“Must have fixed up the house pretty nice, huh?”
“You’ll have to see it. I’ll give you a guided tour.”
“Got the whole island to yourselves?”
“Absolutely. Total privacy.”
“Sounds great.”
“It is great.” Steve shrugged. “Look, you’ve got to spend the day with us. Lunch and dinner. We’ll explore the island, just like in the old days.”
Kirstie bit down hard and said nothing.
“Terrific, Steve.” Jack patted Anastasia’s head, and the dog tentatively licked his fingers. “I’d love to.”
“You’ve met Kirstie, obviously.”
“Of course.” Jack spoke in a courtly tone quite different from his earlier mocking insolence. “She’s something special. I’m jealous.”
“You should be. But don’t get any ideas. She’s mine.”
“Then I’ll just have to content myself with this elegant creature’s affections.” Jack stroked the dog’s silken fur.
“Her name’s Anastasia,” Steve said. “We call her Ana.”
“Beautiful animal. Reminds me of my dad’s Doberman.”
“How is the skipper?”
“Passed away four years ago. Heart failure.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear that.”
“It was quick, at least. He didn’t suffer.”
Jack scavenged a stick of driftwood and tossed it high in the air. It twirled like a boomerang and landed in a puff of coral sand. Anastasia ran to retrieve it, tail swishing joyously.
A sense of unreality stole over Kirstie as she watched. A couple of minutes ago she’d been confronting Jack Dance alone, trying to find the strength either to scream or flee. Now here he was, accepting the stick from Ana, then kneeling to let her lick his face, her tongue slopping across his mouth in a slobbery kiss.
Kirstie found herself studying Jack’s clothes. They were creased, slightly soiled, as if they’d been slept in.
She remembered Anastasia’s jittery nerves last night. Perhaps a bad dream hadn’t been the cause, after all. Perhaps she’d heard Dance’s arrival.
Had he beached the boat in darkness? Had he spent the night on the island?
The thought traced a slow shiver along her spine.
“How did you get here, Jack?” she asked in a neutral tone.
“Rented a dinghy with an outboard motor.”
“This morning?”
“Just showed up.”
“Funny. I’ve been awake for a little while. I didn’t hear a boat.”
Jack shrugged. “The way the wind’s blowing, the sound wouldn’t have reached you.”
“If you tied up at the dock,” she said, pressing slightly, “you must have seen the house. I’m surprised you didn’t notice that it had been repaired.”
He showed her a bland smile. “I didn’t use the dock. Didn’t see the south end of the island at all. I approached from the north and beached the dinghy at the cove. That’s where Steve and I used to come ashore.”
Kirstie wouldn’t let it go. “Pretty early in the morning to rent a boat.” She watched his eyes. “It must have been tough to find anyplace open before dawn.”
She detected no flicker of uncertainty when he answered. “I rented it last night. Figured I’d get an early start this morning. A friend at the marina arranged it.”
“Mickey Cotter?” Steve asked.
“That’s right. Good old Mickey.”
“Didn’t he tell you I was out here?”
This time there was hesitation, and Kirstie was sure Dance had been caught in a lie. But all he said was: “No, never mentioned it.”
Steve sighed. “Maybe Pice forgot to let him know.”
“Who’s Pice?”
“Boat captain who ferried us to the island. He’s got a thirty-foot sportfisher called the Black Caesar. Picking us up first thing tomorrow.”
“You’re going home then?”
“Afraid so.”
“I nearly missed you. Glad I didn’t.”
“So am I. Come on back to the house and we’ll have breakfast. We’ve got a refrigerator full of groceries we need to use up.”
They headed off together, Anastasia trailing Jack and woofing happily, Kirstie taking up the rear.
Ahead loomed the line of trees bordering the beach, furnace red in the intense daylight. The palms threw feathery shadows on the hardwood stands behind them. The casuarinas were graceful sculptures in bold relief.
At the end of the beach Kirstie paused to look back. The sun was a full circle now, stamped on the sky like a target, burning a fiery path through the shallows to the shore. As she watched, the pelican dived into the glitter and bobbed up with a catch in its pouch. It floated on the surface, head lowered, as if in thankful prayer for the gift of food.
The same thought recurred to her: Hunter and prey.
She turned away with a jerk of her head and followed Steve and Jack into the forest.
Close-packed trees and shrubs swallowed them like the walls of a cave. Flies buzzed like miniature dive bombers. Green darners chased mosquitoes in the tremulous young light.
Jack twisted a cane free of a blackberry bush, then produced a pocketknife and deftly sliced off leaves, stems, and thorns. Kirstie thought of Jack’s hand reaching for his pocket as they faced each other on the beach. A tremor passed through her as she watched the slim, clever blade coruscate in a patch of sun.
He threw the twig to Anastasia, continuing their game. The dog snatched it up and scampered away. Jack followed at a jog trot, laughing.
Kirstie touched Steve’s arm to hold him back.
“How could you invite him to stay all day without asking me?” she hissed.
“I didn’t have much choice. He’s an old friend.”
“So I gathered. Tom Sawyer, reunited with Huck Finn.”
“It’s not like that,” Steve said quietly, as his eyes took on that unfocused gaze she knew too well.
She wouldn’t let him drift away. “When he was alone with me,” she whispered insistently, careful not to let Jack overhear, “he seemed
… weird. Dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” Steve frowned. “How?”
“The things he said.”
“Like what?”
She replayed their conversation in her mind. Suddenly the encounter struck her as frustratingly innocuous. There had been no open threats, nothing blatantly improper, only an intuitive sense of jeopardy, impossible to justify with a bare recital of the words exchanged.
She tried, anyway. “He kept asking if I was alone. When I told him to get off the island, he ignored me.”
“Did he say he wouldn’t leave?”
“Well… not exactly. But I didn’t feel safe with him. And I still don’t.”
Steve smiled. “Look, there’s nothing to worry about. He’s just a high-school friend who happened to turn up. Anyway, I’m here to protect you. Okay?”
He moved on, rejoining Jack, without waiting for an answer. Kirstie stared after him.
She’d barely heard what her husband had said. Her whole attention had been focused on his face.
His mouth had been smiling. But his eyes had captured some other emotion, something she could not define. Grief, perhaps, or guilt. Or
… fear.
She wasn’t sure what she had seen or what it meant.
But somehow it scared her, scared her worse than the knife in Jack Dance’s pocket.
Kirstie felt herself trembling as she continued down the trail.
13
Delta flight 627 out of Atlanta touched down at Miami International at 9:57 a.m. Lovejoy and Moore hustled their carry-on bags out of the overhead bins and got off fast.
An Airphone call to the Miami office shortly before landing had established that no one would be meeting them at the gate. The field office’s resources were entirely consumed by the hunt for Mister Twister.
“At least there isn’t any shortage of cabs in this town,” Lovejoy said as he and Moore hurried down the concourse. “But before we leave the airport, it might be advisable to pay a call on security.”
William Proster had been chief of security at Miami International for seventeen years. He offered his visitors a donut (declined) and a seat (accepted). The radio chatter of patrol units crackled and buzzed over the squawkbox on his desk.