Flash Drive

  Flash Drive

  Books by Jacqueline DeGroot

  Climax

  The Secret of the Kindred Spirit

  What Dreams Are Made Of

  Barefoot Beaches

  For the Love of Amanda

  Shipwrecked at Sunset

  Worth Any Price

  Father Steve’s Dilemma

  The Widows of Sea Trail—Book One

  Catalina of Live Oaks

  The Widows of Sea Trail—Book Two

  Tessa of Crooked Gulley

  The Widows of Sea Trail—Book Three

  Vivienne of Sugar Sands

  Running into Temptation

  with Peggy Grich

  Running up the Score

  with Peggy Grich

  Running into a Brick Wall

  with Peggy Grich

  Tales of the Silver Coast—A Secret History of Brunswick County

  with Miller Pope

  Sunset Beach—A History

  with Miller Pope

  Flash Drive

  Flash Drive

  Lost and Found @ Sunset Beach

  by

  Jacqueline DeGroot

  ©2012 by Jacqueline DeGroot

  Published by October Publishing

  Cover design: Miller Pope

  Format and packaging: Peggy Grich

  All rights reserved. No parts of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without the permission of the author.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition 2012

  ISBN: 978-1-4675-2008-9

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names.

  Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.

  –Loren Eiseley

  The Unexpected Universe

  The life of a writer, especially a self-published one, is dependent on many people. Without them, I would never be able to turn my stories into books, get them into the stores, and into the hands of people who, with their encouragement, perpetuate the cycle.

  My writer’s group, Writers Bloc, is a tremendous support and quite possibly the best critiquing partners in the country. We often joke about needing band-aids when we leave the meetings as we pride ourselves on being brutally frank with each other.

  I am so grateful to my dedicated proofreaders who give up their time to read through my stories when it is probably least convenient, and with looming deadlines. They are amazing, each and every one. Without them, I cannot imagine how I could ever get this done. It is their encouragement in the final hours that pushes me toward the end product. I doubt that I will ever truly understand the use of commas, but I do believe I am getting better as time goes on.

  Thank you to my proofreaders:

  Ray Cullis

  Bill DeGroot

  Jack Echard

  Peggy Grich

  Pam McNeel

  Sandy Raymond

  Barbara Scott-Cannon

  A big hug to Miller Pope, for always being willing to drop whatever he’s working on to help design my covers and take me to lunch.

  Love and affection for Peggy Grich for helping to edit, format, and package the final manuscript—seems I’m always asking her to put her life on hold at the end of May to get a book out for the summer season.

  Heartfelt gratitude to my family for being so supportive of a writing career that keeps me very active, and overly focused on a 12 x 9 monitor.

  Thank you Anne, Pat, and Suzanne of Pelican Bookstore for giving my books a prominent place on the shelves and for suggesting my books to new readers . . . we all still blush when talking about them, don’t we?

  There are many places that sell my books, but I am especially grateful to Ginny and Debbie at Sunset River Marketplace, all the wonderful people at Silver Coast Winery, Tracy and John Hopgood at Sunset Beach Trading Company, Dave Nelson, Kelly and Andrea at The Sunset Inn, Wanda at How Sweet It Is, Barbara at L. Bookworm, and Clif and Laura at RBR Books.com

  Flash Drive

  Chapter One

  The House in Ocean Ridge Plantation

  Laurel

  Where the hell was it? Laurel, a petite blonde with wild green eyes began tossing things out of her purse, scattering them all over the high-glossed table. It was a big purse, too big really—and deep—one of those popular hobo shoulder bags. Standing on tiptoes in her size-six Andres Machado pumps, she strained to see the bottom. She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear so she could see into the dark void. She moved things around, but her flash drive wasn’t there. Panic caused her chest to seize. Afraid her heart had stopped, she put her hand over it and froze until she felt it kick-start.

  Not to be deterred, not even by a heart attack, she turned back to her purse and dug deeper. She began tossing everything out. Where was it? Please don’t tell me I’ve lost it—if I’ve lost the files containing my fantasy life, I’ll die.

  Half an hour later, when it hadn’t turned up in any of the sane, as well as insane places it might be, she had to let the thought encroach and settle . . . I’ve lost it. Oh. My.

  God . . .

  The little snack-sized baggie with her 4GB flash drive was missing. Missing! The fact that she needed it to back up her computer files before leaving the house was the only reason she even knew it was missing. Missing! Someone could be reading her stories right now. Dread sapped the life force out of her.

  She was late for her appointment. She was torn about what to do. Her mind raced. When had she last backed up? When had she written something she’d saved?

  Today was Friday. It had to have been on Wednesday that she’d had that little black and red modern miracle of technology in her hand; she’d inserted it into her laptop, and saved the erotic ramblings of one seriously sex-obsessed woman—namely herself. Into the baggie her libidinous, salacious, priapic thoughts had gone. Then the Ziploc had been tucked into a side pocket of her vintage Gucci Diamante shoulder bag.

  She ran around the house dumping sweetgrass baskets, pulling out drawers, opening and closing closet doors, until it became nauseatingly clear that she was not going to find that highly pornographic storage marvel before she had to leave, which really should have been fifteen minutes ago.

  She threw all her stuff back into her purse, vowing to dump it all out and start the search all over again when she got back. It had to be there. It just had to be. She couldn’t comprehend how awful it would be if it weren’t. She forced herself not to go there—no, not right now. People were waiting for her.

  But thinking of whose hands that not-so-innocent little thing could have fallen into, made her cringe. It held her secrets, all her dirty little secrets. Every single wicked scenario that played out in her mind eventually made it onto that thumb drive.

  Laurel was having a really bad morning. And if she didn’t find that flash drive, she was going to have a really bad life.

  Chapter Two

  Village of Sunset Beach

  Garrett

  Garrett Grayson normally hated grocery shopping, preferring to eat out or order in when snacking on cheese and crackers no longer satisfied. But he was at Sunset Beach now, at his beach house, and it was almost a
pleasure to do the domestic duty at the local Food Lion. Everyone was friendly, and if he forgot his MVP card, they always offered to use theirs or to look his up by his phone number. None of the cashiers in the grocery stores in his hometown of Laurel, Maryland would have taken the time.

  He piled the reusable canvas bags on the front passenger floorboard of his blue Corvette convertible, grouping the ones with the cans and cartons of juice together so they’d brace up the milk. He stacked the bags of chips and bread on the passenger seat, tucked the cereal and pasta boxes behind the console, and jammed the deodorant and toothbrush into his shirt pocket. It was inconvenient having a two-seater at times, but well worth it for the long trip down 95, especially in late August, when the weather began behaving again and he could drive with the top down.

  Mid-August heralded the beginning of the season for the homeowners on the island. With the kids back in school the beaches weren’t crowded, favorite restaurants didn’t have a crush of people waiting to get in, and the fall festivals were lining up. Until the end of November, and often well into December, it was a glorious time to be at the beach. And he didn’t mind grocery shopping—not one single bit.

  He pushed the empty cart over to the “buggy” return and shoved it over the bar embedded in the asphalt so that it wouldn’t roll out and dent someone’s car. He frowned when his eye fell on something red glinting in the sun near the toe of his Bacco Bucci sandal. At first he thought it was a Swiss Army knife, but on closer inspection saw it was a deep burgundy, not the crimson red of the Swiss flag. A barrette maybe? He pulled at the denim creasing his thighs to allow for a deep squat. It looked like a flash drive, half in and half out of a snack-sized baggie. He picked up the plastic bag and turned it over. Lexar™ was printed in white type on a black case with the identifying marks: 4GB, Made in China, followed by a long model number and the standard four international communication symbols. The ruby red insertion plug that had drawn his eye was the housing for the USB connection that swung up from the black case. It was a typical flash drive—its bold red accents made it stylish, solid, and intriguing.

  Garrett stood, took it out of the baggie and examined it closer. It was small in his large hand, but not all that special—he figured it cost about thirty dollars. It had a ring on one end that could be used to attach it to something. It wasn’t scratched, so it didn’t appear as if it had ever swung from a set of keys.

  He tossed it up and down as he looked around the parking lot. People were coming and going, oblivious to his find. He called out to the only person he saw, a man rearranging things in his trunk. He looked up and listened as Garrett explained what he’d found on the ground, then shook his head “no.” It wasn’t his.

  Garrett tucked the baggie and the flash drive into his front pocket. He knew from past experience never to get into a ‘vette with anything in his back pocket. He’d learned that the hard way when his comb had gouged the leather seat on his ’85. This was an ’09 and it was pristine.

  He thought he should probably go inside and take the baggie and its surrendered prize to the lost and found. Whoever lost it might backtrack and come looking for it. But what were the odds it was a local person? He decided he might have better luck returning it to its owner than a clerk who would probably just throw it into a drawer and forget about it. He’d take it back to the beach house, plug it in, and see if there was anything on it that would identify the owner. He loved a good mystery and solving puzzles was one of his passions.

  He was so intrigued by the challenge that he was distracted and almost drove right past the entrance ramp leading to the new bridge. He smiled and shook his head. That made three times since he’d been here that he’d done that. Old habits were hard to shake, he mused, as he downshifted to make the turn in time. He sped up to crest the summit. The old swing bridge had been quaint, but a detriment for low-slung sports cars as his. Still, he missed its picturesque presence and the hold-the-world-at-bay sentiment it represented.

  He took his foot off the gas at the top of the 65-foot span so he could enjoy the view on the way down, and ran his fingers through his thick wind-tousled hair. It was a new vantage point for him and he enjoyed seeing the island spread out before him. He couldn’t see his house on the east side of the island because of the rows of houses blocking it, but he could see the ocean stretching out like an aquamarine kaleidoscope shimmering in the sun.

  The sense of peace this place brought him was worth every dime he’d invested. And then some.

  Chapter Three

  Laurel

  This was the worst day of her life! She couldn’t believe she’d lost it—her flash drive—the key to her “secret” life. The one that no one, absolutely no one, was supposed to ever know about—thoughts so prurient, so sinful . . . so shocking.

  No one could learn her secret shame. If anyone knew how wicked her thoughts were, how dishonorably she desired to be treated in her fantasies, well, she’d just curl up and die.

  Why the heck hadn’t she been more careful, at least put one of those address stickers on the bag? Lord knew she had a zillion of them as she’d contributed to every charity that had ever sent her personalized stickers. If she’d only used one, at least her name and address would be handy if anyone wanted to return the stupid thing!

  She was sick to her stomach. The flash drive was all she could think about. All day it had been foremost in her mind. She had written down every single place she could remember being since the last time she had absolutely, positively known she’d had it in her possession. Called every one of those places, explaining who she was, what she’d lost, and where she could be contacted if anyone turned it in. She’d left word with her doctor’s office, two grocery stores, the bank, and the Mexican restaurant.

  That was fun; explaining what she’d lost, in broken high school Spanish. She was sure they thought she’d lost a watch. She finally drove to Las Palmeras and showed the manager a picture of her flash drive, one she’d downloaded from the Internet. He shook his head, nothing like that had been turned in.

  Upset as she was, she still had things to do, and she couldn’t keep leaving her home computer and laptop without backing up the data. She consoled herself by thinking how lucky she was that at least she hadn’t lost any of her work. Not a lick. It was all on her laptop and home computer and everything had previously been saved to

  a disc.

  The tragedy that she was dealing with was that she’d lost control of her life. Some total stranger had her life in his hands. He, or she, had access to everything she’d written in the past five years, everything she thought significant or noteworthy. But that wasn’t the worse part.

  She was fairly certain that her daytime thoughts were fairly normal for someone in her late twenties. Still it was uncomfortable knowing her private musings were out there and could be flying around the country if the person who found her flash drive had a mind to pass them on. But it wasn’t her daytime thoughts that made this an end-of-the-world catastrophe, it was her nighttime thoughts—her “stories.” Bedtime stories to be more explicit, because damned near all of them were about sweet, young heroines in bed with fabulously hunky heroes doing incredibly wicked things to their lovely bodies.

  Chapter Four

  Garrett

  Garrett climbed the steps to his beach house carrying all six bags—he-men never made two trips, no matter that their fingers were still bloodless hours later. The beach house he’d named Stock Exchange, was a present to himself after he’d earned his first million on the market, and now, many millions later, he came here whenever he had the chance. He had in fact, structured his life so that he could work from the beach as much as possible.

  Sometimes during the fall, but always after the holidays, during the semester that was in the dead of winter, he was a college professor teaching online classes for the University of Maryland—correcting papers, grading t
ests, doling out assignments, and offering career advice to students attempting a master’s degree in the field of business management. But that was his philanthropic endeavor, it wasn’t his moneymaker. It was the job that soothed his conscience and appeased his mother.

  His “real” job, the one that paid the bills for his beach house, the Corvettes, the hi-tech toys, and his outlandish Nordstrom account, was day trading. With a laptop and a mouse he could win or lose thousands in seconds, hundreds of thousands actually. He thought of it as winning and losing, not earning and spending. To him it was gambling, pure and simple. Sure, he changed the odds by learning all he could before “rolling the dice,” but he was always cognizant of the fact that he was gambling—majorly. He didn’t dabble, this was big league stuff. It didn’t pay to do it otherwise. And he was damn good at it. Hell, he and the I.R.S. were 60/40 partners now and he often wondered whether it would be worth his while to expatriate and move to Ireland where his grandfather still lived, augmenting his county pension by carving wizards on walking sticks.