“That was exciting,” I said once we were back in the car. Craig had basically thrown us out and had Ava-Rose lock the place up. He asked her to follow him to the station, then invited Drake to ride with him. He didn’t put him in the back seat, but still. I got the sense he didn’t trust him to not drive away. Although there weren’t many places he could go right now, with the ferry service halted.
The rain had turned into sleet. The water was rising dangerously high behind the yacht club, nipping at the stone wall lining the parking area. Tonight was supposed to be the worst of it, with the high winds causing potential flood conditions. I wondered how bad it would get.
“For sure,” Val agreed. “And pretty coincidental, too, huh?” She looked at me, eyebrows raised.
“Which part?” I asked casually. Obviously, I hadn’t tipped Val off that I’d told Craig about this sting operation, but she was a smart girl.
“The whole Craig happening by to see why the lights were on.” Val started the car. “You told him.”
“I may have mentioned it.” I tried to look sufficiently sorry about that but probably failed. “Hey, I didn’t know what would happen, Val. This is serious. Someone died. You’re saying someone is stealing things. These are high stakes, don’t you think?”
“Hmmph.” Val pulled onto the street with a little more gas than necessary. She didn’t have a good answer to that, but she didn’t want to say it. “You’ve always kind of minded everyone’s business, Maddie.”
“I have not!”
“Of course you have. You did it over the summer with me and Cole.”
“Val. Seriously? I’m your big sister. You were falling apart. Someone needed to step in and give you a push in the right direction. And look how well things turned out once you saw the light!”
“Exactly what I’m saying.” She stopped at a red light. The car coming from the other direction caught my eye as it passed under the streetlights directly in front of us. The lights illuminated it just enough that I could see it was a gray Toyota Corolla. I peered through the sleet for a glimpse of the license plate and felt my heart do a flip when I saw SKY.
I sat up and grabbed Val’s arm. “That’s her. Thea Coleman. Follow her!”
“What? What do you mean, follow her?” Val watched the car drive slowly down the cross street, in the total opposite direction of where we were going.
“Follow. Her. Go!” I squeezed her arm.
She shook me off, put her blinker on, and turned left to follow the car.
I looked at her. “Wow. I can’t believe you actually listened to me.”
“I should drop you off at the hospital,” she grumbled. “So they can give you a psych evaluation. Where are we going?”
“Wherever she’s going,” I said.
“Well, what do you think you’re going to find out by tailing this woman?”
I wasn’t sure. I had some ideas, but nothing I wanted to voice just yet. “I don’t know. Where she’s staying, maybe. Or who she knows around here. Maybe we’ll catch her doing something else totally illegal and we can get her arrested.”
“Sure. Sounds rational to me,” Val said dryly. “And how is this any better than Ava-Rose’s stakeout idea?”
I squirmed in my seat. I hated when Val threw my own words back at me. “It’s different.”
“Why, because you aren’t almost eighty?”
“Just trust me. She’s turning,” I said, pointing in front of us.
Val braked to give the car a little headway. The roads were getting slippery, and the car fishtailed a bit. She muttered a curse and let up on the brake, regained traction, and turned right. Luckily, this time Thea wasn’t driving like she was qualifying for the Daytona 500 and no other cars were interfering with our detective work.
We followed my nemesis down a bunch of winding side streets until we ended up on Sand Dune Avenue on the east side of the island. This was a one-lane road in both directions that ran parallel to the ocean. It was quite beautiful in the daytime. And if you followed it all the way, it ran along the coast of every town on the island and was basically one big circle.
Where was she going? First, it could hardly be for a scenic drive, since it was pitch black out, sleeting and windy tonight, and you couldn’t even see the ocean, except for the places it had risen and was lapping at the roads. You could only hear it pounding against the dunes in the distance.
And second, while you could get to every town, this route was a roundabout way of getting anywhere on the island, except to any of the beaches. Which, again, seemed an odd place to be headed on a cold November night.
Now I was really curious.
Val glanced at the clock on her dash. “Maddie. I’m starving. And I can barely see with this stupid weather. Half the roads out here are flooding. It’s all over the news. Do we really need to follow this woman around the whole island?”
She was right. Both our phones keep signaling news alerts and flash flood warnings as the angry waters pounded past normal boundaries. The beach roads, like the ones we were on, would be the first to suffer.
“Hey,” I said indignantly. “What if Craig hadn’t shown up and cut our stakeout short? We might’ve still been stuck up in that bar, listening to Drake work on books or whatever he’s doing.”
Val sighed. “I guess you have a point.”
“I know I do. Let’s keep going for just a couple more minutes,” I said. “If she ends up just taking a drive, we can abort. But she has to be down here for a reason. I feel like she might be going somewhere we’d want to know about.”
“Not me,” Val muttered, but she kept driving anyway.
I kept my eyes glued to her taillights, even though ours were the only two cars on the road right now. I wondered if she was suspicious. Or if she’d even noticed.
My phone dinged a text. I glanced down and saw Lucas’s name.
Hey, babe. Been a long day. Wish I could get home. Miss you.
Miss you, too, I texted back. You wouldn’t believe the night we’re having.
But before I could finish my thought Val stomped on the brake. I grabbed the dash to keep from being thrown forward.
“Whoa. What’s up?” I peered ahead and realized our fugitive had her brake lights on. Had she realized she was being followed?
Then I realized she was turning off the road. But where was she turning onto? I peered into the darkness ahead, trying to get my bearings. We’d crossed out of Daybreak Harbor a while ago, and we were now on the west side of Turtle Point, heading into Fisherman’s Cove, where there wasn’t much but coastline. There had been no other cars on this road the entire time we’d been out here except for one lone pickup truck that had passed us in the opposite direction about ten minutes ago.
“What do I do?” Val asked, panicked.
“Just drive past,” I said, sliding down low in my seat. Logic told me Thea would never be able to see inside our car, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
“She’s turning onto some private road.” Val slowed a bit, giving her plenty of space to pull off. I risked popping my head up to look. She seemed to be going down some old beach road. If she wanted a walk on the beach, she could’ve simply gone to the beach right in Daybreak Harbor, behind the hotel she’d tried to break into. This seemed like a lot of work.
“Drive past and then pull over,” I said to Val.
She did. “What now, Mulder?” she asked, sarcasm dripping from her words.
I frowned at her, even though she couldn’t see me in the dark. “Well, Scully, haven’t you learned yet that Mulder was mostly always right?”
“Mostly being the key word,” Val muttered.
“I’ll be back. Stay here.” I pulled up the hood of my parka, opened the car door, and stepped out.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“To see where she’s going. I’ll be right back.” I quietly shut the door behind me and jogged back toward the turnoff, thankful I’d worn my comfy and toasty, if boring, UGGs and mostly dark colors. It was freakin’ freezing out here, and the sleet hitting my face felt like tiny knives. At least it wasn’t flooding, but if the winds didn’t let up, the potential for that overnight was huge. I tugged my scarf up higher to protect my face as I cautiously approached the street—driveway, really, but at least it was paved—down which Thea’s car had disappeared. I paused at the bend. I could see brake lights ahead.
Keeping to the scant tree line, I moved quickly down the beach road. I could hear the waves in the distance. Where did this road lead, other than the beach? Why this particular beach? She had to be meeting someone.
The car shut off abruptly, leaving the road now in complete black. I probably wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing even if I got closer. I paused about a hundred feet behind her car, not sure what to do next. Then a lantern or something flooded on ahead of me, illuminating what appeared to be a small structure. A house? Out here? What was this? Fascinated, I inched my way forward, keeping myself about as low as her car. A quick flash of light as she opened her car door and got out, heading toward the light. As my eyes adjusted, I realized it was more of a trailer. But not a mobile home–type trailer. Like something you would pull behind a truck, but really large. I squinted into the darkness, wishing the visibility were better. Thanks to the jury-rigged floodlight I could see the trailer was white, and it looked old.
And then a person stepped out of the trailer, waiting as Thea approached. I stopped dead in my tracks, unsure of what I was seeing. If it weren’t for the hat, I would’ve sworn my eyes were playing tricks on me. But the hat was real. A full-on, leopard-print knit hat.
It was Leopard Man.
But that wasn’t even the most shocking part. What was shocking was the man who emerged right behind him. I had to blink twice and dare to take a couple steps closer to be sure.
It was Grandpa Leo.