CHAPTER TWO

Riley Paige took a long, deep breath of the cool ocean air.

She was sitting on the high porch of a beach house where she, her boyfriend Blaine, and their three teenaged daughters had already spent a week. Down on the wide sandy beach, more summer vacationers were scattered about and others were out in the water. Riley could see April, Jilly, and Crystal playing in the surf. There was a lifeguard on duty, but even so, Riley was glad she had a good view of the girls.

Blaine was lounging in the wicker recliner next to her.

He said, “So are you glad you accepted my invitation to come out here?”

Riley squeezed his hand and said, “Very glad. I could really get used to this.”

“I certainly hope so,” Blaine said, squeezing her hand back. “When was the last time you took a vacation like this?”

The question took Riley slightly aback.

“I really have no idea,” she said. “Years, I guess.”

“Well, you’ve got some catching up to do,” Blaine said.

Riley smiled and thought …

Yeah, and another whole week to do it in.

They’d all had a wonderful time so far. A well-to-do friend of Blaine’s had offered him the use of his place at Sandbridge Beach for two weeks in August. When Blaine invited them to go along, Riley had realized that she owed it to April and Jilly to spend more time away from work, having fun with them.

Now she thought …

I owed it to myself, too.

Maybe, if she got enough practice in this summer, she’d even get used to pampering herself.

When they’d arrived, Riley had been startled at how elegant this place was, an attractive house raised on pilings and with a wonderful view of the beach from this porch. There was even an outdoor pool in the back.

They’d gotten here just in time to celebrate April’s sixteenth birthday. Riley and the girls had spent that day shopping fifteen miles away in Virginia Beach, and they’d visited the aquarium there. Since then they’d barely left this place—and the girls seemed to be anything but bored.

Blaine gently let go of Riley’s hand and got up from his chair.

Riley grumbled, “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

“To finish getting dinner ready,” Blaine said. Then with an impish grin he added, “Unless you’d rather go out to eat.”

Riley laughed at his little joke. Blaine owned a quality restaurant back in Fredericksburg, and he himself was a master chef. He’d been making wonderful seafood dinners ever since they’d gotten here.

“That’s out of the question,” Riley said. “Now go straight to the kitchen and get to work.”

“OK, boss,” Blaine said.

He gave her a quick kiss and went on inside. Riley watched the girls romping in the surf for a few moments, then started to feel a little restless and considered going inside to help Blaine with dinner.

But of course, he’d only tell her to come back out here and leave the cooking to him.

So instead, Riley picked up the paperback spy novel she’d been reading. She was too mentally fuzzy right now to make much sense of the elaborate plot, but she was enjoying reading it anyway.

After a little while she felt her whole body twitch, and she realized that she’d dropped the book at her side. She’d fallen asleep for a few minutes—or had it been longer?

Not that it really mattered.

But the afternoon light was waning, and the waves were curling a bit higher. The water looked a little more threatening now that the relentless tide was coming in.

Even with the lifeguard still on duty, Riley felt uneasy. She was about ready to stand up and wave and call out to the girls to tell them it was time to get out of the water, but they seemed to have already come to the same conclusion on their own. They were up on the beach building a sandcastle.

Riley breathed a little easier at their good judgment. At times like now, when the ocean took on a more ominous hue, it occurred to Riley that it wasn’t really a place where humans could ever quite belong. Some denizens of the deep were capable of terrible violence—at least as brutal and cruel as the human monsters she hunted and fought as a BAU investigator.

Riley shuddered as she remembered how she’d sometimes had to protect her family against those human monsters. They had been formidable enough. She knew better than to imagine she could ever contend with the monsters of the deep.

Riley’s last case had been a full month ago—a string of violent knife murders of rich and powerful men, perpetrated in posh and elegant homes down in Georgia. Since then her professional life had been unusually quiet—and somewhat boring, really.

She’d been updating records, attending meetings, and giving advice to other agents about their cases. But she’d enjoyed giving a couple of lectures to students at the FBI Academy. As a seasoned and even rather celebrated investigator, Riley was a popular lecturer, at least when she was available.

Seeing those young, aspiring faces in the classroom reminded her of her own early idealism, back when she was a trainee in the Academy. Then, she’d been hopeful about the prospect of ridding the world of evildoers. She was a lot less hopeful now, but she was still doing her best.

What else can I do? she asked herself.

It was the only work she knew, and she knew she was very good at her job.

She heard Blaine’s voice calling out …

“Riley, dinner is ready. Get the kids.”

Riley stood up and waved, shouting “Dinner!” at the top of her lungs.

The girls turned away from their sandcastle, which had become quite elaborate, and they dashed toward the house. They ran underneath the porch where Riley was sitting and to the back of the house, where they could take a quick shower by the swimming pool.

Before she went inside herself, Riley stood by the railing and saw that the girls’ sandcastle was already getting nibbled away by the rising tide. Riley couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit of sadness about that, but she reminded herself that was normal for castles made of sand.

She’d hardly spent any time at the beach when she was younger. She just hadn’t had that kind of a childhood. But from watching the girls playing during the last few days, she knew that part of the fun of building sandcastles was knowing they’d get washed away.

A healthy life lesson, I guess.

She stood watching the sandcastle vanishing into the water for a few moments. When she heard the three girls galloping up the stairs in back, she walked along the porch around the house to meet them.

One was Blaine’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Crystal, who was April’s best friend. Another was Riley’s newly adopted fourteen-year-old daughter, Jilly.

As the three giggling girls started making a dash to their bedroom to change out of their bathing suits for dinner, Riley noticed a small cut on Jilly’s thigh.

She gently took Jilly by the arm and said, “How did this happen?”

Jilly glanced at the cut and said, “I dunno. Just got clumsy, I guess. Bumped it into a thorn or something else kind of sharp.”

Riley stooped to examine the cut. It wasn’t at all bad, and it was already beginning to scab over. Still, it struck Riley as odd somehow. She remembered Jilly having a similar cut on her forearm the day they’d come out here. Jilly had said that April’s cat, Marbles, had scratched her. April had denied it.

Jilly drew back from her—a little defensively, Riley thought.

“It’s nothing, Mom, OK?”

Riley said, “There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom. Put some disinfectant on it before you come to dinner.”

“OK, I’ll do that,” Jilly said.

Riley watched as Jilly ran after April and Crystal to the bedroom.

Nothing to worry about, Riley told herself.

But it was hard not to worry. Jilly had been living with them only since January. When Riley had been working on a case in Arizona, she’d rescued Jilly from desperate circumstances. After some legal and personal struggles, Riley had finally been able to adopt Jilly just a month ago, and Jilly seemed happy with her new family.

And besides …

It’s just a little cut—nothing to worry about.

Riley went to the kitchen to help Blaine set the table and put dinner on. The girls soon joined them, and they all sat down to dinner—delicious fried flounder filets served with tartar sauce. Everybody was happy and laughing. By the time Blaine served cheesecake for dessert, a warm, pleasant feeling was coming over Riley.

We’re like a family, she thought.

Or maybe that wasn’t quite right. Maybe, just maybe …

We really are a family.

It had been a long time since Riley had felt like that.

As she finished her dessert, she thought again …

I could really get used to this.

*

After supper, the girls went back to their bedroom to play games before going to sleep. Riley joined Blaine on the porch, where they sipped glasses of wine as they watched night setting in. The two of them were quiet for a long time.

Riley basked in that quietness, and she sensed that Blaine did too.

She couldn’t remember having shared many easy, comfortable, silent moments like this with her ex-husband, Ryan. They’d pretty much always either been talking or deliberately not talking. And when they hadn’t been talking, they’d simply inhabited their own separate worlds.

But Blaine felt very much a part of Riley’s world right now …

And a beautiful world it is.

The moon was bright, and as the night grew darker, stars were appearing in huge clusters—almost unbelievably bright out here away from the lights of the city. The dark waves of the Gulf reflected the light of the moon and the stars. Far away, the horizon grew blurry and finally disappeared so that the sea and the sky seemed to blend seamlessly together.

Riley shut her eyes and listened for a moment to the sound of the surf.

There were no other noises at all—no voices, no TV, no city traffic.

Riley sighed a long, deep, happy sigh.

As if answering her sigh, Blaine said …

“Riley, I’ve been wondering …”

He paused. Riley opened her eyes and looked over at him, feeling just a twinge of apprehension.

Then Blaine continued …

“Do you feel like we’ve known each other for a long time, or just a short time?”

Riley smiled. It was an interesting question. They’d known each other for about a year now, and they’d declared themselves exclusive about three months ago. During all that time they’d become very comfortable together.

They and their families had also been through moments of harrowing danger, and Blaine had shown amazing resourcefulness and courage.

Through it all, Riley had come to care about him, trust him, and admire him.

“It’s hard to say,” she said. “Both, I guess. It seems like a long time because of how close we’ve gotten. It seems like a short time because … well, because I’m sometimes so amazed at how fast we’ve gotten so close.”

Another silence fell—a silence that told Riley that Blaine felt exactly the same way.

Finally Blaine said …

“What do you think … should happen next?”

Riley looked into his eyes. His gaze was earnest and inquisitive.

Riley smiled and said the first thing that popped into her head. “Why, Blaine Hildreth—are you proposing to me?”

Blaine smiled and said, “Come on inside. I’ve got something to show you.”