“You remember that. Every second.”
“I just said, I will never get you in trouble.”
Izzy nodded. “All right. Just so long as you know. You do so, you are a dead man.” He folded his hands together. Very powerful hands. He tightened them, as if showing Jorge just what he could do with them.
Jorge wished he had a gun. Bang, bang, you’re dead. Then it wouldn’t matter how tough and powerful Izzy thought he was.
Bang, bang…
Jorge allowed himself the luxury of watching Izzy fall limply to the dock in his mind’s eye.
No guns. That would just destroy them both.
“I hear you, Izzy,” Jorge said.
Izzy smiled again. A scary smile, and yet Jorge could see why women thought it had a certain dangerous appeal.
Loathing him, Jorge watched as his countryman walked away down the dock.
Pink light emerged in the sky, but the air remained touched by a distant storm.
The day was serene.
Jorge turned quickly back to his boat to complete his night run without further incident.
The ride was both too long and too short.
Intimacy could be very strange.
In the condo, it had been as if time had rushed away. Kelsey knew Dane, as she had known him years ago. Dressed, sitting next to him as he drove her car, she studied his face and realized anew how much time had passed. She didn’t know him at all anymore. And yet, maybe it was time to speak out loud about her reasons for being so quick to think him capable of harming Sheila.
“Dane?”
“Yeah?” He was deep in thought.
“I think I came right after you because of what had happened…years ago.”
He glanced her way. “You think?”
She instantly grew defensive. “Hey, excuse me, by your own admission you were the last one to see Sheila.”
He shook his head. “You want to go way back? There was nothing wrong with what we did. Joe was your brother and my best friend. We were always close as kids, even when I was tight with Sheila, which I wasn’t at the time. You came to me for comfort. We wound up in bed. I was fine with it, you weren’t. Sheila and I weren’t together, and you still felt as if you’d intruded on something private that was hers. Well, I wasn’t hers. Hadn’t been for some time. She was already moving in the direction she intended to go. She wanted a hell of a lot more than love from a man, though I don’t think she even knew herself just what that was. The sad thing is, Sheila wouldn’t have blinked before sleeping with someone you loved.”
“It wasn’t just Sheila,” Kelsey told him. She shook her head. “My brother was dead. And there I was…enjoying life.”
“Kelsey, as long as we are alive, we have to live. And that’s all you were doing. Joe would have understood.”
“It’s all easy now, isn’t it?” she murmured.
He shook his head firmly. “Nothing is easy now.”
She was silent for a minute. “All right, you can tell me now that I was a fool when I ran away before, but look at what you just did. You came back to Hurricane Bay to waste your life. You said it yourself. You were only pretending to go through the motions of making a living.”
He stared at her. “Maybe. Or maybe, whether I knew it or not, I came back to pick up the pieces of my life.”
“You looked like a drunk that day.”
“I have been a drunk.”
“So…?”
“Kelsey, that night, with you, after Joe died, I found out that I want to survive. There’s something about life…we want to live it. And while we have it, that’s what we do—we live. I intend to make it past…all this.”
She didn’t have a chance to reply. They had pulled into the parking lot where he’d left his Jeep.
The coffee shop was already doing business, though it was slow and laid-back, on a Sunday morning.
“Sit tight,” Dane told her, after he had left the driver’s seat and she had taken it. “Please. Okay?”
She nodded.
He left her in the car, walked into the coffee shop, and returned within minutes with two cups of coffee and the morning paper.
“Kelsey, I’m begging you, please go straight back to the duplex. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Dane, it’s daylight. And I’m not a stripper or a hooker. I live a dull and boring life, with all my fantasies going into ad campaigns.”
“Maybe so. But we’ve already established the fact that you’re bent on visiting men who may be psychotic killers. Please, promise me you’ll go straight back to the duplex.”
She nodded, waited until he was in his Jeep, then started out along the road for home.
As he had promised, he followed right behind her.
Stupid-ass thing to do.
Stone-cold sober, by the light of day, Andy Latham knew that what he had done had been one really big stupid-ass thing to do.
He sat in his jail cell. Day had come. They brought him coffee and breakfast. Breakfast wasn’t too bad—for jail. The coffee was good.
He rubbed his chin and felt the stubble on it. He must look like hell. Clothes slept in, hair unkempt. It was the alcohol. Usually, he was smart enough not to drink too much. But last night…
It was the fish. The dead fish in his yard. Again and again. And he couldn’t help but believe it was those uppity rich kids throwing the bloated corpses in his yard. The smell…
He had smelled fish all his life. His sense of smell was both inured and heightened. Fresh fish smelled good. Dead and decomposing fish smelled like such awful rot that it could make a strong man vomit. It was as if someone knew how he hated the smell once the creatures started going bad.
He’d had too much to drink, and he’d lost his temper. It had felt good when he’d bashed Nate in the face. Now he knew that it had just been stupid. All the things he’d done in his life, and he’d avoided a cell—until now.
But here he was, all because he’d popped a rich kid in the nose.
A cold sweat suddenly broke out over his flesh.
He had to get out of here. Had to get out and had to get out fast.
He heard a jangle of keys. Someone coming toward his cell. Sheriff Gary Hansen. Pink-faced as always. The fool should move back to the north. Some people belonged here, some people didn’t. Hansen didn’t belong, yet he seemed to think he owned the island.
The door to his cell opened. Andy stood up, wavering just a little. Not because he was still drunk, because he’d been sitting too long. And because he was wary of Hansen.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
“Your attorney is here. Looks like you get to go home,” Hansen said. “If it were up to me, they’d lock you up for a hell of a lot longer. Unfortunately there’s still such a thing as due process.”
“They ought to fire your ass for saying that,” Latham told him, his mouth twitching uncomfortably as he spoke. His eye was twitching, too. Hell, maybe he could sue the sheriff’s department.
“You’re going before the judge, you’ll post bail and walk away,” Hansen said, staring at him with disgust. “But don’t get too cocky there, Mr. Latham. You’ll still be charged with assault and battery. And you may yet do some real jail time.”
Andy Latham paused right by Hansen. “And you, you porker. You might still trip one day and dry up in the sun, just like a slug. Or fall off your boat and drown. The fish would be delighted.”
“Get out, Latham, before I think of a way to hold you longer.”
Latham left. His attorney, a fastidious man in a suit, despite the heat, was waiting. He looked good. Andy found himself suddenly burning with an inner fury. He could look good, too. He could be a handsome man, appealing. He had his charms. He had proven it many times.
It was all right to smell like fresh fish.
Just not decayed fish. He needed a bath. A beer to chase away the trembling from the night before. He needed to grab a nap, change his clothes…
And get away.
; He thanked God for the due process of law.
When Kelsey pulled into the driveway of the duplex, she was startled to see the front door to her side open and Larry, Nate and Cindy come running out to greet her, like a welcoming committee for a long lost child.
She barely got the door open and a foot on the ground before Nate was pulling her out, hugging her. Then Larry, then Cindy, all chastising her at the same time.
“You scared us to death!” That came from Nate.
“You just took off after dinner without saying a word.” Larry was reproachful.
“Thank God you’re back,” Cindy said.
Dane’s Jeep pulled in behind her car. Both Larry and Nate looked at him as if he had done something totally morally reprehensible.
“We were worried,” Nate said indignantly.
It was then that Kelsey got a good look at his face. The left side was swollen and red, his eye area bluish and swollen.
Kelsey gently touched the other side of his face. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, yeah, sure, I’m all right. I’m more embarrassed than anything. Humiliated that I let a slug like Latham get past my guard.”
“What could you have done?” Kelsey said. “He walked up to you and slugged you, right?”
“He’s in jail, isn’t he?” Dane asked quietly.
“I’m fine, and yes, Latham is in jail. But you know they won’t hold him long. He’ll be out on bail. And slugging someone isn’t like a capital offense or anything.”
“But you’re going to press charges,” Dane persisted.
“Part of me feels badly,” Nate said. “He’s such a loser, I’ll just be adding to the degradation that is his life. But then again, he’s a scary piece of scum, so, yeah, I’ll press charges. Though I guess the state is already doing that. I don’t know that much about the law.”
“I believe you’ll have to press charges,” Dane said.
“It’s hot as hell out here. Let’s go in,” Cindy said.
Dane shook his head. “I’m going over to the jail. I want to see if Gary Hansen will let me talk to Latham,” he said. “You’re all going to hang out together today, right?” He stared meaningfully at Kelsey.
Nate and Larry each slipped an arm around her. “We won’t let her out of our sight,” Nate said possessively.
Kelsey frowned, looking at Dane. She had thought that he would stick around. That she would have time to talk to him.
She wanted to kick herself. They’d had so much time together and she hadn’t said anything. And now she suddenly wanted to spill everything. She wanted to tell him what she’d seen on Izzy Garcia’s boat. She wanted to give him the phone numbers she’d stolen and let him try to figure out why Izzy had them.
She wanted to tell him that Sheila had kept a diary, and that she was ready to quit running around, questioning people, until she had read the entire thing.
“We’ll take good care of our Kels,” Larry said.
She was between them, finding their joint embrace kind of sweet, but when Dane started toward the Jeep, she pulled away.
“Wait just one second,” she said, running after him.
Seated in the Jeep, he looked up at her with weary exasperation. “Kelsey—”
“Shut up and listen. I…yesterday, on Izzy’s boat…I prowled around a little before you, er…arrived. I found Sheila’s purse in the storage compartment beneath the seat, port side. And I took these….” She dug quickly in her own bag, producing the list of phone numbers. “These numbers were programmed into his cell.”
He stared at her incredulously. “You’re giving these to me…now?” he said.
She stared back at him. “Better late than never—isn’t that what they say?”
She heard his teeth grate. “Yeah, I guess it is. You’ve got my cell number, Kelsey. Anything, anything at all…get hold of me right away.”
“All right.”
“Anything, Kelsey.”
“I’m not an idiot, Dane.”
His expression told her that she had done little to prove it, but he didn’t say anything else, just gunned the motor of the Jeep and pulled out onto the road.
“You know what we should do?”
Cindy was behind her, her voice as cheerful as ever.
“What should we do?”
“Just take off. Get in a boat, take off for a few hours. We can dive, snorkel, fish. Get away. Just us. The old guard.”
“Cindy, there are things…”
“We’re all worried sick about Sheila, Kelsey.”
She nodded. Of course. “I’m really tired, too.”
“So are we because last night we were up late worrying about you.”
“I told Larry I was okay, that I was with Dane.”
“You know us…we stayed up anyway. C’mon, let’s take off. It is Sunday, you know.”
“You want to go to church?”
“The next best thing. Let’s head out to the reef and the Christ statue. Say a little prayer under water. Kelsey, we have to quit driving ourselves crazy.”
Larry had come up to them. “There’s an idea. Come on, Kels. Let’s do something.”
“Whose boat?”
“Nate has his down at the same marina where Izzy and Jorge keep their charter boats. He has plenty of gear on board for all of us. We’ll just do a day trip.”
Kelsey thought quickly. She wanted to read the diary, but she could take it with her. If she stayed at the duplex, she would just read and pace, read and pace.
Maybe they were right.
“All right. If that’s what you all want to do. I need a few minutes to grab a few things.”
“Me, too,” Cindy said.
“What? What’s up?” Nate asked.
“You’re taking us out for a spin,” Larry told him.
“A spin?” Nate said.
“On your boat,” Cindy told him.
He threw up his hands. “What the hell.”
Kelsey walked past him into the house. She went to her bedroom, digging into the suitcase she hadn’t really unpacked for a bathing suit, shorts, T-shirt and cover-up. She had started for the bed to grab the diary from beneath her pillow when a strange sensation told her that she wasn’t alone. She held still, looking around the room. Again she realized that things were just slightly out of order.
She turned to the door of her bedroom. Nate was standing there, good eye soulful.
“Sorry, Kels. I didn’t mean to disturb your privacy. It was a long night. You know, after Latham slugged me and the cops came and I spent hours with ice on my face, worrying about the fact that you hadn’t come home and that you were calling from some club…and that…well, that you were with Dane.”
“You shouldn’t have been worried if you knew I was with Dane.”
He shrugged. “Okay, maybe I was jealous.”
“Jealous? Nate, after all this time? I thought we were friends, good friends.”
“We are, Kelsey. It’s just that I still get one of those macho, possessive things going on now and then. Oh, nothing serious. I’m over it. Really. Hell, I like Dane. And I guess we all saw something there all those years ago when you…well, when you didn’t know it.”
She just stared at him, brows raised.
He lowered his head. “Anyway, I started looking around. I wasn’t digging into your things, honestly. But Sheila had mentioned something to me once about keeping a diary. I thought I’d look around for it.”
“Did you find it?” Kelsey asked cautiously.
He shook his head. “But I didn’t want you to think you were crazy, and I didn’t want to lie to a friend. I was looking around in here last night. Or this morning. Whenever the hell it was.”
She nodded, still watching him speculatively. He appeared so sheepish that she decided not to yell or lecture.
Larry suddenly appeared behind Nate. “Are you two ready?”
“Just a second,” Kelsey said. “Would the two of you get out of here? For just a minute?”
“Oh, sorry.” Larry turned and walked away. Nate followed and closed the door softly in his wake.
She walked quickly to the bed and found the diary, then stuffed it into the canvas bag she was bringing for their day at sea.
“He’s gone. Out? Free?”
Dane was incredulous as he stared at Gary Hansen.
Hansen, seated at his desk, stared back at Dane, shaking his head. “What the hell did you think I could do? A drunk punched a guy in the face. The drunk had an attorney. I don’t make the laws, I uphold them. And besides, Dane, Andy Latham may not be a popular man around here, but hell, what can you do? He got drunk and punched Nate. You can’t execute the guy for that.”
Dane exhaled a long breath.
Hansen’s eyes narrowed. “What’s with you?”
“What’s with me? Gary, his stepdaughter is missing and we’ve had dead women popping up in the water.”
“Dane, there’s still nothing to say that Sheila Warren won’t come back anytime. She could come sashaying in any day now, be incredulous that we had the gall to want to know where she was and with who.”
“And there’s nothing to say that she will,” Dane said flatly.
Gary leaned forward. “Dane, you find a reason for me to keep Andy Latham in here and I’ll be happy to oblige. Like I said, I don’t make the laws, I uphold them. And I can promise you, I’m not the only lawman in the country sick to my stomach at the ability of fancy lawyers to let criminals walk. But as it goes right now, Andy Latham is walking free. Legally.”
“How about you keep an eye on him, then?”
“We’re trying to do just that. But you know what? We have to cover a hell of a lot of people and a hell of a lot of area. You keep an eye on him, too, if you’re so damned convinced he’s dangerous.”
“He’s proven he’s dangerous.”
“By punching a guy in a bar?” Gary shook his head in weary disgust. “Dane, do you know how many men we’d have to keep under permanent lock and key if that were a crime punishable by years of incarceration?”
“Sorry, Gary. Sorry.”
“Get me something. I’d love to see him put away.”
Dane left the sheriff’s office and drove out to Latham’s place. The guy wasn’t there. His truck wasn’t parked in the driveway.