Flames boiled up his body and the last thing he heard was a crackling noise, close to his face, and the attacker retreating into a haze of orange. And then the orange window narrowed to a pinhole and Bartholomew eased into it and was gone.
“Let me get this straight.” Mac McGuire shifted on the blanket, digging his feet into the sand. “You’ve come all the way from San Diego, down through Florida, on to the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas, so you can take our five-year-old swimming on a beach that’s covered with razor-sharp coral.”
“First of all, it’s not covered with coral, just that one side.” Grace Descanso squirted a dollop of sunscreen directly onto his back and smoothed it in. “And secondly, she’s wearing beach shoes. She’s fine.”
A warm wind gusted across the waves, creating a froth of white that enveloped Katie in foam. She twisted her arms out like a windmill, the turquoise water sparkling around her chest, floating the ruffles of her hot pink swimsuit. Her hair was wet, the golden curls darker than usual.
Katie saw them watching and beamed. “Hi, Daddy Daddy Daddy.”
And Mommy Mommy Mommy, Grace thought sourly.
“Hi, sweetheart, I’ll be back out in a minute.”
Grace could tell by the sound of Mac’s voice that he had a sappy look on his face.
He kept talking, his voice dropping down into the reasoned, considered tone he used on air. He was a CNN health reporter, responsible for filing two stories each week and available for live reports. He was also the face of the unit, on air every weeknight introducing stories researched and prepared by producers behind the scenes. When viewers turned on CNN, they often thought of Mac. At least that’s the way they spun it in promos.
“I know she’s fine, I just thought it might be nice to take her someplace amazing. Both of you,” he amended.
Grace worked the sunscreen into his muscles a little too vigorously. He smelled like a tropical fruit drink. She’d already slathered Katie again, until her daughter was slippery as a baby seal and just as quickly had slid out of Grace’s grasp into the water. Then it had been Mac’s turn with Grace, his fingers strong, his touch lingering. The mating dance of the tropics.
Now his skin glowed hot under her fingers; he’d arrived in the Bahamas the day before, and the sun had already streaked his hair with gold. Grace shifted position and kept working. Over his shoulder she could see part of his dark green swimming trunks. A fine pink scar ran up his left arm, still new. She felt a twinge. She’d put that scar there, and if it had happened the other way around, she doubted she’d be letting Mac anywhere near her body, no matter how good his fingers felt.
“I mean, it’s interesting the place you rented,” Mac continued. “But I would have opted at least for a real bathroom.”
“It’s ecofriendly.”
“It’s a compost heap, Grace, with a wooden throne that sits behind a curtain. How in the world did you find that place?”
“A Portuguese cousin in the travel business. Remind me to kill her when I get home.”
In truth, the bed-and-breakfast was a little more primitive than she’d expected; the promised gourmet lunches had turned out to be leftover mac and cheese wrapped in crinkled aluminum foil and cut into cold wedges, served with hamburger buns studded with raisins accompanied by a vat of peanut butter; and the beach billed as remote was an inaccessible clamber down spiny-ridged limestone. Luckily, she’d rented a car, and after adapting to the harrowingly narrow roads filled with traffic hurtling straight at them, they’d found the beach not far from where they were staying.
The main thing had been to get away. Everything else had been secondary. Life for Grace Descanso had changed in an instant on a sunny October day in San Diego when a monster had reached into her world and grabbed her daughter, and by the time Grace had gotten her back, nothing was ordinary ever again.
Mac was back, for starters.
She’d contacted him in the middle of the kidnapping, when she was desperate and cornered. He’d represented the best hope of getting Katie back. The only hope. And now Grace couldn’t say, Gee thanks, for saving my life and helping find our daughter, but you can leave now.
Katie Marie had no memory of the kidnapping, but Grace relived it beat by beat, startling at sudden noises, tensing at the sound of alarms, always looking for the shadow with the long arm that could snag into the shot and blur out of frame, loping away with Katie in its jaws.
The price of getting her back was constant vigilance. Even worse was the guilt, and Grace feared that would never go away. She had lied to Katie growing up, telling her daughter that her father was dead, and now here he sat, sucking down a canned mai tai and criticizing her parenting skills.
“You know this isn’t healthy.” His voice was mild. “You need to take a breath. Relax. The bad guy’s gone.”
She snapped her eyes back to his shoulders. She’d been watching Katie with the intensity reserved for photos on a post office wall. Mac had the kind of skin that never burned, turning golden and ripe as a peach and then browning. Katie had that skin, and his hair color too, but she’d inherited Grace’s dark Portuguese eyes and a dimple that appeared whenever she smiled, and Grace had to admit she’d been seeing a lot more of it lately, ever since Katie had learned her father was still alive.
“And you know the bad guy’s gone because?”
“I have the money and resources to figure things like this out, that’s the because. He’s not getting back into the States, don’t worry.”
“We’re not in the States.” She glanced around the quiet beach and saw a sand crab busily dragging the corpse of a small sea anemone across the sand.
“Still.”
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” Katie crooned. She clasped her small hands together as if she were holding a Mr. Microphone in a karaoke bar. “I just want my daddy.”
“I’m coming, princess.”
Pet names. He’d met Katie face-to-face for the first time exactly twenty-four hours before, and already he had a raft of them. Little dimple toes. Miss periwinkle flippy hair. Sunshine happy girl.
He clambered to his feet and reached for a towel.
“Do you remember that old movie, A Man and a Woman?” Grace twisted the cap back on and tossed the suntan lotion aside.
“I wonder if I should take off my sunglasses.”
“Remember, Anouk Aimée, and she loses her husband, and then she meets this race car driver, and they both have adorable kids and then they all go out to dinner? Or maybe she lost her race car driver husband, and met somebody else, I can’t remember.”
“She’ll probably splash all over them, right?”
“Well, it’s not like that here.”
“What are you talking about?” Without the sunglasses, his eyes were a brilliant green against his skin. He dropped the sunglasses onto the blanket.
“The kids. In that movie. They were there. But somehow in the background. They were present, but didn’t take over the whole thing. The grown-ups still had a nice, normal dinner and they were flirting to beat the band and—”
“So.” Mac shot Grace a swift, evaluating look. “Are you thinking about the dinner or the flirting part?”
“I am hungry.”
He smiled, his teeth very white, and she felt her body flush.
“Daddy.”