Jack Beale 00 - Dangerous Shoals

Then she hung up before Jack could say anything else.
    Slowly, Jack hung up his phone. What she had told him was still sinking in, when he realized what he had just asked, and the way she responded to his question. “When are you coming home?” It had seemed so natural.
    He walked to the window and looked out over the marsh. There was a light breeze blowing and he could see that the tide was rising, slowly transforming the channels that meandered through the salt marsh from deep gullies of brown mud to ribbons of sparkling blue water. “Is it possible? Is Daniel really here? Am I going to lose Max again?” Resolve set in. “No, that won’t happen. I won’t lose her again.” Maybe that’s what he had meant. By asking when she would be home, he was finally admitting to himself what his heart had known all along.”
    At that moment another image flashed through his head. Those eyes, the same eyes from his dream several weeks ago. The same eyes he saw in the park, the eyes that Courtney had described to him. Why did he keep seeing those eyes? Jack was getting an uneasy feeling. He shook his head to clear them out of his mind.
    He went to the phone and made a call.

CHAPTER 9
    NO ANSWER. HE dialed a second number and Courtney picked up on the third ring. Jack said, “Hey.”
    “Hey, yourself. What’s up?”
    “Have you talked to Max?”
    “No. Why?”
    “She just called and told me she saw Daniel.”
    He heard her suck in her breath followed by silence.
    “Court?”
    “I’m here. She saw Daniel?”
    “That’s what she said.” He paused and asked, “You got a minute?”
    “Sure.”
    “I’ll be right over.” Jack hung up the phone and headed down the stairs. She was out on her porch waiting for him by the time he walked across the yard.
    “Hi Jack.” She gave him a quick hug and then the flood of questions unleashed. “So what’s this about Max seeing Daniel? Did she talk to him? What happened?”
    He didn’t say anything. He just sat down in one of the wicker chairs she kept out on the porch. She sat down next to him, worry on her face like a kid expecting a report card full of bad marks. Jack spoke slowly, trying to organize his thoughts as he went along. “I don’t know all the details, but from what I understand, Max went out last night with Patti and some of the other girls from Ben’s.”
    “I had heard that.”
    “They ended up staying at Max’s last night and this morning went into town for a hangover-killing breakfast. She told me that as she was going into the Blue Iguana, she saw Daniel across the street. By the time she got Patti to turn around, he was gone.”
    The look on Courtney’s face said more than any words could offer. The silence was punctuated only by the cry of a gull, the rustling marsh grass, and the far-off measured cadence of surf pounding on the shore. Then Courtney asked, “She’s sure it was him? Did anyone else see him?”
    “She’s sure, and no, nobody else saw him,” confirmed Jack.
    “Do you think it was really him? What are you going to do?”
    “Do? I have no idea? What do you think?”
    “I don’t know what to think,” said Courtney.
    Jack decided not to tell her about the “unknown caller” that was on his phone’s caller ID. He just wasn’t ready to give the idea that Daniel was around any more life than it already had. He would need more hard evidence before he’d do that.
    Still, he wondered. “Court, you know Max as well as I do. She never talks to me about Daniel. If he did show up, is there any chance that she would go back to him?”
    “Of course not. There’s not a chance in hell. She loves you. You’ll see.”
    Before he could reply, he saw Max’s car coming up the road. “Here she comes.”
    He stared intently as the car came to a stop in front of the cottage. Max jumped out and rushed toward the porch. Was she excited because she was happy or was it because she was anxious and worried? Jack couldn’t be sure. She threw a kiss at him and said, “Hi Court. Did Jack tell you who I saw this morning?”
    “He just told me. Are you sure it was him?”
    “Positive.”
    “That’s not exactly what you told me,” interjected Jack.
    She turned toward him and without any hesitation said, “Yes it is.”
    Courtney broke in before Jack could push it further. “Max, how can you be so sure? I thought he had vanished down in Belize. Wasn’t there evidence that he had been killed by those men who were chasing