Maybe I was just going crazy. I drove for nearly six hours on 195 headed to Nags Head, North Carolina. I kept changing radio stations to keep myself alert. I was thinking to myself that Kyle didn’t want this to end - he was having too much fun; he was in his glory.  I had been in this part of North Carolina before, with Kate McTiernan. So had Kyle. We were trying to stop the sadistic killer named Casanova. He had kept as many as eight women captive in the woods near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Kyle had been on our team, or so I had believed. But Kyle had also been Casanova’s partner in murder.
I made it to Nags Head just before nightfall. As I drove toward the ocean, I remembered odd things: the sticky buns from the Nags Head Market; my long walks with Kate McTiernan along Coquina Beach; the lovely, almost supematurally picturesque beaches in Jockey’s Ridge State Park. I remembered how much I admired Kate.  We were still good friends, talked at least twice a month. She sent my kids imaginative presents on their birthdays and at Christmas. She was working at the Regional Medical Center in Kitty Hawk and living with a local bookseller whom she was going to marry. Their home was in Nags Head, only a couple of miles away.  Kyle had a deep, obvious crush on Kate McTiernan. He’d hinted at it: T could love that girl, if I didn’t have Louise and the kids. Maybe I should dump them for Kate. She could make me a happy man. Kate could save me.’
He had come to visit Kate in Nags Head. I think he’d come to watch her. It bothered him that he couldn’t have her, that he had been denied Kate McTiernan. He also knew how much Kate meant to me.
Kyle was here, wasn’t he? Or he was coming.
I had warned Kate, but on the drive down I called again and explicitly told her to get the hell out of Nags Head. I didn’t care how much karate she knew, or how many black belts she had accumulated.............