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A customer was a customer. And aside from the dripping and the rasping, the deep ones were polite and easy to please. They brought their own food, and cooking was easy. Just throw a raw tuna on a plate, garnish with seaweed, and serve with a tall glass of seawater. For the most part, the deep ones were quiet and undemanding. The only danger was getting caught in an extended conversation with the more fervent fish folk. They could talk for hours upon hours about the glory of R’lyeh and the beautiful oblivion destined to sweep up from the ocean’s depths to consume the surface world. But that was more tolerable than when that Scientologist guy spent the night.
Things were looking up at the Nook. It wasn’t what Philip had in mind when first embarking on this endeavor, but life called for flexibility. He was making a tidy profit, and Clam Bay, still dreary, wet, and cold, had more to offer than he’d ever imagined.
He took Angela in his arms and gave her a long, deep kiss.
“Okay,” she said. “I get it. You’re not gay.”
They shared a chuckle.
“So up for a little . . . mingling?” he asked.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Smiling, she took him by the hand and led him toward the Nook.
Safe and Sound
JEFF ABBOTT
Jeff Abbott was once involved in a taxicab race with Charlaine Harris in North Carolina (he did not win). He is the internationally bestselling author of twelve suspense novels, including Trust Me, Panic, Fear, and Collision. He is published in more than twenty languages. He is a three-time Edgar® Award nominee, a two-time Anthony Award nominee, a Thriller Award and Barry Award nominee, and a past wi
IF Jason Kirk was still alive on the tiny island of Sint Pieter, that happy news would boost Nora Dare’s ratings to a level that made media presidents tremble, rewrote the rules of news coverage, and produced new business case studies at journalism school.
Nora Dare sat at her Constant News Cha
Of course during those treasured moments when she interviewed Jason’s family—which was roughly every other night on her cable-news show, Dare to Fight Back—she pleaded for Jason’s safe return, and she meant every word. Because if the young man turned up safe and sound, well, then, that was ratings gold. Not gold: better, platinum. Maybe even uranium. For three months, college student Jason Kirk’s disappearance while on vacation with his family had made for a deliciously high market share.
Stories as long-legged as Jason Kirk’s did not happen every day. It had all the elements Nora considered key to a ratings grabber: a highly attractive, sympathetic victim with an easy-to-remember name; a photogenic mourning family stu
The theories had come up, and Nora had dissected them with the care of a coroner. Jason had been kidnapped (an early favorite and still the feeling of the Kirk family); Jason had been sold into slavery (popular for two weeks); Jason had been murdered by the mysterious woman, robbed, his body dumped into the ocean (more likely); Jason had drowned, drunk, in a swim off a Sint Pieter beach and the woman had simply fled the scene (the preferred theory of the local police); or Jason had committed suicide (Nora quickly slaughtered that theory; it would savage her ratings).
But now, everything had changed, and the story had fresh life. A witness from a small town on the far north tip of the island claimed that a young man fitting Jason’s description had been spotted near her house. The eyewitness was a young woman who could have been a little more photogenic (didn’t they, Nora wondered, have dentists in Sint Pieter?) but was earnest and heartfelt in her sureness that she’d seen Jason.
The makeup director tended to Nora’s eyebrows with the gentlest of touches while Nora’s director, Molly, slipped an update onto Nora’s interview pages.
“Um, Nora, I’m not really comfortable with your headline theme tonight.”
“ ‘Hope or Hoax’ is perfectly accurate.” Nora didn’t flinch as a stray hair was plucked away from her near-immaculate brow. It was a point of honor for Nora that she never flinched. She made other people flinch. It had been a rocky road on the climb to ratings glory and the multimilliondollar book deals. There’d been that suspect in one case who’d killed himself after Nora grilled him (could his guilt then be clearer? Nora had saved the taxpayers the cost of a trial, in her mind), and the other one where the man she’d proclaimed guilty for five months for killing his wife had, well, been found i
Molly raised an eyebrow. “I see your point, but I think it’s a bit cruel to the Kirks to call this hope.”
“If it’s hope,” Nora explained with a smile of infinite patience, “then the viewers have a reason to tune in tomorrow. If it’s hoax, then they get to see me rip this little lying bitch to shreds.”
“It just seems a bit . . .”
“What?”
Nora thought for a minute Molly’s mouth was forming the fatal word tasteless, but Molly crossed her arms. “Opportunistic. We’re walking a very fine line here, Nora.”
“The only opportunistic person here might be this witness, this”—she glanced at her notes—“hotel worker, A
“I know, feeding on tragedy. The vultures.”
Nora thought she detected sarcasm lurking in the vicinity of Molly’s tone but decided Molly wasn’t that stupid. “The intro stands.”
“All right, Nora.” Molly turned and walked back to the director’s seat in the control room.
Nora watched her go. She’d have to keep an eye on Molly. That girl was an unappealing mix of judgmental and ambitious. Most unbecoming. Opportunistic? No one was a greater friend or advocate to the Kirk family than Nora was. And poor lost Jason. She was truly his only friend, the person doing the most to keep his face in front of millions each day. She waved away the makeup artist.
They went live thirty minutes later, and Nora, after her standard setup on the missing Jason’s history, cut straight to the satellite interview with the young woman who’d supposedly (Nora wove this knotty word into every sentence; it was her second favorite, after allegedly) seen Jason on the far side of the island.
A
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