A footfall, coming from behind him.
He swung around. Flags on houses and boats, Christmas decorations, all of them being battered by the wind, created a confusion of shadows. He could have sworn that he had heard a footstep, but there was no one behind him.
Where could someone be hiding?
Not a hard question to answer, actually. A pursuer could have ducked behind one of the cars still scattered around the lot. Behind a light pole. Behind the giant Santa that was wavering like a trembling jellyfish in front of a souvenir shop.
But the sound had come from directly behind him. As if someone had followed him from the office.
There was no one there now. He slipped his hand beneath his coat and set it on the gun in his waistband, then looked around again, slowly, carefully.
No one. Nothing out of place that he could see. It was late on a winter’s night, the wind was growing wicked, he was tired, and his eyes were playing tricks. And still…
It was bizarre, feeling this uneasy when there was nothing there to be afraid of. He was smart enough to be afraid of what was real—deranged people carrying weapons, for instance. But he had never been afraid of the wind, and he didn’t intend to start now.
There was no one there. He was sure of it.
He told himself that the wind had torn something loose from somewhere, and he had heard it hit the pavement before blowing off again, this time to oblivion. Determinedly, he strode to the car.
The drive back to the house was uneventful, but as he left the car and entered the house by the kitchen doorway, he was startled to feel a sensation of unease again.
Now he was really being idiotic, he told himself. Even if there had been someone in the parking lot, they sure as hell hadn’t followed him here. And back there, the sound had been real, like a footstep on pavement.
Here, it was just…
A feeling. But it was almost palpable. Every hair on his nape stood up in warning.
He paused just inside the door, closing it behind him as silently as possible. Then, even though it made him feel like a fool, he drew the gun from his waistband, certain that something was amiss.
He moved through the kitchen carefully, then into the hallway, passing the formal dining room and Sean’s office, and entering the foyer.
There, the feeling seemed to be like something thundering in his heart. No, it was his heart. As keyed and attuned to danger as it had ever been.
Over there, a flurry of movement.
A creaking on the stairs.
“Stop! Right there, right now!” he shouted.
Suddenly the staircase and foyer were flooded with light. Looking up, he saw a figure at the top of the stairs, indistinguishable in the glare of the lights it had had apparently just turned on.
Simultaneously, someone gasped nearby, someone else shrieked near the bottom of the stairway, and an irritated woman shouted angrily from the doorway to the ground floor bedroom Sean O’Riley had taken over.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw that Kat, wielding a frying pan, was standing at the bottom of the steps. Caer, standing just outside her own door, was apparently the one who had gasped. Not surprisingly, the irritated woman was Amanda O’Riley.
And it was Bridey at the top of the stairway, standing there like an avenging angel with her hand still on the light switch.
He had the gun drawn and aimed. He quickly flicked the safety back on and shoved the gun back into his waistband.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded.
It was a mistake.
They all started speaking at once, their voices rising in their efforts to be heard above one another.
“Oh, my God, it was you!” Kat lashed out at Amanda, looking as if she were ready to go to war with the frying pan.
“It’s my house, whether you like it or not!” Amanda shouted back.
“It’s just that it sounded as if someone was creeping stealthily down the stairs,” Caer tried to explain.
“I did not creep down the stairs, I walked, and I walked because I heard someone creeping—and that someone had to be you,” Amanda told Kat, her hands on her hips. Then she spun on Caer. “Or it was you, creeping around where you shouldn’t be. You were hired to be Sean’s nurse, not spend the night listening to Bridey’s ridiculous stories.”
“Listen!” Zach commanded, and—miraculously—they all shut up.
And then they all heard it, a sudden, hard slamming sound.
“It’s the back door,” Zach said. The slamming came again and again, as if the wind was trying to rip the door off its hinges.
He ignored the women and strode through the house, reaching into his waistband for the gun once again, automatically releasing the safety. He reached the rear door that led out to the back porch and the lawn that sloped to the cliff above the sea.
The door was wide open, swinging on its hinges.
He caught it and stepped out onto the porch, scanning the night. There was no sign of anyone anywhere. No sound of an intruder running away into the night. It looked as if the door had been left open, then caught by the wind.