gone to a lot of trouble to set her up here with a new identity and a new job. She just wasn’t the type to blow off all their hard work.
Had one of the men who had made an attempt on her life in Boston found her? Even though he’d walked away from her two months ago with the realization that he’d never see her again, he’d taken comfort in the fact that eventually she’d find some man to love, would build the family she wanted and live a wonderful life.
His frown deepened as his gaze swept the area, lingering on the abandoned Beacon Manor lighthouse that still showed the blackened scars of the fire that had consumed the top of the forty-foot conical building some time ago.
He froze as something caught his eye, a flash of white against the blackened beams, a ghostly wraith that was there only a moment, then gone.
If he were a superstitious man, he would have guessed that the apparition was the dead wife of Sea Captain Earl Raven seeking her husband. But Ryan was firmly grounded in reality. He didn’t believe in curses or ghosts.
He rubbed a hand over tired eyes and wondered if it had been nothing more than his imagination. He supposed it was possible it might be the missing bride, although he couldn’t imagine how she would have survived her fall off the bluff and be able to climb the stairs to the top of the lighthouse.
Knowing he wouldn’t be satisfied until he checked it out, he left the bluffs and headed back to his car to drive the short distance to the lighthouse.
As he passed the area that had been set up as a command post for the search-and-rescue team, he caught a glimpse of the police chief. Patrick Swanson had impressed him. Ryan would guess the man to be in his sixties, and although he had the body of a man half his age, he also had the command and cool-headedness that came with wisdom.
The wind had picked up again, buffeting his car as he approached the rocky shore where the lighthouse rose up like a sand castle.
A low-lying blanket of fog had moved in, nearly obscuring the base of the structure. Maybe that’s what he’d seen. A wisp of fog. No ghost, no missing bride, just a freak of nature that had momentarily looked like a person.
He’d have to hurry. Before long total darkness would descend and he’d brought no flashlight with him. Although he sensed no danger, he drew his gun from his shoulder holster.
From the moment he’d arrived in Raven’s Cliff he’d felt an underlying aura of something unsettling. He’d only experienced it once before in his life in a small Louisiana bayou.
At that time they’d been chasing a schizophrenic man who had kidnapped a six-year-old girl. It had taken only minutes of being in Black Bay to realize that the townspeople appeared to have more secrets than the man they were hunting.
There had been a happy ending to that situation, and he hoped his hunt for Britta would result in the same kind of ending. With his gun held steady before him, he started up the wrought iron stairs that wound clockwise inside the stone tower.
“Haunted, it is,” Hazel had said that morning. “If it’s not the ghost of Captain Earl Raven’s wife that haunts the place then it surely is the ghost of Nicholas Sterling who set the curse into motion.”
“Ghost, my ass,” Ryan muttered to himself. He counted twenty steps before he reached a small landing. He stared upward, but saw nothing, although he heard the scurry of what he assumed were mice. He heard nothing else to cause him alarm, but unexpected tension pressed hard against his chest.
Fog drifted in the broken windows, tendrils of gray smoke that added to the eerie atmosphere of the abandoned building. He’d just reached the second landing when he heard the echo of something above him. A footfall?
He tightened his grip on the gun as he entered what he knew was the service area. At one time this room would have held all the lighthouse keeper’s equipment, but now the cabinets that hung on the walls had open doors that displayed empty shelves.
Above him was the watch room, and around it would be the lookout deck. It had been there that he’d thought he’d seen somebody. He eased up the stairs, his gun leading the way.
The watch room was empty, but in the dust on the floor he saw bare footprints. Small feet, definitely not a man’s. Did ghosts leave footprints? He didn’t think so.
He opened the iron door that led to the deck. As he stepped outside, the evening air pressed in, thick and oppressive. The view from this observation point was breathtaking. The ocean pummeled the shore, where rocks jutted upward and glistened with deadly intent.
Directly across from where he stood was the bluff where a wedding had turned to tragedy. Although a few boats still bobbed in the water below, it looked as if the search-and-rescue operation had been called off for the night.
He whipped around as he heard a noise to his left. A gasp escaped him as he saw the woman who stood before him. It was obvious that she was naked beneath the gauzy white gown. An intricate shell necklace adorned her pale, slender neck, and her ice-blue eyes seemed to peer right through him.
“Britta,” he gasped in stunned surprise.
“Have you come to take me back to the sea?” Her Norwegian accent was thicker than he’d ever heard. That fact, coupled with the otherworldly look in her eyes as she smiled at him caused a wave of horror to roar through him.
“Britta, it’s me, Ryan.” He quickly holstered his weapon and took a step closer to her.
“Please, sir, take me back to the sea.” With a tiny sigh her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed at his feet.
Chapter Two
Britta dreamed of the sea, of being deep below the surface in the silence of the underworld. The warm water surrounded her, and she felt as safe, as secure as if she were a baby in her mother’s womb.
However the secure feeling disappeared as the water around her became icy cold and turbulent, tossing her weightless body like a leaf in a water-swelled gutter. The water that had moments before embraced her now imprisoned her, pressing against her chest as if to squeeze the very life from her.
She looked up and saw the surface far above her, knew that she needed to get there before the sea choked the last gasp of life from her.
She struggled against the mysterious force that tried to keep her down, panic rising as she moved her arms and legs as fast, as hard as she could.
The sea wanted her. She was to be a sacrifice. The words pounded in her head, but she didn’t know what they meant. She cried as she swam up…up…needing air, wanting life. When she broke the surface, she cried out.
And woke up.
For a moment panic seared through her as she realized she didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten here.
The panic didn’t subside when she saw that she was in a hospital bed. Frantically she moved her arms, her legs, to make certain that everything worked all right. A touch of the terror ebbed. Everything appeared to work just fine and she was in no pain.
She turned her head toward the window where the morning sun streaked in, and stifled a small gasp as she saw a man sleeping in the chair next to the window, a newspaper on his chest.
His buzz-cut, sun-streaked brown hair glinted in the sunlight. Even in sleep his lean features looked stern and slightly dangerous. His face had character lines that let her know he wasn’t a young man, probably in his thirties.
Who was he? Why was he here in her hospital room? And why was she in a hospital?
A new panic gripped her as she tried to remember what had happened the day before. Had she been in a car accident? Had she taken a bad fall?
She tried to remember, desperately wanted to remember, but there was nothing. Her mind was a blank slate. The last memory she had was going into her office at the hotel to take care of some paperwork.
Her job. Whatever had happened to her that had put her here, she hoped it hadn’t jeopardized