JAMES HALL
OFF THE CHART

Dedication

For Evelyn, my rock, my love

Epigraph

We are wiser than we know.

—RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Praise

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

Glittering with moonlight and sweat, Thorn and Anne Joy were lying naked in Thorn’s bed when she launched into the story of her turbulent childhood in Kentucky. Her parents murdered. Lunacy and violence. Pirates, pirates, pirates.

Until that night, they’d shared nothing about their pasts. A breathless fever possessed them for their monthlong affair. An unquenchable horniness. Bruises from the clash of hipbones, flushed and tender tissue, their heat rekindled with the slightest rasp of skin on skin. For hours at a time they barely spoke, and when they did it was increasingly clear the chief thing they had in common was this agitated lust.

Then that night in a calm moment she told the vivid story of her youth, details she claimed to have never shared with anyone before. Saying she had no idea why she was confessing this to him but blundering ahead anyway.

Struck by the oddity of this tight-lipped woman opening up in such detail, Thorn lay quiet, listening intently. At the time, of course, he had no inkling that lurking in that account of Anne’s youth was a foretelling of the torture and torment of Thorn’s own loved ones, the kidnapping of a child, the murders of many others. But even though there was no way in hell he could have known, no way he could have heard in her gaudy tale the dark rumbles of his own future, that didn’t keep him from blaming himself forever after.

It was a raw afternoon in eastern Kentucky. The winter sky had turned the brittle gray of old ice, but Anne’s outlaw father and her older brother, Vic, were shirtless in the cold, hammering together the rickety frame under her mother’s watchful gaze. As Anne described it, the Joys’ yard was treeless and mangy, their property perched on a bluff overlooking the grim, defeated town of Harlan.

Anne stood at her bedroom window watching her family work in the front yard. For an hour she’d ignored her mother’s calls to join in. Only seven years old, Anne already knew she wanted nothing to do with this foolishness.

By dusk the structure was finished and her father and brother had strung Christmas lights along its edges and raised the Jolly Roger flag on its mast. Skull and crossbones flapping in the frigid breeze. When her father plugged in the cord, the flimsy creation burst to life in a phosphorescent flash. Twenty feet high, fifty feet long with red and green and blue lights twinkling in a perfect outline of the brawny hull and blooming sails of a pirate schooner.

For the next eight years the contraption stood in their front yard with those strands of colored bulbs flickering all through the gloomy winter nights of that Kentucky hill country and even into the first soft breaths of spring and the muggy, star-dazzled evenings, blinking in time with summer crickets and the whoop of owls, blazing incessantly into the fall when the sky above the sugar maples filled with the sweet perfume of rot and looming cold; those lights shimmered and winked and that pirate ship sailed endlessly through the rocky, mortified seas of Anne Joy’s youth. Visible for any sane man in that region to see – a ludicrous beacon, a steady rainbow pulse of don’t-give-a-damn lunacy.

Since her own childhood in the Florida Keys, Anne’s mother, Antoinette, had been consumed with pirates, a juvenile hobby that over time turned into a full-blown obsession and finally was to become the compulsory enthusiasm of the entire Joy clan. Even Jack Joy succumbed. Anne’s father was a raven-haired, extravagantly tattooed ex-navy man who drove a fuel-injected Nash Rambler to distribute a variety of unlawful drugs for the Woodson brothers to truck stops throughout eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Even such a roughneck as Jack Joy yielded to his wife’s fixation and became an authority on Long John Silver, Captain Kidd, and Blackbeard and eventually came to measure his own daring and lawlessness by their far-fetched standards.

Anne learned to endure the schoolyard catcalls, the relentless smirks, and those chilling midnights when carloads of boys parked out front and hooted and whistled and slung beer cans at Antoinette’s pirate ship until she or Jack snatched the shotgun from the brackets on the back of the front door and stalked outside and fired a warning shot over the bow of that landlocked schooner.

Other than those visits from local hooligans, the Joy home was peaceful and Anne’s parents’ love affair was luminous and sweet-hearted. Although the townsfolk gave Jack Joy a wide berth whenever he went out in public, Anne never caught so much as a whiff of violence on him once he entered those four walls. There was even a boyish innocence about the way he adored his wife and indulged her every caprice.

Each evening when the meal was done, Jack Joy sat in hillbilly rapture while Antoinette read to the family from the book that provided that night’s entertainment. Radios and televisions were banished from the Joys’ home, and the only books allowed were those that transported them across the centuries to the days of swashbuckling sea raiders.

‘There’s other books, you know,’ Anne said before the reading commenced one night. ‘About other kinds of people.’

‘But not one of those people measure up to buccaneers.’

‘And how would we ever know that, Mama?’ Anne said.

‘Pirates are beyond compare. They made their own rules, roamed at will, survived by their wits. Even famous outlaws like Jesse James were trapped inside the straight and narrow of highways and city streets. They drove cars; they wore ordinary clothes. But pirates were untamed, free to wander. To move with the wind like the big hawks and eagles. High up on the heavenly currents.’

‘And they had cool eye patches,’ Vic said. ‘And hooks for hands.’

‘We’re not one bit free,’ Anne said. ‘Look around us. This isn’t free.’

‘Pirates are in our blood, Anne. You should be as proud of your heritage as the rest of us are. Sooner or later you’re going to have to accept it.’

‘Even if your daddy did run liquor,’ Anne said, ‘that makes him a smuggler, not a pirate.’

‘Same difference,’ her father said. ‘A seafaring outlaw.’

‘A crook in a boat,’ Vic said.

‘The point is, darling,’ said Antoinette, ‘we’re not common folk. Our bloodline sets us apart.’

‘I don’t want to be special,’ Anne said. ‘I want to be like everyone else.’

‘Too late,’ Vic said. ‘You’re weird to the bone.’

On Saturdays the four of them would sometimes drive a half-day to the closest movie house to catch a matinee of Captain Blood or Morgan the Pirate, and on the return voyage Antoinette would dote on the dozens of Hollywood atrocities that had been committed on the truth, grilling Vic and Anne, forcing them to chime out the movie blunders.

True pirates never sailed galleons, those sluggish warships that took a full hour to alter course. They used swift and nimble schooners like the one in the Joys’ front yard or sloops or small frigates, sometimes brigantines and three-masted square-riggers. And no pirate under God’s blue heaven ever relied on such a pansy-ass fencing foil as Errol Flynn waved about. Those real-life buccaneers swung heavy cutlasses that would slash a man in half in a single roundhouse blow.

‘Shiver me timbers,’ Jack Joy might say at such moments. ‘Blow me down.’ And he’d heavy-foot that full-race Rambler till the tires screamed against the asphalt and Anne and Vic were pinned giddy to their seats.

An unschooled man, Jack Joy was made sappy by love, swept away by what he considered his wife’s refined tastes and higher education. Around his wife he played a courtly role, part Southern gentleman, part movie idol. And for her part, Antoinette regularly assured any who would listen that her Jack was double the man of any Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power. For almost two decades of married life she and Jack stayed tipsy on that fantasy.

But Anne Joy had been born with a disbeliever’s eye, and when the sun poured into her bedroom each morning, she began her day by staring beyond the rickety maze of pine slats that formed the pirate schooner at the gashed hills below and the gray haze and acid stench of the underground fire that had plagued that town since before her birth. And she reminded herself of her own dream – an escape from those hills so complete that once she was out of Harlan she intended never to allow a stray memory of the place to flit through her head.

On this point Vic was her total opposite. Vic was his mother’s sworn disciple, the first mate on her wacky voyage. Vic’s favorite chore was to track down the burned-out bulbs that occasionally shut down the light show in their yard. He would spend entire dutiful afternoons unscrewing one bulb after another until he’d located the latest dud.

Whether her mother was insane or just fanatically determined to separate herself from the hard-faced local citizens was impossible for Anne to say. Such distinctions had little currency in that time and place, and it wasn’t for a child to diagnose her parents but simply to endure. Though she was sorely humiliated by her mother’s fixation, it had the positive effect of sending Anne on an inward journey in search of safer, more solid ground, starting a habit of introspection she might never have acquired had she lived in a less outlandish household.

In that town of coal hackers, dope and religion were the only release from the daily grind, and the Woodson brothers year by year grew fatter and more pig-eyed on the profits from their fields of marijuana and meth labs. Over time the entire Woodson clan, which populated the back roads of the countryside, took to driving flashy pickups and staggering drunk in public.

From time to time Big Al Woodson and his little brother, Sherman, made sudden appearances in the Joys’ living room. With big whiskey grins, they dusted their hats against their trouser legs and shuffled and nodded at Antoinette, repeating her name aloud more than was necessary as if to feel its exotic taste on their tongue.

It was on just such a night in early April that the Woodson boys made their last call and Anne Joy’s childhood was forever finished. Vic was seventeen, with sinewy muscles and his black hair swept back in an Elvis ducktail. Anne, two years his junior, already had been cursed with the lush swell of hips and breasts that was to lure men to her all the rest of her days.

Not quite summer, with green pine popping in the woodstove to chase the chill, the family had assembled in their usual fashion in the cramped living room. Anne sat on the ratty corduroy love seat while her father lay out on the blue-and-red rag rug in the center of the room. In the far corner, Antoinette was dabbing at the canvas she’d set up on a makeshift easel. An old hobby she’d recently resumed when Vic questioned her once too often about her childhood days in the lawless Florida Keys.

‘Don’t have any photographs of those days,’ she said. ‘Painting will have to do.’

After two weeks of labor, a scrap of beach and two crooked palm trees were emerging from the canvas, and in the sand by the shoreline there was something resembling a treasure chest tipped on its side with its glorious contents spilling out. In the last few days as she worked at her canvas on lonely afternoons, Antoinette had let slip that on that very beach her courtship with their father had reached its first ecstatic peak. Perhaps, she whispered to her two children, that was even the very spot where Vic was conceived.

For as long as Anne could recall, her parents had talked of returning to that far-off land where they had met and fallen in love. Someday very soon, the story went, when their savings grew to ample size, the Joys would abandon those wretched hills and make the long pilgrimage back to paradise to reclaim their rightful place in that balmy land of sun and water and abundant fish and forever thaw the bitter chill from their joints.

‘We’ll never do it,’ Anne said on one of those quiet afternoons.

‘What’s that?’ Her mother continued to paint.

‘We’re never going to Florida. That’s all a fairy tale.’

Antoinette set aside her brush and looked around at her daughter.

‘Of course we’re going. Soon as the nest egg’s big enough.’

‘We could go now,’ Anne said. ‘There’s nothing keeping us here. You could work. We all could work.’

‘And what would you have me do, Anne Bonny?’

‘You could waitress,’ she said. ‘I could baby-sit. Vic could have a paper route. Daddy could do anything – drive a truck, deliver things. Or he could be a mailman. They have mailmen down there, don’t they?’

‘Waitress?’ Her mother laughed and turned back to her painting. ‘Lord, lord, you’ll never catch me slopping food for a bunch of overfed idiots. No, sir. I’d rather die in these hills than waitress down there in Florida. And your daddy’s way too fine a man to stoop to delivering people’s bills and catalogs. When I go back home, I’m going in style.’

‘You’re just scared,’ Anne said. ‘You’d rather have us eat coal dust the rest of our lives. It’s all a lie. Every bit of it. Just one big goddamn lie.’

Her mother dabbed at the canvas and slipped off into one of her deadly silences.

On that final evening, Anne was sprawled on the love seat listening to Vic struggle with the archaic locutions of a pirate novel he’d plucked from the shelves of the school library. It was then she heard the rumble of Al Woodson’s GTO coming up the dirt drive. Her brother halted the scene and closed the book around his finger. As was his habit, Al pulled up beside the front porch and gunned his engine three times before shutting it down.

Anne’s mother put aside her brush and looked across at Jack.

‘Tell the man it’s too late for a social call. Kids got school.’

‘He doesn’t come but if it’s important. Just be a minute.’

His words were neutral enough, but Anne saw the cocky edge had drained from her father’s face. Her mother saw it, too, and stood up, and her hands knotted into fists and hung beside her hips.

‘You didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have, Jack. Tell me.’

Her father hesitated a moment, then shrugged his admission and made a wave at her painting.

‘Just to get us where we want to go a little quicker. Handful now and then, nothing serious.’

‘Oh, Jack, no.’

‘Risk worth taking,’ her father said. ‘Anyhow, there’s no way those old boys sniffed me out.’

‘Don’t go out there, Jack. Just poke your head out and send them home. Tell them we’re putting the kids to bed, saying our prayers. Settle it in daylight if there’s anything to settle. Give us time to think. Or else make a run for it.’

‘All right,’ her father said. But his words were as vacant as his eyes.

He opened the door, put his head out, then slowly opened it the rest of the way and stepped onto the porch. It was only a few seconds before the voices went wrong, turning high and croaky, then flaming up with curses and a sudden unnatural silence. Then Anne heard the moist thump of fist on bone and the scuffle of heavy boots on the planks of their front porch. The living room floor trembled and Al Woodson grunted a command to his little brother.

Frozen in the center of the room, Antoinette stared at the curtains. Just beyond that window Jack Joy groaned like a man lifting more than he could manage, and the whole house shuddered.

Antoinette flew across the room, whisked the shotgun from its bracket, and was out the door barrel-first. A second later the shotgun’s blast got two quick pistol shots in reply and the front window exploded. Jack Joy hurtled into the room, tearing down the red-checkered curtains and coming to rest in a sprawl of blood and mangled parts.

Outside, the shotgun roared again, and Vic stepped out the door with Anne close behind him.

Through the smoky dark Anne saw Al Woodson blown backward against the blinking schooner, his arms and legs tangled in the nest of wires. The bulbs continued their beat, but the big man was unmoving. On the floor at Anne’s feet lay her mother. She’d taken a slug in her seamless forehead and lay with arms flung wide against the porch as if waiting for her darling man to lower himself onto her one last time. Her foolish eyes still open, catching the green lights and the blue ones and the red, the eternal blinking of that schooner.

In the yard Sherman Woodson knelt with his hands high. Vic held the shotgun his mother had dropped. In his right hand Woodson still gripped his chrome pistol, but his hands waved unsteady circles in the air.

‘Your daddy done wrong, kid. Had his hand in the fucking cookie jar. We didn’t have no choice but to pay a visit. But didn’t nobody mean for this—’

Vic unloaded on the man and kicked him spread-eagled beside his brother into that web of lights that continued to twinkle across the dark valley below.

Anne stooped down and fingertipped her mother’s throat, felt the cold silence of the woman’s flesh, then raked the bloody hair off her face and closed the woman’s eyes. Anne blinked away the itch of tears, then turned on her brother.

‘Now what? There’s a hundred Woodsons within earshot.’

Vic dropped the shotgun in the dirt and stalked into the house and came out with a flour sack under one arm and Antoinette’s painting under the other.

‘What’s that?’

‘Our nest egg,’ Vic said.

Vic marched across the barren yard and stuffed the painting and the sack of money into the backseat and got in behind the wheel and cranked it up.

Full of the dreamy numbness that was to take up residence inside her head like a never-ending trance, Anne walked over to the car and got into the shotgun seat, and the two of them rolled silently down the hill, headlights off, and idled through the darkened town, then hit the highway south. For the next few hours bright lights raced up behind them, then slowly fell away as Vic held the pedal down and screamed through the black night.

Outrunning the Woodsons at last, they drove hard through Tennessee and Georgia, then entered the ceaseless gray monotony of north Florida, driving without rest or food, until the sky turned blue again and winter changed to summer in a single day and the birds grew stalky and white and America finally petered out and became no more than a dribble of rocky islands where the road ran narrow and low, seeming to plow a path right through the blue sea, as if Moses himself had gotten there just seconds before, leading the way to the promised land.

Beside her in the dark, Thorn listened to Anne Joy’s impetuous purging come to a close. When she was done, he lay silent for a moment more, staggered by her tale, searching for something to say. But before he could find the words, Anne slid from the bed, tramped to the bathroom, dressed quickly, and left his house without even a good-bye. Thorn hustled down the stairs after her, but she beat him to her car and was gone in a hail of pebbles.

She never returned to Thorn’s house and would only smile brightly at him when he showed up at her apartment to talk, giving no reply to his questions and finally asking him to leave.

Over time Thorn came to believe that the bond he and Anne had forged in that month of ravenous lust was simply too flimsy to support the sudden, unwieldy bulk of her past. Maybe later on if the structure had grown more secure and their trust more solid it would’ve been fine. God knew, Thorn’s own story could match hers death for death and shame for shame. But it was too early in the cycle for such a heavy dose of truth, and their fragile bond had crumbled to powder in that instant of confession.

Later, when Thorn returned to the memory of that evening, the seeds of what was to come were so obvious in Anne’s story, the warnings so goddamn clear. If only somehow he’d managed to grasp the prophetic hints, he would have climbed out of bed that very night, loaded his pistol, and driven a few miles down the Overseas Highway to kill one particular man – an act that would have spared many from death and shielded a young girl from terrible harm, that blameless, intelligent kid who was as close to a daughter as Thorn had ever known.

1

On that warm Sunday afternoon, when Thorn got back from the john, the drinks were just arriving. He and Alexandra Collins were at a table for six on the outside deck at the Lorelei in Islamorada. The sheer February light had turned the spacious bay to a brilliant blue mica. Over at the rail Lawton and Sugarman and his twin girls were peering down at the resident school of tarpon that threaded between the pilings.

‘Hey, stranger,’ the waitress said as she set their beers down on the table and put the Cokes in front of the empty places.

Thorn stumbled for a half-second, fetching for her name.

‘Oh, hey, Anne. How’s it going?’

‘Just another day in paradise,’ she said. ‘How about yourself?’

‘Fine, fine.’

She bent forward and pressed her lips to his. Inhaling that familiar scent of her shampoo, lime and something herbal, Thorn had a quick cascade of memories, a blur of nights together, their bodies knotted, sheets kicked to the floor. The final story that broke their bond for good.

More than a year had passed since Thorn had last seen Anne Joy. In her early thirties, she still kept her auburn hair cropped short, and her dark eyes had the same electric shine. Thin-lipped, with soft cheekbones, a sleek and coppery complexion, and the coolly impassive smile of a runway model. But her body was far too lushly proportioned for that profession, and no matter what bulky and unflattering styles Anne wore, she couldn’t conceal it.

She stepped back from the table and clutched her tray against her breasts.

Alexandra was looking up at Anne with a curious arch of eyebrow.

‘I think we’ll wait on the order,’ Thorn said. ‘Kids are feeding the fish.’

‘Sure, okay,’ she said. ‘Be back in a few.’

She took a second look at Alexandra, then gave Thorn a quick, approving smile and turned and set off toward her other tables.

‘I’m sorry,’ Thorn said. ‘I should’ve introduced you.’

‘So this is another one?’ Alex said.

‘Another what?’

‘Oh, come on, Thorn. Do you usually kiss your waitress? And this time don’t tell me you two were just old high school friends. She’s ten years too young.’

Alex shook her head, her smile wearing thin.

‘Hey, it’s a small town,’ he said. ‘Limited supply of single women.’

Alexandra tasted her Heineken. She watched Sugarman’s girls fling bits of bread into the water. The Lorelei was packed, tourists lining up to be seated.

‘Was it serious?’

‘A month maybe. Not serious, no.’

‘A month by my definition is fairly noteworthy.’ Alex peered into his eyes, cocking her head slightly, as if searching for a flicker of deceit.

‘We didn’t click,’ he said. ‘Anne’s a little intense, bottled-up.’

‘Not laidback and gregarious like you.’

She shook her head and looked out at the hazy blue of the bay, a flats boat skimming past, the white rip of foam behind it.

‘Oh, come on. You can’t be jealous. You know how I feel about you.’

‘It’s just amazing,’ she said. ‘Everywhere we go there’s another one.’

‘I’ve lived here all my life,’ Thorn said.

‘Yeah, and it’s a small town. But still.’

‘Look, I’m no ladies’ man,’ Thorn said.

‘What would you call it then?’

Thorn knew better than to field that one. He poured the rest of his Red Stripe into the stein and watched the foam rise exactly to the brim, not a single trickle running down the side – another of his highly refined, utterly useless motor skills. When he looked up, Alexandra was smiling at him, but her eyes still had a stern edge.

‘You heard of Vic Joy?’ he asked her.

‘Name sounds familiar.’

‘Owns half the upper Keys,’ Thorn said. ‘Not a big favorite with law enforcement. Runs that casino boat behind the Holiday Inn, owns a dozen marinas and waterfront joints from Islamorada to Key Largo. Doesn’t pay a lot of attention to what’s legal, what’s not. Has a whole law firm working for him full-time to keep him out of jail. In the past fifteen, twenty years, there’ve been a half-dozen murders with Vic Joy’s name floating around in the background. Then witnesses change their story, refuse to cooperate, or flat out disappear. That kind of guy. Anne never tells anyone she’s Vic’s sister, but people know.’

‘Brother’s a big-shot hoodlum, but she’s still a waitress.’

‘There’s some tension between them. Plus Vic spies on her. Checks out her boyfriends, lets them know they’re swimming in serious waters. First week we went out, he stopped by the house, asked me a lot of questions. Took a good look around. Started giving me a list of dos and don’ts.’

‘I bet you were very polite.’

‘Things started to go wrong when I grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him back to his car and threw him inside.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I lost it,’ he said. ‘This crook lecturing me about good manners.’

‘You were willing to risk the gangster’s wrath to keep playing around with his sister.’

‘Come on, Alex. Let it go.’

‘You have a long and sordid past, Thorn. I’m continually surprised.’

‘Point is,’ he said, ‘Anne and I didn’t mesh. And you and I do.’

‘Is that what you call it? We’re meshing?’

‘I think that’s an accurate description. Yeah, I’ll stand by that.’

He tried to smile his way past this mess, but Alex wasn’t buying just yet.

Lawton ambled back to the table and sat down. Alex gave Thorn’s shoulder a quiet stroke. Okay, interrogation over, all forgiven. Sort of.

Lawton had a sip of his Coke and the three of them gazed over at Sugarman and his daughters. He was Thorn’s oldest and closest friend. Sugarman had stood by Thorn through some blinding shit-storms, even risked his life on more than one occasion when everyone else deserted. Ten years ago Sugar had been a sheriff’s deputy; now he was struggling along as a private investigator.

This weekend was Sugarman’s monthly visit with his twins. Lunch, a boat ride, a cookout later at Thorn’s house, then Sugar and the girls would make the long trek back to Fort Lauderdale where his ex-wife, Jeannie, lived. The girls were eight. In May they’d turn nine.

Uncle Thorn, they called him.

More than likely those two girls were as close as he was ever going to come to having children of his own. Biologically he was probably okay, but he was too damn rigid for kids, too private, too rooted in habit. Still, he loved Sugar’s girls, loved their raucous games, their delight in tiny discoveries – holding a magnifying glass up to a hibiscus bloom while their daddy recited the names of its parts, their functions, showing off his flawless recall of high school biology. Thorn didn’t mind the girls’ pouts, their tantrums that came and went like summer thunderstorms, so quickly replaced by sunshine, it seemed never to have rained at all.

Twins, but very different. Jackie was devoted to television and was usually clamped inside the headset of her portable CD player, and she had her eye on a BMW convertible for her sixteenth birthday. Janey was fascinated by birds, bugs, frogs, and snakes. An amazing memory for the names of things. Tell her one time, it was there. Janey was constantly testing her dad’s knowledge of natural history. Forcing Sugarman to expand his library, stock up on multiple field guides, which the two of them pored over for hours at a time. Janey was a quiet kid, eyes always following Thorn like she might be working up a crush. She enjoyed watching him tie his bonefish flies. The slow, intricate wrapping and twisting, the bright Mylar threads and gaudy puffs of fur and feathers. A month ago she’d taken a shot at tying one herself and when she was done she snipped the final threads and held up her mangled creation and said, ‘Let’s go catch a lunker.’

Alexandra and Lawton were fond of the girls, too. When they came over some weekends, Thorn could see Alex soften – squatting down to help them tie a shoe or soothe a scuffed knee. An easy, natural gift for girls that age. Lawton grumbled about their noise, their rambunctiousness, but when they left he grew solemn and introspective, and it was clear the old man felt their absence more strongly than he could admit.

Thorn might be too damn old for kids, but he wasn’t too old for these.

Lawton had another deep sip of his Coke and set his glass down on the table and patted his mouth with the paper napkin.

‘You two should go over and look at those tarpon. They’re gigantic.’

‘We looked at them already, Dad, when we came in.’

‘You did?’

‘Yeah. Just a minute ago, before we sat down. You were with us.’

Lawton raised his hands and raked his fingers through his mane of white hair, then laid his hands flat on the table and pressed down as if he meant to levitate it.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That explains why I don’t remember. Something happens a minute ago, why should I waste my mental faculties on that? Most likely it’s not going to turn out to be worth remembering anyway. All the important stuff happened a long time ago.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Alex said, giving Thorn a brief look. ‘I believe some of the important stuff may still be unfolding.’

She had a sip of her beer and patted her father’s hand.

‘Hey, did either of you see the tarpon?’ Lawton said. ‘Over by the pilings. They’re huge. You should go look.’

Closing in on seventy-five, Lawton suffered from an evaporating memory and a growing confusion about things great and small. So far, no doctor had given his condition a name. Apparently he was headed down the steep and irreversible slope of dementia. There had been times lately when the old man’s focus narrowed so severely, he seemed to be peering at the world through a pinprick hole. Staring mutely for a solid hour at a blade of grass, water dripping from a faucet, the hairs on the back of his knuckle.

For the last few months he’d been preoccupied with returning to his boyhood home in Ohio. Packing his bag at any hour of the day and night, heading out toward the highway to catch a bus. Twice Thorn and Alex had woken in the night to find Lawton missing from his living room cot, and both times they’d finally located him sitting in the bus shelter a mile from Thorn’s house, his valise on his lap, dead set on a journey back to Columbus.

When Alex asked him why in the world he’d want to abandon the paradise of the Florida Keys for Columbus, Ohio, Lawton puzzled on it for a moment, then told her that he wanted to go home so he could dig up a time capsule he and his younger brother Charlie buried sixty-five years before. A time capsule? Alexandra wanted to know what was so important about a time capsule. ‘My past,’ he said. ‘It’s buried in the dirt behind a white frame house at 215 Oak Street.’ But what was in the capsule that required Lawton to depart on a journey in the middle of the night to retrieve it? ‘What’s in it?’ he said. ‘How the hell am I supposed to remember what I buried sixty-five years ago? That’s why I’ve got to go dig the damn thing up.’ He looked hard into her eyes and said, ‘So maybe I can find out who the hell I used to be.’

Now each night before she put him to bed, Alexandra lectured Lawton sternly. If he wandered off from the house one more time, she would have to start padlocking the door. Lawton always listened with a deadly earnest look. Although the midnight jaunts had ceased, neither Thorn nor Alexandra was sleeping easy.

During the day Thorn looked after the old guy while Alexandra labored as a crime scene photographer for the same Miami police department Lawton had once served as a homicide detective. For the last few months she’d been making the sixty-mile journey from Key Largo to the treacherous streets of Miami, then back each evening. A commute she claimed to find restful.

They’d met a few months back when Lawton showed up on Thorn’s doorstep. The old detective was on a self-appointed mission to track a killer and Thorn had been just a quick stop on his erratic journey. Hours after Lawton disappeared, Alexandra showed up at Thorn’s searching for him. And though things had started badly between them, the clash of his flint against her steel had sparked a smoldering connection that since then had been growing ever hotter.

While Alex dabbed her napkin at a spill of Coke on her father’s lap, Thorn’s gaze drifted over to Anne Joy, who was waiting on a nearby table. He’d nearly forgotten about the woman. So much intensity at the time, but the months had fleeted by and Anne had turned to smoke and drifted almost completely from his memory.

‘Thorn?’ Alex tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to her, but she’d already tracked down the source of his attention, and her smile was tart.

‘Yeah?’

‘Dad and I are going to take another look at the pet tarpon. You want to come, or stay here and ogle?’

‘Those fish are huge,’ Lawton said. ‘Wish to hell I’d brought my pole.’

Thorn got up and took Alexandra’s hand in his. She answered his squeeze with the slightest pressure, and they walked over to the rail to join Sugarman and his girls.

Like everyone else sitting outside at the Lorelei that sunny Sunday afternoon, Anne Bonny Joy noticed the sleek black Donzi sliding up to the restaurant dock – just another flashy Miami asshole down to the Keys for brunch – and she wouldn’t have given him a second look except for the name printed in gold script on the stern of the big rumbling speedboat, the Black Swan, which happened to be the name of her mother’s all-time-favorite pirate flick.

The boat’s captain and two top-heavy blondes barely out of their teens took one of Anne’s tables, and while the girls sat reading their menus, the guy tilted his head back and closed his eyes to bask in the sun. Anne Bonny came over, placed their water glasses in front of them, and stood next to the table until the man rocked his head forward and revealed his dark blue eyes. Longer and thicker lashes than her own.

‘Take your order?’ she said.

Standing there in the Lorelei uniform, green shorts and a tight white T-shirt. The girls in bikini tops and snug shorts, the guy bare-chested, with a caramel tan. His dark hair was long and swept back like a teen idol from forty years earlier. A man too handsome for his own good, and for anyone else’s.

‘How it’s usually done,’ he said, giving her a lazy grin, ‘you’re supposed to say, “Hi, I’m Mandy; I’ll be your server.”’

The girls were both platinum blondes. They might’ve been twins. Anne looked at them as they giggled at the man’s wit; then she looked back at the man.

‘Take your order.’

‘What’s good here?’ one of the girls said. ‘Let’s have what’s good.’

‘Cheeseburger,’ the other girl said. ‘You have cheeseburgers, don’t you?’

‘It’s a fish joint, Angie,’ her double said. ‘You should order fish.’

‘I hate fish. It smells funny.’

‘Your name?’ The man was in his mid-thirties, about Anne’s age, and had a coarse black beard he hadn’t bothered with that morning, bristles glinting in the harsh sunlight.

‘It’s there on her shirt, the little tag,’ one of the girls said. ‘Anne Bonny.’

The man turned his head to the blonde.

‘I see the tag,’ he said. ‘I’d like to hear her say her name out loud.’

The blonde’s lips wrinkled into a practiced pout.

‘My name is Anne Bonny Joy. Can I take your order?’

‘That’s a weird name,’ the other girl said.

‘It’s an illustrious name,’ said the man. ‘Legendary.’

‘Never heard of it,’ the pouting girl said. ‘I think it’s stupid.’

‘Three hundred years ago,’ the man said, ‘Anne Bonny was the most famous woman in the world. Bigger than a movie star.’

‘There weren’t any movies three hundred years ago,’ the blonde said. ‘Were there?’

He was watching Anne’s face. His voice was dark and liquid and his blue eyes were fastened to hers, stealing past her usually impenetrable shield. She held her ground, her pencil poised above her pad. It was all she could manage. Seagulls squealed overhead. On the other side of the patio the reggae band started their version of ‘I Shot the Sheriff.’ The bell in the kitchen rang, another order up. Garlic and shrimp and coconut suntan oil floating on the breeze.

‘Anne Bonny was the greatest pirate of the Caribbean, ruthless and daring, the equal of any man.’

‘Big deal,’ the sulky one said.

‘My mother named me,’ Anne said. ‘It’s just a name.’

‘Whatever you say.’

The man touched a fingertip to the lip of his water glass, smiling down.

‘And your boat?’ Anne said. Irritated now, wanting to push back.

‘My boat?’

‘The Black Swan.’

‘Oh.’ He glanced out toward the docks, then let his eyes drift back to her. ‘It’s the name of an old movie with Tyrone Power.’

‘And Maureen O’Hara,’ said Anne.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, giving her a more careful look. ‘Who could forget Maureen O’Hara?’

‘Hey,’ said the sulky blonde. ‘Are we having lunch or what?’

In the Lorelei kitchen, Vic Joy made an offer. Seven million dollars.

And Milton Stammer, who owned the joint, said sure, sure, he’d think about it and get back to Vic real soon. Blowing Vic off.

‘What’s to think about?’ Vic said. ‘It’s two million more than the goddamn place is worth.’

Milton Stammer was a short balding man with a formidable paunch. He kept smoothing his hands across his bloated belly like a pregnant woman trying to get used to how big she’d grown.

‘Okay, so I sell you the restaurant, what am I going to do then, Vic? Move to Boca, sit in a golf cart all day, cocktails at four, early bird at five, sit around, talk about how everybody did on the back nine? I’m a blue-collar guy; I’m too freaking old to pick up golf.’

Vic glanced out the serving window and watched Thorn and his group sitting in the sun, waiting for their lunch. In his free time for the last few months, Vic had made Thorn his project. Shadowing him, asking around about the guy, trying to get a feel for what would motivate the asshole.

Today Vic had tagged along two cars back and wound up at the Lorelei, where his own sister worked. His estranged sister. Two of them hadn’t spoken in years.

When Thorn and his gang pulled into the Lorelei, Vic parked a few spaces away facing the sprawling restaurant and bar. He sat there for a moment watching Thorn and his friends walk into the place. Vic must’ve driven by the Lorelei a million times, but he’d never given it any serious real estate scrutiny. It had a nice ramshackle feel. A laidback, outdoorsy vibe. A nice fit with the rest of his holdings. Five minutes after pulling into the parking lot, he was inside the noisy kitchen, waving seven million bucks in front of the owner’s face. That’s how Vic Joy worked, relying on his creative juices. Weaving and bobbing as events took shape. He’d built a damn nice empire that way.

‘Place like this,’ Vic said, staring up at the ceiling, ‘all this wood. Must be a bitch to insure.’

Milton closed his eyes and shook his head solemnly.

‘A grease fire,’ Vic said. ‘Or maybe a smoker flicking his butt in the bathroom waste can, or bad wiring, overloaded circuits. Shit, it could start a hundred different ways. All this old timber, about twenty minutes all you got is ash and rubble. Then you’d be sorry as hell you didn’t take the six million.’

‘What happened to seven?’

‘Did I say seven? Well, I meant six.’ Vic watched the hubbub of the kitchen. Steam rising from the dishwashing machine. A darker steam coming from the deep-fat fryers. The Lorelei was a busy place, and prickly hot. Kitchen staff hustling back and forth, sending uneasy looks their way. Everyone knew Vic Joy, how he worked. ‘Actually, Milton, now that I take a careful look around, I’m going to have to back down to five mil. All this wood. This place is a fucking fire trap. I don’t know how it’s lasted as long as it has.’

Milton’s stubby arms hung at his sides. The man’s eyes were grayish and bulgy. A large man’s large eyes. Pry them out of their sockets, they’d fill your palm. For a second Vic flashed on an image of a couple of gray eyeballs floating inside a glass jar, suspended in formaldehyde. Make a nice addition to his collection.

He smiled at the big man, but Milton wasn’t in the smiling frame of mind.

‘I’ll tell you what I’m doing, Vic. I’m taking all that fire shit as a threat. I don’t know if that’s how you meant it, but that’s how I’m taking it. Now I want you to get the hell out of here. If I ever see your sorry ass around my restaurant again, I’ll call the cops. You got that? Tell them you been threatening me.’

‘The cops?’ Vic shivered and wobbled his hands in the air. ‘Be still my heart. Not the cops.’

Milton gave Vic a bitter glare, then about-faced and tramped across the buzzing kitchen to his office and shoved the door closed behind him.

Vic stepped over to the fry cook, a tall thin man with a hook nose. Guy’d been eavesdropping, sneaking looks.

‘You know who I am, kid?’

‘Vic Joy,’ the hook nose said.

‘Bingo.’

With a wide spatula the cook slid a burger onto a plate, then settled a fish sandwich onto another. Lettuce, tomato, pickle on the side.

‘Let me see that ticket.’ Vic reached out and snapped the order slip from the clip. A few minutes earlier he’d watched Anne Bonny hang it there. When she’d appeared, Vic swung around and kept his back to her. Didn’t want to give his little sister a cardiac right there at work, bumping into her long-lost brother after all these years. Vic studied the order slip. In his sister’s scrawl, Thorn was written out next to the guy’s order.

‘Which one’s the grouper with Swiss?’

Vic nodded at the six plates lined up in the window.

The hook nose took a careful look at Vic.

‘Which one?’ Vic said again.

The fry cook reached out his spatula and tapped one of the sandwiches.

Thorn’s lunch. Fried fish with a layer of melted cheese. Guy was going to choke on cholesterol if he wasn’t careful. Which suited Vic fine, as long as the jerkhole waited till after Vic was completely done with him.

‘Guy’s a friend of mine,’ Vic said. ‘We do this, me and him. Little pranks back and forth.’

‘Whatever.’ The fry cook got busy with the dressing on a cheese-burger.

Vic peeled back the bun on the grouper sandwich and laid it on the plate. He reached into his pocket and drew out his penknife and flicked open the blade. Out on the sunny patio Anne Bonny was taking the order at another table. Two blondes and a dark-haired guy. Vic craned forward and squinted into the sunlight.

Dark-haired Romeo smiling up at Vic’s little sister. Batting his eyes and Anne batting back.

Vic laid the blade against the palm of his left hand. He looked over at the fry cook, but the guy was focused on his work.

Vic gritted his teeth and sliced the blade across his palm, an inch, another inch, just deep enough to get a trickle of blood rising from the seam, spilling into the web of creases.

He reached out to Thorn’s open sandwich and made a fist and watched the dark fluid dribble out. Six, seven drops spattering against the melted Swiss.

He milked out a few more drips, then closed up the sandwich and set it back under the warming lights just as the fry cook smacked the signal bell.

A few seconds later Anne headed back toward the window to pick up her order. There was a tiny smile on her lips. Probably nobody else would’ve noticed, but Vic was her brother and he’d spent years studying the looks that came and went on Anne Bonny’s face. He’d never seen that exact smile before. Not once.

Vic ducked away from the window. He rubbed his bloody hand on the leg of his jeans and tried to shape his lips into a replay of Anne’s smile, but it felt slippery and uncertain on his face.

When he looked back, Anne was at Thorn’s table dealing out the plates. Vic stayed in the shadows to the side of the window and watched until finally Thorn picked up his sandwich and held it for a moment near his mouth while he laughed at something one of the little girls said. Then he took a bite and munched on the fried grouper seasoned with Vic Joy’s blood.

Vic grinned, watched Thorn swallow, watched him take another bite. Swallow that one, too. The lumps of food snaking down Thorn’s throat and into his esophagus, heading toward his belly. Wouldn’t be long until Vic Joy was slipping inside the fucker’s bloodstream, mingling, festering. Taking root.

‘That’s some weird prank,’ the fry cook said.

Vic turned to the cook, then fixed his eyes on the hand holding the spatula.

‘Think you could still flip burgers with a metal hook on the end of your arm?’

The guy stared down at his right hand, then back at Vic. His Adam’s apple jiggled.

‘Hell, Mr Joy, I wouldn’t say anything. Not a goddamn word. Really.’

Vic winked at the kid and headed for the parking lot.

2

Three weeks after their meeting at the Lorelei, Daniel Salbone and Anne were having breakfast on the outside patio of the Cheeca Lodge.

Overnight a late-season cold front had muscled in and the sky was hanging low – as heavy and ominous as a slab of slate. A few yards away from their table the Atlantic thrashed and foamed against the resort’s white beach. While they sipped their coffee Daniel’s gaze kept drifting out toward the end of the long dock where a white sport-fishing yacht was moored. For the last half hour several men had been rolling dollies down the dock, then heaving the supplies aboard.

Anne’s mind was whirling, her body inflamed from the three-week frenzy of sex and extravagant food and full-throttle cruises on the Black Swan, both of them naked, racing the moonlight. Except for the boat rides, they’d not left their room at the Cheeca Lodge. DO NOT DISTURB on the doorknob. Room service trays piling up in the corner, their sheets growing funkier by the hour. They’d switched off the air conditioner because they wanted to marinate in their own juices, breathe the other’s true scent. They opened the windows to hear the ocean and the gulls, inhale the marshy breeze. Lying in the black night or at noon, feet tangled in the sheets, skin glistening, she trailed her fingertips across his long stretches of muscled flesh.

A few nights ago in the dark, Daniel said, ‘Is this love?’

‘Hell, no,’ she said. ‘This is sex, plain and simple.’

He laughed and she laughed with him.

A moment later he said, ‘You don’t want it to be love.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You want something flimsy, something you can control, something you can walk away from when you’re ready.’

‘This isn’t real,’ Anne said. ‘It’s heat lightning on a summer evening.’

‘You’re worried, aren’t you? You’re scared.’

‘Of what?’

‘That it’s real. That it’s solid.’

She was silent. Staring up at the darkness.

‘I don’t scare easy,’ she said.

‘Then you’re a rare woman.’

‘You’re just noticing?’

The ghostly curtains stirred with a warm breeze.

‘So who was that guy at the restaurant?’

‘Restaurant? What guy?’

‘The Lorelei, that day we met. I saw you kiss some guy. Your boyfriend?’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘He’s nobody. A local I went out with for a while. It was finished centuries ago.’

‘What’s his name?’

She hesitated a half-second and said, ‘Thorn.’

‘First or last?’

‘That’s what he goes by. I don’t know which it is.’

‘So it’s over, is it? He won’t be wondering where you’ve gone off to these last three weeks?’

‘Stone-cold over.’

‘You kissed him. I saw that. You still have feelings.’

His body stiff, Daniel stared up into the dark.

‘Hey, what is this? You store away a meaningless kiss from weeks ago. Are you some kind of green-eyed control freak? Tell me now. I don’t want any big surprises later on.’

Her words hung in the darkness. When he answered, his voice was solemn, almost apologetic.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t lie to you. I suppose I can be fiercely protective of what I care about. Is that a crime?’

‘Well, there’s nobody to be jealous of, Daniel. Nobody at all.’

He took her hand and shifted beside her. As he fit his length more snugly against hers, the tension seemed to drain from his body.

‘So you’ve been saving yourself for me,’ he said. ‘For this.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not at all what I had in mind.’

‘What about now? Do you have me in mind?’

He touched her in the dark and she made an uncertain groan.

‘You’re not happy? This doesn’t make you happy, Anne Bonny?’

‘Two inches lower and it will.’

Anne called in sick one day too many and the Lorelei let her go. Three weeks together, she and Daniel had talked easily, focused on the moment, but without sharing history on either side. Now it was over.

This morning while Anne lay in bed, Daniel’s cell phone rang for the first time since they’d met and he stepped out on their balcony and spoke quietly for a moment, then came back inside and told her that he was going to have to leave.

‘For the day?’ she said.

He shook his head.

‘And do what? Go where?’

‘I can’t talk about it.’

‘Oh, you can’t talk about it. I see.’

Anne rose from the bed and went to the closet and yanked her clothes off the hangers: Large structures were collapsing in her chest. Her vision muddy.

‘Not right now.’ Daniel waved at her, then motioned her to the far wall.

Naked, she hesitated at the closet door, then stalked across the room. Daniel tipped the table lamp to the side and tilted its golden shade. He pointed at the white plastic disk mounted there. Hardly larger than a bottle cap, with a tiny aerial sprouting from its edge. Anne stared at it and was about to speak, but Daniel pressed a finger to her lips.

He pointed to his ear, then pointed to the lamp.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh.’

‘Breakfast?’ he said in a normal voice, settling the lamp back into place.

Now, outside on the patio of the Cheeca Lodge, their waitress brought the coffeepot and topped up their cups.

When she was gone, Anne said, ‘Is anyone eavesdropping out here?’

‘Not likely,’ he said.

‘So you’re dirty?’

‘Dirty?’

‘Crime,’ she said. ‘A bad dude.’

Daniel smiled.

‘You are, aren’t you?’

He looked out at the yacht. One of the men was standing by a piling watching the others heave boxes aboard.

‘For years I worked for my father,’ he said. ‘Vincent Salbone. Have you heard that name?’

It took her a moment to place it, then another moment to absorb the fact.

‘On TV,’ she said. ‘Always surrounded by lawyers, always gets off.’

‘Yes,’ Daniel said. ‘He always has.’

‘So you grew up in the Mafia. A little prince.’

His smile faded.

‘Hardly a prince,’ he said. ‘I’ve always been a disappointment to my father. Especially these last few years.’

Daniel scanned the patio. A family chattering two tables away, another young couple with a noisy toddler. The other tables were empty.

He reached out and took her hand and cradled it in both of his. His voice was quiet and resolved. But his words came haltingly, with awkward edges, as if he’d never pronounced these exact phrases before.

‘The family business, I struggled to make it work for a few years, but I was restless, impatient. Doing things the same way they’ve always been done, I felt trapped. Not a good match. Drugs, gambling. I was confused. I felt tainted and unnatural. So I cast around for a while until I found something different, more stimulating. Cleaner. An old-fashioned form of commerce that died out a while back but is making a return. Something that suits me better. More adventurous.’

Anne fixed her eyes on him.

‘What’re you saying, Daniel?’

‘My father was from the streets. Philly, a city guy. But I was born here. I’m South Florida through and through. Boats, water. I’m more at home when I’m out of sight of land.’

‘You don’t look like a fisherman to me.’

‘I think you know what I am. I think you’ve known since the first time we spoke. Tyrone Power, Maureen O’Hara. All that.’

The toddler screamed and threw a handful of silverware onto the patio.

Anne leaned forward and drew her hand out of Daniel’s grasp.

‘You’re telling me you’re a pirate?’

‘I’ve always preferred the sound of buccaneer,’ he said.

She leaned back in her chair. The air was pinched in her throat. She brushed a hand through her hair, felt her face warming.

‘Well, this is just perfect. My mother would’ve fainted away.’

‘Those are my men out on the dock. That’s one of my vessels.’

Anne stared out at the yacht. The work had finished, the men standing around smoking.

‘So how does it work?’ she said. ‘You commandeer a ship at sea, repaint its name, hoist a new flag, sail it away like it’s yours?’

‘That’s one way,’ Daniel said.

‘Kill everybody, throw them overboard?’

‘We sometimes have to defend ourselves. But no, we’re not killers. Five years, no casualties yet. On either side.’

‘But you would if you had to. You’re armed.’

‘If we had to protect ourselves. Yes.’

Daniel met her eyes, a defenseless gaze she hadn’t seen from him before. Every spark of cockiness vanished, his debonair smile gone. This was who he was, no hedging, no juking and jiving. Her lover, a goddamn pirate.

Anne touched a fingertip to her forehead, combed a stray hair back into place. She hadn’t been waiting for this man. She hadn’t been waiting for any man. She was still young; other guys would come along, or no guys. She’d always told herself that either way suited her fine. She could grow old in Islamorada. A weathered waitress with sun-brittle hair, her voice coarsened from secondhand smoke. Take your order, sir? She knew a lot of those. Living in their silver Air-stream with their overfed cat and their quart of rum. Carpenters or boat captains sharing their bed for a week or two. It wasn’t so bad.

She closed her eyes and listened to her body, felt the alien quiver spreading through her gut. All these years with little more than a tingle. Now this. This man who was way too handsome, way too dangerous. For all these years she’d stayed well inside the lines, a good citizen, invisible. Ten-hour shifts, then back to her apartment. At night in bed she’d read thick biographies from the library, getting lost in other people’s lives, their quirks, the moments of triumph and despair. On her hours off she puttered through the mangroves in her aluminum boat, watched the endless reshaping of the clouds. There were a couple of waitresses she talked to, not friends exactly. Over the years she’d allowed a couple of dozen men to lead her to their beds, but no one who stirred her blood. Except maybe Thorn, and even with him she’d managed to cut it off on the brink of something more. She refused to let them charm her. Always disciplined, drawing back at the first warm shiver. She wasn’t going to sacrifice everything. Hand her life over to a dark-eyed dreamboat. Be a martyr for love like some sappy heroine in a pirate movie.

‘Who put that bug in our room?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It could’ve been a number of people.’

‘How long have you known it was there?’

‘Since yesterday.’

The waitress came back. An older woman with thinning blond hair.

‘More coffee?’

He turned to Anne and she shook her head.

‘Just the check, please,’ Daniel said.

The waitress gave Anne a look, then turned and headed for the register.

‘I want you to come with me, Anne. Try it out. If it doesn’t work, if there’s anything at all you don’t like, I’ll bring you back here immediately. No questions, no hesitations.’

‘You can’t be serious, Daniel. Three weeks together, and you expect me to become a pirate? A criminal?’

‘I’m very serious. I’ve never been more serious.’

One of Daniel’s crew had come down the dock and was standing near the patio railing. Daniel looked over and the man touched a finger to his watch.

Anne watched the family at the nearby table. The mother was feeding the toddler from a jar, the father reading a newspaper.

Anne Bonny Joy had never needed any man. She’d worked hard to assemble her world, her routine, every austere second under her control. That feeling in her gut was real, yes, this new hum resonating in her bones, but if she waited long enough, the rumble would pass. She knew it would.

‘It’s okay,’ Daniel said. ‘I can understand your caution.’

Anne Bonny swung back to him. Her pulse was roaring.

‘You’re not going to say you love me, fall on your knees, plead?’

‘Would it make any difference?’

‘Hell, no,’ she said.

‘You already know I love you.’

Anne knew it all right. For whatever it was worth.

‘If it doesn’t work for you, I’ll give up the life,’ Daniel said. ‘Take a job.’

‘Oh, yeah. Go straight. Sure, Daniel.’

‘If that’s what it takes for us to be together,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.’

‘You should’ve warned me, prepared me a little. You throw me into this cold. Men waiting out on the dock. The boat running. What did you expect?’

‘I had hoped we would have more time. I could tell you in a more relaxed way.’

‘And why didn’t you?’

‘The device in our room.’

‘What? The law’s closing in. We’re about to be arrested?’

‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe we have the luxury of time.’

‘But you bring your boat right here. You’re not worried?’

‘The boat’s clean. If they had enough to arrest me, it would’ve happened by now.’

‘You couldn’t work nine to five, Daniel. You’d hate it. And before long you’d start resenting the hell out of me for forcing you into it, and oh boy, what fun we’d have then.’

‘People change,’ Daniel said. ‘I know I could do it, Anne. If that’s what you truly want.’

Daniel’s eyes were quiet and exposed, nothing shifty, no attempt to turn up the volume, radiate charm. Glossy blue with those calm depths. At ease in his skin. In their weeks together he had shown her nothing but a steadfast courtesy, a gentility approaching shyness. Just that one flare-up of jealousy about Thorn. Even when both of them were dizzy with lust, Daniel was still reserved, dignified. An honorable man, an outlaw.

Then again, she had little trust in her judgment. Bad training, corrupted genes, a flawed vision. Long ago she’d banished herself to solitary confinement, lived out the sentence she believed was her due.

She watched the waitress returning to the table carrying the check in a padded leather folder. The woman was in her sixties. She wore no rings, and the creases in her face hadn’t come from smiling. She padded toward them carefully, as if walking a tightwire of exhaustion.

At the nearby table the toddler flung his plastic drinking cup in the air, and it rolled across the patio. Daniel pushed back his chair and went over and retrieved the cup and took it back to the young family. The father set the newspaper aside and nodded his thanks. Daniel said a few words to the couple, and they laughed, then he returned to the table.

‘I’ll take that when you’re ready,’ the waitress said.

‘We’re ready now.’ Daniel counted out the bills, leaving her a tip that would have been sufficient for a dinner of twelve. The waitress stared at the cash and Daniel said, ‘Thank you for taking such good care of us.’

The woman gave Anne another look, then left.

‘I barely know you,’ Anne said.

‘You know more about me than anyone has ever known. This isn’t easy for me, either, Anne. But it’s right. I know that much. It’s real.’

‘And I’m supposed to step aboard that ship and just go riding off? Leave everything behind.’

Anne watched the waitress refilling saltshakers.

‘If you don’t feel the same way I’m feeling, Anne, you should stay here. I’ll respect your decision either way.’

The man from Daniel’s crew came onto the patio and walked over to the table. He had a narrow face and an olive complexion and was wearing a white shirt and khakis and his sunglasses hung from a leather strap around his neck. He carried what looked like a small radio. He nodded at Anne.

‘Weather’s deteriorating in the straits,’ he said. ‘We got maybe till tonight before things kick up out there. It’ll be rough after that.’

‘Thanks, Sal. I’ll be there in a second.’

Sal nodded again at Anne and left.

‘This has been wonderful,’ Daniel said. He took her hand again. ‘Like nothing I’ve ever known.’

‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Don’t give me some goddamn good-bye.’

She turned her eyes from his and watched the waves shatter against the beach. A musky, sexual scent rode the briny mist that drifted to the patio. Seaweed, crabs, barnacles exposed to the sun – as if the surface of the ocean had been peeled back to divulge all the sensory richness below.

The truth was, Anne had felt an axis shift inside her. It happened days ago. Maybe it had even begun to tilt that first moment she’d seen Daniel at the Lorelei. She’d been denying it. Pretending he was simply another man she’d admitted to her bed. But that was a lie. He’d changed her, awakened appetites and aspirations she’d stifled until now. A dangerous man. A pirate.

‘All right, goddamn it.’ Anne Bonny heard the words rise from her throat unbidden. A voice more certain than her own. ‘But let’s get one thing absolutely straight, Mr Buccaneer.’

‘Yes?’ Daniel said.

She reached out for his hand and gripped it hard.

‘I won’t be some goddamn scullery maid for a bunch of scurvy dogs.’

Daniel’s mouth relaxed into a smile. And the sun was never brighter.

‘Marbled godwit,’ Janey said.

‘Where?’ Sugarman lifted his binoculars.

‘Eleven o’clock, two hundred yards.’

Sugar swung to the left and caught only a flash of the bird. The godwit made a wide arc to the west to avoid some tourist strapped into a parasail.

‘Yeah, yeah. Good eyes, Janey. Good eyes. Or was that a curlew?’

‘It’s a godwit, Daddy. The bill’s too straight for a curlew.’

Janey trained her binoculars on a platoon of pelicans skimming a foot above the leaden surface of Blackwater Sound. It was the first weekend in March, another blast of cold air pushing through, chopping up the water, tossing the palms, a spritz of chilly rain now and then from the blue-black clouds sailing past. Thorn was upstairs with Alexandra making lunch while Lawton snoozed in the hammock that was strung up between two coconut palms.

At the picnic table on the upstairs porch, Jackie had her chin propped on her fists. She was fuming again. She’d wanted to go back to the Lorelei to hear that reggae band they’d listened to three weeks ago. Sugarman said no. Uncle Thorn had invited them to lunch and he’d gone to a lot of trouble. Just yesterday he’d traded a few dozen of his custom bonefish flies with one of his regular customers for ten pounds of stone crabs and a bucket of fresh shrimp.

Jackie said she hated stone crabs and she was pretty sure she hated shrimp, too. Before it escalated further, Alexandra said she’d run down to the Upper Crust for a double cheese and pepperoni twelve-incher. But nothing would appease Jackie. She had inherited a heavy dose of her mother’s pissy tendencies. Me first and last and always. Sugarman tried to treat the twins evenhandedly, but at times like this it was rough. Jackie was just so damn frustrating, coasting along fine one minute, in a full-blown snit the next.

Beside Sugarman at the end of Thorn’s dock, Janey sat with binoculars pressed to her eyes. For the last half hour she and Sugar had been scanning the overcast sky, the rocky shoreline, and the snarl of woods that edged both sides of Thorn’s property, spotting birds, racing to see who could ID them first.

As usual, Janey was way ahead. On the drive down the eighteen-mile stretch from the mainland into the Keys, she’d already collected five roseate spoonbills, a dozen white pelicans, uncountable egrets and herons, and five kingfishers on the telephone wires. Since they’d been at Thorn’s she’d spotted another kingfisher, two warblers, a red-shouldered hawk, and an osprey. Suspended about a half-mile overhead, there was a single frigate bird holding its place in the currents with small tips of its wings. So far Janey had missed the frigate bird, but Sugarman was confident she’d notice it soon enough.

While she combed the darkening sky, Sugar set aside his binoculars and began to thumb through The Sibley Guide to Birds. He wanted to have the Latin name ready when she finally noticed the frigate bird. A juicy factoid would be nice, too. Lately, Janey had been sponging up the names of birds and bugs and reptiles so fast, Sugar had started to worry he was slipping in his parental duties. Each week before their visitation, he’d been doing homework – an hour or two poring over Sibley or one of the Audubon field guides he’d been collecting. From a lifetime in the Keys he already had a pretty good command of shore-birds and waders, and he was good on the diurnal raptors. The anhinga, boobies, cormorants, and the rest of the pelecaniformes he knew. He was weak on small sandpipers, but the tourist birds were what really threw him. The Keys were a north-south highway for a variety of the migratory species, some pretty exotic specimens flittering past all through the winter and spring. Purple martins, swallow-tailed kites, parrots, shrikes and vireos, wrens and finches and sparrows. It’d take him two more lifetimes to keep all those sparrows straight.

‘Over there by those ferns,’ Sugar said. ‘What’s that bobbing its tail?’

She swung her binoculars around and found the bird.

‘Oh, you know what that is, Daddy. It’s a palm warbler. They’re always in the dirt, hardly ever in tree branches.’ She panned the binoculars slowly back and forth across the dense foliage. ‘Did I tell you about the tufted titmouse?’

‘The one in Orlando?’ Sugar said.

‘At Disney World. It was sitting in a bush shaped like a brontosaurus. Its call is real loud. Peter-peter-peter. Tufted titmouses are rare down here in the Keys, huh?’

‘Yeah, you hardly ever see them this far south,’ Sugar said. ‘But I think the plural is titmice.’

‘Look at that, Daddy. Up there.’ Janey had her binoculars tilted up.

Sugarman was ready for her.

‘Fregata magnificens,’ he said. ‘The frigate has the longest wings relative to its weight of any bird there is. Steals food from other birds, a pirate.’

‘Not the frigate bird,’ Janey said. ‘That man in the kite.’

‘Is that damn flasher back again?’ Thorn had come out on the dock behind them with a plate of crackers and smoked fish spread. ‘Close your eyes, Janey. This guy is gross.’

‘He’s taking pictures of us,’ Janey said. ‘Look.’

She raised her binoculars and handed them to Thorn.

It took him a few seconds to locate the big blue parasail against that dark sky and then tilt down to see the guy strapped into the sling below it. He wore a black tank top and white shorts and a red bandanna on his head. He was holding a camera, clicking away.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said Thorn. ‘That who I think it is?’

Sugarman tightened his focus.

‘Maybe he thinks I’m still dating his sister.’

‘I’d heard about this,’ Sugarman said. ‘The guy’s been working up and down the coast taking pictures. Three or four people told me about it, but I didn’t believe it.’

‘Who is it?’ Janey said.

‘A bad man,’ said Thorn. ‘A crook.’

Sugarman said, ‘His name is Vic Joy, honey.’

The boat that was hauling the parasail made a slow turn away from shore, circling out to deeper waters.

‘What makes him so bad?’

‘Probably his past,’ Thorn said. ‘Things that happened to him when he was a kid.’

‘No,’ Janey said. ‘What does he do that’s so bad?’

‘He takes advantage of people, sweetheart,’ Sugar said. ‘He doesn’t play fair. He tries to get what he wants no matter who it hurts.’

Janey stared out at the bay for a moment, filing away this new fact. The water was glazed with silver like cooling lava. The shifting scent of the cold front rode the breeze, mingling its rough blend of fall leaves, wood smoke, and the sweet burn of fresh-cut pine with the sulfur and saffron of the resident tropical air mass.

Janey lifted her binoculars and swung them to the right. So much for bad men – now back to work.

‘Yellow-crowned night heron, Daddy. Look, three o’clock.’

3

It was Monday morning after another raucous weekend with Sugar’s kids. A day of bird-watching and hide-and-go-seek. Lawton was pretty funny, doing a stiff-legged Frankenstein walk, arms outstretched, eyes squinty, as he searched for the squealing girls, who hid behind bushes and in closets. At dinner Jackie nibbled at her pizza while the rest of them scarfed stone crabs and shrimp.

After Alexandra left for work and Lawton climbed into his hammock with a stack of fishing magazines, Thorn tied on his carpenter’s apron, filled the pockets with nails, and dug into his latest project. He’d been working on it for the last month and had almost finished the framing, raiding the tall stack of milled hardwood planks that had been lying on the gravel beneath his stilt house for years. They were leftovers from the time when he’d had to rebuild the place entirely, and now he’d decided those old boards would work perfectly for enclosing the downstairs area – the open space between the eight telephone poles that held his house fifteen feet above the ground.

It was to be a room for Lawton, granting all of them a measure of privacy they hadn’t known since Alex and her dad moved in. For the last few months Lawton had been sleeping on a cot in Thorn’s living room, a mere ten feet away from where he and Alexandra shared a bed. Thorn had told the two of them that he was building a workshop, wanting to keep the real intention secret until the room had actually taken decent shape.

At Thorn’s current rate, he figured Lawton’s room would take another month to finish. By then he was fairly certain he’d know if it was safe to tell Alexandra the true purpose of the space. The reason he’d shied away from confessing it already was that he didn’t want to scare her off. It seemed so permanent, such a pivotal step. A room for Lawton. An unmistakable display of the growing bond he felt toward the old man and his beautiful daughter.

At noon he’d finally finished the framing. To celebrate he decided to take Lawton on the skiff, go out past Crocodile Dragover to McCormick Creek, check some snook holes he knew. Do some damage to the fish population.

So he showered, put on fresh shorts and a white T-shirt, and carried his spinning rods and tackle box down to the skiff. Out at the end of his dock, he heard the grinding roar, a noise he’d become all too familiar with lately. Two properties to the north a bulldozer was leveling the Island House. For fifty years the small motel with a half-dozen quaint bungalows had been at that location. He’d heard Doug and Debbie Johnson had sold out but assumed the new owner would keep it intact as all the previous owners had for half a century.

Thorn stood at the end of his dock and watched the big machine uproot an old gumbo-limbo, then flatten a stand of wispy Australian pines, mowing down those shallow-rooted trees that took decades to reach those heights. That rocky shore and the rickety motel had been in his peripheral vision for so many hours and so many years that now, with the coastline so suddenly altered, he was feeling a whirl of vertigo.

When the land clearing was done, Thorn’s neighborhood was probably going to be getting another of those ten-thousand-square-foot get-away-for-the-weekend mansions. A million-dollar party house owned by a Miami heart surgeon or a pitcher for the Florida Marlins – with a half-dozen Jet Skis and a flashy red speedboat at the dock. Progress.

Back on the shoreline Lawton was standing in water to his ankles with fishing line tangled around both arms. In the stiff breeze, his casting practice had been going badly.

In a couple of hours Alexandra would be home and they’d open a bottle of wine and hold hands while they watched the last trickle of the daylight drain from the sky. If she was in the mood, she’d tell him about one of her cases that day. Keeping it light but still managing to give him a glimpse of the brutalities that were commonplace in her daytime world. He’d recount his time with Lawton, things the old man had said or done. And she would listen without comment, her eyes on the distance. After these few months, their routine felt solid and reliable. Thorn, his lover, and his lover’s father, an odd little family but a family nonetheless. For someone who’d spent most of his life working hard to stay isolated, it was startling to discover how much satisfaction he found in the constant presence of that old man and his strong-willed, beautiful daughter.

Thorn smiled at Lawton’s struggle with the fly line and headed over to give him a hand – glad to have some reason to pull away from the bulldozer’s dismal work. He was halfway down the dock when the car pulled off the Overseas Highway and began to inch down Thorn’s gravel drive. A dark blue Crown Victoria.

The car parked in the shade near his house and the man who got out from behind the wheel was squat and square-faced, with a paunch stressing the buttons on his blue madras shirt. Despite his stumpy legs, the man advanced on Thorn with a cocky stride. His head was shaved and gleaming and his beard ran in a narrow, precise band along the outlines of his jaws and chin. He had on jeans and boat shoes, but both looked as if they’d been purchased an hour earlier and hadn’t yet been broken in. This seemed to be a man for whom casual dress did not come easy.

‘Thorn,’ he said as he came across the yard.

Lawton was swiping at the wispy fishing line as if trying to pluck a spiderweb from his skin.

‘You okay, Lawton?’

‘Fine, fine,’ the old man said. ‘I’ve caught a monster this time. Me.’

The stranger held out his hand, and after a moment’s reluctance Thorn shook it.

‘Do I know you?’

‘You should,’ the man said. ‘Mind if we stand in the shade?’

Thorn followed the man over to the shadows of the tamarind tree.

‘Jimmy Lee Webster,’ the man said.

‘Listen,’ Thorn said. ‘I don’t mean to be impolite, but—’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Webster said. ‘You’re busy tying flies, or whatever it is you do with your free time.’ He flashed Thorn a one-second smile, then said, ‘Which seems to be most of your day. And a lot of your night.’

The man produced that miserable smile again, like something he’d acquired from a second-rate drama coach.

‘You might’ve seen me on TV,’ Webster said.

‘If I had one.’

‘Or in the newspaper.’

Thorn shook his head.

‘Jimmy Lee Webster.’

‘I heard you the first time.’

‘Really? Not even the faint tinkle of a little bell?’

‘What’re you, a TV star?’

‘Secretary Webster.’

‘Oh, okay. You’re the guy that answers the phone, takes dictation.’

‘Yeah, I was warned,’ Webster said, ‘what a smart-ass you are.’

‘Fair enough,’ Thorn said. ‘But I still don’t know you, Webster.’

‘I was Secretary of the Navy, last administration.’

Lawton had dropped down in the grass and was peeling the knotted strands of line off his legs and sandals. He noticed Thorn looking at him and showed him his palms. Didn’t need any help, doing just fine.

‘I know,’ Webster said. ‘Looking at me, it’s hard to believe. Don’t exactly have a military bearing. Not the tall, top-gun prototype. But fortunately, advancement in the armed services isn’t based on appearance.’

‘Well, congratulations,’ Thorn said. ‘Your parents must be very proud.’

‘Reason I was on TV is because I was controversial,’ Webster said. ‘I butted heads with the big boys, but I held my own. Damn well got some things accomplished in those four years.’

A shift in the breeze sent Webster’s aftershave Thorn’s way. An abrasive blend of wood smoke and motor oil.

‘Look,’ Webster said. ‘You don’t know me, but I know a little about you. You’re a loner. You don’t like strangers wandering up to your house. Hey, who does? I can appreciate that. And the fact that I was Secretary of the Navy doesn’t cut any ice with you, okay, that’s fine, too.’

Jimmy Lee Webster drew a white handkerchief from his jeans pocket and dabbed the sweat off his face, then did a quick swipe across his dome.

‘I don’t know how you folks put up with this heat.’

‘There’s not a lot to do about it.’

‘Okay, here it is,’ Webster said. He spread his legs apart and reset his feet as if he were about to snatch Thorn by the lapels and body-slam him. He produced his fake smile again and said, ‘My style is to go for the throat. That way we don’t waste any more of your valuable fly-tying time. So here’s what’s going on. Your name came up in an investigation I’m running. And I decided I should come have a chat.’

‘Whoa,’ Thorn said. ‘Stop right there.’

‘Look, I can explain the whole enchilada to you out here in the sun. Or we can go upstairs, have a beer, discuss it in detail in the air-conditioning.’

‘Only air-conditioning I have is what you feel right now.’

Lawton had extricated himself from the fishing line, and it lay in a nasty tangle near the dock. He dusted off his hands as if he’d just knocked a bully flat, and marched over to join them in the shade of the tamarind.

‘Okay, then,’ Webster said. ‘I understand you had a hot and heavy fling with Anne Bonny Joy.’

Lawton settled in between Jimmy Webster and Thorn. Leaning forward, giving Webster a good going-over.

‘You’re that navy guy,’ Lawton said. ‘From TV. You sunk that ship.’

Webster smiled at Thorn. See, somebody recognized him.

‘That particular fling you’re referring to,’ Thorn said, ‘was over a long time ago.’

‘That’s not how I heard it. I heard there was still considerable heat there. Some sparks.’

Thorn took a calming breath, glanced out at the water, then turned his eyes back to Webster.

‘Look, Mr Secretary—’

‘Not anymore,’ Webster said. ‘I’m out of the cabinet these days. Still got one foot in government, but I’m in other areas. A bit more low-profile.’

‘Clandestine,’ Lawton said. ‘Covert operations.’

Jimmy Lee looked at Lawton.

‘This your father?’ Webster said.

‘Practically.’

‘You came to the right place, Webster,’ Lawton said, ‘because it just so happens I did a bit of undercover work myself at one time. Miami PD. Several high-profile sting operations. Stolen merchandise, cocaine. So I know how it’s done. We took down some pretty rotten apples.’

Jimmy Lee nodded uncertainly at the old man.

‘Forget about Thorn,’ Lawton said. ‘He’s the shy, retiring type. The guy you want to talk to is standing right here.’

Thorn rested a hand on Webster’s shoulder and eased him firmly toward his car.

‘I just want to pick your brain about Anne Joy.’

‘You already picked it clean, partner. Time you hit the highway.’

‘You didn’t even ask him what he wanted?’ Alex said. Lawton was stretched out in his cot, the full moon had risen above the trees, and Blackwater Sound was frosted with gold.

‘I ushered him to his car and sent him on his way.’

‘Jeez, Thorn. Jimmy Lee Webster.’

‘Big shot, huh?’

‘Was for a while.’

‘He claimed he was controversial.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Alex said. ‘He’s the guy who gave the go-ahead for a navy destroyer to fire on some commercial ship in Malaysia, somewhere over there.’

‘Why?’

‘Something about pirates. Problem was, he got the wrong boat. Bad intelligence. I forget the details. Bunch of civilians got killed, ship sank. That’s how I remember it. Major international incident. A lot of saber rattling afterward. There was a Senate hearing on TV for a week or two. Haven’t heard much about him lately.’

‘Pirates?’

‘I think what it was, navy intelligence thought an American oil tanker had been taken over by thugs and they were sailing off somewhere after murdering the crew. They had that part right. There was an oil tanker that got pirated; our folks just got the wrong ship. A US destroyer tried to get this other tanker to stop; when they didn’t respond, our guys opened fire. A dozen men killed, that’s what I recall. Maybe more. Big oil spill.’

‘Well, he’s doing something else now. CIA maybe. Who knows?’

Alex leaned against his shoulder. They were standing at the rail looking out at the darkness.

‘Your name came up?’

‘That’s what he said.’

Thorn considered for a half-second telling her about the Anne Joy connection but decided to pass. No need to stir that up again.

‘It might’ve been interesting just to hear his pitch.’

‘No way. I’m on vacation.’

‘Oh, yeah? For how long?’

‘Rest of my natural life.’

‘Well, that’s fine. But me, I’d want to know what the deal was.’

‘Whatever it was, I’ve got my hands full already,’ Thorn said, nudging her hip with his. ‘My cup is overflowing.’

‘Hey, I know what it was,’ Alexandra said. ‘Your name came up in an investigation of international Lotharios.’

‘Funny,’ he said. ‘Hilarious.’

He poked his elbow lightly in her ribs.

‘They wanted to know what makes you so irresistible to women. Start distilling it. Put it in bottles, lob it at the enemy. A weapon of mass seduction.’

Thorn laughed. He lifted his glass and clinked it to hers and had another sip of wine. She gave his cheek a peck, then drew away and looked back at the dark view.

‘Irresistible?’ he said. ‘How irresistible?’

‘Mesmerizing.’ Alexandra finished the last swallow of her cabernet and set the glass on the table behind them. ‘An overpowering magnetism.’

In the thick mangroves that bordered his land, a bird keened. A warning screech or maybe a late-night mating call. He wasn’t sure what kind of bird it was. Didn’t sound like an osprey or the red-shouldered hawk, not the screech owl, either. Sugarman or Janey would know.

‘Well, it’s nice to know,’ Thorn said, ‘I’m such hot shit.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You are. You most certainly are.’

She laced her fingers in his and drew him away from the water a quarter-turn and into her strong arms. And there he stayed until they were breathless and dizzy with their mutual heat. Then she stepped out of his embrace, took his hand, and led him quietly past Lawton’s cot into the bedroom they shared.

4

For the next few weeks, Anne Bonny lived the life she’d been named for. They didn’t roam the open seas with a lookout clinging high to the mast, peering through a spyglass, searching for a ship to take. Daniel’s operation used a simple scheme that relied on the shipping industry’s antipirate tracking system, FROM. Fleet Remote Monitoring units were installed aboard security-conscious transport ships and relayed an automated signal six times a day that informed corporate headquarters of their ships’ exact position, speed, and direction. A seagoing LoJack. The system was designed to give the owners an early warning if one of their ships made a drastic change in course and allowed them to track it once it left its charted route and send assistance.

Sal Gardino, Daniel’s young computer guy, had penetrated the system’s security firewall – a worm, a backdoor; Anne Bonny could never keep the hacker jargon straight. But now with a few minutes of work on his laptop, Daniel could enter the site and prowl through the code to determine the exact positions of thousands of different vessels at sea. Freighters, tankers, container ships. Maersk, Hanjin, TransAsia, Global Transport, the entire fleets of dozens of shipping companies were open books to him. Daniel relished the irony of it, using their system against them.

They stayed at sea for four weeks straight. Two boats. The sleek forty-five-foot Hatteras sportfishing yacht that had picked them up from the Cheeca Lodge. High-performance diesels below its decks. Anne and Daniel, Sal and Marty lived aboard that one. And the Nicaraguans and the rest of the crew manned a second vessel, a shrimp trawler that had been outfitted with enough horsepower to stay up with the Hatteras. Both boats were equipped with seven-man inflatables powered by four-stroke Yamahas. These they used as boarding craft. While they were under way, they kept a two- or three-mile cushion between the two boats, moving from location to location through the West Indies, off the South American coast, and through the islands. The Hatteras carried a cache of automatic weapons, the satellite communications system, and the computer that Sal used to crack the FROM site.

With all that shipping data arrayed before them, selecting a new target was a little like going to the track. You studied the program, checked the stats, figured the odds, one ship against another based on what else was racing that day, considered the value of the cargo, the difficulty of disposing of it, and above all you didn’t bet more than you could afford to lose.

Early in April, after hitting four ships in as many weeks, they bivouacked at the Gray Ghost Lodge, a fishing camp Daniel owned. Thirty acres in the Barra de Colorado, on the Costa Rican – Nicaraguan border.

Ten primitive wood cabins, a small dining hall, a marina big enough for half a dozen open fishing boats. Daniel stored his Donzi there, the Black Swan, that playboy speedboat he’d used so successfully to court Anne Bonny.

The fishing camp was bordered on the west and south by dense rain forest, a roadless nature preserve that was well off the tourist track. To the north and east were a labyrinth of estuaries and lagoons and a system of shallow, nearly impenetrable bays that led to the Caribbean Sea.

Partly for appearances, partly for his own amusement, Daniel kept the fishing lodge open during the winter season, hiring guides, cooks, and service help, operating it as a legit business. From November to February, rich anglers paid five hundred dollars a day to stay in the shacks and fish with guides for the giant bonefish and tarpon that streaked across the sand flats.

But in the sweltering spring and summer months, when the rains began and most of the bonefish and silver kings migrated away, Daniel shut down the business and used the lodge off and on for regrouping, making repairs to vessels and weapons, for a little rum and relaxation by the tropical lagoon.

Not far from the Gray Ghost Lodge, hundreds of ships a day passed within striking distance of the coastline. Even with all those easy targets near at hand, it had been Daniel’s custom to lie low when they were based at the lodge. No reason to draw attention to that particular region when there were countless square miles of unpatrolled ocean available. They tried, when possible, to work in international waters. Between the never-ending hunt for terrorists and dope smugglers, the US Coast Guard was spread impossibly thin throughout their own territorial waters, which left much of the rest of the hemisphere relatively free of naval law enforcement.

With his satellite phone and laptop computer Daniel could turn virtually any location into a command and control station – staying in constant contact with his people in Taipei and Rio, Montevideo and Jakarta, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Anchorage. The same network he’d constructed years before when he worked for his father, trafficking in hash and cocaine, now helped Daniel dispose of even the most exotic cargo.

In those few weeks Anne had adjusted to the routine, the guns, the constant movement, the controlled thrill of boarding ships. Whatever daytime doubts Anne developed were wiped away by the long nights with Daniel. His measured calm, his certainty. Not the dashing, risk-taking swashbuckler her mother had dreamed of, but a man on a simple mission – to pile up as much cash as quickly as he could with the smallest possible risk.

‘Some pirates we are,’ she said one night at the fishing lodge. ‘A whole month and we’ve not slit a single throat.’

‘I like to think of myself as an entrepreneur. An adventure capitalist.’

‘That’s a good one.’

‘We’re simply skimming a little of the obscene corporate profits and letting the insurance conglomerates cover the shipping company losses. The daisy chain of high finance kicks in. The big boys passing around the big bucks.’

‘You’ve got it all rationalized.’

‘I have my morals,’ Daniel said.

‘Most entrepreneurs don’t use automatic weapons.’

‘They’re just props,’ Daniel said. ‘Have we fired one shot?’

‘But they’re loaded,’ Anne said. ‘Guns have a way of going off.’

‘Are you having trouble with this, Anne? You want to go home, back to a safe routine? Say the word, I’ll take you back.’

‘It’s just the guns,’ she said. ‘I told you about my parents. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, what can happen.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But this is different. Your dad was skimming from redneck dopers. This is the other end of the spectrum.’

‘The sophisticated end,’ Anne said.

‘The safe end,’ said Daniel. ‘The smart end.’

When Daniel hit a target, they usually outnumbered the crew, storming the ship in the dark, half from port, half from starboard, taking the bridge first, subduing the captain. Screaming, threatening, bashing defiant crew members with the butts of the Mac-10s, the AK-47s. In those four weeks they’d clubbed a few to their knees, left some heroes bleeding and broken, but nothing worse. Since she’d joined Daniel and his men, they’d taken everything from eighty thousand gallons of flaxseed oil to fourteen hundred new Toyota ATVs and a container ship full of refrigerators and microwaves, and in all that time they’d not fired a shot. The ships were never armed; the men were sailors, not fighters. Not a single chase at sea, not even a close call.

Once they disabled the FROM, they handed off the ship, then one of Daniel’s Latin American accomplices piloted the vessel to a friendly port in Colombia or Venezuela, where the goods were unloaded. What happened to the vessel after that was up to his business partners. Sometimes they simply walked away from the unloaded vessel after pocketing their profit. Other times they turned the stolen craft into a phantom ship. Repainted and reflagged it, picked up another load from a legitimate shipping company, sailed away, and promptly docked at a nearby port where they unloaded the goods. Two loads with one ship.

But Daniel wanted no stake in all that. Hit and run, that was his game. Skim the cream, leave the awkward problem of disposing of the cargo and the ships to others. Even with the camouflage of new papers and new paint, phantom ships were relatively easy targets for the Coast Guard or foreign navy patrols. For Daniel it simply wasn’t worth the risk of being caught aboard a stolen transport ship just to pilfer one bonus load of olive oil.

It was during the first week in April while their group relaxed at the Gray Ghost Lodge that one afternoon Daniel handed Anne Bonny the latest stack of FROM printouts. In the next two weeks there were fifty-seven ships on their way toward the Caribbean Sea, most of them passing within a hundred miles of their location.

‘It’s time you chose,’ he said. ‘You know what we’re looking for.’

‘I thought we didn’t hit ships in this part of the Gulf?’

‘Just this once,’ he said. ‘It couldn’t hurt.’

‘Well, I’m not ready to pick the ship.’

‘Oh, you’re ready.’

Daniel had already shown her the access codes to break into the FROM site, made her practice the steps till she could slip inside in less than ten minutes. Treating her with respect, a business partner on equal footing with him, not simply his lover. So Anne took the stack of papers and went out to the tiki hut beside the lagoon and for an hour she studied the printouts.

‘The Rainmaker,’ she told Daniel later in their cabin.

‘And why that one?’

‘I liked the name.’

Sal Gardino and Marty Messina looked on in silence.

‘You like the name. Oh, come on, Anne. Be serious.’

‘Four or five of these meet our conditions,’ she said. ‘Cargo’s roughly equivalent in value, all headed through the Yucatán Channel to New Orleans or Galveston, an easy shot from here, all with about the same number of crew, so everything being equal, I picked a name I liked. The Rainmaker, like some old Indian chief chanting for the skies to open up. The end of a long drought.’

Sal Gardino smiled, but Marty Messina, who’d been standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, grimaced and stalked away.

Marty was a beefy man in his late thirties who only a few months before had been released from prison after serving a six-year term for running drugs for Daniel. Before Marty went to trial, the DEA offered him full immunity, witness protection, a lifetime pension, if he’d inform on the Salbones. But he hung tough, served his time, and came home to Miami expecting, by God, to be Daniel’s chief lieutenant, a role Anne was already filling.

From their first meeting, when he realized the situation, Marty was bitterly polite, all smiles, ‘yes, ma’am, no, ma’am,’ but he was a lousy actor. He damn well wanted to claim his rightful place. To appease Marty, Daniel had assigned Messina the role of maintaining their foreign contacts and cultivating new ones. Though it was a crucial part of the operation, Marty didn’t seem particularly satisfied.

Daniel studied the data on the Rainmaker, humming to himself.

‘She’s a quick study,’ said Sal.

‘Crude oil,’ Daniel said. ‘We’ll have to find a buyer right away.’

‘Guy in Buenos Aires,’ said Sal. ‘With the new refinery. Or the Texan.’

‘You want to make the call, Anne? Negotiate the numbers?’

‘That’s Marty’s job.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell Marty, have him look around, see who’s thirsty. We’ll have to off-load at sea.’

‘Still, it should be easier to get rid of than that damn flaxseed oil.’

He paged through the printouts a moment more, then smiled at her.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘That’s the one. Excellent choice, Anne. The Rainmaker. Now, you know how it’s done. If something ever happens to me.’

Daniel smiled, but there was a shadow lurking in the depths of his blue eyes as if he’d sensed already what no one else had, the gleaming missile on its downward arc.

‘Oh, come on,’ Anne said. ‘This is safer than waitressing. Restaurant work, there’s a truly perilous career. Never know what dangerous characters you’re going to run across.’

Sal Gardino stood up, nodded his approval, and left.

‘One more year,’ Daniel said when Sal was gone. ‘Six months if we’re lucky. Then we call it a day.’

‘You’re worried about something?’

‘Not worried, no. It’s just that my perspective on risk and danger has changed lately. Having someone I care about.’

‘If you’re really worried, we could stop now.’

‘Do you want that, Anne?’

‘What do you want?’

He looked at her for a moment, then turned back to the stack of papers.

‘Six more months, we’ll never have to dirty our hands again.’

‘And then?’

‘And then we can retire to this lovely spot.’

‘Live in the jungle.’

‘Build your dream house, a tropical bungalow, whatever you want. It’s perfect here. Wild parrots, fantastic fishing. Like the Keys, only more pristine. Not to mention excellent tax advantages.’

‘Live here and do what?’

‘You know what.’

‘I want to hear you say it.’

‘All right,’ Daniel said. ‘Raise our children in the Garden of Eden, start over, get it right.’

‘Keep them isolated? No cartoons, no computer games.’

‘We’d be great parents,’ he said.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because we love each other.’

‘That’s all it takes?’

‘It’s a damn good start,’ he said.

For the next ten days, they followed the ship’s progress on the laptop.

After taking on 840,000 barrels of North Slope crude, the Rainmaker departed from Berth 5 of the Alyeska Marine Terminal across the bay from Valdez, Alaska, on a blustery afternoon. All eleven of the Rainmaker’s tanks were full and she rode low and slow in the heavy seas of the northern Pacific. The ship was owned by TransOcean Shipping Lines, an American corporation based in San Francisco, although for tax purposes the Rainmaker was registered in Panama and flew the Panamanian flag of convenience. For the first few hundred miles the ship was battered by gales. She took eight days to steam down the coast of California and around the Baja Peninsula and across the eastern Pacific to the Panama Canal. For their purposes, the canal was an ideal choke point, funneling a huge percentage of the hemisphere’s traffic through a narrow band of sea.

When the tanker passed through the Miraflores Lock on the Pacific side at four-thirty in the afternoon, the ship’s image was captured by a Web camera and a few seconds later the image was broadcast on the Internet Web site operated by the Panama Canal Authority. The Web camera was updated every few seconds and showed the constant stream of ships through the first Pacific lock. Sal monitored the Web site to double-check the data coming from the FROM system.

‘Headed our way,’ Sal said. ‘Right on schedule.’

With Anne looking over his shoulder, Sal sat at their tiny desk and tapped out the code to slip into the FROM. From this point on, they’d camp inside the Web site for the moment-by-moment updates on the ship’s position.

‘Shit,’ Sal said. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

Daniel set aside the Mac-10 he was cleaning and came over.

‘What?’

‘There’s a lag,’ Sal said. ‘Look.’

Anne and Daniel leaned close to the computer. The stream of data that had always flowed smoothly across the screen, updated every two or three seconds, had slowed to a crawl.

‘What is that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sal said. ‘But it’s not right.’

‘Have they fingered us? They know we’re inside?’

‘Could be the satellite. Some kind of weather interference. But it’s never been this slow.’

As they watched, the screen blinked as if the laptop were losing power; then the stream of numbers and coded letters resumed its normal flow.

Daniel stepped back.

‘A hiccup in the transmission,’ Daniel said. ‘Nothing to worry about. A thunderstorm over the Pacific. Lightning in Guam. No big deal.’

‘Yeah,’ Sal said. ‘Could be.’

Anne said, ‘They could do that, know we’re watching? Figure our location?’

‘If they had reason to be suspicious, yeah, top security people might be able to discover we’ve hacked the site,’ Sal said. ‘But track us back here? Not unless they’ve got the Pentagon in on it, a supercomputer doing the work. Not some piddling corporate security system. Or it could be the mercs.’

Daniel shook his head at Sal, but Anne said, ‘Mercs? What’s that?’

Turning away from her, Daniel said, ‘Mercenaries. Hired guns.’

‘First I’ve heard of that,’ she said.

‘There’ve been a couple of cases,’ said Daniel. ‘Both times in the China Sea. A gang of ex-soldiers hired by the shipping companies.’

‘And what? They arrested some pirates?’

‘Took them out is more like it,’ Sal said.

‘Took them out? Murdered them?’

Daniel flashed a look at Sal and said to Anne, ‘The details are sketchy.’

‘But they’re out there,’ Anne said. ‘And that’s who this is?’

‘It’s the weather,’ Sal said. ‘Just some damn lightning storm.’

They watched for a while longer as the data scrolled at a steady pace.

Daniel tapped Sal on the shoulder and asked him to step outside. Sal rose, took another look at the screen, then shrugged and left. Daniel shut the door behind him.

‘Anne,’ he said. ‘I think you should stay ashore for this one.’

His eyes showed her nothing. A depthless smile.

‘What? You’re having a premonition? This computer thing?’

‘Just do me this favor, one time. Okay?’

‘We don’t need to hit it at all,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing special about this one. Something doesn’t feel right, let’s bail.’

Daniel came over to her and put his hands on her shoulders.

‘You won’t do this for me? Just this once. Stay home.’

‘What’s going on? You’re phasing me out? I’m supposed to start training to be the happy homemaker?’

He drew his hands away as if they’d been stung. She hadn’t meant to lash out like that. But she couldn’t bring herself to apologize. He had a different look. Unsure, lost. It unnerved her, seeing him like that. The ground beneath her growing unsteady.

He swept both hands back through his glossy hair and turned his eyes to a window in the cabin.

‘If I died,’ he said, ‘or we got separated, what would you do, Anne?’

‘You’re not going to die.’

He turned to her then, his eyes as harsh as she’d ever seen them.

‘I asked you what you’d do.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’d probably go home.’

‘Back to Key Largo.’

‘Yes.’

‘Back to your brother and your boyfriend?’

His blue eyes were full of twisting light.

‘You asked me a question, Daniel, I’m trying to be honest. I’d go home, try to resume my life. There is no boyfriend. And I have no desire to see Vic.’

‘Key Largo,’ he said. ‘Okay, that’s good. Something ever happens, I’ll find you there. That’s where I’ll come.’

‘Daniel? What’s wrong? What’s going on?’

He stared at her for several moments, then said, ‘I’m sorry, Anne. I’m tensed up, that’s all. I’m sorry I bullied you. Forgive me.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

But when he came to her and held her, for the first time since they’d met, the fusion of their bodies, that disappearance of their separate selves she’d come to expect and depend on, did not occur.

On that steamy April afternoon, the Rainmaker passed through the Pedro Miguel Locks, Gatun Lake, and finally the Gatun Locks, then out of the Panama Canal and into the Caribbean Sea, where she went north on her last leg, following the busiest of several shipping lanes that would take her through the Yucatán Straits, up into the Gulf, then into the Mississippi, headed to the Marathon Oil refinery in Garyville, Louisiana, which was midway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. She carried a crew of fourteen.

Using two of the fishing boats from the Gray Ghost Lodge, Daniel and Anne and their crew shoved off three hours after the Rainmaker passed through the last lock of the Panama Canal. Earlier in the day, Marty Messina had set up the rendezvous with two small tankers based in Barranquilla, providing them a GPS location out in the Colombian Basin where they would converge near dawn tomorrow to off-load the crude before scuttling the ship.

Their crew was a mixed lot. Five former Sandinista guerrillas, well-armed, quiet men who doubled as Gray Ghost fishing guides in the winter. And there were Pedro and Manuel Cruz, two Cuban brothers from Miami who’d assisted Daniel with various rip-offs at the Port of Miami before he strayed from the family business. Two others had peeled off from Vincent Salbone’s Miami crew: Sal Gardino, the young computer guy, and Marty Messina.

Two hours after departing the Gray Ghost, they spotted the oil tanker a mile to the east, and for the next hour Daniel in the lead boat and Anne Bonny following with Sal Gardino and three of the Nicaraguans shadowed the Rainmaker as it moved north a hundred miles off the Central American coast. At that distance in their high-powered craft, they could seize the ship, tie up the crew, take her to the designated meeting spot, off-load the crude, and still be back in the maze of estuaries of the Barra de Colorado by the day after tomorrow. Long enough for a watchful owner to become alarmed at losing touch with one of his vessels, but too quick to send help.

When the sea was clear in every direction, Daniel signaled, and the boats came along opposite sides of the Rainmaker. Hull to hull with the tanker, the men readied the grappling hooks. That part hadn’t changed in hundreds of years, same four-pronged steel hooks. Only difference was that theirs were coated with a rubberized layer to soften the clang when they caught the rail.

In recent years, as piracy had boomed, shipping companies had begun to install laser devices that sensed boarders climbing over the side. Alarms sounded, decks were flooded with light, and usually the pirates fled. If they didn’t, the tanker’s crew was usually ready with powered-up fire hoses to blow them back over the side.

But Sal Gardino had researched the Rainmaker’s specs and her recent maintenance history and was certain she wasn’t equipped with alarms. Once aboard, Sal would only have to locate and disable the FROM system and the ship would simply vanish from computer screens.

At Daniel’s signal, the hooks were heaved and they caught to the rails of the big ship and the rope ladders uncoiled beneath them. The Rainmaker was a midsize tanker, just under a thousand feet long and 166 feet wide. At that hour of night, with most sailors customarily spending their free time in quarters and only a skeleton crew working the bridge, it was highly unlikely a boarder would encounter one of the tanker’s crewmen when coming over the side.

But this night was different from any before.

Anne Bonny was halfway up the ladder, Pedro, one of the Nicaraguans, and Sal Gardino ahead of her, when she heard the first sharp pops. Her breath seized in her lungs and her hands fumbled for a grip.

She’d practiced with the Mac-10 at the Gray Ghost Lodge target range and recognized the quick burst. And those first few shots were answered by a duller noise, the suppressed puffs of what surely were silenced weapons.

At the railing, Pedro hesitated, gripping the rope with one hand while he struggled to unsling the AK-40 from his back. Then there was another round of firing, this one longer. Panicked shouts from the deck, and the metallic chime of slugs flattening against the ship’s iron sides. She heard Daniel’s voice, strangely calm, commanding Marty Messina to take cover.

‘Move!’ Anne shouted. ‘They’re in trouble. Move, goddamn it!’

Raising up, Pedro lifted one foot to the lowest rail, and a half-second later the small man was kicked backward by a burst of fire. He shrieked and somersaulted, the heel of his boot clipping Anne Bonny on the shoulder as he pitched into the sea. For a half-second she lost her grip, burned her hand on the rope as she fought to regain her hold, and scrambled up the rope ladder and wrestled past Sal Gardino, who was paralyzed and gibbering to himself. A techno geek, rendered useless by the first sounds of a gunfight.

On the top rung of the rope ladder, Anne Bonny paused and found her breath. Head down, crouched below the gunwale, she gripped her Mac-10, formed a quick image of her next move, then sprang up and tumbled over the rail, ducking a shoulder, slamming into the rough pebbled deck, and rolling once, twice, a third time until she came to rest against an iron wall.

She was dizzy and nauseous and for a moment thought she’d been hit by one of the slugs strafing the deck. She closed her eyes and scanned her body but sensed no numbness, no hot prickling. Just a throb in her shoulder where she’d slammed the steel deck.

She sat up, pressed her back flat against the wall, and was fumbling with the Mac-10, trying to find the right grip, when she made out the shadow of a man moving to the rail. Then saw the bright flashes as he unleashed on Sal and the rest of her crew following her up the ladder.

The man got off a dozen rounds before Anne Bonny could raise her weapon. Sal screamed and one of the Nicaraguans cursed in Spanish and went silent. Anne Bonny aimed at the center of the body armor sheathing the man’s back and curled her finger against the cool metal and the tall man bucked forward and tumbled over the side.

She blew out a breath, but before she could move again, dozens of spotlights bathed the deck in staggering brightness and in the same instant the whup and blare of a helicopter sounded from the north.

‘Stay down, Anne. Stay down!’

All around her, automatic weapons erupted, the raw thuds and clangs of bullets slamming the ship’s tough hide.

Daniel’s voice had come from her right, roughly fifty feet away. She rose from her crouch and craned around the edge of the wall, which she could see in the blue-white glare was not a wall at all but a yellow cargo container emblazoned with the logo of the Maersk shipping line.

‘Anne, flat on the deck! Stay down.’

A staccato chain of blasts cut him off. Louder ones answered back and a dozen more of the muffled shots replied. Then it was silent. To the north she saw the helicopter searchlight prowling the dark waters on the starboard side of the ship. Again and again, a large-caliber machine gun unloaded on men in the water. One of their speedboats exploded, the fireball blooming against the black sky.

Facedown, she wormed to the edge of the yellow container and peered toward the spot where she’d last heard Daniel’s voice.

Two men in camouflage pants and black T-shirts were standing over Daniel’s body. They gripped silenced weapons. The taller of the two men said something to the other and the man unloaded his weapon at Daniel’s body. She thought she saw Daniel twist aside in time to avoid the gunfire; then both men scrambled out of view.

A wail broke from Anne’s throat, but before she could rise to fire, she was staring at a pair of black boots not more than a yard from her nose.

‘Fuckin’ move and you’re dead.’ His growl was all New York, the nasal bray of a street punk. ‘Shove it out slow, that fucking gun. You hear me, cunt? Twitch and you’re dead.’

A year before, she would have obeyed instantly, raising her hands in relief that this long and terrifying dream was done. But that was before Daniel. Before he led her to the edge of the precipice, took her hand in his, and looked past the surface of her eyes into regions of her self she had barely sensed were there and the two of them leaped over the brink, dropping and dropping in one long ecstatic rush, only to land in the black heart of this moment.

Anne Bonny Joy nudged the Mac-10 forward along the deck, inch by inch until it was fully exposed; then without a flicker of hesitation she slid her hand down the stock and squeezed off a half-dozen rounds at the toes of the black boots and watched them jerk and dance for a half-second; then she spun to the right, came to her feet and sprinted to the rail, and dived into the bottomless dark.

In the choppy sea she stripped a life jacket from one of the Nicaraguans. She ducked away from the spotlights, stroking slowly and steadily beyond the perimeter of their search zone. Through the night, she paddled and drifted in a swoon of dehydration, rage, and despair. She was carried by the current mile after mile northward until an hour after sunrise she was spotted by a Panamanian fishing boat and plucked from the sea.

They put her ashore on a beach at Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, and she used some of the American dollars she was carrying to work her way south by bus down the Mosquito Coast. Campesinos on the bus turned to stare at her. As Anne slumped in her seat, an old woman nudged her shoulder, checking for life. At Punta Castillo Anne chartered a skiff to the Barra de Colorado. In a deadened haze, she left the boat behind and trekked through fifteen miles of rain forest and made it to the lodge late in the afternoon four full days after the disaster on the Rainmaker.

Taking cover in a gully on the outskirts of the camp, she spent an hour listening to the shrieks of parrots and howler monkeys. She sniffed the air but detected neither foreign aromas nor the charred ruin of the camp. Until dusk she waited; then finally she rose and entered the camp.

In the gathering darkness she inched along the shadowy edges of the buildings, a pocketknife her only weapon. The sour stench of the staff latrine, a can of garbage overturned and raided by jungle creatures. The cigarette reek of the bunkhouse where the Sandinistas slept, and at every step there were the vaporous echoes of voices.

She slipped into the main cabin that she and Daniel had shared the last weeks. Their bed was neatly made. She stared at his comb lying on the dresser and her brush, which lay beside it. She wiped her eyes clear and stepped over to the bathroom mirror and took it down from its hook. She calmed the jitter in her fingers and dialed the numbers and swung open the steel door. For a moment in the gloom she thought all was well, then she reached out and ran her hands across the bare shelves and a low groan rose from her chest. Someone had beaten her back to the camp and looted the reserves.

The journey back to Florida took two weeks. Riding Greyhounds through the long nights, exiting at dawn, eyes down, speaking to no one. Staying in cheap motels along the coast, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. Blinds shut tight against the daylight, drinking herself to oblivion while she spent the impossibly long days staring at the pitted walls and the blank screens of televisions. Paranoid, grieving, so twitchy she couldn’t sleep. Not even in those desperate weeks after her parents’ deaths had she felt so hopeless.

Somewhere east of Pensacola she woke from a drowse, jerked upright in her bus seat, and startled the teenage kid in a cowboy hat beside her.

‘You okay, ma’am?’ The kid had taken his Stetson off and set it in his lap. ‘Bad dream?’

Anne looked at the boy for a moment, then turned her eyes to her window, at the palm trees and scrub brush flashing past.

‘I wish it were,’ she said. ‘I wish to hell it were.’

5

Oh, come on, Thorn. Even a guy like you could find a use for two million bucks.’

‘Not really, Marty.’

Marty Messina shook his head and groaned. He was a big man with a blocky head and coarse black hair that he wore in a military flattop. An inch of hair across the front was greased into a small curl like a perfect wave rolling off the black ocean of his skull. He was several inches above six feet. In the years since Thorn had seen him last, Marty had chunked up, and now dangerous muscles flared in his shoulders and arms. His neck was so thick, he probably had to custom-order his flowered shirts. He wore white high-top tennis shoes with a complicated lacing system, and skintight blue jeans and a black rayon shirt printed with yellow hibiscus blooms. The shirt was opened to the sternum, showing off a pad of black hair that rose to his throat. Five, six years ago when he’d been sent away to prison, Marty had been fond of heavy gold jewelry, but they must’ve had a fashion class up there, because now he wore only a single diamond stud pinned to the top of his right ear.

Marty shook his head and made a show of sighing and marching over to the wood stairway of Thorn’s stilt house and planting his butt on the fourth step with such resolve, it appeared he meant to stay as long as it took for Thorn to cave in.

Resetting his grip on the pine slat, Thorn pressed it against the sawhorse, then drew the handsaw back and forth through the last inch of softwood. When the excess piece dropped in the grass, he smoothed away a couple of brittle ends on the slat and stepped over to the shade of a tamarind tree and set it on the bench that was three-quarters complete. He brushed the sawdust from his hands and wrists and looked out at Lawton Collins, who was napping in a hammock strung between two coconut palms a few yards from the rocky shore of Blackwater Sound.

It was about four o’clock on that May afternoon, and Blackwater Sound shivered with sharp blue light. A brown pelican coasted a few feet above the still water, carried along by a warm draft from the west. An Everglades breeze full of mold spores and mosquitoes and the first ozone whiffs of a spring thunderstorm. It had been a brutally dry year. During the winter only a couple of cold fronts had plowed all the way down the state, and those brought no rain. And so far, the summer monsoon season still hadn’t kicked in.

His grass was charred and crispy underfoot, but the bougainvillea seemed ecstatic about the drought, and their great clouds of purple and pink and white cascaded over trees and lesser shrubs all around the perimeter of his five acres. The wild lantana and the penta were doing fine as well. For generations those indigenous plants had thrived in the inch of sandy soil dusting the limestone rubble that passed for land in the Florida Keys. Regularly flooded by the salty sea or scraped back to nubs by hurricanes, those native plants seemed to bloom with even greater flourish after each new trial.

The year of relentless heat had been nearly ruinous for Thorn’s fly-tying business. Out on the flats the bonefish and reds were lethargic in the overheated water. A warmer-than-average winter in the Northeast and a series of airline crashes had cut the tourist flow by half, so the fishing guides who worked the flats hadn’t snapped up Thorn’s custom flies in the numbers they had in the years before. And though Thorn had almost exhausted his savings and was starting to make uneasy calculations whenever he looked into the pantry, he wasn’t about to confess any of that to Marty Messina.

Back when Marty Messina had been a bush-league dope peddler around the upper Keys, word was Marty was connected to a Miami crime family. Whether it was true or not Thorn didn’t know, but the guy certainly had acted the part. As a sideline, he’d laundered some of his profits through Tarpon’s, a waterfront restaurant he operated in nearby Rock Harbor. Probably through dumb luck, Marty signed on a young chef who’d discovered some creative uses for cinnamon and bananas and exotic Caribbean fruits in his fish dishes. Nobody had ever cooked that way in Key Largo before, and the restaurant became a trendy hit with locals. Even Thorn had gone there once or twice for special occasions.

Marty kept the prices low, routinely buying rounds of drinks for the whole bar to celebrate his great good fortune. But then a trawler Marty was piloting was boarded by the DEA just off Islamorada. Nearly a ton of Mexican grass was aboard at the time. Within a few weeks Marty was sent away to perfect his croquet skills in a minimum-security prison somewhere in north Florida, a place that housed corrupt politicos, white-collar embezzlers, and other well-lawyered crooks. In his absence, the restaurant changed hands, the chef moved on, and finally the place became just another tourist joint, pumping out fish sandwiches and limp fries.

A couple of weeks ago Marty Messina had materialized again in Key Largo. Thorn had heard from one of his fishing guide buddies that Messina had been planting his butt on a stool at the bar of his old restaurant, running the place down to anyone who’d listen. Reminding everyone what a cutting-edge hot spot it had once been.

‘So you a Realtor now, Marty? Get your license in prison?’

‘Fuck you, Thorn.’

‘Seems reasonable,’ Thorn said. ‘Real estate’s the logical next career choice after apprenticing in crime.’

‘Hey, Thorn, come on, man, I don’t have all fucking day. Just say yes, and I’ll go back and draw up the papers and get your money bundled up.’

Marty gave him a cheerless grin.

‘My buyer will pay all cash,’ he said. ‘Two and a half mil.’

‘A minute ago you said two.’

‘I’m negotiating.’

‘Oh, is that how it’s done?’

‘Okay, three,’ Marty said. ‘Three million dollars, Thorn.’

Marty stood up and lumbered back over to the sawhorse.

‘You’re negotiating in a vacuum. I’m not selling.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I told him. You were a first-class knucklehead.’

Thorn glanced up, but Marty was looking out at the glassy bay.

‘Tell him to drop by. I’ll refuse him to his face.’

‘This guy doesn’t drop by, Thorn. He pays people to drop by.’

Marty turned and looked Thorn in the eyes and a smile spread slowly across his face as if he’d surprised himself with his own ominous wit.

‘What’s his name, Marty? The guy who wants this place so bad.’

‘Look, Thorn. If you fuck with me, you fuck with him. And believe me, buddy, you don’t want to fuck with him.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yeah, really.’

Marty’s dark eyes held to Thorn’s and he clamped his lips together as if to keep from blurting out the name. The buyer could’ve been any of a hundred of Marty’s old associates, dope runners of an earlier era who’d stashed away enough to buy their way into legit businesses around the Keys. Thorn had nothing against their kind. He’d smoked his share of funny stuff back in his younger days before grass got all inbred and so full of hallucinogenic juice that one toke would give you the munchies for a month. He knew a ton of plumbers and electricians and roofers around the island who’d bought their first tools and panel trucks with the proceeds of one successful dope run. Most of them were upstanding citizens now. Churchgoers with a mortgage, kids in high school, a small fishing boat they took out weekend yellowtailing. But there were other guys he’d run into back in the good old dope days who’d gaffed and gutted one too many of their competitors, waded a little too deep into the dark sea of deadened senses. They were still around the island, but you didn’t see them out and about. They sent their lackeys, guys like Marty Messina, to do their bidding.

‘Okay,’ Thorn said. ‘So what exactly does he want to do with my land?’

‘Improve it,’ Marty said.

‘Ah, yes.’ Thorn lined up another slat of pine on the sawhorse and drew out the aluminum tape. ‘This land’s long overdue for improving.’

‘Don’t get funny with me, Thorn. I’m running low on patience.’

‘Hey, Marty. I have a tip. Tell your guy to swoop in and buy the tract where the Island House motel used to be. Back in March somebody knocked all the trees down, scraped the land bare, then left it sitting there. Guy must’ve run out of money. That’d be a nice spot to improve.’

‘He wants this land,’ Marty said.

‘You hit town one week, you’re out throwing around millions of dollars the next. How do I know you’re even legit? You know what I’m saying?’

‘This is for real, Thorn. A bona fide offer. Far as just getting into town, yeah, that’s true. But some people around here remember me, respect my abilities. I got excellent credentials.’

‘A stretch in jail being near the top of the list.’

‘I been out for a while, jerkhole. I been into some other things; now I’m into this. Not that it’s any of your fucking business.’

‘You’re standing here trying to buy my land. That sort of makes it my business, doesn’t it?’

Thorn took the pencil from behind his ear and marked the slat, then set the blade of the saw against the mark, drew it back an inch to score the spot. But before he could begin to saw, Marty stepped close to the horse, blocking his stroke.

‘Look, Thorn. You got a piece-of-shit car; it’s rusting through. Same fucking car you had before I went off to the joint.’

Thorn looked up at Marty. He held the saw in place.

‘You got this falling-down house, one good storm comes along, a puff of wind, trust me, Thorn, that shack’s gonna wash right into the bay.’

Marty made his eyes go droopy like he was bored with this, bored trying to reason with a knuckle-head, but still trying real hard to be decent.

‘Three million, you could buy any car you want. Buy ten cars. A house on the water anyplace in Florida. Put the rest in mutual funds, live off the interest. See what it feels like to be an adult for once in your life.’

Thorn looked over at Lawton stretching his arms, yawning, then rearranging himself in the hammock and easing back for the rest of his nap. Lately the old man had taken to dressing in Thorn’s clothes. Today he was wearing a baggy white T-shirt and khaki fishing shorts with flap pockets in the front, the exact same outfit Thorn had on. The official uniform for Camp Thorn.

‘I’ve already got a house on the water, Marty. I have the piece-of-shit car I want. So why don’t you go on back to Mr Hotshot’s office and tell him to find another plantation to sack and plunder.’

Marty peered into Thorn’s eyes for several seconds, then shook his head sadly as if about to deliver a fatal diagnosis.

‘I told my guy how you were. But he said to come anyway, ‘cause he believed I could talk you into selling. Man has that kind of confidence in me. Now I got to go back and tell him you blew me off. You’re going to make me look bad, Thorn. I don’t like looking bad.’

Thorn held the saw steady against the notch.

‘Seems like you’d be used to it by now, Marty.’

Overhead a warm breeze crackled through the brittle fronds. Marty’s eyes grew even droopier. He’d heard it all. Been there, pissed on that. He was too jaded to get riled by some amateur smart-ass. But all the same, Thorn could see the flush inching up his neck like the mercury on an August afternoon.

Marty held his stare, then shifted his gaze to the saw in Thorn’s hand. His dark eyes going flat.

‘You’re a crazy motherfucker, aren’t you, Thorn?’

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘I believe you’d use that, wouldn’t you? That saw. Take a swipe at me, try to saw my fucking head off if you could.’

‘You could stick around about two more minutes and find out.’

Thorn gave him an innocent smile.

‘Assholes like you, Thorn, they’re a dime a dozen in the joint. Thing is, they don’t last long with that hard-ass attitude. Sooner or later they smart off one too many times and wind up getting their fucking tongue cut out and handed to them on a clean white plate.’

Thorn looked down at the wood slat and nudged the saw back and forth across it, the blade missing Marty’s leg by half an inch. He spoke without looking up.

‘You might want to go home, Marty, stand in front of the mirror, work some more on that sales technique. ‘Cause it’s not working worth a damn.’

Marty took a few steps toward his car, then stopped and swung around.

‘He’s coming after you, Thorn. This guy doesn’t take no for an answer. He’s going to have this land one way or the other. That’s just fair warning.’

‘Bring him on,’ Thorn said. ‘Bring the fucker on.’

Just inside the front door of Tarpon’s, Marty snagged the portable phone off the podium and headed into the bar to use it. Tying up their only line right at early bird time. The old lady hostess came over and tapped on his shoulder and held out her hand, but Marty turned his back to her until she went away. What he needed was a damn cell phone, but he hadn’t put away enough cash yet.

He checked in with his boss, broke the bad news about Thorn, and his boss was pissed at the pigheaded asshole, but he wasn’t surprised.

Marty’s boss thought about it for a minute, humming to himself the whole time like he might be shaving or some damn thing; then he came back on and told Marty he could redeem himself by doing another job for him, one he could probably manage on the telephone. Marty got the details and hung up and about then the hostess came back, tapped on his shoulder again, but Marty ignored her and dialed the next number, hoping he’d catch the guy before he knocked off for the day, then had to wait another five minutes while the secretary who answered carried the phone outside to the guy on his forklift.

Marty didn’t even have to bully the forklift guy. Just used his boss’s name and offered him a foreman’s job at another marina, double what he was making, and the guy said hell, yes, he’d do fucking backflips for that kind of money. And after two more minutes on hold, listening to the background music at Morada Bay Marina, with the Tarpon’s hostess coming and going, pecking him on the shoulder to get the phone back, the forklift guy came back and said he had it. Five pages, the complete May calendar, the float plans for every boat in the marina. Marty gave him his boss’s fax number and the guy said he’d send it right over.

‘Fine,’ Marty said. ‘Come by on Monday morning, Paradise Boatyard, there’ll be a job with your name on it.’

‘Hey, thanks,’ the guy said.

Marty said, ‘Go fax the thing. And don’t go telling anybody what the fuck you’re doing, either, or your ass is chum.’

Two minutes later he called his boss again and the guy right away said, ‘Finally you did something right, Marty, I was beginning to wonder.’

‘You see anything there you can use?’ Marty ignored the put-down. He’d had enough of those for one day from Thorn.

‘Thursday night coming up. It’s perfect. Two birds, one stone. Thorn’s ass is mine.’

‘The guy’s a hardhead. I don’t know.’

‘I know all about this guy, Marty. I been making a little study of the asshole. And what I’ve decided, once I take this guy’s land, I’m going to cut off his balls and pickle them.’

‘I want to see that.’

His boss said, ‘The guy’s got a friend, Sugarman.’

‘Yeah,’ Marty said. ‘Used to be a cop, now he’s some kind of half-assed private eye.’

‘Way I hear it, these two guys are joined at the hip. Tickle Sugarman’s nose, Thorn sneezes.’

‘That’s about right.’

‘Well, I got a way to tickle the ever-loving shit out of Sugarman’s nose.’

‘So Thorn sneezes.’

‘That’s right, Marty. So Thorn sneezes his fucking brains out.’

A minute later when they were done Marty hung up and took the phone back over to the podium and set it down.

‘I believe this is yours.’

The old lady hostess blasted him with a glare, then turned and smiled at her next party and led them to their table.

6

By late afternoon Thorn was almost finished with the bench. Out in the western sky a few wispy cirrus clouds sprang from the horizon like the fine sprigs of hair curling off the neck of an elegant woman. The sun was brassy red and poised only minutes from another fiery crash into the Gulf. Already the western clouds were rimmed with gold and a gloss of crimson spread across the bay as if somewhere deep below the water’s surface the Earth had opened a vein.

While he rested his eyes on the showy sky, out of the dense woods that bordered his land a yellow Labrador puppy stumbled into the open lawn and halted beside the trunk of a giant sea grape tree. A mockingbird in the sea grape shrieked at the pup, then fluttered down and dive-bombed his head, but the Lab seemed oblivious.

After scanning the yard, the puppy spotted Lawton sleeping with one leg looped over the edge of the hammock. He ambled over and stopped below Lawton’s bare foot, cocked his head up, eyed the pale flesh, then washed his tongue across the old man’s sole. With a whoop, Lawton jerked awake.

Thorn smiled and picked up the handsaw and finished cutting the final slat of pine. While Lawton spoke to the puppy, Thorn carried the slat over to the bench and lined it up. When he was satisfied it was parallel, he screwed it into place and ran his eye along each of the slats to check its spacing. Then he turned and settled his rump on it and leaned back. Solid and secure. Maybe not the most comfortable bench, but good enough for what he had in mind.

Across the yard, Lawton rolled out of the hammock and tumbled into the tall grass and giggled like a child. The puppy staggered out of his way, then charged in to lap at the white grizzle on Lawton’s cheeks.

Thorn called over to see if Lawton was okay, and the old man gave a just-fine wave while the dog snuffled in close.

Thorn brushed some sawdust off the bench, then walked over for a better view of the wrestling match. He squatted in the grass as the puppy drew out of Lawton’s grasp, shook himself hard, then marched over to one of the old man’s leather sandals that lay in the grass. He plopped down and began to gnaw on his tail. His fur was matted and there were dark greasy streaks across his golden back. His ribs were showing through his scruffy coat.

‘Kind of mangy,’ said Thorn. ‘Looks like he’s been sleeping in a tar pit.’

‘He’s a survivor,’ Lawton said. ‘Been living off the fat of the land.’

‘And how do you know that?’

‘He just told me.’

Lawton wriggled his finger in a patch of grass and the dog paused midmunch and peered at this new quarry. Lawton wagged his finger again and the puppy dropped his tail, rose to a crouch, lowered his head an inch, focusing like a well-schooled bird dog. Lawton wiggled his finger again and the puppy leaped a few inches in the air and pounced on Lawton’s hand.

The old man laughed, turning his gray eyes on Thorn.

‘Goddamn it, I want this dog, and I’m going to have it, so don’t fuck with me, mister.’

Thorn drew a breath. In the last few months Lawton’s condition had suffered a series of small and quirky downturns. For one thing, there were these new flashes of irritability. Curses flared to the old man’s lips without warning or cause.

‘This puppy and me,’ Lawton said, ‘we’ve bonded. It’d be a goddamn criminal travesty to separate us.’

‘We’ll talk to Alex when she gets home. See what she says.’

‘I don’t give a shit what she says. If I want a dog, by God, I’ll have a dog. I’m too goddamn old to take orders anymore.’

The puppy fastened his teeth onto the tip of Lawton’s finger. But as Lawton stroked the Lab’s throat, the spiky puppy’s eyes closed and with a quiet groan he began to nurse on the old man’s crinkled fingertip.

‘I need a dog, goddamn it,’ Lawton said. ‘I need somebody to talk to.’

‘You can talk to me,’ said Thorn. ‘Anytime you want.’

‘You know what I mean,’ Lawton said. ‘Somebody on my own level.’

Thorn smiled.

‘How old am I anyway?’ Lawton said.

‘Not all that old.’

‘Am I still a boy?’

Thorn shook his head.

‘Older than a boy.’

‘Well, damn it, I feel like a boy,’ Lawton said. ‘I feel twelve. That’s all right, isn’t it? Feeling twelve? I mean, it’s not sick, is it, feeling that way?’

‘I’d say that’s fine. Twelve is a damn good age.’

‘Well, good, then I’m a boy,’ Lawton said. ‘And every boy needs a goddamn dog. So this one’s mine.’

As Lawton stroked the pup, Thorn leaned back, propped his elbows in the brittle grass. The sky had gone pink with honeyed whisks and spatters of color as bright and unnameable as the garish shades of reef fish. A school of cherry clouds cruised in formation a hundred miles aloft, and the entire bay had turned the hazy pink of brick dust.

As the final glint of sun disappeared, he heard the foghorn blare of a conch shell blown from a neighbor’s rooftop. A venerable Keys tradition still hanging on, a long single-noted salute to the dying day performed with the shell of the nearly extinct gastropod. The queen conch, official symbol of the Florida Keys, had almost vanished from her waters. Too many roadside stands, too many tourists looking for a cheap memento of their week in paradise, too many conch fritters and bowls of conch chowder. These days the roadside stands had to air-freight their conch shells from distant oceans where the locals still believed they were the keepers of a limitless supply.

While Lawton tussled with the puppy, Thorn got back up and went over to the shade of the gumbo-limbo. He opened a can of yellow paint, stirred it till it was oily thick, then began to spread it on the new bench.

As the first coat of paint dried, Thorn lit the charcoal in the grill and went back upstairs to marinate the fillet of a dolphin that he and Lawton had caught the day before out on the edge of the Gulf Stream. He set a pan of brown rice to boil on the stove and sliced up a fresh avocado, a portobello mushroom, and a meaty tomato, fresh produce Alexandra had selected last weekend at the farmer’s stall in the Key Largo flea market.

Thorn drew the cork on a bottle of wine she’d brought down from Miami and poured himself an inch in a squat highball glass. It was her favorite wine, a lush cabernet from Oregon. They’d been indulging themselves these last few months. Good wines, fresh fish, chocolates for dessert. A diet far richer than either of them was used to. He supposed it was the flush of love that gave them such indulgent appetites, as if their senses had become so inflamed from the constant sight and touch and smell of each other’s flesh that only the most luscious foods could compete.

When he was finished with the preparations he walked onto the porch. The sky was a dreary gray. Only a seam of red still burned along the horizon. Lawton was out by the dock, trying to teach the dog to sit. The puppy had no attention span and barked in protest each time Lawton set his rump back down in the grass and commanded him to stay put.

As Thorn was settling the mahimahi steaks and portobello onto the grill, Alex pulled in the gravel drive and parked her glossy blue Honda behind his rusty VW. Thorn pushed the steaks to the edge away from the fire. He walked over and met her at the car.

‘He’s got a dog,’ Thorn said.

Alexandra looked past him into the yard. ‘I see that.’

‘It just came wandering out of the woods and he adopted it.’

‘And you said he could keep it?’

‘I said we’d wait till you got home and talk about it then.’

‘So I get to be the bad guy.’

‘I’ll do it. If that’s what you decide.’

Thorn leaned in and gave her a kiss on the lips, which after a couple of seconds warmed to something more than a hello.

The tart scent of her long day’s work in Miami clung to her clothes and flesh. She averaged a half-dozen crime scenes on a typical shift, shooting several rolls of film on each one, using her video camera on the larger scenes. From what Thorn gathered, it was hardly glamorous, rarely more than routine. Women beaten to death by boyfriends, teenage boys shot down in their first drug deal, geriatric suicides, babies fatally shaken by mothers trying to keep the little brats quiet. Mainly Alexandra moved through small dismal rooms with peeling paint and furniture abandoned by long-departed occupants, one sprawling body after another, usually discarded hypodermics, baggies of crack somewhere nearby. In the years she’d been doing it, Alexandra had cataloged so much death and misery, made such a study of cruelty’s stark poses, it was a wonder the heavy shadows of her work didn’t mute her laughter or dim her nearly ceaseless smile.

Finally she drew out of the embrace and pressed a hand to his chest to hold him at bay, a not-now-but-definitely-later smile in her eyes.

‘So about this dog.’

‘Well, I tried to stay neutral because I thought it was your call.’

‘Because he’s my dad.’

‘I didn’t think it was my place to decide.’

‘Meanwhile, look at him.’

Lawton was lying in the grass near the dock, flat on his back, hands laced behind his head, with the Lab’s snout propped on Lawton’s chest.

‘A dog is a long-term commitment,’ she said. ‘You ready for that?’

She turned her head slowly and fixed her eyes on Thorn’s.

‘Never been readier.’

A ghost of skepticism hovered just below the surface of her smile.

‘So it just came walking out of the woods?’

‘Poof, like that.’

She lifted her hands and raked her fingers through her thick black hair as if unsnarling the thousand invisible knots from her long day. He heard what sounded like a quiet groan of pleasure escape from her throat. Then she tipped her head back and shook her hair so it rustled along the back of her white sleeveless blouse. Thorn looked at her neck, at her delicate ears, at the dusting of dark hair that formed her sideburns.

‘A boy and his dog,’ she said. ‘Oh, hell, why not?’

She put an arm around his waist and they walked down to the shoreline.

‘I’ve named him,’ Lawton said. ‘I’ve named the dog.’

‘Hello, Dad,’ she said.

‘I’m calling him Lawton.’

‘But that’s your name.’

The dog was staring up at Lawton as if waiting for the next command.

‘I know it’s my name. What do you think, I’m so far gone I don’t know my own name?’

‘You think that’s a good idea?’ Thorn said. ‘Two Lawtons, that might be one too many.’

‘Why not? It’s a good name,’ Lawton said. ‘It’s served me well.’

‘We might get you two confused. Lawton the dog, Lawton the dad.’

‘Get us confused? Now who’s losing their mind? I’m a man, this is a dog. How’re you going to get us confused?’

‘He’s got a point,’ Thorn said.

She looked at him and closed her eyes briefly.

‘Okay, okay,’ she said. ‘But you’re going to have to take care of him, Dad. That’s a big job. Are you ready for that? Bathing him, taking him to the vet. He’ll need shots.’

‘Watch,’ he said. ‘I’ve taught him to sit already. He’s a smart little fur ball.’

With an open hand Lawton motioned the dog down, and the puppy jumped up and tried to nip his fingers.

‘Down, Lawton. Sit.’

With a single bark of complaint, the puppy planted his rear on a sandy patch and stared up at Lawton, his tail brushing back and forth across the bare earth.

‘See,’ the old man said. ‘He’s a fast learner.’

‘That’s good, Dad. And you’re obviously a good teacher.’

‘He’d better be fast,’ Lawton said. ‘Because I don’t have much time left to teach him much.’

‘Oh, come on. Don’t say that.’

‘Where’d that guy Webster go? He offered me a job working undercover. I need to talk to him about when I’m going to start.’

‘That was months ago, Dad. That was March; this is May. He went away and he’s not coming back.’

‘Went away?’

‘Anyway, you’ve got this dog. You don’t need any more jobs.’

‘But Webster was counting on me. It was a national emergency. I could be putting us all in peril. This woman Anne Joy is at the root of it.’

‘Anne Joy?’

Alexandra stooped down beside the dog and scratched him beneath the throat. The puppy grew limp at her touch.

‘Her name came up,’ Thorn said.

‘First I’ve heard of that.’

‘Webster mentioned her. That’s when I shut him up and kicked him out.’

‘Oh, yeah, I feel it coming,’ Lawton said. ‘The end is definitely near. It won’t be long. This dog is going to have to be my legacy.’

‘Dad,’ Alex said. ‘Please stop.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Lawton said. ‘I’m ready. Now that you’re finally in good hands and there’s someone to carry on my name, it’s time for me to exit.’

Alexandra stood up, her mouth clamped tight.

‘It’s okay,’ Thorn said. ‘It’s just words.’

‘I know. I know. But still.’

‘You ready for a glass of red?’

‘Thorn, what did Webster want with Anne Joy?’

‘He thought I knew something about her. I assured him I didn’t.’

‘You should’ve told me that.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.’

‘The kind I have right now, you mean.’

‘Yeah, that kind.’

‘We shouldn’t conceal things.’

‘I’m sorry. You’re right. Really, I’m sorry.’

She looked into his eyes, and he could see her letting it go. Most of it.

‘So I had another visitor,’ he said as they strolled back toward the house.

‘What, they sent the vice president this time?’

‘When’d you get so funny?’

She stopped next to the bench.

‘And what in the world is this?’

‘A bench. A yellow bench.’

‘What is it, Thorn?’

‘I was thinking Lawton might like it. You know, for his midnight rambles. Might keep him off the highway if we can convince him the Greyhound stops here.’

She stared at the bench, then looked up at Thorn, a smile warming her lips.

‘Worth a try,’ he said. ‘I was thinking of putting it over there, next to the gumbo-limbo. Kind of like the bus shelter.’

‘You’re something, Thorn.’

‘Well, I’m not much of a furniture maker, that’s for sure.’

She leaned in and gave him a kiss on the mouth so deep and long, it closed his eyes and kept them closed a second or two after she’d drawn away.

‘So who was your visitor this time?’

He took her hand in his and waved his free hand at the open yard and the darkening bay.

‘Would you trade all this for three million dollars?’

‘All this?’

‘The house, the land, my car. All of it.’

‘Three million for that heap of rust you call a car?’

‘I’m serious. The house, land, all of it. Would you?’

She held his eyes.

‘It’s not mine to sell.’

‘But let’s say it were. You could take the three mil, go someplace else, invest some of the money in mutual funds, live off the interest. Never have to work again, do whatever you wanted.’

‘Mutual funds?’ She reached out and pressed her palm against his forehead. ‘You been outside all day without a hat?’

‘Answer the question,’ he said, startled by the impatience in his own voice.

She took her hand from his forehead. Her smile drifted away.

‘Would I swap all this for a truckload of cash?’ she said. ‘Not in a million years, Thorn. Not in three million.’

Thorn let go of the air that had been building in his lungs.

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’

‘Was that some kind of test, Thorn?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Because I thought we were a little past the testing phase.’

‘We are,’ he said. ‘It’s just that sometimes, your job, all the shit you put up with every day, I wonder if you wouldn’t be happier retired.’

‘You’d sell all this so I could retire?’

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