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Keith looked at Ben apologetically, afraid that his story had been too effective.
“You’re not scared, are you?” Kim demanded.
“Of course not,” Amber protested. She laughed, but it was a brittle sound. “Don’t be silly. Sandy, you’re not scared, are you?”
“About staying on a haunted island?” Sandy asked. “No. I mean, the tents are all pretty close together on the beach when you think about it, right? Of course, I do wish Brad and I were one of the groups in the middle.”
“I’m sure we’re just fine,” Amanda said.
“I think it will be fun,” Brad teased. “Sandy’s going to be all cuddly tonight, I assure you.”
“Oh, my God!” Amber exclaimed.
“What?” Ben demanded.
“Dad…we might have found one of them today. One of the ghosts!”
“It’s just a story,” Keith said. “You asked for a ghost story and—”
“No, no, there was a skull. At least…we thought it was a skull,” Amber said.
Ben groaned loudly. “Girls, one of you stubbed a toe on a conch shell. There was no skull. Enough with the scary talk, okay?” he said firmly.
Beth kept her mouth shut, wincing. And not because Ben was annoyed, but because she was suddenly more frightened than ever herself. The girls had just let everyone know they had seen a skull.
And someone here, someone sharing the island with them, had taken that skull for reasons of their own. Reasons that couldn’t be ignored.
“It’s easy to imagine things out here,” Matt said easily. “I promise you, there are no ghosts here.”
“But lots of ghost stories supposedly have some truth to them. There were shipwrecks all around here. I’ll bet the story is true, and that the ghosts whispered it in your ear,” Amber said.
“Okay, that’s a scary thought!” Sandy said, shivering.
“It’s getting better and better for me, girls. Please, go on,” Brad said, laughing, but also trying to ease the fear the girls seemed to feel.
“We’re in the Bermuda Triangle, too, aren’t we?” Amanda asked, rising. “Luckily, I don’t have a superstitious bone in my body.” She stretched, and Keith’s shirt fell from her shoulders. She reached down languidly to pick it up and slowly walked—or sashayed—over to Keith to return it. “Besides,” she said softly, “there are a lot of handsome, well-muscled men around here to protect us if we need it. Well, good night, all.”
Her cousins and father rose to join her, saying their thank-yous as they rose.
The group began to break up, everyone laughing, promising to see each other in the morning.
As they returned to their tents, Beth was silent.
“Aunt Beth, are you afraid of ghosts?” Amber asked.
“No,” she assured her niece.
“Then what are you afraid of?” Amber persisted.
Beth glanced self-consciously over at Ben. “The living,” she said softly.
Her brother sighed, shaking his head. “Just like good old Captain Pierce, I carry a gun. And I won’t let anyone close enough to use it against me,” he assured her.
A few minutes later they had all retired, Ben and Beth to their “one-bedroom” tents and the girls to the large “two-bedroom” Ben had recently purchased for his daughter. None of them were more than ten feet apart, with the girls situated between the adults.
Amber and Kim kept a light on, and Beth found herself hoping their supply of batteries would be sufficient. She could hear the girls giggling, probably inventing ghost stories. She told herself that people were simply susceptible to the dark, to shadows, whispers on the breeze, and the dark intent of a tale told by firelight.
But she was uneasy herself. She reminded herself that she had been uneasy long before Keith’s ghost story.
It’s just a story, he’d said. A good story, told on the spur of the moment.
And it hadn’t scared her. Not a silly—even sad—ghost story.
Yet…she was scared.
Despite her unease, she eventually drifted off to sleep. Her dreams were disjointed, snatches of conversation, visions that seemed to dance before her, never really taking shape until she saw, in her mind’s eye, a beautiful young girl in eighteenth-century dress, a handsome Spaniard and a sea captain, sword in hand….
The sea captain—arresting, exciting, masculine—took on the appearance of someone familiar…Keith Henson.
Sadly, even in her dream, the beautiful young girl looked like Amanda.
She tossed and turned as the dream unfolded, more like a play with the director continually calling, “Cut!” than a real dream.
And then she heard the wind rise, a rustling in the brush…
She awakened, a sense of panic taking hold of her. Her palms were clammy, her limbs icy.
It was just a nightmare, she told herself.
Except it wasn’t just a nightmare.
Nearby, the foliage was rustling. Someone was creeping about in the stygian darkness.
Pirates had definitely frequented this area, once upon a time.
Spanish galleons had carried gold.
Had Keith truly only been telling a tall tale?
Because human nature never changed. Piracy still existed. She wasn’t frightened by anything sad that might have occurred in the past, because the present could be frightening enough.
Someone was out there. Not a ghost.
Someone very much alive.
3
NIGHT MOVES.
He had expected them.
Someone on the island was playing games.
Innocent games? Searching for legends?
Or games with far more deadly intent?
Keith rose silently and waited just inside his tent, listening, trying to determine from which direction the noises were coming. There was a breeze, so the trees continued to rustle. But he had heard far more than the subtle movement of the palm fronds in the soft, natural wind of the night.
Whoever it was, they had slipped across the sand and into the dense foliage of the interior.
Looking for a skull?
Or was there something more, something entirely different, going on? Perhaps he shouldn’t have told his ghost story. But he had told it on purpose, watching the others closely for their reactions. In the end, though, he’d learned nothing except that everyone seemed awfully easy to spook.
But had he caused this movement in the night?
He eased slowly, silently, from the tent and started across the white sand. Just ahead, barely discernible, the rustling sound came again.
Suddenly there was a light ahead, as if whoever was there felt they had gone far enough not to be noticed.
With the appearance of the light, he knew for certain he wasn’t chasing some nocturnal animal through the trees.
He followed, quickening his pace as he left the beach behind.
FEAR KEPT BETH DEAD STILL for several seconds until her instinct to protect the girls rose to the fore.
She almost burst from the tent, to find…
Nothing. Nothing but the sea by night, the soft sound of the gentle waves washing the shore, a nearby palm bent ever so slightly in homage to the breeze.
She went still, looking around, listening.
Still nothing. She told herself she needed to get a grip. She had never been the cowardly type, and stories were just that: stories. There were real dangers in life, but she had always dealt with them. She didn’t walk through dangerous neighborhoods alone at night. She carried pepper spray, and she’d learned how to use it. She even knew how to shoot, since their friends included several cops, who’d taken her to the shooting range and taught her how to handle a gun, though she didn’t choose to keep one, since her house had an alarm system.
So why was she panicking?
Because in her heart of hearts, no matter what anyone said, she was certain she had seen a skull. And it hadn’t belonged to any long-dead pirate.
No one nearby, no sounds now. She still had to check on the girls.
First she looked down the beach. All the fires were out, and she could see the tents, silent in the night. Keith and his buddies had tied a hammock to a couple of palms, where it swung ever so slightly in the breeze. Down from them, another group of tents, and farther still, a larger tent, all of them quiet and dark.
She hurried over to the girls’ tent and looked in, her heart in her throat. But both of them were in the second of the two little rooms, and they were soundly sleeping. Their light was still on, turning their small bedroom into an oasis and everything around it into a black hole.
She exhaled in relief and started backing out—straight into something solid, large.
In her, terror rose and she screamed.
KEITH HEARD THE SCREAM and froze, his blood congealing at the terror in that shrill sound.
In a split second, he was back in action.
The scream had come from the beach.
Beth!
The light ahead went out, but he ignored it and turned, tearing through the brush, desperate to reach her.
SHE LET OUT A SECOND, terrified scream; then she swung around, ready to fight to the death on behalf of the girls.
There was no need.
“Dammit, Beth,” a voice swore fiercely in the night. “What the hell are you doing?”
She blinked, drawing back with just seconds to spare before giving her brother a black eye.
“Ben?”
“Who the hell did you expect?”
“You scared me to death,” she accused him.
“What’s going on?” Amber asked nervously, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she crawled from the bedroom.
Kim followed, and the four of them wound up in the small outer room of the tent, tripping over one another.
“Nothing,” Ben said irritably.
Just then, as Amber tried to stand, she bumped one of the poles and the tent collapsed on them.
Ben tried never to swear around his daughter, but tangled in the nylon, tasting sand, Beth could hear him breaking his rule beneath his breath.
“It’s all right. The tent just fell,” she heard herself protesting.
But when she twisted to free herself, she only became more entangled.
Then the fabric was lifted from her, and, looking up, she saw the face of Keith Henson, tense and taut as he stared down at her.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded curtly.
“Nothing,” she snapped.
“You screamed.”
By then Ben had managed to escape the mess of poles and nylon and make it to his feet. He was shaking his head disgustedly.
“Sorry, everyone.”
