Prologue
Atlantic Beach
Outside Jacksonville, Florida
Officer John Penotti took a sip of his rapidly cooling coffee, fighting the drowsiness that always came in the last remaining hours before daybreak. Listening to the command radio’s static, he peered through the cruiser’s windshield as it traveled along a remote portion of state road A1A. His partner, Tommy Haggard, was behind the wheel, humming a tune that had been playing at the all-night diner they’d recently departed. The rain had ended and beside them, the endless stretch of the Atlantic appeared to be nearly one with the blackened sky, with only the foamy whitecaps of ocean waves breaking through the darkness.
“You taking vacation this summer?” Tommy asked.
“You sound like my wife. I keep telling her we already live at the beach.”
Tommy kept his left arm poised coolly on the window’s rim as he used his right hand to steer the cruiser. He was younger than John by a decade and still had the energy to do more than sit in front of his television with a cold beer on his days off. “So do something different. Go hiking in the mountains, or take the kids to Disney World.”
“They’re getting too old for it.”
Tommy gave him a look. “Too old? I had my honeymoon at Disney, man.”
A snide comment formed on John’s tongue, but he let it pass as he placed his foam cup in the holder and nodded toward the road ahead of them. “Look up there.”
“Great,” Tommy muttered, annoyed. He slowed the cruiser and activated the light bar on the roof as they approached.
The silver Acura had taken out a good ten feet of wooden stake fencing that separated the environmentally protected sand dunes from the highway. It had veered off the still-wet road and plowed into one of the mounds, its crumpled front end embedded into white sand. The driver’s side door hung open. They’d had a quiet night so far, John thought, with only a minor traffic violation and some teens trying to buy beer at the local Gas ’N Go with a fake ID.
“Probably a DUI,” he surmised. “Idiot’s probably passed out on the beach.”
Tommy cut the engine but kept the cruiser’s light bar on, staining the Acura with rhythmic blue streaks. Getting out, John pulled his flashlight from his utility belt and trained its beam into the car’s darkened interior.
“Empty,” he confirmed as he moved to the open door. The air bag had deployed in the crash and hung from the steering wheel like a deflated balloon. “Tennessee plate. Want to call in the tags?”
Tommy headed back to the cruiser as John leaned into the car for a closer look. Blood droplets, still wet, were visible on the air bag. Frowning, he raised the flashlight higher, illuminating more of the interior. While it was possible the bag’s release had broken the driver’s nose, there was a lot of blood on the seats—drying brown smears that looked as though rusty fingers had been wiped against the leather.
“The car’s stolen.” Tommy returned to John’s side. “The owner’s vacationing here and reported it missing two days ago.”
“We’ve got blood.”
Tommy peered inside. “Any open containers?”
“No.” Straightening, John walked around to the front end of the car. He put his hand on the hood. It was still warm. Squinting onto the darkened beach, he filled his lungs with briny sea air, then sighed in resignation. “Let’s go look for the driver.”
As they crossed one of the walkovers—plank bridges that provided access to the beach while protecting the dunes from foot traffic—John unsnapped his holster. He noticed that Tommy—always in search of excitement—had already unsheathed his firearm and held it poised in front of him as if he were part of a SWAT team conducting a raid. Normally, he gave his partner hell about his gung-ho tendencies, but this time he acknowledged that the car’s stolen status did increase the possibility of an armed perp.
“Footprints,” Tommy noted as John’s flashlight swept the packed sand at the bottom of the wooden steps leading onto the beach. The prints were narrow with only a shallow indention, indicating that whoever had abandoned the crashed vehicle wasn’t too remarkable in size, and was also barefoot.
They followed the trail for a couple hundred feet before it veered into another village of sand dunes anchored by thick ocean grasses and vegetation. John raised the flashlight, sweeping the area. A shadowed form crouched behind a scraggly cluster of oak trees, barely visible and as still as a rabbit trying not to end up as quarry.
“This is the Atlantic Beach Police,” John announced in an authoritative tone, removing his weapon. Tommy stood beside him, already in shooting stance, his gun’s barrel pointed into the trees. “Come out slowly with your hands on your head!”
The form remained motionless.
“Come out now!” John stepped carefully closer and focused the flashlight’s beam directly on the figure.
“You think we won’t shoot you, asshole?” Tommy yelled. “There’s two of us and only one of—”
John laid a hand on his partner’s arm, pushing the gun’s nose down. “Christ. Put that away.”
The huddled form was a woman. She squatted on the ground, her slender arms wrapped around herself in a protective gesture. A curtain of sleek, dark hair concealed her face, but the flashlight illuminated her skin and the dried blood on her hands, arms and legs. At first, John thought she wore a bathing suit, but realized with a jolt it was only a skimpy pair of panties and a lace bra. She trembled in the beam’s filmy swath.
“Ma’am? You all right?” He came a few steps closer, one hand stretched toward her. To Tommy he said, “Go back to the car, get a blanket and call for an ambulance.”
Once Tommy had taken off, John sank on his haunches to the woman’s level. If she was aware of his presence, she gave no indication.
“Ma’am?” he asked again. His fingers grazed her shoulder, which seemed to break the trance she was in. She cried out and scrambled backward, her chest rising and falling rapidly with her ragged breathing.
“It’s gonna be all right. I’m a police officer. We’re sending for help.”
Her brown eyes were wide with fear or confusion, her pupils dilated, a likely indication of a head injury, or possibly drugs. Her nose was bleeding a little but didn’t appear to be broken, and John wondered how badly she was hurt. She had a lot of blood on her, but he couldn’t ascertain its source. Her wrists, however, were red and badly abraded.
Wherever she’d come from, she’d been tied up.