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  “Have you talked to Ed yet?” he asked.

  She stared. “About what?”

  He snorted. “About this. I think he’d love to know that you’re getting rid of John for good. That, and about the other thing we discussed.”

  “Ron, look.” She thought for a moment to pick her words carefully. “Ed and I are friends. I’ve known him most of my life, and yes, I do love him, but I don’t want to risk that friendship. We work well together, and I really don’t have any other family now that Mom and Dad are gone. I’m fine with the way things are.”

  Ron leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Yes, but wouldn’t you like to see them go farther?”

  She sighed. “I don’t think Ed wants that. I don’t want to put him in an uncomfortable position of having to turn me down. Frankly, I’d be mortified if that happened.”

  “Mitch, you’re not listening to me. Ed is crazy about you. Any fool with half a brain can see that. I watched him this weekend, and the way he looks at you and acts around you, he’s got it bad for you.”

  “If he wants to take things a step closer, he will. I’m not going to put him on the spot, Ron.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to get going. He’ll be back from St. Pete in a little while with the injectors, and I want to help him put them in.” She stood and handed Ron the coffee mug. “How soon will this happen, and how much do I owe you?”

  He walked her out to the Bronco. “Pro bono. Give me a week to get them drawn up and back to you for a signature. I’ll let you do the filing yourself, and you can pay the clerk’s fees.”

  She hugged him. “You sure? You don’t have to do that.”

  He smiled. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m just glad to see you untying the knot with that creep.”

  Mitch headed back up US 19, stopping at the Publix in Bayonet Point to pick up something for lunch. She went to the house, changed her clothes and got Pete, then headed over to the boat. Ed already had the engine cover up and was organizing the tools. He smiled when she stepped onto the stern. “Whatcha got in the bag, dear?” he asked.

  “Fried chicken for lunch.” She set the bag on the counter in the galley where Pete couldn’t reach it and helped Ed replace the injectors. They took a break about two hours later to eat, relaxing in the stern.

  “Where’d you go this morning?” he asked her.

  “I went to go see Ron.”

  “About what?”

  No reason not to tell him.“I want to get the filing done and be finished with John. There’s no reason in the world to stay married to the man. I’ve been putting it off because I dread the contact with him, but it won’t get done if I don’t do it.” She studied his face and wished she could read his mind. Her stomach twisted. She knew he hated John, but would he take the opportunity to speak up and tell her what she wanted to hear? Would he make her day, or break her heart, with his reaction?

  * * * *

  An earthquake couldn’t have rocked Ed’s world any harder than that news. He successfully resisted the urge to pull her into his arms and plant a deep kiss on her lips. “I’m glad to see you get that done. It’s not good for you to be connected to him. Are you going to ask for anything?”

  Mitch shook her head, her auburn ponytail bobbing. “Only what’s rightfully mine. Mainly the WaveRunners, stuff I’ve still got in the house, things like that. No alimony or anything, and he can do whatever he wants with the house. I don’t want it.”

  He silently nodded, his mind racing. He felt radical changes approaching. Problem was, they weren’t close enough for him to tell if they were good or bad. With her divorced, his last, logical argument as to why he couldn’t approach her vaporized.

  Oh, quit thinking like that. You’re nineteen years older than her. What would she want with you?

  The summer heat felt hypnotic, and they had to force themselves back to work. Even the shade of the boat slip’s roof proved no help. Mitch eventually went home to get an electric fan for some relief. It was late afternoon before they finally finished everything they had to do, and they wearily closed the engine hatch and put the tools away. They were just cleaning up when Rick’s grey-and-black FMP Bronco pulled into the parking lot and stopped next to Ed’s truck. He ambled up to the slip.

  He laughed. “Boy, looks like the two of you’ve been having fun today.”

  Ed swabbed at a smudge of diesel oil on Mitch’s cheek. “Fuck you, Rick. Some of us have to do our own maintenance, you know.” Ed and Rick exchanged snide remarks ever since the FMP officer sheared a lower unit off one of the Johnsons on the back of his Boston Whaler a couple of years earlier while chasing a suspect. Ed and Mitch towed him back in, and Ed didn’t let him forget it.

  Rick sat on the dock box. “My, my, touchy today, are we?” He smiled. “Just thought I’d let you know, they found out that guy’s real name. Julio Barres, from Miami. Had rap sheets long as your arm in all the aliases, but never anything as big-time as this. They’re still not sure that maybe someone else was on the boat with him before it sank, but they don’t know and aren’t going to worry about it unless a body turns up. They haven’t tracked down the owner yet.” Rick had spent a few years in the DEA before changing tracks, but he still had a few friends in low places, so to speak.

  “Did the Coast Guard figure out why the Emmerand sank?” Mitch asked as she scrubbed the grime off her hands in the wash sink.

  “It looks like somewhere along the line she hit something pretty hard and bashed the props which bent the shafts—”

  “Which made the packing come loose,” Mitch finished. “That’s what I figured.”

  “Bingo. That’s the only explanation they can come up with, so they’re going with it.”

  Ed perched on the gunwale. “He wasn’t the owner?”

  Rick shook his head. “No, the real owner is a Caymanian trust called Tropical Holdings. Being in the Caymans, it’s most likely a front to launder money. Problem is, it’s damn near impossible to get through the legal red tape to find out if there are any flesh-and-blood people actually traceable to the boat. Many times, it’s a web of trust after trust after offshore corporation, that’s owned by another trust. When you finally figure out where the chain begins, the people are usually fictitious or dead.”

  “Let me guess,” Ed interrupted, “with a trust handling the affairs of the estate.”

  “Exactly.”

  Mitch piped up. “So with the Caymanian driver’s license, it’s logical to assume that if he wasn’t a trustee, he at least had access to its different holdings.”

  He nodded. “That might be true. And for all we know, that could include condos, more boats, companies here and abroad, etc., etc.”

  Ed laughed. “Do you think this guy was really smart enough to pull all of that off?”

  “The official story is yes. Realistically, they don’t want to touch this. It’s not like there’s a clear-cut South American connection they can go after. There’s nothing to follow up on this guy. When DEA went to his apartment in Miami, it was cleaned out. Nothing left but the furniture. Someone doesn’t want this guy traced back to them in a big way, but there’s nothing to go on right now.” He chuckled. “Are the press still hounding you?”

  Mitch shrugged. “I don’t know. They haven’t come out here today, and I haven’t checked the machine yet for messages. I hope they stay away.”

  Rick glanced at his watch and stood up. “Oops, I’ve gotta run. I told the wife I’d take her to Outback for dinner tonight. See you later.” They watched him return to his Bronco and pull out of the shell parking lot in a cloud of white dust.

  Mitch sighed. “Speaking of dinner, why don’t we call it a day?”

  Ed grinned. “I’ve got a couple of steaks I put out to defrost this morning. I’ll bring ’em over and fire up the grill.”

  She smiled in return. “That would be great.” They finished cleaning up and secured the boat. Ed left for home in his truck. He lived on the north side of Aripeka, out on the we
st side of the road in a tall, sturdy stilt house overlooking a vast expanse of saw grass flats that gave way to the Gulf. She lived on the south side of Aripeka, but on the creek, on a point that faced the cypress wetlands to the east.

  The Hernando-Pasco county line split the small community right down the center of the island, but Mitch’s house lay on the north side of that line, in Hernando County, even though her neighbors kitty-corner across the road lived in Pasco. The tiny bridges and shallow depths didn’t allow her to bring the Sun Run back to the house, but she had a jon boat with a twenty-five-horse Evinrude that she used if she wanted to go upstream to the spring or just offshore to cast for trout or snook by the channel.

  She opened the door of the Bronco and Pete jumped in and immediately sat on his towel. She drove the short distance home, planning the side dishes to go with the steaks. As she rounded the final curve in her road, she spotted a great blue heron perched on the peak of the roof. He was a regular, and she had named him Jeeves because of his formal, stiff-legged walk.

  The Aripeka house was forty years old, a tall three-story wooden stilt structure that had withstood quite a lot. Surprisingly, it was one of only a few stilt houses in the area. Most of the stilt houses in the community were newer, and she never understood the rationale that had made original Aripekans build on ground level. The FEMA flood plan now mandated raised structures, but there wasn’t that much buildable land left in the area due to the vast amount of surrounding wetlands. Most of the houses in the area had sustained damage during the No-Name storm in March of ’93, but the majority of residents repaired rather than rebuilt due to lack of adequate flood insurance. The Jacksons had just finished repairs to their own utility room, as a matter of fact, when Ray died.

  Mitch shut off the engine and listened to the crickets in the saw grass. She loved Aripeka and its quiet pace, its population consisting mainly of fishermen, retirees, and a few artists scattered here and there. In its heyday, Babe Ruth had supposedly frequented the fish camp that used to be on the island, but she had no idea how much truth there was to that story. She felt a longing for the water when she went to live in Tampa with John. It was a relief to come back home when she left him.

  She made a mental note to remind herself to ask Ed where to get the waterproofing for the sides of the house. The cypress siding had started to lose its luster and fade from rich golden brown to a dull grey from the sun. Mitch whistled for Pete to follow her upstairs and she locked him in the house.

  She went back downstairs, to the bait tank on her dock. When Jeeves saw her, he flew down from his vantage point and strutted down the dock behind her. Mitch scooped several pinfish out of the tank and tossed them, one at a time, to the bird, who expertly speared them with his long beak and gulped them down, immediately ready for the next one.

  Mitch knew it wasn’t the best thing to do, but the bird had been hanging around for years, and she considered him a part of the family. It was better he get natural meals from her rather than the ground turkey or other meat products from well-intentioned people who didn’t know how harmful they could be for the wild birds.

  Once he’d swallowed eight of the fish, she hung the net back and started for the house. “That’s all, Jeeves. I’ve got stuff to do.”

  He carefully eyed her, then decided he wasn’t going to get any more and returned to the roof to preen himself. She watched him a moment longer before going inside to take a shower.

  Mitch heard Pete’s excited barking as she pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. A moment later, Ed’s truck pulled into the driveway. She was still towel-drying her hair when she opened the door and let Pete charge out to meet him. Leaving the door open for them, she went back to hang the towel up on the shower curtain rod. She quickly ran a comb through her damp hair and went to greet Ed. He juggled three grocery bags while trying not to trip over Pete while climbing the stairs. She met him halfway up and took a bag from him, shooing Pete up the stairs into the house.

  “He sure is happy to see me.” Ed laughed.

  * * * *

  She smiled back at him, and he felt his throat go dry from the feelings that suddenly surged inside him again.

  She laughed, bringing him back to reality. “What’s wrong, Ed? Cat got your tongue?”

  He shook his head and smiled. “No, just thinking about how much I’m going to enjoy relaxing tonight.”

  God, I’m a bad liar.

  He followed her up the stairs and into the house.

  “What is all this stuff anyway?” she asked, unpacking the bags.

  “Oh, just felt like a few extras,” he said, helping her. Among the spoils were a four-pack of peach wine coolers—Mitch’s favorite flavor—and a couple of ripe avocados.

  She opened wine coolers for them and made a bowl of guacamole. They sat on the porch in the evening air and munched on chips while waiting for the grill to heat up enough to cook the steaks. A slight breeze sprang up from the north, just enough to drive away the bugs. Pete curled up at their feet and drifted off into contented sleep as bullfrogs joined the crickets in a chorus by the cattails.

  Ed got up to throw the steaks on the fire and she went inside to make the salad and heat up the vegetables. They were eating inside at the counter when the phone rang twenty minutes later.

  “Mitch, what the hell have you and Ed gotten yourselves into?” The voice on the other end laughed.

  She recognized the caller immediately. “Matt! Oh, geez, I was going to call you and totally forgot.” She motioned for Ed to pick up the cordless and join in.

  “Yeah, right, sure you were,” Sami joked on the extension from the other end. “We’re up here in the middle of nowhere, and we’re always the last to know.”

  Mitch and Ed had been friends with Matt and Samantha Barry for a couple of years. The Barrys lived in a house in the middle of the Croom section of the Withlacoochee State forest, just east of Brooksville. Sami’s first husband, Steven Corey, had been a writer.

  Through a long and mysterious series of mostly unexplained events, he went insane and drowned in an old mining pit near the house while trying to kill Sami. Mitch and Ed headed the team that searched for and retrieved his body. Well after the events of that day, the Barrys contacted them about going out on a fishing trip, and a friendship ensued.

  Mitch and Ed spent some time bringing Matt and Sami up to speed with the events of the past weekend and the information Rick gave them. When they finished their tale, Matt let out a low whistle. “Boy, sounds like you two really stumbled onto something.”

  Mitch swallowed a mouthful of steak. “You aren’t kidding. I hope I never have to go through anything like this again.”

  “Hey, we’ve got a charter going out on Wednesday. Want to come?” Ed invited.

  “Do you have room?” Matt asked.

  Mitch insisted. “Of course we do. Be at the dock at seven.”

  Sami groaned. “There goes my beauty sleep.”

  Mitch and Ed said their good-byes and continued their dinner. After the dishes were done, they settled on the couch to watch TV and before she knew it, Mitch found herself drifting off to sleep on Ed’s shoulder.

  He smiled as he watched her. He gently touched her still-damp hair and inhaled the floral scent of the shampoo she used. Again he felt the desire stirring within him. He carefully extricated himself, trying not to wake her. He stood over her for a moment, watching her sleep, wanting to reach out and touch her cheek and kiss her lips. As his mind turned in this direction, he knew he had to leave. He reluctantly locked the door behind him and thought “what if” all the way back to his house.

  Chapter Nine

  He sat in the parking lot and watched the people going in and out of the bar. While in the mood for the hunt, he did not have an uncontrollable need for it.

  Yet.

  The weekend’s events disturbed him. The loss of the Emmerand was distressing, but he could absorb the cost and replace the shipment that now sat in a guarded federal warehouse. What di
sturbed him was who discovered the vessel. His agitation over that had brought the need back, but it wasn’t yet so urgent he couldn’t control it.

  He was parked outside the same nightclub where he’d met Jenna. She was now safely asleep in her condo, exhausted after an evening of vigorous sex. Jenna was as eager a lover as he’d ever had, but the two orgasms she’d brought him to still weren’t enough to fulfill his urges.

  Not this urge, at least.

  While he sat and waited, searching for an appropriate prospect, he thought about the night two weeks prior when he first met Jenna. Time blurred and doubled for a brief moment when a red Miata drove up, but the illusion dissolved when a man and a woman climbed out and went inside. He would be with Jenna tonight except friends had asked her to go out with them.

  The night he met Jenna had also been hot, like this one. The Orlando nightclub teemed with people when a woman drove up in a red Mazda Miata. Her long blonde hair flowed loose over her shoulders, and she wore a pair of white linen pants with a turquoise silk blouse. He saw from the way she carried herself that she wasn’t here to meet someone in particular, and she didn’t appear to be a prostitute, but something about her stirred him.

  He locked his car and followed her inside after paying the cover charge. If he managed to persuade her to go with him, he knew he would spare her. Sometimes, it just happened like that. He didn’t kill every woman he picked up while hunting, just a select few. Sometimes the knowledge that he had the power of life and death over them was enough to quiet his hunger.

  He stopped at the end of the bar, ordered a drink, and scanned the room for her. He found her standing at the opposite end of the bar and waiting for a drink. Like a good hunter he watched and waited, studying his quarry. Eventually she selected a seat at the bar. He picked one, too, where he could see both her and the TV.

  He sensed she wanted to start up a conversation with someone, but was hesitant about doing so. She wore a slight air of vulnerability, something not noticeable to the untrained eye. He knew, if approached the right way, she would be his tonight. Like the zebra on the savanna, she was wary of the lion that prowled in the distance. The slightest hint of something amiss, the slightest misstep on his part, and she would turn and flee, slipping through his fingers like so much vapor.