This guy already had that much figured out about her. By the look he gave her, he knew enough about her to know she was not here to heap rewards or praise on one of theirs.
She shook her head slowly. She could almost feel the tread of sneaks and stilettos on her back as the other reporters trampled her to get the story. If they convinced Hale to talk while she sipped Pinot Noir, she might as well start fabricating a résumé, because no one was ever going to hire her with her real one.
She pushed damp hair from her forehead.
Wile might be in order.
Or maybe something brash, near the truth.
What were they going to do? Toss her out into the storm?
Addy leaned over the bar and gave the thin, redheaded bartender an earnest smile. She didn’t need to make enemies out of these people.
“Look. I’m a reporter. Zachary Hale has a story to tell and I want to get his side out to the public before there are any more accusations.” She took a breath hoping her message of benevolence would get through. “Or worse yet, charges are filed against him.”
“Aw, just let her go out there ’n’ look, Michael,” a burly, dark-bearded man said to the bartender as he nodded toward the old oak door.
Michael folded his arms over his chest but remained silent.
“I know that he’s from around here,” Addy brushed at her sodden hair, tipped her head to the side and continued. “And I get that he doesn’t want to be hounded by reporters, but that’s going to happen, anyway. It’ll just be more civilized if he has a chance to lay his side out before the lies get too vicious.”
Before the real truth gets out, she thought. Was her nose growing?
“You can’t go out in this.” The bartender tried again, his arms not budging from their determined pose across his chest.
“But if the storm—”
“Hurricane, miss. Hurricane.”
The wind took that moment to snap the boards covering the windows as if to reinforce the bartender’s statement.
“All right. If the hurricane is already here—”
“This is merely the build-up.” He interrupted her with a warning glance that made her insides slightly queasy. “They expect winds of up to a hundred miles an hour to hit us in a few hours.”
She sighed. Did they think she was going to stand on a street corner and wait for a hurricane to blow her away? She had work to do. At least two other reporters already knew where Hale might go to ground.
“If you just give me directions to Sea Crest Hill, I’ll be out of here.”
“Hale’s not there,” the dark-bearded guy said, looking as dark as the storm clouds outside.
He had to be in Bailey’s Cove. Her lead had been sound, as reliable as one could get these days.
If not at his home, where in this town could he be? Bailey’s Cove was his comfort zone. This is where he’d go, said Savanna, her sister who had worked in the off-site records department of Hale and Blankenstock Investments, LLC, for over two years.
Peering into their faces, she examined the crowd once again to reassure herself Hale wasn’t cowering there in the disguise of a local. That would be just like a scoundrel. She got a lot of petulant, stoic looks and plain blank stares, but Hale’s slick good looks weren’t there.
Saying Hale wasn’t at his home on Sea Crest Hill was most likely a misdirection. She’d find Sea Crest Hill and have a look for herself. She’d know his home once she got there. It would be the biggest and the fanciest.
“Thank you so much for your offer of shelter,” she said to the bartender and started to leave.
The door to the tavern burst open and six people entered—two women and four men—sodden, weary and breathing hard except the man who had pulled her away from the falling FRANCINE. He stood tall, brooding and soaked, taking inventory of the people in the tavern as if he were somehow responsible for each one of them—and ignoring her.
ADDY’S SAVIOR FROM the docks signaled a farewell to the bartender and turned to leave.
“Where’s ah— Where’s he going?” The stout white-whiskered man asked from his bar stool at the near corner of the bar’s U shape.
One of the newcomers stepped forward. “Said he had to get back to—”
The bartender shot a hand into the air and he, too, seemed to make a point of not looking at Addy.
Addy studied the red-haired man and the retreating newcomer for a moment. The retreating man was her quarry.
He had to be Zachary Hale.
As impossible as it seemed, tall, rough looking and seething was Zachary Hale. Stripped of his business suit and the affable expression, the whiskered man with his wet hair plastered to his head seemed like a Maine fisherman instead of a criminal tycoon. She was such an idiot for not seeing it in the first place.
She started after him.
“Leave him alone, miss.” She had taken only a step when the sharp demand stopped her.
When she turned, the short white-whiskered man was no longer on his bar stool but standing inches behind her.
“He’s not who you think he is,” the man finished in a deadly calm voice.
Facing him squarely she looked directly into the faded blue eyes and told a lie that at least might fool him for a moment while she fled. “It’s a family thing.” If anyone would understand this, it would be a man from Maine.
The man’s look did not change.
She fled the tavern in time to see the SUV pull away from the curb.
Uncaring any more about the drenching rain, she flew to her car and jumped inside. Gripping the steering wheel as tight as she could, she headed out after the beckoning taillights.
The road was still deserted except for her car and the SUV.
No other reporters. Wally Harriman and Jacko Wilson would be sitting snug in their dry Boston condos waiting for the storm to pass, sure no one would be gutsy enough to travel in such weather.
“He’s not who you think he is”? This man was Zachary Hale and he was hers.
She followed, pushing the rental car as much as she dared as water ran down the back of her neck, down her body and into her bra. She wiggled her shoulders. This, too, would pass.
The street was worse than when she arrived in town. A slick of water covered most of the surface spraying out from the tires of the SUV and then filling back in.
When she passed it, she could barely see the old church through the blowing rainfall, so she spared the historic building a nod.
The hammering of the wind had escalated in the short while she had been in the town and every time the car took a broadside shot of the gusty stuff, she was sure the bitsy rental was going to tip over and tumble her like towels in a clothes dryer. But each time, the hatchback car held on to the ground and kept up the insane pace she asked of it.
Doggedly, she followed the SUV’s taillights off the town’s main street onto a side road leading away from the ocean and climbing gently up a hill. The rain slashed and the wind ripped at the trees surrounding the bungalows lined up along the road. The press of houses eventually thinned out and the road began to climb and curve through pine trees that seemed to close in behind her as she drove.
When a large tree branch plopped down onto the almost absent shoulder of the road, it brushed Addy back toward the center and she stayed there.
If