Jack Beale 00 - Dangerous Shoals

brought some plain plastic cups for the lemonade and iced tea.”
    “Don’t feel bad; you didn’t know.” With that, Max reached into the bottom of the picnic basket and brought out three bright-colored plastic goblets. She handed a light green one to Courtney, deep blue for Jack, and kept an aqua one for herself. “Here, we’ll use these.”
    The look on Courtney’s face made Jack laugh and then they all laughed. It was perfect. The sandwiches were delicious, the potato salad had just the right amount of onion, and the iced tea was sweet. As they ate, conversation was limited to short sentences and nods between bites. When lunch was finished and the basket repacked, Max lay back and looked up at the blue sky with its puffy white clouds. “Look, there’s one that looks like a giraffe,” she said.
    Courtney and Jack looked up. “And there’s a hippo,” said Court as she lay down next to Max. With that, the two women became silly little girls as they took turns pointing and calling out what each cloud looked like. Jack chose not to play the cloud game. Instead, he remained sitting up, preferring to people watch.
    He watched a young couple pushing a carriage. They took turns peering in on its passenger and grinning proudly each time. “Must be a new addition,” he thought. An occasional giggle would draw his attention to Max and Courtney, and he’d look at them, then glance up to see what they were giggling at.
    It was after one such glance that something or someone caught the corner of his eye as he looked up. Turning his head toward the river he saw two couples. One couple was standing and gazing out over the river oblivious to the world around them, her arm around his waist and his draped over her shoulder, each pulling the other closer. But it was the other couple that caught his attention. They must have been so engrossed in each other that they had walked right into a lone man. Jack watched and could see that they were being overly apologetic, but the man seemed distracted and didn’t want to have anything to do with them. His look went right through them to something beyond. Curious, Jack looked in that direction. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and when he looked back he found himself locking eyes with that lone man for a split second. As soon as eye contact was made, the man turned away, quickly leaving the still apologizing couple and hurried off.
    The whole incident only took a moment, and when it was over, Jack’s memory began to catch up to with what his eyes had just seen. He knew those eyes, and a deep chill went down his spine. His heartbeat quickened as he felt a moment of panic. “ It’s not possible. It can’t be,” Jack thought.
    “Jack … Earth to Jack.” Max’s voice penetrated his thoughts, bringing him back to the present. She was sitting up, her arm on his.
    “Hunh,” he said.
    “Jack, are you all right?” Max asked.
    “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
    “Because you just had the strangest look on your face. What were you looking at?” She pressed on. “You sure didn’t look fine to me. Court, what do you think?”
    “He looks okay to me,” said Courtney as she sat up, twisting around to look at him.
    “Jack, are you sure you’re all right?”
    “Yes, Max. I’m fine. I just have a lot on my mind. Nothing important, just stuff,” he said, grinning at her.
    After one more deep look at him, Max was satisfied that he was okay. Looking at her watch, she said, “Uh oh, it’s getting late. We have to go. I have to get to work.” Then she winked at Courtney. “I have this real bitch of a boss who will not tolerate my being late.”
    “Bet your sweet ass,” said Courtney.
    They packed up the picnic and walked back to the car, fully satisfied with a wonderful afternoon.

CHAPTER 5
    WHEN THEY ARRIVED back at Jack’s, Max ran upstairs to change for work while Jack and Courtney emptied the car. “Court, I saw him,” said Jack as he took the picnic basket out of the trunk.
    “Saw who?”
    “The guy you told me about.”
    “What guy?”
    “The creepy guy you told me you saw downtown.”
    “He was in the park?”
    “I’m sure of it.”
    “So now you believe me,” said Courtney.
    “I guess I do,” he said somewhat hesitantly. Then, he told her what he had seen. She just stared at him silently, hardly daring to breathe. As he finished the story, she said to him in a whisper, “Did you see what he was looking at?”
    “No.”
    “So what are you