Page 12 of Beachcomber Enemy

Grateful that Cap didn’t bother asking why, Dane rattled off her home address, knowing today was her day off from the pie shop. She closed the place Mondays and Tuesdays and stayed home—or made herself a nuisance at the beach shack, testing out recipes on them like they were guinea pigs.

“I’ll send a man—”

“No. You need to do this yourself. This is all on the QT. Shana and I are dead and no one called you just now. You know nothing about Sassy potentially being in danger. And that goes double for your men.”

“Got it. When will you be back?”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to,” Madeline said. Peter nodded his agreement. Dane gave them a nod of acknowledgment.

He said to Cap, “I’ll be back before our funeral.” He looked at the group staring back at him. “Which should be in a few days.”

“I’ll call you after I check on Sassy.”

“I’ll fill you in on the details of our plan then.” Dane put the receiver back into its cradle.

“What’s going on?” Peter asked. “And how can I help?”

Dane smiled his first true, relaxed smile since the beach shack exploded hours ago.

“Some madman is after Shana. We think it’s Whitey Nash.” Dane explained about their escape by water and the text messages Shana got.

“We’d like to remain dead, convince Whitey of it. We need you and Cap to arrange a press conference announcing our confirmed deaths and then the funeral as soon as possible.”

The governor nodded. Dane gave him the name and number of the small church where the minister owed him a favor. Madeline said she’d get them some clothes.

“I’ll need a disguise in case Whitey knows what I look like,” Dane said.

Then he turned to face the murderously cold look he knew Shana was giving him. The fact that he’d asked for a disguise only for him and not for her wasn’t lost on her. She wasn’t going to let him get away with excluding her from the plan. Not easily anyway. But if he could get Peter on his side, he might have a shot at keeping her here.

“I’m going with you back to the island.” She folded her arms high across her chest and stood with her feet apart as if she were ready to do battle. He knew she was.

But so was he.

“You want to play into his hands?”

“We can keep under wraps for a couple damn days until the funeral. Then we’ll have Cap and his officers on guard to help take him down. I’ll be perfectly safe.”

“Maybe you will. But what about Whitey?”

She knew he was asking her if she was going to kill Whitey. She looked around the room. She wasn’t about to give an answer on this stage. It would be tantamount to confessing to premeditated murder.

“He’ll go to the funeral,” she said. “And I’ll be the one to spot him. I need to be there.”

“We have several good quality photos of him from the internet search,” Dane said. “We don’t need you to be the one to ID him.”

“I need to be there,” she insisted, bordering on pleading. Would have pleaded if she didn’t have so damn much pride. She might do it yet.

“Tell us more about this Whitey Nash character,” Peter said.

Shana repeated the story of her arrest of Nash in a matter-of-fact quick telling, leaving out her current fear.

“He knows I’m still alive,” Shana said. It was the fear making her paranoid, but even though she knew it, she couldn’t stop it.

“We need to make him doubt that. We need to take away his motive to kill Sassy for revenge, to punish you,” Dane said.

“We need to find Sassy before he . . .” she couldn’t say it.

Madeline looked at Shana.