CHAPTER ONE
Silver Strand State Beach
Coronado Island, California
Present Day
It was coming to the end of swing shift on a cloudless night in summer when the moon was full, casting a ghostly gray light over the vast Pacific Ocean. Like diamonds glittering against black velvet, she could see a glimmer of light on the water now and again, the flickers undulating as the ocean gently rolled.
But she’d seen the water like this at night too many times to count. In her sixth year on the job with the Coronado Police Department, Cpl. Karia Bayne found the water soothing and hypnotic. She was heading back to the barn, having been patrolling the south end of the city on this night. And she was looking forward to going home, crawling into bed, and watching Netflix until she was decompressed enough to fall asleep. Sometimes that took hours and her sleep patterns were off because of it. She was particularly thankful she wasn’t working day watch.
Swing shift had its advantages and she’d been working the shift for two years now. It was a shift for the men and women who didn’t have families, much like the graveyard shift, because you were home at odd hours, meaning it was difficult to see your family at times. For Karia, that didn’t really matter much considering she’d been single since before going on swing shift. Her ex was on the day shift and they hardly saw one another, thankfully. But she still heard about his new fiancée and how they’d purchased a new house together.
Karia just smiled and told everyone how happy she was for him.
Asshole….
Nights like this made her think of Derek and his fetish for finding a deserted parking lot somewhere and wanting to have sex in the back seat. They’d been caught a couple of times by some of their fellow officers, who would simply shake their heads and drive away as if they hadn’t seen a thing.
Truthfully, she missed those days. Two years down the road, she was coming to think that she was just extremely unlucky in love. Maybe her ex, who liked backseat sex, had been her last chance at it. At thirty-two years of age, she wasn’t getting any younger.
So, she drove north on Silver Strand Boulevard and tried to forget about the past that dogged her. At the urging of her sister, she’d just joined one of those dating websites, so maybe there was still a remote chance. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have anything going for her – a solid career, a new homeowner, five feet and six inches in her stocking feet with a hot body she worked hard to maintain. She looked damn good in a bikini even if there wasn’t anyone to show if off to. Still, she had to have faith.
But faith was something that was fading these days.
Off to her left was the old Silver Strand Highway, a bike path, and South San Diego Bay. The big, green ghost of the Coronado Bridge was to the north and she could see it silhouetted against the sky. Headlights flashed on the bridge as cars headed onto Coronado Island.
It was a Friday and they hadn’t had many calls yet, surprising considering the full moon. That was when all of the freaks came out. Hopefully she’d come off shift before the heavy-duty calls began to come in. She was already looking forward to her bed, Netflix, and those two big babies she owned, spoiled toddlers masquerading as dogs. Those German Shepherds were the only males in her bed these days.
But she had to make her final round before she headed in for the night, so she drove northbound on the Silver Strand Highway, heading into the city of Coronado and slowing her speed as she entered an area of buildings, high-rise apartments, and the City Hall. The traffic wasn’t particularly heavy on this side of town, mostly because the bars and restaurants were further north.
In fact, traffic was rather calm so she pulled into the parking lot of the Coronado Playhouse that paralleled the boulevard because there was a small park-like area next to the Playhouse that bordered the bay. Sometimes they had hobos that liked to slip in there at night and sleep, so she pulled up to the bollards that blocked the entrance to the park and flipped the switch for her spotlight, lighting the area up.
Beyond the big modern art sculpture at the park entrance, she spied a couple sitting on a bench facing the water who immediately got up and hurried away when she lit them up. A few people were passing through the park, perhaps heading away from the Playhouse, which had a performance that evening, and there was a truck backed up to the Playhouse stage doors moving scenery in or out. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Karia turned the spotlight off and was about to move on when she saw a man standing at the white railing that marked the water’s edge. He’d just kind of wandered into her line of sight, dressed in light shorts and some kind of tee-shirt with a bright green frog on the back. The colors were light so she could see them in the moonlight. She could also see that he had either white or very blonde hair, at least that was her assumption because the moonlight was reflecting off of his pale head.
But she was too far away to see much more than that; just a guy looking over the bay in the moonlight. Not that she blamed him, given the beauty of the night. There was no beach here, just the fence and a short sea wall with a drop off into the water. She didn’t find anything weird or threatening about the man just standing there looking out over the water.
Until he suddenly dove over the top of the fence and straight into the bay.
Startled, Karia threw her car into park and bailed out, running across the small park to the white fence, the last place she’d seen the man. Whipping out her Maglite, she shined it over the water, looking for the man. She was becoming increasingly concerned that she didn’t see him. He hadn’t come up for air.
God, it would just be her luck that some dude would try to commit suicide right in front of her. Just when the night was so peaceful. She was just about to call it in to dispatch when her radio went off.
“Bravo-Thirty.”
That was Karia’s call designation. The mic of her radio was clipped to the top of her uniform shirt and she answered.
“Bravo-Thirty go.”
“Bravo-Thirty, I have you as clear.”
Karia hesitated. “Affirmative.”
“Then see the manager at the Coronado Municipal Golf Course. Juveniles playing near the sea wall and a possible drowning. R.A. is rolling.”
Karia paused for a moment longer, shining her Maglite all over the water and on to the jetty that was perhaps two hundred feet to the north. There were all kinds of boats moored there, some of them with people living in them, and she was coming to think that the man must have come up over by the jetty. She could hear people over there on the boats, soft talk floating in the evening air. Life was going on over there.
Doubt filled her. Maybe he was just some guy who didn’t want to walk all the way over to the jetty where his boat was. In any case, she had a real call to attend to now. With a final look, she switched off the Maglite and sprinted back to her cruiser as she acknowledged the call.
“Copy that.”
Throwing the car into gear, she took off Code Two along Silver Strand Boulevard, following it until it became Pomona Avenue and finally Glorietta Boulevard. That led her straight to the city golf course with its lit-up driving range, which was empty at this time of night. As she turned into the driveway of the golf course, the ambulance, paramedic squad, and fire rig were right behind her. All four vehicles rushed into the parking lot of the golf course, heading towards the clubhouse were several people were already standing out front. As she pulled up to the front of the clubhouse, an older Hispanic man ran towards her.
“These boys were playing over by the eighteenth hole,” he said in a panic. “They had skateboards and I had chased them away earlier, but one boy stayed. I saw him go right into the water and when we went to get him out, he was gone!”
Karia nodded quickly. “Show me.”
The man jumped into a golf cart, motioning for everyone to follow him, and they did in a line of flashing lights. They ended up driving over the curb and onto the paved path that was only meant for the golf carts, and they followed that right to the water’s edge. Karia put the car in park and leapt out, running to the sea wall where the club manager was pointing into the bay.
The water was black and the firemen rushed up beside Karia, looking down into the water as she shined her Maglite. There was a growing sense of panic as the fire captain scratched his head.
“I don’t see anything,” he said, turning to the manager. “Are you sure this is where he went in?”
The manager nodded urgently. “Right here,” he insisted. “Aren’t you going to go in after him?”
The fire captain looked at Karia; she knew the man, a seasoned veteran, and since this was a rescue operation, she would leave that decision up to the fire department. The paramedics were already starting to strip down, removing shoes, getting ready to go in.
“Dammit,” the captain hissed, seeing that his men were about to go into the black drink. “We don’t have a choice; get ropes and harnesses on. I don’t have any idea how deep this water is, so if it’s too deep for you to safely touch bottom, we’re going to call in divers. This is a big bay, gentlemen. You’re not going to swim the whole damn thing.” He looked at the manager. “What’s the drop off here?”
The manager sighed heavily. “It drops off very quickly,” he said. “It goes from five to twenty feet pretty quickly. After that, it goes deep.”
Karia watched the fire department swing into action. “How long ago did this happen?” she asked the manager. “Did the boy come up at all?”
The manager was growing distraught. “I don’t really know,” he said. “We saw him fall in and by the time we got over here, he was gone.”
“How long ago?”
“Maybe ten minutes or less. You got here pretty quickly.”
Ten minutes under water. Karia was starting to think this was going to be a very bad situation, indeed, so she stepped away from the manager to call her sergeant. Just as she took several steps away from the man and called dispatch, she could hear the firemen shouting.
“There!”
“Grab him!”
Startled, Karia put dispatch on stand-by and raced back to the water’s edge to see two people surfacing on the water. The firefighters were lowering themselves down the sea wall, ropes and harnesses around them, as they reached for the two people swimming towards them. Actually, it was one man swimming, trying to hand off a limp body in his arms.
Karia crouched down right at the edge of the sea wall, shining her Maglite on the operation as the man swimming handed up the limp body of a teenager into the arms of the paramedics. As the paramedics scrambled to get the drowning victim up and onto level ground, more men were reaching down to pull the swimmer up. And that’s when Karia saw it.
A bright green frog on the back of the man’s wet tee-shirt.
She switched the Maglite off as everyone came up onto the shore, with the paramedics putting the drowning victim onto the ground so they could try to get the water out of his lungs. With mounting confusion, Karia stood there a moment, watching the activity and realizing the man who had rescued the boy had the same light shorts and pale hair that she’d seen from the man who had jumped over the fence and into the sea down by the Playhouse. That frog on his shirt only confirmed it. It was the same man she had assumed had come up over on the jetty, out of her view. But he hadn’t.
He’d come up here, at least a half-mile away. Through a bay of deep water.
Now, she was really confused.
… what the f—?
Truthfully, she was having difficulty believing her eyes. Curious, and trying not to freak out, she made her way over to the man with the frog on his shirt.
As she approached, she studied him carefully; he was a big man, very muscular, with a trim waist and big, muscular legs. The wet tee-shirt and wet shorts were giving her an eyeful because the guy was built like a brick shithouse. His pale blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail that he had wrapped up in a messy man-bun. Karia had to admit that they guy was all shades of hot, but that didn’t explain what she’d just seen. The more she thought about it, the more intensely curious she became.
“Sir?” she said as she approached him. “Can I ask you a few questions?”
The man looked at her and she felt as if she’d been struck; he had eyes the color of the sea but it wasn’t merely the color. It was simply the way he looked at her, a square-jawed beauty that sucked the air right out of her. As she gawked, he wiped the water from his face.
“Sure, Officer,” he said. “Anything you need.”
Shit, she thought, that’s an open statement with a variety of answers and not one of them duty-related. She cleared her throat softly to mask the fact that she nearly choked on her reply.
“Let’s move away from the paramedics,” she said, stepping away and pulling out a small notepad from her shirt pocket. “I just need some information for my report. First of all, are you okay?”
He nodded, still wiping water from his eyes. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t need to be looked at by the paramedics?”
“Not at all.”
She paused, watching him grab his man-bun and squeeze the water from it. “Then how in the hell did you find that kid?” she asked. “I mean, we were just standing here looking for him and up you came. Where did you come from?”
The man grinned, a devastating gesture that had Karia’s stomach doing all kinds of flips. “I work at the base,” he said, referring to the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado that covered about one third of Coronado Island. “I was just heading back when I saw the kid go into the water. I was lucky enough to locate him.”
Karia looked him up and down. “The base?” she repeated. “What do you do over there?”
“I’m with the Teams.”
A SEAL. Well, that explained a lot. With the way this guy was built, she didn’t doubt for one second that he was one of the most highly-trained warriors in the world. He had that look about him.
“I see,” she said, jotting down notes in her pad. “Name, please?”
“Kerk Lesander.” He spelled out both names.
She scribbled. “Address?”
“343 Pomona, Coronado.”
“Phone?”
He gave it to her.
“And you said you work at the base?”
“Yes.”
“Rank?”
“Sr. Chief Petty Officer.”
She glanced at him. “Aren’t you a little young for that?”
He grinned. “No, ma’am.”
She continued writing, trying to smile because she’d just insulted him. “Sorry,” she said. “I always think of the petty officers as old sailors.”
“Not in my line of work.”
“The SEAL Teams?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She scribbled away on her paper. “So, can you tell me what happened with this kid? How did you come into the picture?”
He was watching her as she wrote, perhaps looking at the curve of her neck and the way her dark hair glistened. In fact, if she’d looked up from her pad then, she would have seen that he was watching her very closely. “Like I said, I was just heading back to base when I saw the kid go in. It was just luck, really.”
Karia lifted her head, looking around. “Where were you in relation to this location?” she asked. “You said you were heading back to base, but how did you see the kid go in?”
He turned to look at their surroundings as well. “I was over there,” he said, pointing generally westward. “I was close enough to see what had happened.”
“Where, exactly?”
He pointed to the west. “There.”
“The boulevard?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He wasn’t being too specific but Karia suspected that was about as specific as he was going to get on the subject. It was true that he’d been on the boulevard when she last saw him, but not on the boulevard he was pointing to. He’d been a half-mile away. Tired of playing games, she stopped writing and looked up at him.
“Can I ask you something off the record?” she asked.
He nodded. Karia took a few steps away from the group of firefighters and rescue personnel, crooking her finger at Kerk and inviting him to follow her. He did without hesitation. When they were well away from the others, she pointed to the small inlet bay south of the golf course.
“Less than ten minutes ago, I was over by the Playhouse when I saw you standing by the sea wall,” she said quietly. “At least, I thought I saw you standing by the sea wall. Then you jumped into the water and disappeared. Then I get this call only to see you come out of the water with a drowning victim.”
He didn’t seem concerned by her question. “And?”
Karia lifted her eyebrows. “And that’s about a half-mile away. How’d you get here so quickly?”
He gave her a half-grin, a gesture she found incredibly alluring. Something in those sea-colored eyes glimmered at her. “Magic,” he whispered.
She grinned because she thought he was teasing her. Or maybe he wasn’t. She had no idea. “Really?” she said, although it wasn’t a question. “That’s what you want me to believe? It was magic?”
His eyes were still glimmering at her. There was warmth there, although Karia refused to entertain such a thing. She was on duty and had a strict policy against flirting or doing anything that could be construed as inappropriate.
Still, it would be so easy….
“If you want to,” he said. Then, he looked at the name plate on her left breast. “Officer Bayne?”
“Corporal Bayne.”
He nodded his head in mute apology for misaddressing her. “Corporal Bayne,” he said. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Uh… okay.”
“What’s your first name?”
“Karia.”
He lifted an eyebrow, blonde like the hair on his head. “Karia,” he said softly, drawing out the name – CAR-ee-uh. “I like it. Can I call you Karia?”
“You can if you tell me the truth.”
He laughed softly, revealing a mouth full of straight white teeth. “Fair enough,” he said. “How do you know it was even me over by the Playhouse? Did you see my face?”
She shook her head. “No, but the guy I saw was wearing the same shirt and shorts you’re wearing.”
He looked at his wet clothing. “There’s nothing unique about what I’m wearing.”
“And I saw the blonde hair.”
“Lots of men have blonde hair.”
She sighed with exasperation, although it was lightly done. “Seriously? You’re going to bullshit me? I’m a trained observer, you know. And I know what I saw.”
He simply smiled at her, a sexy half-smile as if he had a very big secret that he wasn’t going to confess.
“I think the moonlight was playing tricks on you, Corporal Bayne,” he said rather seductively. “And speaking of moonlight, what are you doing tonight when you get off shift?”
That was the end of the conversation as far as Karia was concerned. She didn’t like being hit on while on duty, no matter how cute the guy. She simply rolled her eyes. “Nothing that concerns you,” she said, realizing she was sorry to say such a thing. “But stay here a minute; I’ll be right back.”
Leaving him standing there, smirking all the way, she headed over to the firefighters as they lifted the drowning victim onto the gurney. It seemed that they got the boy breathing on his own and they were anxious to get him to the hospital. Letting the fire captain know she’d meet them at the hospital so she could finish her report, Karia turned back to Kerk only to see that he’d disappeared.
Brow furrowed, she quickly made her way over to the spot where she’d left him, looking around to see where he might have gone. The dark golf course was all around and she didn’t see him anywhere. There would have been no place for him to hide if he’d run, no trees or concealing buildings or bushes, so she was genuinely at a loss. Where in the hell did the man go?
But then, it occurred to her.
The water’s edge was about five feet to her right. He’d come out of the sea; maybe he’d returned to it. She turned to the vast expanse of the bay, fearful to even entertain the thoughts that were rolling through her head. But she had to see for herself. Hesitantly, she made her way over to the sea wall, peering down into the dark water. It was rippling, lapping up against the rocks, but there was no sign of Kerk Lesander.
He was gone.
With a sigh, Karia was genuinely puzzled as to why the man would have disappeared. It wasn’t as if he was in any trouble, but maybe he hadn’t liked her line of questioning. She had essentially called him a liar, but in her opinion, he was. She knew he was the man she’d seen over by the Playhouse without question. But she genuinely had no idea how he would have made it across a half-mile of ocean in so short a time. Maybe he had a Jet Ski he’d used, but she hadn’t heard a motor. A personal submarine? Maybe. The only other explanation was the one he gave – magic.
Karia didn’t believe in magic and she most certainly didn’t believe he was capable of such a thing. There had to be a logical explanation. Glancing at her pad, she had his name, address, and phone number. Whether or not Kerk Lesander liked it, she was going to follow up on him and get to the bottom of his miraculous appearances and disappearances. Something told her that the answers she sought might be something extraordinary, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her. She was going to hound the man until he told her what she wanted to know.
Looking at her pad again, she saw his address. She knew that general location. He’d asked her what she was doing tonight when she got off shift. Now, she knew.
Netflix was going to have to wait.