Beach Baby. Joan Kilby

that’s what I came west for.”

      “Let me push for a while,” Nina said, taking over the stroller. “Tell me, what type of music do you like? What kind of books? I want to know everything about you. We have so much to catch up on,” she continued before Amy could reply. “We’ll go to Stanley Park and take the ferry to Vancouver Island. Oh, the aquarium is wonderful. Beebee will love the killer whales. I’ll take you on a tour of the television studio.”

      “That would be fantastic.” Amy’s heart lightened and so did her step. “I couldn’t believe it when I found out my mother was a TV star.”

      Bound to a chair, Luke struggled against the ropes cutting into his wrists. His ankles were tied, too, bending his knees at an unnatural angle that cut off his circulation. Before him paced the General, his chest festooned with colorful medals against his dark green uniform. Luke heard sounds coming from behind him and knew the General’s henchmen were preparing their instruments of torture.

      “Where are the documents?” The General spoke flawless English with just a trace of an accent.

      “I don’t have them.” Before the soldiers had stormed the warehouse, he’d shoved the manila envelope beneath a loose floorboard.

      “I don’t believe you. You want to destroy us.”

      The General gave the nod and a man in a dark suit slowly stubbed his burning cigarette out on

      Luke’s arm, sending the acrid smell of his own singed flesh up his nostrils.

      Sweat poured down Luke’s back. Or was it blood from the gunshot wound that had reopened when they’d dragged him from the warehouse to the basement of this burnt-out church? “I’m only trying do what’s right. I’m protecting innocent people.”

      REID LEANED BACK IN HIS chair and put his bare feet up on his desk while he read over the passage. What a load of crap, he thought, shaking his head in disgust. Luke Mann didn’t try to defend his actions like some guilty politician. Never apologize, never explain, that was his motto. With a few keystrokes, Reid deleted what he’d spent all morning laboring over.

      Tara was mad at him. Amy said she’d never forgive him and Nina suddenly occupied the moral high ground. Was it any wonder he couldn’t write? Thank God Beebee still regarded him with affection.

      On a wide, high shelf to his left sat framed photos of Tara and Carol, a scented candle Carol had claimed would encourage creativity, except that he never remembered to light it, and a carved wooden box where he kept his treasures. He opened it now, pushed aside the baseball card his grandfather had given him, a bald eagle feather, a moon snail shell, a set of poker dice and, in a separate compartment of its own, a child’s gold bracelet set with tiny pink stones.

      The bracelet had been Amy’s, his gift to her on her eighth birthday. It had come back to him in a box of clothes and toys Amy had outgrown, which Elaine had passed on to Tara. Reid had intercepted the bracelet for sentimental reasons, keeping it as a reminder of Amy’s childhood when he’d moved back out west. Then he’d gotten Tara her own bracelet.

      Reid lifted the thin gold links out of the box and felt the fine weight flow over his fingers. Over the years he’d thought about giving it back to Amy but it was a child’s bracelet; probably it meant more to him than it did to her. Carefully he returned it to its compartment.

      Through his shut office door he could hear Amy and Nina out in the family room, the soft cadence of their voices punctuated frequently by laughter. He’d followed their progress on the dike with his bird-watching binoculars until they’d rounded the bend and he couldn’t make out their figures any longer. Now they were back, getting along like a house on fire.

      Another gale of laughter brought him to his feet with his hand on the doorknob. To what? Ask them to keep it down or to join them? How did Nina do it? Neither of his daughters were talking to him or to each other but, as soon as Nina had arrived, suddenly the house was filled with conversation and laughter. He’d forgotten how much she liked to talk.

      He pressed an ear to the closed door. What was so funny? He should be glad that Nina was getting along well with Amy, except that it stung, coinciding as it did with his abrupt fall from grace. He forced himself back to the computer. He absolutely had to write ten pages today if it killed him.

      Upstairs Tara was drawing her bow across the violin strings as loudly as she could, as if trying to drown out Amy and Nina. Another burst of laughter from the family room was followed by a piercing screech of the violin’s top string.

      That was it. He couldn’t work in here. Reid grabbed his laptop and slid his feet into his sandals. As he came out of his office Nina and Amy stopped yakking to look at him.

      Reid put on his sunglasses and a baseball cap and headed for the French doors. “I’m going to write on the beach,” he said to no one in particular and left without a backward glance.

      Nina had been almost as aware of Reid’s unseen presence behind the shut office door as she was of Amy and Beebee, right in front of her. “He was always quiet,” she said to Amy, “but he didn’t use to be this antisocial.”

      “He gets grumpy when his book isn’t going well,” Amy said. “Some days he hardly speaks to anyone. He just mutters to himself about some guy called Luke.”

      “That’s the hero of his novels,” Nina said.

      “I’ve tried reading his books,” Amy added. “I can’t get into spy thrillers.”

      “They’re not usually my cup of tea, either.” Yet she’d read all of them. Nina got up and went to the window to watch Reid stalk down the beach to sit cross-legged in the sand against a log with his laptop across his knees. “That doesn’t look very comfortable.”

      Amy came to stand beside her. “He told me once he couldn’t work outside because of the seagulls.”

      “They can be noisy,” Nina agreed.

      “It’s their beady eyes,” Amy corrected her. “They fly in and circle around, coming closer and closer, hoping for food, I guess. They stare at him until he can’t think.”