Rising Tides Read Online Free

from the horizon. Benknew it was time to return to the Gerritsen cottage. He had given Dawn enough time to get used to the idea that he was back in her life. He had probably given her parents time to arrive, and anyone else who had been invited, too. He trudged across sand and crunched his way through a fifty-yard stretch of wild flowers and sea grasses. Ozone and the herbal essence of the vegetation scented the air. Behind him, as a light rain began again, he heard the triumphant cawing of sea gulls feasting on the mullet the fishermen had missed.
    He was halfway back to the cottage when the heavens opened and the rain began in earnest. He was al ready wet, but with darkness falling, his tolerance was disappearing fast. The main road bisecting the island was lined with fishing camps and the occasional store that served them. He headed for the closest one to wait out the worst of the storm.
    Ten steps led up to the wood-frame building, which was no larger than a three-car garage. Inside there were two narrow aisles flanked with counters and shelves. Of more interest were the occupants.
    The storekeeper was lounging against the counter. A man who’d embraced his fifties without an argument, the storekeeper was balding, stooped and paunchy. When he smirked at the younger man who was standing across from him, his tobacco-stained teeth were an inch too long.
    So enthusiastically was he staring and smirking, the storekeeper didn’t even notice Ben. “Well, boy,” he said to the man in front of him, “I might know where the house is, and I might not. Depends on why you want to know. Me, I can’t figure why a nigger’d be looking for Senator Gerritsen’s house after dark, unless he’s got something on his mind he shouldn’t.”
    Ben stood in the doorway and watched the other man—a man who, at thirty-seven, hadn’t been a boy for two decades—reactto the storekeeper’s words. Ben recognized him. He waited for his reaction.
    Phillip Benedict leaned across the counter. “Now if I wanted to kill Senator Gerritsen, coon ass, you think I’d stop here first so you could remember exactly what I looked like?”
    The storekeeper cranked himself up to a full five-foot-four, but he needed an additional ten inches to be Phillip’s equal. Actually, Ben concluded, he needed a whole lot more than inches.
    “Get out of my store! Go on. Get! And watch your back while you’re on the island. Might find yourself riding the waves facedown if you don’t!”
    Phillip had beautiful hands, long-fingered and broad. One of them gathered the material of the storekeeper’s shirt and twisted it so that he couldn’t move away. “It would take a very quiet man to sneak up on me, coon ass. You don’t have that kind of quiet. You got a big mouth. I’d hear it yapping a mile away. So you be careful, ‘cause while you’re yapping, I might just sneak up on you. And you wouldn’t hear me.” He let go of the shirt and pushed the man away from the counter. Then he turned. His eyes met Ben’s. For a moment, he didn’t move.
    “Coon ass?” Ben asked.
    “Wish I’d coined the phrase.”
    Ben looked past Phillip to the storekeeper, who was edging toward the wall. “He’s a mean son of a bitch,” he told the man. “Eats white folks for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Now, I’d be careful. All that, and a friend of the Gerritsen family, too. He’s a good man to stay away from.”
    “Both of you get out!”
    “Bad for business to be so rude.” Ben picked up a candy bar and fished for some change, which he laid on the counter. “Want anything, Benedict?”
    “Yeah. A head on a platter.”
    “Next store down the road.” Ben draped an arm around Phillip’s shoulder. “Let’s see what we can do.”
    They exited that way, although Ben kept his eye on the storekeeper until they were safely out the door. “About now is a good time to make tracks,” he said at the bottom of the steps. “Do you have a car?”
    “Sure as hell didn’t