Beckett's Convenient Bride. Dixie Browning

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      Oh, no—someone had shot a deer!

      Maybe the poor thing wasn’t dead—maybe the Fish and Wildlife people could…

      After the first few steps she froze. Then, sick with dread, she crept closer. “Omigod, omigod, no, please,” she whispered, backing away.

      It was an old man, and he was obviously dead. There was a black hole in the middle of his forehead and a dark trickle of something that looked like blood trailing down his cheek from his left nostril.

      Kit’s snack of almonds and dried apricots threatened to turn on her. She swallowed hard and muttered, “Gotta get help, gotta get help!”

      But where…? Who? Murder didn’t happen in a place like Gilbert’s Point, it just didn’t.

      But it had. And suddenly she realized that whoever had done it had to have seen her car. There couldn’t be more than one like it in the entire county—maybe in the entire world.

      She stared at the vanity plate she’d bought with part of her first advance: KITSKIDS. If anyone wanted to find her…

      Edging around the still form lying on the weedy, badly graveled parking lot, she hurried to her car. Throwing her pack onto the other seat, she locked the doors, keyed the ignition and ground the starter.

      Don’t panic.

      Cell phone. Why the devil hadn’t she bought herself one of the pesky things and learned how to use it. Everyone knew how to use a cell phone.

      Everyone but Kit.

      But even if she’d had a phone, she didn’t know the sheriff’s number. Wasn’t there some automatic gizmo you could punch to get help in an emergency?

      One of the reasons she didn’t own a cell phone or a computer or any of the other gadgets everyone else in the world took for granted was that she was no good with gadgets.

      “Nine-one-one, you ninny!” Any child knew how to dial nine-one-one. Don’t panic, don’t panic.

      She would go home and dial nine-one-one and tell whoever answered that there was a dead man out at the old church on Cypress Mill Road. And they would ask her name, and she would have to go in and testify, and her grandfather…

      Oh, shoot.

      There was no one in sight when she raced up the steps and slammed inside the unpainted frame house she’d rented only a few months ago. Slinging her backpack toward the table, she grabbed the phone and started dialing, hardly remembering to breathe.

      Answer, answer, answer the blasted phone!

      Someone answered. A woman who sounded as if she resented being disturbed. “There’s a dead man in the cemetery—no, I mean in the church parking lot out on Cypress Mill Road!”

      “Name, please?”

      “Name! I don’t know his name! I just told you, he’s dead! Someone shot him! Oh—” Cold sweat beading her forehead, Kit slammed down the receiver. She took several deep breaths, her hand still on the receiver. All right, she’d done her duty. She had reported the crime; it was out of her hands.

      Name. The woman had wanted her name, of course. “Idiot,” she muttered, feeling the horror of it all over again.

      Should she call back and give her name? But if she did that, she might have to go in and answer all sorts of questions, and the story would get in the papers and old Cast Iron would be after her again to come to her senses, and she didn’t feel like brawling with him right now, she really didn’t.

      On the other hand…

      All right, Katherine, for once in your life, think logically.

      Had she done everything she could?

      Absolutely. She had reported the crime. Knowing her name wouldn’t help anyone solve it.

      Was she in any personal danger?

      How could she be? She’d only done her duty as a citizen.

      On the other hand, her car had been the only one in the parking lot. It was certainly easy enough to identify, even without the vanity plate. For all the killer knew, she could have witnessed the whole thing instead of only hearing it.

      Maybe she should go stay with her grandparents until the murderer was caught. She could even go on with her job, for that matter. Regardless of how often she moved she was never more than forty-five minutes or an hour away, depending on season and time of day.

      There was probably some murky psychological reason why she’d untied the apron strings, but never quite cut them entirely, but she didn’t need to delve into that now. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Kit weighed her options. She could disappear. All she had to do was pack up and move again. But that would leave her boss in the lurch, and it would mean starting a whole new set of illustrations for Gretchen somewhere else.

      She could go back to Nags Head. She knew the area, knew where the best jobs were, and where she could probably find an affordable room this early in the season, maybe even her old one.

      Taking another deep breath—at this rate, she’d be hyperventilating—Kit glanced despairingly around at the shabby old house she had rented semi-furnished. It was just beginning to feel like home. She had even named the raccoons that regularly raided her garbage can.

      Face it, Katherine—the gypsy life is losing its appeal.

      Reluctantly, she dragged out her suitcase and the banana boxes she used for packing her painting equipment, copies of her books and all the messy details of her profession. The legal pads, which she bought by the score; the bulging files of correspondence and another file, pitifully thin, of royalty statements.

      Could she be exaggerating the risk? The gunman was probably a hundred miles away by now. Why on earth would he come back to the scene of the crime, knowing he might have been seen?

      All right, so she was thinking logically. That didn’t mean the killer thought logically.

      On the other hand, she really liked Gilbert’s Point. It was much quieter than Nags Head, which was a circus during the peak season. She liked the people here. She had a decent job that allowed her plenty of free time for her real career. Not all employers were as understanding, but Jeff Matlock at Jeff’s Crab House was proud of her. Even though he was a bachelor, he’d bought copies of both her books.

      Besides, her rent was paid through the end of March. And unlike the beach area, Jeff’s season was just getting started. The snowbirds—the semiannual flight of yachtsmen fleeing the snow and ice via the inland waterway, and returning in the spring once the north began to thaw—were beginning to migrate.

      Kit stood at the door of her closet, staring at the eclectic mixture of grunge clothes—her tie-dyes and hand-embroidered jeans that her grandparents so despised—and the few decent dresses she’d kept for emergencies. Weddings, funerals, autographings and anniversary parties. Somewhat to her disgust she’d discovered that she was too much her father’s daughter to dress inappropriately for public occasions.

      With a sigh of resignation, she closed the closet door. She would stay, but she would СКАЧАТЬ