By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs by Antoinette Stockenberg Read Free Book Online Page A

estates placed
at ostentatiously discreet distances from one another, was deserted
at this early hour. Cindy was driving the long way around the
island because she wanted one last chance to take in the splendor
of Ocean Drive. She drove rather slowly past the forty-and
fifty-room summer "cottages" built on fortunes made from oil and
railroads, from copper mines and diamond mines—and from margarine,
paper clips, Worcestershire sauce, and liver pills. Not that she
cared a whit where money came from. As long as it was there. She
was so much more democratic about those things than her cousins;
but then, they hadn't been raised in deprivation in a French
convent the way she had.
    She rolled past the historic Ida Lewis Yacht
Club, made the little jog up to Spring Street, with its colonial
houses tucked side by side, and dropped back down to the
waterfront. Even America's Cup Avenue was deserted. The bars and
restaurants were closed; boutiques and souvenir stores would not
open before ten. Between the shops and condominiums Cindy caught
glimpses of the historic harbor, crammed with moored, docked, and
anchored boats arranged as precisely as sardines in a can. She had
been to cocktails on two or three of the larger yachts and had
enjoyed herself. What a pity that Alan wasn't more of a yachtsman
and less of a madman; life aboard a hundred-foot pleasure boat
might have had its moments.
    A bank of thick gray fog hung over the
graceful suspended expanse of the Newport Bridge. As she swung onto
the double lane going west, Cindy's heart began to pound. If he
wasn't there? For the first time the enormity of her situation hit
home. For the first time it occurred to her that, looked at one
way, her actions could be considered criminal. She herself hadn't
done anything wrong—not deliberately, anyway. She had been
careless, perhaps; remiss, yes; an accessory, she supposed. But she
was no criminal mastermind.
    But her heart kept pounding—slamming,
really, up against her chest, ricocheting inside her head. Where was he, damn it, where ? She was creeping as slowly as
possible toward the center span, expecting to see him parked
somewhere on the bridge, waiting for her. If he wasn't there—she
would jump, she really would. Cindy knew that the speed was kicking
in, making her psychotically impatient. She knew, but she was
helpless to fight it. She felt her blood thinning to the
consistency of water, rushing through her veins like a gurgling
brook. Delly, Delly... don't do this to me, she prayed. In
her panic she hadn't even noticed the car following close behind
her; it took a quick tapping of the horn to get Cindy to look in
her rear-view mirror and, at a hand signal from him, to pull her
Mercedes over to the right.
    In one mad dash Cindy and her duffle bag
were in the front seat of Delgado's Chevy Suburban, although, like
Cinderella, she had in her hurry left behind a slipper—in this
case, a cobalt-blue pump, on the floor of her Mercedes.
    "Delly! I thought you'd be parked and
waiting!" she said, breathless with rapture.
    "Woman! That was the old plan. Quickly—over
the seat and on the floor. Under the blanket."
    "Okay, sure. I'm sorry, Delly; I forgot
that," Cindy said, moving as fast as her skin-tight designer jeans
would allow. "I was just so nervous." She pulled a charcoal wool
blanket over her head. It made her feel suddenly ignominious and
ridiculously small.
    "That is perfectly natural, my love," he
said over his shoulder. "But you left the note?"
    "Yes, just like you said to."
    "And locked the door?"
    "Yes."
    "And left behind all your things? This bag
looks to me very, very full." There was suspicious reserve in his
voice.
    "All the clothes are brand new, Delly. No
one knows I even bought them. What do you take me for?" she asked,
wounded. There was a pause. "Delly, there is one
thing..."
    "What thing?" It wasn't alarm; it was
low-key menace.
    "I ... ran someone down on the way home last
night. He was in the middle of the road,