Dawn in Eclipse Bay

it.”

chapter 10
    Gabe dropped Lillian off at the entrance to her apartment building shortly before ten o’clock on Monday morning.
    “I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said when she made to slide out of the Jag.
    She stood and looked at him through the open door. Tension coiled in the pit of her stomach. He was dressed for business once again in the legendary Gabe Madison war armor: steel-gray jacket and trousers, charcoal-gray shirt secured with silver-and-onyx cuff links, silver-and-black striped tie. When he moved his hand on the wheel, the dark-gray edge of his shirt cuff shifted, revealing the gleaming stainless-steel watch on his left wrist.
    He looked good, she thought. Exciting. Powerful and predatory and wholly in control. You’d never guess that he was suffering a bad case of burnout. But, then, what did burnout look like?
    “Fine,” she said. “I’ll be ready.”
    She hurried toward the building’s secured entrance and punched in the code. Gabe waited until she was safely inside the lobby before he drove off in the direction of his downtown office.
    He was wrong to accuse her of being nervous about their relationship, she thought a few minutes later when she twisted the key in the lock of her apartment door. She had spoken the truth the other morning when she had tried to explain herself to him. They both needed to think things through. Neither one of them could trust their own judgment at the moment.
    A man dealing with burnout was certainly not in the best position to make sound decisions regarding his personal relationships. As for herself, she had arrived at a major turning point in her life. Getting involved in an affair with a man who was going through his own emotional crisis was the last thing she needed.
    Probably be best to write off that night at his cottage as an ill-advised one-night stand.
    It all sounded so logical. Why did she feel depressed by her own clear reasoning?
    She opened the door and walked into the apartment. They had made good time on the long drive from Eclipse Bay this morning. She had most of the day ahead of her to tidy up some of the loose ends that she had left dangling when she had rushed out of town a few days ago. She had a number of things on her agenda, not the least of which was deciding what to wear to the dinner tonight.
    The atmosphere of the apartment had the closed-up feeling that accumulates quickly when a residence has been uninhabited for a few days. She walked through the rooms, cracking open windows to allow fresh air to circulate.
    She did the living room first and then went down the hall to her bedroom. At the entrance, she paused. A tingle of eerie awareness drifted through her.
    There was something different about the room. Something wrong.
    She looked around with her artist’s eye, noting the small details. The bedding was undisturbed. The closet doors were firmly closed. The dresser drawers were shut.
    The closet doors were closed. Completely closed.
    Her attention snapped back to the mirrored closet. She stared at it for a long time.
    She was certain that she had left it partially ajar because of the way the slider got hung up when it was pushed fully closed.
    Almost certain.
    She had been in a hurry the other morning when she had left for Eclipse Bay, she reminded herself. Perhaps she had forced the door closed without thinking about it.
    She crossed the room, gripped the handle and tried to open the slider. It stuck. Just as it had been sticking for the past two months. She took a firmer grasp, braced herself and forced it open.
    The slider resisted for a few seconds and then reluctantly moved in its track. She stood back and surveyed the interior of her closet. The clothes on the hangers seemed to be in the same order they had been in when she had packed. The stack of plastic sweater boxes on the shelf looked untouched.
    This was ridiculous. She was allowing her imagination to get carried away.
    She reached for the handle of the slider again, intending to close the door. She went cold when she saw the smear on the mirrored glass at the far end next to the metal frame.
    She allowed her hand to hover over the smear. It was right where the heel of a palm would rest if one were to take hold of the frame at the far end in an attempt to force the slider closed. But the mark was a little higher than one she would have left if she had grasped the frame.
    Right about where a man or a woman a couple of inches taller than herself might put his