Night Whispers Read online

  Jess reached them first, well ahead of the others, his breathing unaffected by his run. “We thought we heard shots coming from here,” he said, scanning the dunes. “Didn’t you hear it?”

  Sloan made a valiant effort to seem amused while she lied to a trusted friend who’d just raced to her rescue. “Those were firecrackers, Jess. Two teenagers set them off in the dunes and then split.”

  “It sounded like shots,” Jess argued, planting his hands on his hips and staring beyond her shoulder.

  Ted Burnby and Leo Reagan lumbered to a stop a few moments later. “We thought we heard shots,” Ted panted, but Leo Reagan was incapable of speech. Forty pounds overweight and completely out of shape, he leaned over and braced his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

  “A couple of teenage boys were setting off firecrackers,” Sloan lied again, feeling more awkward and resentful with each falsehood.

  Leo and Ted accepted that far more readily than Jess, but then Jess was smarter and more streetwise, a big city cop who’d defected to a less violent community but whose instincts were still sharp. After a few moments more, he finally gave up his frowning visual search of the dunes and frowned at her instead. “Pete’s party is almost over,” he said bluntly. “We were wondering why you hadn’t shown up.”

  In the current circumstances, there was only one possible, believable answer Sloan could give. “I was on my way there just now.”

  He dropped his hands from his hips, adopting a slightly less aggressive stance as he surveyed her companion. “Who is this?”

  To Sloan’s relief, the FBI agent decided to introduce himself. “Paul Richardson,” he said, reaching forward to shake hands with Jess, then Ted and Leo. Positively exuding relaxed male cordiality, he added, “I’m a friend of Sloan’s from Fort Lauderdale.”

  “If you plan to get anything to eat at Pete’s party, you’d better get over there,” Leo warned the agent, his thoughts ever reverting to food. “The nachos are already gone, but the chili dogs are good.”

  “I’ve had a long day,” Agent Richardson regretfully replied; then he looked at Sloan and said smoothly, “Sloan, you go to the party without me.”

  Sloan panicked. He intended to vanish without answering any more questions! She’d unmasked him, and now he would simply disappear from Bell Harbor, leaving her in an agony of uncertainty, with no way of finding out why the FBI was watching her. She was so desperate to stop him that she actually clutched his arm. “Oh, but I want you to meet Pete,” she insisted. “We’ll only stay a few minutes.”

  “I’d really be a drag tonight.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” Sloan said breezily.

  His eyes narrowed in warning. “I think I would be.”

  “You couldn’t possibly be a drag. You’re such an interesting person.”

  “You’re biased.”

  “No, I’m not,” she argued, and in desperation Sloan switched to veiled blackmail and said to her friends, “Let me explain how really interesting he is—”

  “Don’t bore them with any details, Sloan,” he interrupted with a meaningful smile. “Let’s go meet your friend Pete and get something to eat.”

  Leo brightened at the mention of eating. “Hey, Paul, you like anchovies?”

  “Love them,” Richardson said enthusiastically, but Sloan had the impression he was clenching his teeth.

  “Then you’re in luck because the pizza had anchovies on it, so there’s a lot of it left. Never met anybody who likes anchovies, except Pete and now you.”

  Throughout the discussion, Jess had been intently studying the FBI agent; then he seemed to lose interest and patience. “If we don’t get back to the party, the party’s going to come looking for us.”

  “Let’s go,” Agent Richardson said agreeably; then he startled Sloan by curving his arm around her shoulders in what appeared to be a casually possessive, affectionate gesture. But there was nothing affectionate about the hard warning squeeze he gave her shoulders.

  Jess, Leo, and Ted fell into step beside them, and the four men quickly struck up a conversation about sports. Soon the relative isolation of the dunes began to give way to a well-lit stretch of beach, where portable radios competed with the sound of the surf and beach blankets dotted the sand like colorful bandages, occupied mostly by young couples who were romantically inclined.

  8

  The kiosk where Pete’s party was taking place was next to a barbecue grill, and the smell of charcoal lighter and overcooked hot dogs was enough to make Sloan’s nervous stomach churn. Pete and his fianceé, along with the rest of the party guests, were standing a few yards away, listening to Jim Finkle, who’d brought his guitar and was playing a beautiful flamenco song. “He should have been a professional musician, not a cop,” Jess remarked, and he continued on to join Jim’s audience.

  Leo hung back a moment, however. “Have something to eat,” he instructed Richardson, gesturing expansively to a wooden table covered with open pizza boxes, large bowls encrusted with the remnants of cheese dip, chili, and potato salad, and a platter of cold hot dogs with buns. “Drinks are over there in the cooler,” Leo added before he headed off to listen to Jim. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks, I will,” Agent Richardson said, and with his hand still on Sloan’s shoulder, he forced her to remain at his side until they reached the table. Sloan knew he’d been angry at first, but on the way here, he’d seemed to truly relax, joking with Leo about men who like to cook, and even laughing at something she said. Since she hadn’t actually given his identity away, she naturally assumed he was feeling more charitable toward her. He even smiled as he handed her a plate and said furiously, “If you so much as utter one word tonight that might somehow jeopardize me, I will bust your ass for obstruction of justice.”

  His continued anger caught her so off-guard that Sloan gaped at him while she automatically took the plate from him. Still smiling, he handed her a napkin, took one for himself, and snapped, “Got it?”

  Having issued a warning that she knew was no idle threat, he spooned food onto his plate from each bowl and picked up a cold hot dog, but Sloan noticed he did not touch the pizza—not even when the guitar music stopped and Leo and the group were returning to the table. Evidently Agent Richardson’s dedication to duty and country stopped short of eating an anchovy.

  “I wasn’t really going to tell them anything about you,” she explained, adopting the tone of calm reason that she always used to neutralize violent emotional situations. “But I am entitled to an explanation, and I couldn’t let you disappear without giving me one.”

  “You should have waited until tomorrow.”

  Sloan dipped a limp taco chip into some salsa and put it on her plate, determined to appear as nonchalant as he. “Really?” she retorted. “Exactly how was I supposed to find you tomorrow?”

  “You couldn’t. I would have found you.”

  “With what?” she said bitterly. “Binoculars?”

  Her rejoinder almost seemed to amuse him, but the man was like a human chameleon, so she couldn’t be certain. “I see your point.”

  “Hey, Sloan, where’ve you been?” Pete demanded. With his arm looped over his fiancée’s shoulder and a beer in his hand, he strolled up to them, and Jess tagged along. Mary Beth was blond and slender, a shy, refined, pretty girl who managed to look as happy as Pete without saying a word.

  “Honey, show them the locket I gave you as a memento of the week before we got married,” Pete instructed as soon as Sloan finished introducing them to her “friend” Paul Richardson. “It’s solid fourteen karat gold,” Pete added proudly.

  Mary Beth lifted the heavy, heart-shaped locket at her throat so they could properly admire it.

  “It’s lovely,” Sloan murmured, trying to concentrate on everything happening around them, watching for anything that Richardson might consider as “jeopardizing” his case.

  Agent Richardson leaned forward to study the locket as if he had absolutely nothing on his min