Chapter One
Burke Wolftauer, the Clam Cop, dusted his hands on his cutoffs and observed the black SUV tearing out onto Chapin Beach at low tide. Crammed with half-naked sweaty semi-inebriated humans, the Lexus roared down the beach, narrowly missing a gamboling golden retriever. It roared to a halt in a spume of sand and mud, and all four doors popped open to let a spill of drunken humanity onto the (previously) calm beach.
All of which meant nothing to him, because the full moon was only half an hour away.
Burke dug up one more clam for supper, popped it open with his fingernails, and slurped it down while watching the monkeys.
Okay—not nice. Not politically correct. Boss Man wouldn't approve (though Boss Lady probably wouldn't care). But never did they look closer to their evolutionary cousins than when they'd been drinking. Homo sapiens blotto. They were practically scratching their armpits and picking nits out of their fur. A six-pack of Bud and a thermos of Cosmos and suddenly they were all miming sex and drink like Koko the monkey.
All of which meant nothing to him, because the full moon was only half an hour away.
Now look: not a one of them of drinking age, and not a one of them sober. Parked too far up the beach for this time of the day, and of course they hadn't let any air out of their tires. They'd been on the beach thirty seconds and Burke counted an arrestable offense, two fines, and a speeding ticket.
He licked the brine from both halves of the clam shell, savoring the salty taste, "the sea made flesh," as Pat Conroy had once written. Clever fellow, that Conroy. Good sense of humor. Probably fun to hang out with. Probably not too apelike when he knocked a few back. Guy could probably cook like a son of a bitch, too.
Burke popped the now-empty clam in his mouth and crunched up the shell. Calcium: good for his bones. And at his age (a doddering thirty-eight) he needed all the help he could get.
Then he stood, brushed the sand off his shorts, and sauntered over to the now-abandoned Lexus. He could see the teens running ahead, horsing around and tickling and squealing. And none of them looked back, of course.
He dropped to one knee by the left rear wheel, bristling with disapproval at the sight of the plump tires—tires that would tear up the beach in no time at all. He leaned forward and took a chomp. There was a soft fffwwaaaaaaahhhh as the tire instantly deflated and the SUV leaned over on the left side. Burke chewed thoughtfully. Mmmm… Michelins…
He did the same to the other three, unworried about witnesses—this time of year and day, the beach was nearly deserted, and besides, who'd expect him to do what he just did?
He walked back up the beach to retrieve his bucket and rake, using an old razor clamshell to pick the rubber out of his teeth.
He belched against the back of his hand and reminded himself he wasn't a kid anymore—he was looking at half a night of indigestion.
Worth it. Yup.
Chapter Two
Serena Crull heard someone come close to her hole and went still and silent as… well, the grave.
This was an improvement over what she had said twelve hours earlier, upon tumbling ass over forehead into the eighteen-foot-deep pit: "Son of a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii… ooommpph!"
This had been followed by: "Shit!"
And: "Son of a bitch!"
And: "Ow."
Which had been followed by roughly twelve hours of sulking silence. She had tried climbing out: no good. She'd just pulled more slippery sand down onto herself. She hadn't bothered to try jumping: she wasn't a damned frog. She'd once jumped down, but it was only a story or so and, frankly, it had hurt like hell. Not to mention she hadn't stuck the landing. Jumping up?
Maybe in another fifty years.
Then the sun had come up, and she'd really been screwed. She scuttled into a corner (or whatever you call the edge of a hole that gives shelter), pulled some sand over herself, and waited for the killing sun to fall into the ocean one more time. What she would do after that, she had no idea.
And she was starving.
She was dying and she was starving.
Okay: She was dead and she was starving.
From above: "Hey."
She said nothing.
"Hey. Down there." Pause. "In the hole."
She couldn't resist, could not physically prevent her jaw from opening and the nagging voice from bursting forth, it was just so exquisitely stupid, that question: "What, down the hole? Where else would I be? Dumb shit."
Longer pause. "I'll, uh, get help."
"Don't do that. I'll be fine."
"Someone'll have some rope in their truck."
"Why don't you have rope in your truck?" she couldn't resist asking.
"Don't need it."
It was amazing: the man (nice voice—deep, calm, almost bored) sounded as indifferent as a… a—she couldn't think of what.
"I don't, either."
"Don't either what?"
Nice voice: not too bright. "Don't need a rope. I do not need a rope. No rope!" No, indeed! A rescue right now would be disastrous. She could picture it with awful clarity: heave and heave, and here she is, thank goodness she's safe, and what the hell? She's on—She's on fire!
As her hero, Homer Simpson, would have said: "D'oh!"
"How did you even fall in there?" her would-be rescuer was asking. "It's impossible for there to be a deep hole on the beach.
The sand would fill it up."
"I'm not a marine biologist, okay?" she snapped.
"Geologist," he suggested. "You're not a geologist."
It was amazing: she'd spent the day alone, in hours of silence, terrified of the sunlight, hoping she wouldn't face an ugly death, and now she wanted her rescuer to get the hell lost.
"Get the hell lost."
Pause. "Did you hit your head on the way down?"
"On what?"
"You seem," he added, "kind of unpleasant."
"I'm in a hole."
"Well. I can't just leave you there."
"Oh, sure you can," she encouraged. "Just… keep going to wherever you were going."
"I didn't really have anywhere to go."
"Oh, boo friggin' hoo. Is this the part where I go all dewy between my legs and talk about how I'm secretly lonely, too, and how it was meant to be, me falling on my ass and you hauling me out? And then we Do It?"
"Did someone push you down there?"
"Shut up and go away. I'll be fine."
"Maybe the fire department?" he mused aloud.
"No. No. No no no no no no."
"Well. You can't exactly stop me."
She gasped. "You wouldn't dare."
"Even if you are crazy. I can't just not help you."
"Go away, Boy Scout."
"It's just that I can't hang around too much longer."
"Great. Fine. Have a good time, wherever you're going. See ya."
"I have this thing."
"Okeydokey!" she said brightly, her inner Minnesotan coming out, which was an improvement over her inner cannibal, which wanted to choke and eat this mystery man, claw strips of flesh from his bones and strangle him with them, then poke a hole in his jugular and drink him down like a blue raspberry Slushee Pup. "Bye-bye then!"
"But I could maybe keep you company until it's time to… for me to go." Another pause, then, in a lower voice: "Although that might not work either."
"Aw, no," she almost groaned. "You're going to talk down my hole, then go away?"
"Yeah, you're right. That won't work."
"For more reasons than you can figure, Boy Scout."
"I don't have a cell phone, is the thing."
"Me neither. Aw, that's so sweet, look how much we have in common; too bad we're not ha**ng s*x right this second."
Pause. "You keep bringing up sex."
"Yeah, well. It's been a long fargin' day."
"Fargin'?"
"Shut up, Boy Scout."
"It's just that you don't have to worry."
"That's a humungous load off my mind, Boy Scout."
"Because the thing is, I can't… you don't have… it's that I'm not attracted to you at all."
She clutched her head. "This. Is. Not. Happening."
"I don't mean to hurt your feelings."
Insanely, he had. "Hey up there! For all you know, I'm an anorexic blonde with huge tits, skin the color of milk, and a case of raging nymphomania."
Another of those maddening pauses. "Anyway, that's not really the problem. The problem—"
"Bud. I so don't need you to tell me what the problem is. Please get lost."
She heard a sudden intake of breath, as if he'd come to a quick, difficult decision, and then there was a whoosh and a thud, and he was standing next to her.
Chapter Three
Five minutes later she was still screaming at him. Right at him. The hole was only about three feet in diameter. They were chest to chest. And she was loud. Really loud.
"… left your brains up there, Boy Scout, not that you ever were that heavy in the smarts department in the first place!"
"It just seemed like a good idea, is all."
"Seemed like a good idea?"
"Wow. You're really loud. While you're yelling, I'll make a step, and throw you out."
"You'll make a what and what me what?"
"Make a step with my hands. Like this." He bent forward to show her, and they promptly bonked skulls.
"Ow!"
He could feel himself get red. "Sorry." And red wasn't the only thing he was getting. What had he been thinking? She was right: he'd left his brains up there with the seagull shit.
"This was your solution?" she scolded, rubbing her forehead. "No cell phone, no rope, and now we're both down here?"