly hadn’t been since the last time she disappeared.

      That information was what had sent Renee initially to the beach and Deception Bay. She’d asked some questions of the town residents about the area, what it had been like, who were some of the notable families, whatever she could think of to get the conversation rolling. Then she would insert that she knew a family who’d adopted a daughter from somewhere around Deception Bay, that daughter being a friend of hers from high school. No one seemed to know anything, but an old salt who spent his time on a lookout bench above the ocean and fed the seagulls, much to the annoyance of the townies who found them scavenging pests, told her she should go see Mad Maddie.

      “Mad Maddie?” Renee asked dubiously.

      “Lives up there…” He waved in the direction of a rocky tor. “Coupla nice motels there once. Run down now. Maddie owns one of ’em, I guess. Leastwise she stays there. Someday some big resort company’ll buy it up and build somethin’ hee-uge. Cost a fortune to stay there, but ain’t happened yet.”

      “You think Mad Maddie could help my friend locate her biological parents?”

      “She’s as fruity as a punchbowl. Lost her marbles. She reads the future.” He snorted out a few chuckles. “She’ll tell ya a whole buncha drivel.”

      “She’s a psychic reader?”

      He snorted. “Call it what you want. Her and her crazy family.”

      Renee had driven up a winding road to the crest of the tor and had to agree with the old salt about the beauty of the area. Someday maybe a resort company would build “somethin’ hee-uge” here and it would have an amazing view of the Pacific. But for now there wasn’t much left of the motel but a gray, weathered, beaten-down, one-story set of buildings with sagging carports and weed-choked gravel parking. There were a couple of equally sad cars parked outside, vacation renters, who could stay by the day, week, or month, according to the handwritten sign propped against the wall.

      Renee guessed the unit at the end was Mad Maddie’s residence, as there were items stacked outside the front door: used furniture, old plastic toys, a propane stove that had seen better days, various and sundry kitchen and bathroom items, and a couple of lawn chairs set out to view the approach of visitors, not the commanding view on the back, western

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