Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel Read Free Page B

she did for a living.
    Tess had been a deputy district attorney for five years. During that time, she’d discovered that the world seemed to be divided into two groups. One comprised of individuals who, upon hearing what she did, looked guilty, as if they expected her to read their minds, know every petty offense they might have committed, drag them into court, and prosecute them straight to the big house for jaywalking or parking fines.
    The other group appeared fascinated by her work and wanted her to reveal the “inside scoop” on her most gruesome or violent cases. She suspected that these were the same people who kept those true crime TV shows in business. Those were the times when she was grateful that her kidnapping had occurred before these days of a twenty-four-hour news cycle and nonstop social media.
    The only people who didn’t fall into either the intimidation or fascination categories were the people she worked with. Unfortunately, conversations centered on crime tended to be limiting. Which was why she’d been so grateful when Alexis had arrived in the office two years ago, chucking a position at a prestigious law firm in exchange for the unceasing workload and peon’s wages of a deputy district attorney.
    It was as if they’d known each other all their lives and next summer Tess was going to be the maid of honor at Alexis’s marriage to Matthew Miller, a Portland attorney.
    As the sun lowered over the Pacific Ocean on her right, turning the water to spun gold, Tess’s mind drifted to the travel brochure for Orchid Island Alexis had shown her. Donovan—who’d visited the island with a friend who’d grown up there—had recommended it as a perfect honeymoon location. With its swaying palm trees, turquoise water, and spun sugar sand, the island looked like everyone’s Pacific fantasy paradise. She was going to have to investigate Orchid Island further. As soon as she had time.
    *     *     *
    Damn.
    Nate rocked back in his chair and glared at the computer screen. He’d been writing for hours, and nothing was working. At this rate, he’d have to pitch the entire mess out and begin again.
    It shouldn’t be that difficult. All he had to do was fill three hundred-plus manuscript pages with scenes of spine-tingling horror. He’d succeeded before. Six best-selling novels in the past four years proved that his loyal readers found him to have mastered the art of infusing terror into what appeared to be a perfectly normal setting. Six novels, and not one of them, not even the first, had given him as much difficulty as this one.
    As he reread the lines of dreck on the screen, Nate couldn’t help worrying that his problem was that he’d run out of stories to tell. Fears to unleash. Secret, forbidden doors to open.
    “Blast,” he muttered, borrowing a salty, archaic curse from the captain as he got up from the desk.
    Throwing in the towel for now, he retrieved a beer from the small office fridge and walked over to the large bay windows overlooking the sea. The tide was coming in, the water tinted brilliant shades of crimson, lemon and purple by the setting sun. On the horizon a fishing boat rode at anchor, and Nate imagined he could hear the water faintly slapping against the boat’s sides.
    Under normal conditions, the ever-changing panorama of the Pacific Ocean soothed him, cleared his mind, and calmed his senses. But not today. Nate was unreasonably edgy. The disquieting feeling that had settled upon him during his sleep had escalated during the day.
    “It’s only a dream,” he reassured himself aloud.
    He shook his head as he took a long pull from the bottle. It might be only a dream, but damn, it was messing up his mind. Usually he thrived on his work, racing with zest, even joy, toward each new horror. Lately it was all he could do to grind out five pages a day. It was as if, after six successes, his muse had suddenly deserted him.
    Nate cursed. That wasn’t it. The muse who used to