The Tide Can't Wait by Louis Trimble Page B

mouth shut.”
    â€œRule two?” She was still angry.
    â€œDon’t trust anyone. Not even yourself.”
    She felt herself flushing in the dark. One of the things she feared most was her own nature. “Thank you, Professor.”
    â€œYou don’t have to mock me. I’m only doing a job.”
    â€œI’m doing a job, too,” she reminded him. “If I’m going to do it halfway decently, I’ll have to be trusted enough to be told something.”
    â€œIf I could trust you,” he said bluntly.
    He stopped. She felt his hand on her arm, the fingers squeezing lightly, in warning. She sat still. The night seemed the same except that the moon was higher and brighter. The soft breeze carried the scent of the sea on it. Listening, she caught distant sounds. There was a boat putting softly around beyond the mouth of the cove. She listened for something else, sure that Barr hadn’t been disturbed by a distant boat.
    He was speaking so softly that she had difficulty picking his voice out of the light breeze. “To your right. Something just cut across the light from Portia’s window. Start a quarrel with me. Then jump and run—head for the inn.”
    A moment before she would have been glad to quarrel and run from him. Now the thought of leaving the protection he represented frightened her. But there was no questioning his tone of voice. “Your conversation is very pleasant—and that’s all I came for. Conversation.” Her voice was shrill, loud.
    Barr chuckled.
    She said, even more loudly, “If I ever take another walk with you, I’ll bring handcuffs. Good night!”
    She turned and started off. Barr came up from the rock and grabbed her arm. She swung about and slapped him, startled at the sound her hand made hitting his face. She hadn’t meant to hit him so hard. Or had she?
    His whisper cut in, “Run!”
    She ran. The uneven ground rose to trip her. She cursed the impulse that had made her wear high heels. She felt herself falling and she thrust out her hands. The jar went up through the heels of her palms to her shoulders as she struck the grassy but hard ground. She had started to push herself up when she heard the noise, very soft, something like the pop of a wine cork muffled in a towel.
    She looked back the way she had come. It was dark there and Barr was not in sight. The popping came again and this time she heard the bullet as it struck a rock and whined off into the night.
    Now she understood Barr’s order. Someone was stalking them with a silenced gun. She was not sure how she knew that it was a silenced gun, but she did know, just as she knew that somewhere close by, in the dark shadows cast by the rocks, someone with a gun was trying to kill Barr or kill her—or both of them.

CHAPTER VII
    Lenny found it hard to comprehend. She had the feeling that all this must be out of a book and that she could lay it aside when she chose.
    She moved and her foot kicked against a small stone, sending it noisily into another. A form moved and the light in Portia’s window was a tiny clear rectangle of yellow again.
    The plopping sound came. But before she heard it, her ears registered the whine of a searching bullet just above her flattened body. And now the reality of this slammed into her.
    From near the rock where they had been sitting, a noise made her twist her head. She could see the rock etched by the moonlight and another form arcing up, blurred by movement. It struck the grass near the cliff’s edge. A figure rose, cutting off the light from Portia’s window again. It moved, a dark bulk against the night, and then was gone. Lenny thought, Barr, drawing attention from her. But she dared not rise and run now. Either they were both marked for death or the stalker could not tell them apart.
    Even so, she could not simply lie there and do nothing. Nor could she crawl forward over the rough ground. She did not know