Reunion on Edisto by C. Hope Clark

Author:C. Hope Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BelleBooks, Inc.
Published: 2022-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

NOBODY HAD A more secure house on Edisto Beach than the chief of police, and only then because she’d tired of criminals breaking in to prove they could. Said culprits being two. One dead and one in jail. After installing an assortment of devices, putting her back in charge, she developed a habit of watching camera footage in the evenings as entertainment. There was something intensely powerful about being aware of who set foot on her lot and porches in her absence and while she slept.

Her neighbor Sophie called her paranoid. Callie didn’t care what you called it.

However, nobody should be at Chelsea Morning at twelve forty a.m. unless he lived there, yet her motion sensor lights shined insanely bright in contrast to the darkness of the surrounding properties. She slowly drove in, praying to catch sight of her son’s Jeep, needing to accuse someone familiar. Maybe Jeb came home early to visit his dear old mother.

She pulled closer. A plain sedan, silver, parked in her oyster shell drive, off to the side as if as a courtesy to give Callie space.

A rental, if she guessed right. Had Mark put his car in the shop in Charleston? Or possibly her old boss Stan? They were the only souls with the audacity to visit this time of night, but both of them would have texted.

Which made her wonder if one of them might be delivering some sort of notice.

Jesus . . . Jeb.

She mashed the gas to pull in quicker, her cruiser tight behind her Ford SUV. She got out, instinctively eased the door silently closed, as was her way, but in the hushed darkness of the island, however, the click made itself known.

She approached the two levels of stairs required by homes in hurricane paths, knowing full well that walking up twenty-four steps—even avoiding the swollen risers that popped—she was exposed to whoever hovered above, or below, or in the copse of trees on the side of her lot. Wide open, especially under lights she’d designed to expose someone like her approaching. She reached for her weapon, released the snap, and rested her hand assuredly on the grip.

A man in his forties, a solid six-foot plus, stepped from the end of the porch. He moved with reservation, coming out of that shadow and into her automated porch light just as she reached the landing. His blondish-red hair swept across one brow and up over his ears in short waves, his wisp of a mustache matched, and to Callie he seemed an Irish stereotype. Legs and arms long, lean, and accustomed to the gym for toning, not bulk. Maybe a runner.

Stepping onto the porch, standing askance, fingers wrapped tight on the grip, she held out her other hand. “Don’t come closer. Show me some identification, please.”

As most do when approached by someone with the power to shoot you dead, he displayed his own hands, fingers splayed. “I mean no harm,” he said, a keen worry in the accent. “It’s Peter, Callie.

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