Undying. V.K. Forrest

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      But this late at night, with the park officially closed, there were no minivans, no families on vacation. The parking lot was empty except for two red porta-potties and a couple of overflowing trash cans.

      Macy grabbed a hooded sweatshirt off the floor of her car, pulled it on, lifted the hood, and traipsed up the sandy dune crossing, over the crest of the man-made dunes. She had discovered this beach one day while driving south, after an assignment. Although it was on the ocean side of the highway, there was a scraggly woods line not far off the beach. Somehow, over millions of years, plants and trees had managed to evolve enough to live in the sandy soil, just a couple of hundred feet from the salty body of water. She admired those trees with their prickly needles, and the low-lying bushes with the spindly branches. They had managed to survive in adverse conditions. They had adapted.

      Much in the same way Macy had adapted.

      On the far side of the grassy dune, the beach stretched out to the north and to the south. As she had promised Fia, the moon was glowing bright over the ocean. But it was no longer full. Teddy had missed his mark. She crossed the clean beach, walking toward the water. She was early. It would be a few minutes before the FBI agent arrived.

      Macy had checked into a hotel earlier and sat on the edge of the bed with a yellow bedspread and contemplated what she would say to Fia. She had no real information to provide. All she had was this feeling of being on a high-speed train, rushing forward. A train with no brakes. A train about to derail. So why was she here? Did she really think she could stop the train?

      Could she and Fia do it together?

      Macy had an idea that Fia understood something about Teddy. She had picked up on the fact that this was too soon for the killer to strike again. Not enough months had passed. She seemed to sense that some sort of urgency was building in Teddy.

      Macy stopped at the water’s edge and contemplated taking off her shoes to feel the wet sand between her toes. She stared down at the frothy water washing up on the shore, then at the waves, then beyond the breakers to the rippling expanse of the Atlantic seeming to move as if it were alive.

      She walked south, keeping an eye on the parking lot. She had not heard Fia’s car yet, or seen the headlights. It had to be near time for their meeting.

      She’d be here. Macy knew she would come.

      Just as Macy was about to turn around and head north again, movement caught her eye at the woods line. She stopped and stared into the darkness. A pair of glowing eyes—light reflected from the moonlight—stared back.

      She felt her mouth turn up at one corner in a half smile. It was a gray fox. A rare treat. Gray foxes were native to North America as was not the case with the more often seen red fox, which was brought to the continent by colonists wanting to hunt them. Macy stood still, staring at the fox. The fox, poised to run, every muscle in his sinewy body tense, stared back. Should she move, she knew he would startle and lope off into the darkness.

      Macy, at once, felt a kinship to the woodland creature. She understood perfectly his flight instinct. It had been her modus operandi for the last fourteen years.

      Chapter 7

      Arlan stood beneath the prickly low-hanging pine bough as he stared at the woman on the lonely stretch of beach. She was small in stature, slender, almost boylike in shape. She wore jeans and a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. From beneath the hood, golden strands of hair were visible. Her eyes were luminous in the moonlight.

      Arlan swung his long tail one way and then the other, unable to tear his gaze from hers. He had morphed into a large male Urocyon cinereoargenteus so that he could get a better look at Fia’s Maggie. He’d arrived ahead of her and had been watching her since she walked out on the beach. When she spotted him, he should have darted into the brush, as any fox with sense would have done, but there was something about this woman that held him spellbound.

      When she saw him, she had gone completely still, but it appeared she had done so to prevent frightening him. She was not afraid. In fact, from the intensity of her gaze, he sensed that she was as momentarily fascinated by him as he was of her.

      This petite woman with green eyes and spun gold hair was not what Arlan had expected. He had worked with informants before, male and female. They were often drug abusers or alcoholics. They were humans down on their luck, willing to accept money for information. They were skinny, malnourished, and hollow eyed. They had a look about them that was often pathetic. Maggie had never asked Fia for money, for anything actually, and in no way did she appear pathetic. This woman was healthy and she was on her game. Whatever game that was. He could smell that much on the salty night air. Yet, she also seemed sad. Lonely.

      When their gazes locked, he felt some kind of instant connection with her. An understanding. Arlan could not read the minds of humans, but he sensed a vulnerability about her that made him want to reach out. To touch her. To take her in his arms.

      And her neck was so lovely, so pale and slender….

      Arlan shook his head, trying to dislodge the forbidden thoughts from it.

      She didn’t flinch. Instead, she surprised him by taking a tentative step toward him.

      He wondered what she would do if he bolted toward her. Nothing, he decided. She wouldn’t be afraid of him, wouldn’t fear he was rabid. She would stand there and let him trot up to her.

      Arlan had to force himself to turn away. He loped into the brush, running back toward the rental car he’d parked on the road south of the parking lot. He didn’t morph until he reached the car. Then he hopped in and drove the quarter of a mile to the lot. He parked beside her car and walked up over the dune.

      She was waiting for him in the moonlight.

      “Maggie?” he called, as he crossed the dunes and walked down the sandy slope toward her.

      Now she was the one poised to lope off into the darkness. She still wore the hood up on her sweatshirt. All he could see was her hair and her eyes. Nothing of her face.

      “Who are you?” she demanded.

      Arlan was suddenly desperate to see her face. “My name is Arlan Kahill. Fia sent me.”

      “She didn’t say anything about sending someone else. Fia would have called me and told me if she couldn’t make it.”

      “She had a family emergency and she asked me to come in her place. Had she called to tell you, you wouldn’t have shown up, Maggie.”

      She watched him with guarded eyes. “You FBI, too?”

      “No.” He stood still, trying not to spook her, much the same way she had done when she had approached him farther down the beach a few minutes ago. “I…I’m an old friend. I help her out with tough cases sometimes.”

      “That doesn’t sound legal.”

      He smiled to himself. She was pointing out that what they were now doing probably wasn’t legal, but she was making no attempt to walk away. “Fia really wanted to be here, but—”

      “Right, the family thing.”

      “The family thing,” he repeated.

      Both regarded each other for a moment.

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