The hotel was just a few miles away from her studio apartment over her dojo, and they kept a floodlight dimly illuminating the shoreline. Once she fired up her iTunes track of ocean waves, it was instant relaxation. In San Diego’s North County, 2:00 a.m. was just about the only time you could stare at the waves on the beach without a bunch of people in the way. Perfect.
She double-clicked the link, grabbed her tea, and leaned back in the chair while the webcam loaded. Now all she needed was the smell of sea air and she’d be good to go. Her shoulders started to relax, and Tegan grinned, taking a swallow of her tea. Anxiety attacks didn’t stand a chance against the calming power of the Pacific Ocean.
The grainy picture came up, and she stretched out her cramped fingers. She frowned and leaned forward in her chair. Someone was on her beach.
A man and a woman. He shoveled sand while his date reclined on the shore. What were they doing building sandcastles at this time of night?
She sighed and set her tea aside. So much for her beach break. Being a Peeping Tom during someone else’s late-night date wasn’t part of her calming respite. Tegan poised the mouse over the X to close the webcam when the guy scooped his date up and dropped her into the hole.
“What the hell?” She rubbed her eyes, leaning closer to the screen.
Goosebumps lined her arms when the first shovel of sand covered the woman. “Holy shit.” She reached for her cordless phone. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“911. How can we help?”
Two more shovels of sand into the hole. “There’s a man burying a woman in the sand outside of the Starlight Beach Inn.”
“I show your location on Pacific Highway.”
Tegan nodded, only half listening. “Yeah, I’m watching him on the hotel’s webcam. Someone needs to help her.”
“Ma’am, you realize you can be held accountable for falsifying calls to 911.”
The man on the beach chose that moment to look over his shoulder, wiping his chin and exposing a bold tattoo on his forearm. She didn’t need a close up to recognize what it said. Aeternum Ardebit. “Everlasting burning” in Latin. His eyes glowed like a cat’s in a picture using a bright flash, but this was only the dim light of the webcam.
Tegan’s heart lurched in her chest. “It’s him.”
She instinctively clicked the “off” button on her phone, her lungs constricting and fingers tingling with the beginnings of an anxiety attack. Painful memories swamped her. Even with the grainy webcam view, she recognized every angle of his face. The same face still haunted her nightmares.
The man who attacked her in Los Angeles, the man the police had failed to catch, had just traveled south into her sleepy beach town. In fact, he was only a few miles away from her bedroom.
…
Tegan left the sheriff’s department exhausted mentally and physically, but there was no way she was going to fall asleep. The looks on the uniformed officers’ faces told her all she needed to know. They didn’t believe her. Apparently a black and white did visit the Starlight Beach Inn at 2:45 a.m. to find the beach deserted with no signs of disturbed earth. They claimed the hotel was requesting the webcam footage from their service provider, but it would be at least a week. Without any evidence of a crime, they couldn’t force the issue and subpoena records.
All it took was pulling up her case file for the officers to get that familiar look of pity in their eyes and assure her the search for her attacker was still ongoing. It was no secret she’d had a mental breakdown after the attack, and although she’d given them a full physical description of the man, she’d been unable to tell them about her injury. They told her he’d stabbed her with an acid-dipped blade of some sort.
But she knew the unbelievable truth.
She’d been bitten, and as crazy as it sounded, no human man had pointed teeth like she’d seen that night when he smiled and his forehead contorted, cracked to expose something inhuman beneath.
This was information that would’ve kept her locked in a psych ward, so she remained silent. As the months passed into years, she started to wonder if maybe she was crazy after all.
Tegan leaned back in her La-Z-Boy reading chair, peppering herself with questions. Could her mind have been playing tricks on her when she fired up the webcam? It was late, and she’d felt uneasy before the picture ever came up.
But she’d watched that beach hundreds of times in the middle of the night and never saw anyone. Definitely never saw a man bury a body.
If you could call that sick sack of shit a man.
Her fingertips traced the line of the fish-hook shaped scar on her shoulder near the base of her neck wishing she could erase the memories and rehabilitate her mind the way she had with her body. She thought she’d put that night behind her.
Until the bastard showed up on the webcam and ripped the wound wide open again.
Yeah, sleep was definitely not going to happen. The threat of seeing him again in her dreams kept her too amped up to sleep. She got up and pulled the small card table to the side of the room. Controlling her breathing, she moved through her martial arts katas. Her focus on each fighting position calmed her, defusing the bomb of panic brewing inside. By the time she reclaimed her peace, sweat soaked the back of her T-shirt.
She wasn’t the same college student from four years ago. She wasn’t a victim, not anymore. And she never would be again.
Tegan pulled her hair back into a ponytail and reached for her laptop. If the police didn’t believe her, she’d hire someone who would. Sitting around hiding was not an option.
…
Multiple Google searches, several hours, and ten calls later, she chucked her hair tie across the room in frustration. She either couldn’t afford the PIs she was finding, or they’d heard there was an open case number involved and didn’t want to get anywhere near it. Her gaze drifted to the picture of her folks at the country club. They’d loan her the money in a heartbeat.
But then they’d worry. It wasn’t until a few months ago that her Mom and Dad finally started traveling again. They were supposed to be enjoying retirement, not babysitting their only daughter. If they found out she thought she’d seen her attacker, they’d swoop in and try to take over. Unacceptable. She could handle this. Somehow.
She grabbed the phone again. Another search and she scanned the names until one caught her eye: Gabriel V.H. Smith. Licensed PI and paranormal investigator.
Paranormal Investigator? She stroked the mouse key lightly, not ready to commit to clicking. What kind of private investigator admitted to paranormal investigations? Did he think he was some kind of Ghostbuster? People couldn’t possibly hire him to check their house for the dead and haunting, could they?
She leaned back in her chair. This guy could be a waste of time. But she’d already placed more calls than she’d intended—and she was running out of viable options. What did she have to lose?
She made the call, relieved when a receptionist answered. He had a secretary. That had to mean that he took his business seriously—or at least she hoped so—and Tegan did her best not to judge him by the fact he had time in his schedule to meet her that same day. No harm done driving up the coast to San Clemente for a meeting. She didn’t have to hire him. San Clemente was probably a perfect PI location, too, right between San Diego and Los Angeles. He could spy on cheating husbands and wives in either big city.