Homeport

approved of.
    It had been so like her, Miranda thought now. Those pithy little comments in the will. She’d stayed in the big stone house for years, living alone, having survived her husband by more than a decade.
    Miranda thought of her grandmother as she reached the end of the coast road and turned into the long, curving drive.
    The house that topped it had survived years and gales, the merciless cold of winter, the shocking and sudden heat of high summer. Now, Miranda thought with a little twist of guilt, it was surviving benign neglect.
    Neither she nor Andrew seemed to find the time to arrange for painters or lawn care. The house that had been a showplace when she was a child now displayed its sags and scars. Still, she thought it lovely, rather like an old woman not afraid to act her age. Rather than rambling, it stood in straight, soldierly angles, its gray stone dignified, its gables and turrets distinguished.
    On the sound side a pergola offered charm and fancy. Wisteria tangled up its sides, buried its roof in blossoms in the spring. Miranda always meant to make time to sit on one of the marble benches under that fragrant canopy, to enjoy the scents, the shade, the quiet. But somehow spring ran into summer and summer into fall, and she never remembered her vow until winter, when the thick vines were bare.
    Perhaps some of the boards on the wide front porch of the house needed replacing. Certainly the trim and shutters, faded from blue to gray, needed to be scraped and painted. The wisteria on the pergola probably needed to be pruned or fed or whatever you did with such things.
    She would get to it. Sooner or later.
    But the windows glinted, and the ferocious faces of the gargoyles crouched on the eaves grinned. Long terraces and narrow balconies offered views in every direction. The chimneys would puff smoke—when someone took the time to light a fire. Grand old oaks rose high, and a thick stand of pines broke the wind on the north side.
    She and her brother shared the space compatibly enough—or had until Andrew’s drinking became more habitual. But she wasn’t going to think about that. She enjoyed having him close, liked as well as loved him, so that working with him, sharing a house with him, was a pleasure.
    The wind blew her hair into her eyes the minute she stepped out of the car. Vaguely annoyed, she dragged it back, then leaned in to retrieve her laptop and briefcase. Shouldering both, humming the final strains of Puccini, she walked back to the trunk and popped it open.
    Her hair blew into her face again, causing her to huff out an irritated breath. The half-sigh ended in a choked gasp as her hair was grabbed in one hard yank, used as a rope to snap her head back. Small white stars burst in front of her eyes as both pain and shock stabbed into her skull. And the point of a knife pressed cold and sharp against the pulse in her throat.
    Fear screamed in her head, a primal burn that burst in the gut and shrieked toward the throat. Before she could release it, she was twisted around, shoved hard against the car so that the blossom of pain in her hip blurred her vision and turned her legs to jelly. The hand on her hair yanked again, jerking her head back like a doll’s.
    His face was hideous. Pasty white and scarred, its features blunted. It took her several seconds before the dry-mouthed terror allowed her to see it was a mask—rubber and paint twisted into deformity.
    She didn’t struggle, couldn’t. There was nothing she feared as much as a knife with its deadly point, its smooth killing edge. The keen tip was pressed into the soft pad under her jaw so that each choked breath she took brought a searing jab of pain and terror.
    He was big. Six-four or -five, she noted, struggling to pay attention, pay attention to details while her heart skittered into her throat where the blade pressed. Two hundred fifty or sixty pounds, wide at the shoulders, short at the neck.
    Oh God.
    Brown eyes, muddy brown. It was all she could see through the slits in the rubber fright mask he wore. And the eyes were flat as a shark’s and just as dispassionate as he tipped the point of the knife, slid it over her throat to delicately slice the skin.
    A small fire burned there while a thin line of blood trickled down to the collar of her coat.
    “Please.” The word bubbled out as she instinctively shoved at the wrist of his knife hand. Every rational thought clicked off into cold dread as he used the point to jerk