Lighthouse Reef (A Pelican Pointe Novel Book 4) Read online

  Praise for Vickie McKeehan’s Novels

  “Strong, distinctive characters. I cannot wait to get my hands on the next book.”

  Just Evil

  - Coffee Time Romance and More -

  “Queen of suspense…”

  Just Evil

  - Jill D. Hidy, author of The Old World Series -

  “…an excellent storyteller…”

  Deeper Evil

  - Toye Lawson Brown, author of When the Music Stops -

  “A must read trilogy.”

  Ending Evil

  - Rosalie A. Pope, author of Puppies For Sale $25.00 -

  “A brilliant and rewarding read.”

  Promise Cove

  - Bestchicklit.com -

  “For an entertaining adventure and love story,

  I highly recommend.”

  Hidden Moon Bay

  - Marilyn Holdsworth, author of Pegasus -

  “You feel Keegan and Cord’s sorrows, pain, and love…”

  Dancing Tides

  - John Chavez, reader -

  also by Vickie McKeehan

  The Evil Secrets Trilogy

  JUST EVIL Book One

  DEEPER EVIL Book Two

  ENDING EVIL Book Three

  The Pelican Pointe Series

  PROMISE COVE

  HIDDEN MOON BAY

  DANCING TIDES

  LIGHTHOUSE REEF

  STARLIGHT DUNES

  LAST CHANCE HARBOR

  SEA GLASS COTTAGE

  LAVENDER BEACH

  The Skye Cree Novels

  THE BONES OF OTHERS

  THE BONES WILL TELL

  THE BOX OF BONES

  HIS GARDEN OF BONES

  The Indigo Brothers Trilogy

  2016

  Exclusively at Amazon in print and Kindle format

  Lighthouse Reef

  A Pelican Pointe Novel

  VICKIE McKEEHAN

  Lighthouse Reef

  A Pelican Pointe Novel

  Copyright © 2013 Vickie McKeehan

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Excerpt from Starlight Dunes copyright 2013 by Vickie McKeehan. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  ISBN-10: 0615797776

  ISBN-13: 978-0615797779

  Printed in the USA

  Cover design by Jess Johnson

  Pelican Pointe map designed by Jess Johnson

  Visit the author at:

  www.vickiemckeehan.com

  www.facebook.com/VickieMcKeehan

  http://vickiemckeehan.wordpress.com/

  www.twitter.com/VickieMcKeehan

  For all those who wage their

  war every day against cancer,

  for all those who support

  them, and for all those who

  ultimately kick its ass

  And for Johnny, an inspiration to us all

  No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

  Oscar Wilde

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Lighthouse Reef

  A Pelican Pointe Novel

  VICKIE McKEEHAN

  Welcome to Pelican Pointe

  Prologue

  Twenty-five years earlier

  Pelican Pointe, California

  The waves crashed up against the rocks. The wind whipped in gusts while a slice of moonlight trailed along the sand, glistening like silver. On the deserted stretch of beach, three young men huddled in front of a campfire they’d built up trying to stay warm in the chilly, damp night air. Two were brothers—the other an older tag-along already of legal age they’d talked into buying beer and cigarettes in the neighboring town of San Sebastian—where you could purchase liquor if you were twenty-one.

  But San Sebastian was farther inland and it didn’t offer the Coast Highway to tour up and down cruising for chicks, especially in the summertime, or during spring break when babes wearing string bikinis were as common as surfboards. Oddly, that was usually the best time of year to pick up hitchhikers, too.

  Not four hours earlier, the trio had set off an alarm on Main Street when they’d broken a window to get inside Ferguson’s Hardware store. Their plan had been to rob old man Ferguson, take whatever cash they could find. Who knew Ferguson had gone and installed an alarm system? Probably something the son had come up with to impress his old man, a step toward progress, signaling a change in ownership one day in the not too distant future. Something to show the town he deserved the cushy job he’d fallen into as daddy’s right-hand man.

  After all, nepotism ran strong in this shitwater of a town, didn’t it? Fathers turned the reins over to their sons to inherit the business, whatever the business happened to be. It was a practical matter, a legacy that had held its own ritual for years and would continue to do so for future generations.

  Future generations? What a joke that was. Like anyone with a brain would stay in Pelican Pointe their whole life and hope to have a future here.

  Flames rose higher on the fire as they took turns tossing more driftwood onto the pyre hoping to make it more like a bonfire.

  “Why do you want to do that?” the younger one asked. “We’re just attracting attention to ourselves.”

  “Shut up,” the older brother barked. “Didn’t we just gather up all this wood? It’s freezing out here in the mist. Besides, I call the shots. Don’t forget that,” he warned as he chucked another log into the blaze, making the tips of the flames shoot up higher, as if trying to reach all the way to the top of the bluffs where the lighthouse sat high atop its craggy perch.

  Up to now, the discarded beer cans that littered their feet were the only true indication the three had been drinking. But as they got drunker—they also got more surly—and louder. Nasty tempers began to clash as they always did between these same companions and flare like rockets on the Fourth of July.

  The youngest, barely sixteen, spared a glance in the direction of the young teen girl they’d tied up earlier and placed close to the fire. Her eyes told him she looked scared to death. Not an hour earlier, his brother had stuck a gag in her mouth to shut her up and keep her from screaming. “What should we do about her?”

  The older brother didn’t take long to think about it. “Let’s take the bitch up to the lighthouse. Whaddya say we go up there and have our
selves some fun. We’ll put it to her good and hard. No one will hear a thing.”

  “He’s right. The longer we stay down here on the beach, the more we risk somebody could come along and spot us,” the tag-along agreed without much hesitation. “But shit. How do we get the bitch up there? You feel like toting her all that way?”

  “Hell no. We’ll stick her in the back of my pickup while we make our way through town. That way it just looks like it’s the three of us same as it usually does.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  “I’m in. How do we choose which one of us goes first though? Should be the oldest that gets first dibs, dontcha think? Since that’s me—”

  “No. No different than the way we always do things. I go first, then my little brother. You last.”

  “Why does it always have to be your way?”

  “Because it’s my damn truck that’s why. Now shut the fuck up and help me get this bitch loaded up. Anymore crap from you—?”

  “Okay. Okay. No need to get your panties in a wad. How much do you think she weighs?”

  “How the hell should I know! The three of us should be able to handle her though.” With that the oldest brother went over and pulled the terrified girl to her feet. He brought out the knife he carried and stuck it to her throat. He looked into the blonde’s brilliant-blue eyes and wondered what it would be like to watch the life go out of them. He’d been thinking about it a lot lately, reading about it, too. Tonight he had his chance to see what it was like for himself. He just had to bring the others around to his way of thinking.

  “Grab her feet,” he ordered the tag-along. To his brother, he yelled over the sound of the wind and surf, “Open up the tailgate.”

  “What about the fire?”

  “We’ll come back. For what I have in mind, this won’t take that long at all.”

  Chapter One

  Present day

  Somewhere over California

  Logan Donnelly was so close to a part of his past he could almost smell the California coast. He was pretty sure that was impossible at twenty-five-thousand feet. But the minute the plane had crossed into California airspace, it seemed to Logan, a weight had lifted.

  As he glanced out the window of the sleek jet just as it bumped into a nasty pocket of turbulence that had his stomach lurching, he decided if he didn’t get this phase of his life out of the way once and for all, he would never be able to move forward to do what he wanted in his work.

  He’d put off coming to Pelican Pointe long enough. But since he’d made a promise two decades back, it was past time he kept it.

  He’d traveled literally thousands of miles to get here. It was true he’d spent his early years drifting from one place to another to learn everything he could about his craft. When he’d been a budding, eager artist just starting out, he’d tried living in San Francisco for a time just to stay closer to his roots. But it hadn’t taken long for the wanderlust to nip and bite and he was off to try a new place. For a time Los Angeles had offered the distance he needed. But in the end, the City of Angels hadn’t worked out any better than the City by the Bay had. While both offered merits, each in its own way, neither had worked for Logan, at least, not for very long.

  Instead he’d packed up the tools of his trade and headed to the Big Apple where he’d worked and lived in a sparse loft he’d renovated in Greenwich Village with his own two hands. It had taken him twenty months of sweat equity to get it livable. And after spending a few more years there, he’d left the U.S. behind altogether for places like Athens and Paris and more recently Rome.

  God’s truth he’d seen the world, lived in many different places. But now he could admit he was tired of bumping elbows in the crowds of major metropolitan cities, any urban city. He didn’t want to spend another minute breathing exhaust where it seemed as if the noise never stopped. He yearned for the quiet and the solitude where the press would leave him alone for five damn minutes—without asking some stupid question about his work or his failed relationship—which meant he could no longer blame his lack of inspiration on his pressure-packed, high profile marriage to Brazilian model Fiona Perez.

  Thank God and all that was holy his lawyers had finally persuaded Fiona to sign the divorce papers three months ago.

  He looked down at the evidence of that. The cast on his right hand was simply one indication of the errors in judgment he’d made. It had taken him way too long to admit that, even though he’d known it within the first ninety days he hadn’t made a move to correct it. Especially since Fiona Perez possessed a right hook more like an Irish boxer with a temper to match. Her frequent mood swings often reminded Logan of a meth addict on an overload of speed, which wasn’t that far off the mark. If Fiona ever downed anything other than diet pills, if the woman ever bothered to eat something besides baby food, it certainly hadn’t been during the thirty months and twenty-five days Logan had spent married to the manipulative witch.

  Not to mention, Logan was convinced that Fiona Perez had lived a past life where she’d ruled earth with an iron fist, where she’d been crowned the queen of bitching and moaning early on. Secretive and cagey, getting the truth out of the woman had been damned near impossible. In those first ninety days of what should’ve still been the honeymoon stage, he’d caught Fiona in lie after lie. It didn’t matter if it was something major like money, or something as trivial as a dinner party, the stories she propagated became an embarrassment to him. It didn’t matter to Fiona what subject she found important enough to fabricate. She’d lie about something as insignificant as what she’d done that day to pass the time right down to her age, which happened to be five years older than what she’d admitted to.

  The final straw had taken place in a villa outside Rome when he’d discovered she’d taken out a five million dollar life insurance policy on him and his work behind his back. That night had been the turning point. He’d finally reached his limit and kicked her skinny, bony, lying ass out of his life then and there for good. At two in the morning he’d phoned his lawyers and instructed them to file divorce proceedings.

  Two weeks after that, Fiona had found a way to sneak back in. She’d picked the lock on his studio, pilfered a marble statuette he’d just completed that had been commissioned by the Italian government, and then gone bat-shit crazy with it. She’d crept into his bedroom in the middle of night, armed with the statue and started beating him in his own bed. Before he could wrestle her to the floor, she’d cracked open his skull, and broken two bones in his wrist.

  The gash in his head had taken sixteen stitches to close. However, his right wrist, the one he used predominantly to create, to earn a living, had suffered tendon damage along with cracked bones that had taken way too long to heal. He supposed he was lucky his hard head hadn’t been equally impaired. Otherwise he might be dead right about now instead of embarking on a new phase of his life. It hadn’t seemed to bother Fiona in the least to learn that the breaks she’d caused had resulted in Logan having to undergo two major surgeries already.

  Even though Logan had filed charges, Fiona Perez had simply packed up and fled Rome, flown back to her native Brazil where the authorities couldn’t or were unwilling to get at her and haul her ass back for prosecution.

  The doctors still weren’t completely convinced Logan would ever be able to use his right hand with the same kind of dexterity he’d had before.

  No, for Logan, it was past time to get away from his messed-up lifestyle of the past three plus years and move on to another chapter. In fact, he was looking forward to fixing up the lighthouse he’d just bought in an online auction. Since the entire spot had spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean, his goal was to turn it into his studio. A new place, a new environment in a small town where he could hopefully recapture whatever was missing in his life sounded almost like heaven to Logan.

  Because somewhere during the last thirty-six months, he’d lost his passion for what had once been his reason to get up in the morning. He hoped to Chri
st he could get it back—and soon. His agent had already told him the galleries were losing patience with the “genius” he’d once been. Which was a crock, he thought now. He was the same damn person he’d been a dozen years earlier when the critics had dubbed him a talent to be reckoned with, whatever the hell that had meant.

  Coming back to his native California had to be the best place to start.

  When the Challenger 600 reduced its air speed to descend, when the pilot announced to his only passenger that he needed to prepare for landing in Santa Cruz, Logan briefly wondered if what he was doing wasn’t foolish, even irrational. He was well aware he was at a crossroads of sorts. But if he couldn’t come to terms with his past, how could he ever hope to move forward into the future?

  Plus, he’d had his fill of high maintenance women, enough to last a lifetime. No more marriages for Logan Douglas Donnelly. He’d vowed to live the rest of his remaining years—whether fifteen or fifty—without ever taking another trip down the aisle again.

  And because he was fed up with the intrusive paparazzi’s stupid questions they always managed to ask, he hoped the little town of Pelican Pointe could provide some privacy. If not, his first order of business would be to install a gate at the end of what was now his own road to keep people out.

  Using this opportunity, he planned to do something to change the direction his life had taken. Since he intended to make the most of it, Logan didn’t want to waste more time.

  If it also paved the way to keeping the promise he’d made to his grandmother, then he might rack up bonus points for that, too.

  In that next instant, he heard the landing gear drop down. The pilot nosed the jet through wispy clouds until Logan could make out one of two runways. He caught a glimpse of ocean, then mountains before he heard the bump of wheels making contact with the tarmac at the little Santa Cruz airport.