“Of course. But they’re not,” she said wearily, ignoring all her own misgivings. “Didn’t you hear? There was a suicide note. And the one guy was definitely one of the killers. I saw him. I’ll never forget staring him in the eye, not as long as I live.”
“And someone who commits murders like that doesn’t just stop, yeah, I know,” Luke said. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No. If you did it…I’m glad you told me.”
He glanced at her sideways. “Then I guess I should admit I also went out to the house on the beach.”
She felt tension streak through her. “I see.”
“I’m sorry if that disturbs you.”
“I just don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
“I told you, something about the case… Forget it and let’s move on.”
She sat silently as they drove onto the highway that would bring them to the causeway out to the beach. She was oddly glad, and yet seriously unnerved, that he was taking such an interest. She was afraid, she realized. Afraid that she was right, that there had been more behind what had happened ten years ago.
Ten years ago, when so many of her friends had died.
“Look, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t. I’m fine.” And she was fine at the moment, she realized. It was scary to think that she felt oddly secure at his side. She wanted to have him near her, an ever-confident and assured rock, more often.
Not to mention that she wanted to find out what those hands would feel like touching her flesh.
Somehow they managed to make conversation after that, mostly consisting of her telling him things she thought he needed to know about fashion. Before she knew it, they were moving down the street where the mansion stood. “Just pull up to the gate,” she told him, “and I’ll hop out. You can’t actually reach the call box from the car.”
Given how polite he was, Chloe thought, he probably wanted to hop out himself, but it really wasn’t practical.
Chloe got out and hit the button, belatedly realizing that maybe she should have checked with Myra to make sure it was okay to just show up. Then again, she was trying to make it look like a casual thing.
Myra’s assistant answered the call and told Chloe that their arrival was a pleasant surprise. The gates opened, and they drove in.
Tonight, if there were any guards around, they weren’t apparent. They left the car and walked to the door. Myra herself was there, and she kissed Chloe’s cheek, then looked over at Luke. “Mr. Smith, how nice to see you. I wasn’t really expecting to go over the final details of the shoot with you for a few days.”
“We were just going out to dinner and thought we’d stop by. Actually, Jack was hoping for a chance to talk to Rene. Is she here?” Chloe asked.
“Up in her room,” Myra said. “I’ll call her.”
“If it’s all right, I’ll just run up and get her myself,” Chloe said.
“Certainly. Mr. Smith, can I get you something to drink?” Myra asked.
She was leading him to the kitchen as Chloe bounded up the stairs. She tapped on Rene’s door, and the girl called, “Yes?”
“Rene, it’s Chloe.”
“Chloe? Oh, Victoria’s friend.”
The door opened.
Rene was a stunning young woman. Her eyes were huge and deep brown, adorned by thick lashes. Her lips were beautifully shaped and generous, and the gods of perfection had given her a wasp waist and natural curves, all in a petite package.
She didn’t need air brushing.
“Hi, Chloe. Nice to see you. What’s up?” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not with the cops, are you? I actually called them today to assure them I’m not a missing person. My parents were driving me crazy, leaving messages all the time.”
Chloe shook her head. “No. I’m with a friend who’s going to be doing his own shoot along side the calendar shoot. Everyone has told him that you’re perfect for what he’s looking for. He’d like to meet you.”
“He’s not some weird old guy hoping to cop a feel, is he?”
Chloe laughed. “No. I think you’ll like him.”
“Oh, my God!” Rene’s eyes widened. “I think I know who you’re talking about. They were telling me about him. I was sorry I ran away the other night—I thought he was a cop, or someone my father sent after me. I knew he was at the party—and I knew he had followed me upstairs. Later I heard he was a designer and wicked hot.”
Wicked hot. Yes, that pretty much described Luke.
Rene was always beautiful, whether she wore an oversize sweatshirt and boxers, or was dressed to the nines. Tonight she was wearing leggings and a silk tunic, comfortable, but more than presentable.
She followed Chloe downstairs and joined Myra and Luke in the kitchen, where they had settled comfortably.
“Rene, this is Jack Smith, Mermaid Designs,” Chloe said. “Jack, Rene.”
“Hi. Nice to meet you,” Rene said, offering a hand. Her almond eyes were alight.
“The pleasure is mine,” he assured her.
“We’re on our way over to the beach for a casual dinner. Do either of you want to join us?” Chloe asked.
“Thanks for asking, but count me out,” Myra said. “I’m still worn-out from the party, and there’s a lot coming up that I have to prepare for, and I was in meetings with Harry Lee all day, so I didn’t get any of it done.”
Chloe hoped Rene would go with them and found herself breathing a sigh of relief when the other woman said, “Actually, I haven’t eaten yet. That sounds wonderful.”
Luke suggested a few places, but everyone was in favor of something light, so they wound up at a little sushi place on Washing ton, family owned and operated. Rene ordered sashimi and steamed vegetables, making Chloe feel guilty about the sushi rolls she ordered.
“You’re so lucky,” Rene told her. “You can eat all that and still look fine, athletic, like you’re ready for a game of beach volleyball or something. Not fair.”
“Great. Now I feel like a prizefighter,” Chloe said, then realized that Luke was grinning appreciatively at her, apparently not obsessed with women being bone thin.
“Well, you kind of are a prizefighter. You do all that tai kwan fu stuff all the time,” Rene said.
“Mixed martial arts.”
“I loathe exercise,” Rene said. “But I do love living at the mansion, and even though it’s a lot harder than anyone ever realizes, I love modeling, too.”
“That’s great,” Luke said. “And from what I’ve seen, the camera loves you.”
“So am I going to be in your catalogue?” Rene asked Luke.
“Of course,” he told her.
Chloe thought it was too bad there wasn’t actually going to be a catalogue. She also wondered how and when Luke was going to convince Rene to phone home.
“Has modeling always been something you’ve wanted to do?” he asked Rene.
“Since I was a little girl. But I come from one of those old-fashioned families where I was supposed to marry well, raise a pack of children and be a good wife,” Rene said. “And I do want to get married one day and have a family. Two children. Manageable. But I don’t see anything wrong with having a career, as well. Look at Heidi Klum.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage everything. And I’m sure your family must be thrilled with your success,” Luke said.
“No, trust me, they’re not,” Rene said. “They want me to quit the agency and come home. All they talk about is how worried they are about me.”
“Can you really blame them? After all, Colleen Rodriguez did disappear,” Luke said.
A clouded expression filled Rene’s beautiful almond eyes. “We’ve been friends since we were kids. She should have told me what she was up to.”
“Aren’t you worried that something bad happened to her?” Luke asked.
Rene sighed. “I’ve been over this so many times with so many authorities. As far as I knew, she was seeing wh
at’s-his-face—this cute guy on the island. Mark Johnston. I just can’t believe anything bad happened to her. It’s making my parents crazy, though. It’s just easier not to talk to them.”
“I bet they’d be grateful to hear from you,” Luke said.
Rene looked uncertain.
“He’s right,” Chloe said. “Come on, Rene—what can it hurt? If they start to give you a hard time, hang up. But you ought to give them a chance.”
“Chloe’s right. Hang up if you have to. But…remember what you told me? That you want kids yourself one day. Think how you would feel if your kids stopped talking to you,” Luke added.
Rene stared at him suspiciously for a moment, but then, to Chloe’s surprise, she pulled out her phone and, still staring at Luke, punched in a number. “Mama?” she said a moment later. “It’s me.”
They could hear her mother’s joyous response. Tears sprang into Rene’s eyes, and she looked away quickly.
The rest of the conversation was in Spanish, but they could tell when her father got on the line because they could hear his gruff voice.
When she hung up, Rene was smiling.
But then she looked at Luke again and asked, “Who are you really?”
“Jack Smith, Mermaid Designs.”
Rene still looked suspicious, but she leaned across the table and kissed his cheek. “Gracias,” she told him.
Chloe was shocked to feel an immediate surge of jealousy. No, not jealousy, she told herself. That would be ridiculous.
She forced herself to focus on how glad she was that Rene had called her parents.
“My pleasure,” Luke was saying to Rene. “Now, be honest, aren’t you at least a little bit worried about Colleen?”
Rene sighed. “Yes, of course I am. But I have to believe she’s playing some kind of publicity stunt.”
“Can you tell me about the day she disappeared?” he asked.
Rene nodded. “We were done shooting for the day, and we went back to my room and talked for a while. Then she was supposed to see Mark, and I was meeting up with some of the others.”
“Who were you meeting?”
“Um, let’s see. Lacy and Maddy and Lena. We were drinking at the tiki bar down by the dive shack.”
“And Colleen said that she was meeting Mark?”
Rene nodded. “But she didn’t. He came to the bar looking for her. He was upset because she hadn’t shown up.”
“Did they fight a lot?” Luke asked her.
“No, not really. They disagreed sometimes, but who doesn’t?”
“Was he ever violent?” Luke asked.
“No! Colleen wouldn’t have tolerated that.”
“Did she have any enemies?” Luke asked.
Rene frowned. “Enemies? Everyone loved Colleen. I mean, I suppose some people might have been jealous of her because she was doing so well, but she was—is—so sweet. That’s why I think she planned her disappearance—no one on that island would have hurt her. And definitely not Mark.”
“Perhaps,” Luke agreed. “Still…how much time passed between when she left to meet him and when he showed up at the tiki bar?”
“Maybe ten or fifteen minutes.”
“So you were the last one to see her?”
“I suppose. She had her purse with her when she left. And…here’s another reason why I think her disappearance was a stunt. We’d been talking about how hard it was to make it to the top. There are so many girls, really young girls, who are so pretty, and some of them are pretty ambitious, too. She was saying how she was afraid she might never make it to the top. Look at all the press she got from this, and think about how much more she’ll get when she shows back up. That’s why I think it has to be a stunt. But I’ll be careful anyway, I told my parents that.”
“It’s always good to be careful,” Luke assured her.
Rene looked at Chloe. “You’re going, too, right?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Chloe told her.
“Good. I’ll stick to you and Victoria like glue.”
“That will be fine,” Chloe promised.
“So, tell me about your designs,” Rene said to Luke.
Chloe found herself enjoying the next few minutes as Luke played designer. Luckily Rene was excited about swimsuits, and she filled in every gap in the conversation. Eventually they finished their dinner, and Luke drove back to the mansion.
They didn’t drive in, but Luke got out of the car at the gate and waited until Rene was safely inside the house. But then, instead of getting back in the car, he still stood staring up at the mansion.
Chloe opened her door and stepped out.
“What’s the matter? What is it?”
“Nothing,” he told her, turning back to the car.
But by then she was staring at the house herself.
The moon was out, but there was a haze over it, and the color was mixing with the mansion’s security lights and the mist drifting along the coast.
The house appeared to be bathed in red.
Bloodred.
He was restless that night. So restless.
He was God’s warrior, but he had to be patient. Planning the perfect battle against evil took time.
God wanted his warriors to be skilled and ready. And God had given him what it took to fight the battle and then escape from those who would never understand his cause.
Of course, he had to be honed to the perfect sharpness, like the weapon he was. Honed and ready at all times, so it was only just and right that he kept his edge by killing while he waited for the battle to commence. He was an animal, a predator, and he had come to love the pursuit, the cunning he used, the look in the eyes of those who knew they were about to die. They had sinned, and they were there fore both sacrificed and saved by giving him pleasure in their deaths. He knew that he had a higher calling than others, so he had to kill at other times. A killer couldn’t lose his edge.
And he liked it. He had to like it. God knew that. Liking what he did kept him from faltering. It gave him the brilliance to wield the knife and then disappear into the fabric of everyday life. And he played his role well.
He only killed selectively.
Not children. Never children. God did not condone the murder of children.
He chose only those who were going down the wrong path. Only those who were vain and obsessed with material goods. Only those who teased and taunted men with their sexuality. Who drank and fornicated freely. They were his for the taking, and what he did with them, to them, was right.
Tonight…he watched.
Tonight…he waited.
Tonight…
The moon was strange tonight. It bathed the world in red.
Red. The color of blood.
He looked at the moon, and he knew that his chance was coming. Another chance to save another soul through death.
As the blood-soaked moon cloaked Miami and the Keys, he knew that his time was coming.
And he was honed, practiced and ready.
SIX
Chloe had a hard time waking up on Tuesday morning.
She had slept restlessly.
Badly.
She knew that it was all because of the past resurfacing. She and Luke had talked about the massacre, and then they had talked to Rene about Colleen’s disappearance.
She shouldn’t be surprised that she was having dreams. It would be surprising if she didn’t.
But it wasn’t only the dreams. She was seeing things when she was awake, too.
Last night, Luke had been as proper as ever when they got back to her house. He had gotten out and opened her door, and he had waited not just until she had gone in the gate, but until he saw her go into the carriage house.
She had almost turned around. Almost asked him to come in. She’d wondered what he would say if she casually mentioned that he was wickedly hot, then told him that she didn’t trust people easily but she trusted him, and that she had never felt such an overwhelming desire to be with someone. That just
knowing he had watched her go inside was incredibly arousing, that his least touch awakened feelings she barely dared to acknowledge.
He would probably have looked at her kindly, before apologizing and turning her down.
She knew almost nothing about his past, and yet…she was sure he was somehow damaged, afraid of intimacy. Just as she was.
Afterward, upstairs in her room, she’d been unable to sleep. All the lights out as she lay in bed, she’d turned on the television for company. The television, that was it. It must have been the reflection from the television that had led her to believe she saw Colleen’s ghost sitting in the chair in the corner of her room, watching her.
She had bolted straight up in bed, then forced herself to walk over to the chair to…find…nothing. The image had disappeared.
She had nearly started screaming, ready to race over to the main house, and sleep on the floor at the foot of Uncle Leo’s bed. Instead, she had turned on every light and turned up the TV volume.
At least Colleen hadn’t spoken to her that time.
With all the lights on and the television blaring, she had managed to sleep off and on, but she had awakened far too many times to look around her room. She hadn’t seen the ghost again, but she had been grateful, though still tired, when it was time to get up.
Time to bask in the daylight, anathema to ghosts. Why was Colleen haunting her, even if only in her own mind? She knew all the logical explanations. She was worried about the other woman, certain she was dead, so she was trying to prove her case in the recesses of her mind. Giving herself an excuse to keep on investigating.
Great. She needed help, but there was no time for it now. She was off to try to help others.
She had a decent morning at work.
Chloe worked with a series of children who were des tined for special classes unless she could discern the cause of their behavioral problems. It never failed to amaze her how accurate shapes and colors could be in discerning problems. It was easy to deduce that a child who drew himself inside a box or a house with no windows felt trapped. If he chose to color with unrelenting blues, purples and black, he was almost always dealing with a deep sadness. Reds and yellows indicated energy and warmth, but the constant use of red indicated feelings of hostility and anger. The children’s art gave Chloe insight into their situations and characters before she spent time in session with them.