Perilous Homecoming. Sarah Varland

way back into town—she pulled her car into the parking lot that connected to the coastal trail. She exhaled even before she got out, feeling some of the tension leave her shoulders as she thought about running. It was one of the best ways she knew to relieve stress.

      She’d changed into running clothes before leaving the museum, so she climbed from her car, set her phone to her running playlist and put it on her armband. Hesitating for a second, she pulled the phone back out for a second and sent a quick text to Sawyer, just to let someone know where she was. She regretted the message the moment she’d sent it. Sawyer didn’t need to know where she was, especially since the day had been quiet and it seemed like maybe...like maybe the threat from last night hadn’t been as big as she’d feared.

      Then again, Michael Wingate’s body was in the McIntosh County morgue right now, so Kelsey knew that wasn’t true.

      Either way, the text message was sent and Kelsey needed this run, had plenty of things in her brain that needed to be sorted out.

      She started out at a comfortable pace and eased into her workout. The first thought her mind landed on was Sawyer. Nope. She wasn’t going there. She sped up a little, felt her feet pound the ground a little harder at the thought of the boy-turned-man who’d thrown her so off balance earlier in the day.

      No. No matter what, she wasn’t going to think of him right now.

      Instead she thought about work. Had Matt overreacted by keeping Gemma away from the museum for now? Kelsey wanted to say yes, especially since she didn’t want to believe she was truly in danger from her work there...but what other reason could someone have for killing Michael Wingate if it wasn’t connected to his job?

      She pushed herself a little harder. Today had been calm. Boring, even. She’d walked through most of the exhibits, accompanied by an officer. He was a younger guy, not a native of the town, but he seemed nice enough, even if his couldn’t-be-more-than-twenty-one-year-old self kept calling her “ma’am.” She loved Southern charm and manners, except when they made her feel like she was much older than pushing thirty.

      Kelsey had gotten a lot accomplished as far as her insurance job, but where the investigation was concerned, she wished she could have spent time in the room where the murder had taken place. She’d remembered while she was working that Michael had acted strangely around one exhibit in there in particular, like there was something about it that made him uncomfortable. It was the most fascinating exhibit in the museum—there wasn’t any doubt about that. Many of the rooms and exhibits focused on Treasure Point’s history in general, but this particular exhibit was exclusively geared toward Treasure Point’s pirate history. Blackbeard was only one of the many pirates who had loved this corner of the Eastern Seaboard for all its barrier islands, mysterious swamps and places to hide smuggled goods.

      It was Treasure Point’s little claim to fame, its most valuable asset as a town trying to grow its tourist trade, as well as its greatest liability. The last few years had seen an upswing in crime for many of the reasons pirates had frequented the area years before.

      The exhibit was interesting, but she hadn’t seen anything in there worth killing over. Most of it talked about shipwrecks that had happened over a hundred years ago.

      Who would kill over that?

      Kelsey shook her head, picked up the pace a little. She was coming up on the parking lot. One more lap, she told herself, and then she’d jump into the water to cool off, take a swim in her workout clothes—she had a spare towel in her car she could sit on—before heading back to the house to tackle a few cleaning projects there and eat another sandwich for dinner.

      She’d had more fun having that impromptu dinner with Sawyer last night than she liked to admit.

      Sawyer? Where had that come from?

      She ran faster. Enough of that.

      The second lap went quickly, and then she was carefully picking her way along the narrow game trail through the woods that led to the beach. Not many people accessed the beach from here, but it had always been a favorite place of hers to swim. The main beach of Treasure Point wasn’t very big, and as a result it was usually crowded.

      Kelsey liked having this quiet space to herself.

      She narrowly avoided some thorns and pushed her way through the last bit of underbrush until she emerged onto a clearer area, where the dirt of the forest gradually gave way to sand. It was a unique area, in general and environmentally, and Kelsey loved everything about it. This was why, though she’d longed for a big city, she’d settled on Savannah rather than somewhere farther like Atlanta, or even Charleston. This place would always be home in a way, and Savannah was the most similar to Treasure Point.

      Kelsey waded into the waves, the water felt good against her hot skin after the initial jolt of cold. The waves lapped against her and she let herself float on them, relax with them and even stayed there on her back for a few minutes, looking up at the blue sky dotted with cotton-ball clouds.

      The sound of the waves hitting the beach was loud, but the noise relaxed her. After a few minutes of floating she moved upright again, swam a little closer to the shore since she’d drifted. Then she found the two trees in the distance she liked to use as markers for herself and swam a few laps.

      Finally, exhausted, she lay on her back again, exhaled the stress of the day into the warm salty air and let herself relax.

      Something snatched her arm, jerked her underwater before Kelsey could react, before she could draw in one more long breath of air to sustain her.

      She kept her eyes open even though the salty ocean water stung, but her attempts to see her attacker were useless. The water here was far from clear, and though the sun was shining, all she could see were particles and a shape. Definitely human. She struggled, fought to get away, and managed to wrench her arm free before throwing herself toward the shore and kicking with every bit of strength she had left.

      Was that someone on the beach? Did her attacker have an accomplice?

      She kicked harder, moved her arms in the freestyle motion, only to be jerked backward again by the man—she was fairly certain that the shape was too large to be a woman—and pulled back under. This time she’d taken a breath, so she had more energy to fight.

      Still, as she kicked and struggled, she knew that she didn’t have long. She couldn’t keep holding her breath, but to stop trying was to give up and die.

      And Kelsey wasn’t a quitter. Never had been. Wasn’t about to start now.

      “Kelsey!”

      She heard the shouts from the beach. Was the person she’d seen someone on her side, not her attacker’s?

      The knowledge gave her confidence to give this struggle all she had, and she landed one solid kick to her opponent’s gut.