Page 18 of Hush (The Seaside Saga #25)

“Shit, shit,” Princess whispers, hands on hips.

She slowly turns, looking from one window to another to another wrapping around the cupola.

The problem is that she can’t even get a glimpse outside.

Every window has a piece of plywood tacked over it.

So though she can actually open the windows from the inside, there’s no view to be had.

No wind blowing in. No droplets of the sea spraying the walls.

There’s only noise in this confounded hurricane.

Noise swirling beyond the plywood tacked on outside.

Noise of monster waves she can just picture crashing onto the beach—that’s how violent they sound. They must be churning right beneath this cottage-on-stilts. The waves are surely licking up, up, up at the floorboards above them.

Then there’s that howling wind. It could sound like someone in pain. Someone at the end of their rope and begging for mercy.

Or the wind could sound like ghosts.

Yes, maybe that’s it. Echoes of spirits lost in the night.

And the debris … branches, stones, forgotten sand pails maybe, or pieces of lawn furniture lifted into the air. It all bangs and pings and whips against the old cottage shingles.

In the candlelit cupola, Princess feels like a caged animal. Helpless. Especially after seeing the thief throw on his slicker and rush out a little while ago. Pushing the door open, he bent into the wind and ran right into the storm. Something came over him to drive him out like that.

Something.

But his kid brother is here, so the thief’s not out chasing him down. And he’d already pilfered liquor from a neighboring cottage. So it’s anybody’s guess what drove him outside like that.

Still, there’s got to be a way to reach him. To get the thief back here to safety. To food and shimmering candles and warmth near the fireplace.

To her—damn it.

She opens a window and presses her palm against the plywood nailed outside it. Her hand feels the pressure of wind on the other side of the thin wood. Feels the driving rain sluicing through the air, whipping this way and that—splattering against the plywood.

She pauses, then, and just stands alone in that candlelit cupola in her black bell-bottom jeans and fitted black crop top. She takes a sharp breath. Adjusts the paisley headscarf wrapped around her long brown hair.

And decides.

She lifts her hand again. A wooden bangle on her wrist slides up her arm.

And she presses that plywood.

Then stops.

And tries to place what direction this window faces. Feels it’s the right one.

And presses against that wood once more, harder this time.

Harder. She puts her other hand on top of the hand already on the plywood and applies more pressure.

As she pushes, there’s a creaking sound.

Nails pulling out of wood. And whistling wind, too.

Like an insidious snake, that wind sneaks inside now as she presses even harder and the wood gives.

More creaking. More panic from Princess.

Wisps of hair slip from that headscarf. She moves her hands along the edge of this one open window and presses the plywood.

Presses—here, there—circling the window’s perimeter.

She grunts with the effort. And with each press on the plywood, it loosens, gives until—just like that—the gale-force wind snatches that piece of plywood and whips it into the night. Whips it spinning up into the sky.

All as the hurricane blows directly inside the cupola now. Wind and rain and noise and brute force push Princess away. She nearly falls against a wicker sofa, but stops herself.

She pushes back against the storm, though—quick—and slams that one window shut tight. The plywood over this window is gone, but the glass is holding up. Outside, rain sluices down it in rivulets .

But that’s it.

Princess squints out into the storm. There’s just blackness. Roiling, churning blackness. Thankfully, the exposed window holds fast. So she does what she has to. It’s the only thing she can. The thief is out there in this blackness. She has a hunch where, but can’t be sure.

In case he is, though, she takes some of the flickering candles from a table and sets them on the window ledge—high in the uppermost room of the old cottage-on-stilts.

In the stormy night, those lone candles burn in the exposed window. Hopefully, they’ll be enough.

***

“Oh my God,” Maris says. It’s as though this Princess speaks to her. Is showing her the way—as this Driftline passage flies from Maris’ fingertips. She sits back and rereads the paragraphs. Watches as Princess desperately tries to reach the thief.

To save him.

To bring him back.

Back to her.

Quickly then, Maris saves the manuscript, closes her document, shuts off the computer and checks her watch.

She has a few hours. Sitting there, she looks around the dining room.

Smells that pot roast simmering in the slow cooker.

And jumps up from her seat. Like Princess, she paces the dining room—which gets Maddy excited.

The dog follows after her. Nudges Maris’ hand with her muzzle.

“Maddy?” Maris bends and roughs up the scruff of the German shepherd’s neck. “We’re going to be busy, busy, busy . ”

Because what Maris knows is this: When she came upon Jason on his father’s stairs this morning? She saw something that Princess saw in the thief in this passage.

Jason was so alone. Really, truly. In his own storm.

And now Maris knows what to do.

Knows how to reel him back.