Dark shadows drifted across the tiny office window. Even the lights strung along the ferryboat across the way could not chase away Donna Gallagher’s tickle of unease as she gazed out at San Diego Bay. Rain beaded on the glass, a winter storm. The vessel was already crowded in spite of the weather. In the upcoming three weeks, the number of visitors would swell as eager Christmas shoppers came over from the mainland and overnight guests arrived for the Hotel del Coronado’s holiday festival. Twinkling white lights, ice-skating, fireworks and hot cocoa. The perfect Christmas in the beautiful island town of Coronado.
Every year since she could remember, her father, Bruce, had accompanied Donna, her three sisters and their mother to the festival. Every year, until now.
The pain in her chest started up again and tears pricked her eyelids. In the corner of the office stood a small pine tree, decorated with handmade ornaments. Each daughter had taken great pains to craft the perfect ornament for their father’s office tree, except two years ago when Donna hadn’t made one. The unfairness of it burned in her. This year, she was fully recovered and ready to make up for lost time. It was the holiday that would finally erase her disastrous rebellion, bury it firmly under a pile of happy memories.
The Gallaghers were all healthy, Candace finally on her feet after her husband’s death in Afghanistan five years prior and Donna recovered from the crash, physically, anyway.
She had not yet put the finishing touches on her wooden cable car, a remembrance of their trip to San Francisco, where she’d turned back to God and decided to start living again, thanks to her father. But now it was too late. Christmas held no joy for Donna this year, and she wondered if it ever would again.
Besides the grief, something dark and frightening poked at her instincts. Bruce, her father, her hero, had been murdered, she was certain of it. All around her, on every inch of floor and the sleek wooden tabletop, lay stacks of files that she’d extracted from the cabinet. The answer to his death lay inside, she was positive. Wind rattled the office windows. She jumped.
She could not shake the sensation that someone was watching her, waiting to make sure she didn’t find her answers. Paranoia? Exhaustion? Her sisters would probably say both. They thought she was in denial, her imagination exacerbated by grief and stress. And guilt, her heart added. There was no murder, they insisted, just an accident.
And her impulse to sift through her father’s cases and play the part of a private investigator, as he had been?
A ludicrous attempt to take control of her grief. She was a veterinarian, after all, not a detective. But ever since she’d started looking through Bruce Gallagher’s paperwork, there had been hints of danger.
Nerves, she told herself. The vehicle that appeared in her rearview mirror too often, the repeated hang-up phone calls on the office line. She looked out onto the darkened street. A truck drove slowly along, pulling to the curb outside. Was it the same truck she’d imagined was following her? Heart thudding, she stood behind the screen of the curtain, watching. A soft glow from inside, the flicker from a cigarette. Who would stop for a smoke here? Stomach tight, she watched.
One long minute and the vehicle drove away. The breath whooshed out of her. Paranoid, Donna.
She picked up her father’s most recent file from the “active” tray on his desk. The neat label, Mitchell, P., rang a bell deep down in her memory. Mitchell, P. Her memory supplied the full name. Pauline Mitchell.
It was not Pauline’s face that sprang into her mind but the face of Radar, her German shepherd. Something ticked up deep in Donna’s stomach. She’d treated Radar a month earlier, and when she’d called to check on the dog’s improvement a few days later, there had been no answer and no return of her messages.
Inside the file there was only one sheet of paper, adorned with her father’s nearly microscopic handwriting.
Her eyes wandered to the small picture on the desk—Bruce, in his marine dress uniform, arm slung rakishly around his wife, JeanBeth. What had her father’s interest been in Pauline Mitchell? She must have been a client, but as far as Donna had known, they’d never met.
The office phone rang, shattering the silence and jolting her nerves. Too late for a business call. She blinked hard and went to switch off the ringer.
But what if it was the hospital calling about Sarah? Her youngest sister was stable now, the doctors assured her. Safe after being pried from behind the wheel in the crash that had killed their father.
She reached to pick it up, stopping in uncertainty until the message kicked in. “Pacific Coast Investigations. Please leave a number and I’ll return your call.” Her father’s voice on the recording nearly took the knees from under her. There was the obligatory beep and then a long pause. Could she hear breathing on the other end of the line? She was not certain. The caller ID was unfamiliar. Wrong number?
She picked it up. “Hello? Who is this?”
Silence. There was someone on the line, she was sure. The same person who’d called and hung up a dozen times. “I said, who is this?”
Click.
A creak from the hallway brought her to her feet.
“Calm down, already,” she chided herself.
It was Marco, no doubt, her father’s business partner and a longtime family friend. He had a key and came and went as he pleased. She heaved out a sigh. Now nearly forty, Marco was a former Navy boxing world champion, and she did not have to worry about her safety while he was around. Marco loved her and her three sisters as if they were his own kin, even if her relationship with Marco had been downright prickly at times. He was grieving the loss of Bruce Gallagher, too.
She picked up the file again and the paper slipped out and fell to the floor. She bent over to retrieve it. A shadow flitted through her peripheral vision.
She froze.
Her paranoia again?
Or was someone else there in the empty office?
It was her imagination, she decided, until she heard the creak of a floorboard.
* * *
Brent Mitchell finally felt his muscles loosen. The run had eased the nervous energy that cascaded through him. Even though the coast guard doctor had firmly cautioned him to take things slow during his recovery, Brent figured the four-mile jog fit the bill, since he’d normally run six. The rain didn’t slow him down. Instead, it washed the Southern California air so clean it almost hurt to breathe it.
Another ten to twelve days of leave from his job to rest from a concussion might as well have been an eternity, and a short run seemed like a better option than going slowly insane. Besides, he could not lose a twist in his gut, that same sensation that he’d gotten just before the last time he’d dropped from a helicopter into a heaving ocean. Something wasn’t quite right. He checked his phone again. No messages.
There were plenty of reasons why his sister, Pauline, might have split town for a while, leaving calls unanswered. She could be mad at him, which he richly deserved. He was probably in the running for the “worst brother of the year” award. Still, he felt a niggle in his gut. Pauline had a temper, but she was also quick to forgive and this period of radio silence had lasted longer than usual. He’d even gone so far as to let himself into her house, but found nothing out of place. Still, the uneasiness continued, so he’d snatched up an address tacked to her bulletin board and followed it to the front walkway of a neatly tended little building on Coronado Island at eleven thirty on a crisp December night.
His cell phone vibrated. “Brent Mitchell.”
No answer at first. “Where...where is she?”
He stiffened. “Who are you looking for?”
The breath on the other end was short, panicky. Click. Disconnect.
Brent stared at the phone. Wrong number? Or someone who