Key West Heat
Alice Orr

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my husband, Jonathan—

always my romantic hero

To my map artist—

Ed Vesneske, who is also my dear son

To my editor—

Julianne Moore, a true jewel

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Taylor Loyola Bissett—A woman drawn to the tropics and to the danger awaiting her there.

Des (Destiny) Maxwell—A dashing man who could be the greatest danger of all.

Winona Starling—A Key West psychologist who could be Taylor’s savior.

Jethro Starling—Winona’s very nervous son.

Armand Santos—Key West homicide detective.

April Jane Cooney—Proprietor of the Key Westian guesthouse.

Violetta Ramone—Who knows all about Caribbean cooking…and the past.

Early Rhinelander—Taylor’s confidant for as far back as she can remember.

Desiree Loyola & Paul Lawrence Bissett—Taylor’s late parents.

Pearl & Netta Bissett—Taylor’s late aunts.

Madame Leopold—A Key West psychic.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Prologue

Des smelled it before he saw it. He was not quite fourteen, but he knew right off what it was: the thing you smell a few blocks away or on the breeze and hope won’t come close enough to smart your eyes and chafe your throat. The heavy, old-wood scent of it was almost pleasant at first, like bonfires or leaves burning. But there weren’t that many falling leaves in Key West, except those ripped from branches by a blasting hurricane. And there was nothing pleasant about the way this made him feel. He held his breath, as if doing that could make the danger on the wind go away by magic, like when a little kid closes his eyes and thinks that makes him invisible. Pretty soon, Des had to breathe again, and the smoke smell was still there.

The wind was blowing hard. Tonight’s gale hadn’t been upgraded to hurricane from tropical storm yet, but Des guessed it was on the way there. He’d been feeling funny all day. That happens when there’s a wild drop on the barometer. He’d taken it in stride the way any real conch would, conchs being native Key Westers. He was even a little bit excited, like when a big adventure is about to hit and you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. He liked that in the movies, but he knew there was a big difference between the screen and life. In real life, adventures could mess you up bad. Still, the lurking storm and rising wind had his heart beating fast all day—till now.

What made his heart beat fast now was fear.

He knew where the smoke smell was coming from. For a moment, he did nothing, not because he was scared, even though he was. He just couldn’t believe what was happening. The worst time ever to have a fire is in a high wind. Everybody knows that. The flames blow up twice as fast in a storm, and there was no rain yet. And the smell of smoke was coming from the place he loved best in all the world.

Thinking that got Des started running. In the few seconds of his hesitation, flames had broken through the roof at the back of the tall Victorian perched at the edge of the sea, with so much water so nearby, yet too far away to be of help now. By the time Des reached the veranda steps he could hear the fire, cracking and popping and racing through the long, narrow rooms.

Miss Desiree always left the windows open, especially where they looked out onto the water. That meant the sea wind would be howling inside, feeding the hungry fire and helping it grow. Des caught his breath with a gasp of horror that sucked in more smoke and made him choke. Her room was back there too, where the sea view was best, the loveliest room he had ever been in.

He knew by heart where to find the front staircase, even with his eyes already tearing nearly blind. He took the wide steps two at a time. It occurred to him that the thick, rose-colored carpet would turn into an instant river of fire when the flames reached this part of the house. The only way out after that would be the roof. The back stairwell was sure to be an inferno by now. Des hurried faster against the smoke that wanted to stop his lungs. He would do what had to be done when the time came. He would get her out no matter what. He whispered that promise to himself and to her. Praying he could keep it scared him more even than the smoke and flames.

Then there was a sound, faint against the crack and whoosh of the fire, but Des heard it anyway. Until that moment, he had forgotten there was anyone besides Miss Desiree in the house. Now he remembered the little girl was in here, too. That had to be her crying. It was more a child’s sound than a grown woman’s, so it had to be the little girl. He hesitated another instant. Miss Desiree was along the balustrade in the other direction and all the way to the rear of the house, if she hadn’t already gotten herself out. The girl was down the hall to the right from where he now stood and definitely still inside this house that was being rapidly consumed by flame.

He knew he couldn’t wait to decide. The fire was gaining ground too fast for that. He ran down the hall toward the crying sound. All the doors along the hallway were closed. Maybe she had heard that you shouldn’t open a door in a fire. Even a kid her age might know that. Then, he got to the door with the crying behind it and knew the real reason she hadn’t come out. The door was locked, and there was no key in the hole. The child’s cries were more strangled now, rasping with smoke like Des’s throat. He croaked a reassurance that he would get her out even though he wasn’t sure how.

“Under the rug,” the child rasped from the other side of the door. “I think she put the key under the rug.”

Des dropped to his knees and pawed at the hallway carpet. The electric lights had gone out. Probably the system had been burned out by the fire. It was too dark to see, and his streaming eyes were useless anyway. Des fought down his terror as he prayed to find a bump under the rough wool nap. When his fingers touched it he almost cried out with joy and relief. He fished the key out and lunged at the door, feeling for the keyhole. The key took two turns to catch, and Des thought he might go crazy from being so scared in the meantime.

Then the door was open, and the little girl had leapt into his arms.

“Keep low,” he said. “There’s not so much smoke near the floor.”

If that was true, Des couldn’t tell. The smoke was pretty thick everywhere by now. They stumbled and crawled toward the staircase. They had just reached the top of the stairs when, with a roar and a crash, the flames broke through into the hallway at the opposite end from where they had just been. Des saw orange and blue lick up the delicately flowered wallpaper. Then a line of fire shot toward them down the center of the hallway ceiling, like a flaming arrow in a cowboy movie.

The child’s high-pitched scream was right next to his ear, and he wanted to tell her to shut up. Instead, he grabbed her arm and pulled her down the stairs, bumping her from one step to another, knowing that if he lost his grip on her she would fall. He also knew that if he didn’t drag her this rough way they could lose their race against the flames and be caught in the river of burning carpet he had imagined on his way up these same stairs.

Suddenly, he remembered what his mission had been when he first ran into this house. He had come to save the mother, not the child. He had not thought for even a second that he could lose his own life in the attempt. He had only cared about Miss Desiree. He glanced back toward the stairway and the balustrade to the left toward her room. Flames rimmed the opening to the hallway in that direction. In less than a moment they would spread into a wall of fire across the only way he might possibly reach her.

Des continued his plunge down the stairs with the child in tow. He couldn’t afford to hesitate for a second, even though what he was doing could cost the life of the person he loved more than anyone or anything in the world.

She would want you to save her baby, a voice inside him said. She always called the little girl her baby. He knew the voice was speaking truth, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

They had reached the heavy front door. In a flash of premonition, Des saw the etched glass cracking from the heat of the fire and the pale veneer curling into charred blackness. Though none of that had happened yet, he knew it would, and very soon.

Des shoved the door open and dragged himself and the child onto the veranda. Wind was whipping the lime trees that bordered the brick walk from the house to the road. Miss Desiree took such pride in those lime trees. She would hate to see them wracked and bent by the storm, even though she would know they were plenty strong enough to survive.

Des dropped the child’s arm, and she fell onto the bricks. He didn’t pick her up. The child was safe now. He knew that the mother, unlike her trees, would not survive this night. He heard the sirens in the same moment he came to understand that there was no use running back inside. He would only turn to charring blackness along with the white-painted woodwork and the chintz-covered chairs and all the rest of the bright, beautiful things she loved. She wouldn’t want that to happen to him.

“Desiree,” he whispered because his throat was too raw to scream. Her name was so like his own, Desiree and Destiny, that people said they should have been mother and son. But they weren’t. She was only the closest thing he’d had to a mother since his own mom died before he was old enough to know her.

Des reached down and grabbed the child’s arm again and began dragging her along the brick path, getting her away from the house as a second-story window exploded too close above them. He could only move in a crouch now. He was weak from gasping for breath. He felt the hard brick through the soles of his sneakers and then the softer sod as he pulled himself and his burden onto the lawn just inside the gate and the tall fence. He fell to the grass and buried his face in it, surprised that he could smell the greenness through the smoke that filled the wide yard and sooted the flower beds.

Des heard the trucks and the shouts of the men as they dragged heavy hoses down the path to shoot a futile stream of water at the blazing hulk that was already too far gone to save.

It was too late. Too late for her house. Too late for her. Too late for Des, and for the one bright shiny part of his lonely life.

He wrapped his arms around the child who lay sobbing at his side. He needed somebody to hang on to, even this kid he’d always been a little jealous of. She sobbed against him as his eyes continued to stream, not only from the smoke and fire this time, but also from tears he wasn’t ashamed to cry.

Chapter One

Twenty-four years later

She should have come here long ago. Taylor Loyola Bissett knew that the minute she stepped from the cab. She was out of her element, as her Great-Aunt Pearl would have put it, but that was exactly what Taylor wanted to be. “Stay where you know the territory and the territory knows you,” her aunt said over and over, like a chant. “That way you will always be in tune.” Taylor could feel herself out of tune with this place already, and that both frightened and thrilled her.

Her immediate impulse, conditioned by years of Aunt Pearl, was to get back in the cab and escape. But Taylor never did anything on impulse, at least not before today. Besides, all the way from the Key West Airport she had been less than at ease with the driver of this outlandish pink taxi who looked like he’d just crawled off skid row. She’d prefer not to drive any further with him, not even back to the airport. She couldn’t leave the Keys yet anyway, anymore than she had been able to resist coming in the first place. There was something to be settled for her on this island. She’d been haunted by that feeling for weeks now. She had to find out what it was all about. Maybe then she could put the past, what little she could recall of it, to rest at last.

Taylor climbed out of the cab, dragging her belongings with her. She should have had the driver help with her bags, but he hadn’t offered and she hadn’t asked. She did stupidly independent things like that sometimes. Her hair was heavy on her neck from the humidity, and tendrils clung to the dampness of her cheeks. By the time she lugged this load up the steps to the guest-house porch, she’d be drenched with perspiration, and the Key Westian looked too small to have a bellboy. She stopped to catch her breath and also to try to get a handle on her apprehension.

Everything bad that ever happened to the Bissett family had happened on this island, starting with the day her father, Paul Lawrence Bissett, met Desiree Loyola. He was a young naval officer, fresh from a small town in northern New York State and green as the valley of the St. Lawrence River for which he had been named. She was a pale-eyed beauty who captured the young naval officer without so much as a shot over his bow. He married her and gave her Stormley, a tall, stately house by the sea, as a wedding gift. His maiden aunts did not approve. Netta moved to the Keys to watch out for Paul and his interests, but not even that was enough to prevent disaster. Within a few years, he had deserted both country and family, and his beautiful wife was dead, consumed by the inferno that some said was her deserved end.

After that, Taylor had been taken back to northern New York to be raised by her great-aunt, Pearl Bissett. Netta Bissett remained in Key West. Pearl had passed away two years previously, and now Netta was gone too. During Pearl’s final illness, she had instructed Taylor to sell off all Bissett holdings on Key West, especially Stormley, after Netta died. Taylor worked full-time managing the Bissett family’s considerable north-country interests. Still, lawyers and realtors could have handled the Key West details. That had been Aunt Pearl’s plan. Taylor wouldn’t even have to show up here, where nothing but bad fortune had ever befallen her and those she cared about.

Taylor would have been content to go along with it—except for the dreams. They began a few months before Pearl died. They came in the hour before dawn and were filled with creatures made of tangled green foliage and smoke. Sometimes Taylor was embraced by these creatures. Other times they pursued her. She awoke with her heart pounding from both terror and fascination, and with the certainty that these images had something to do with this Isle of Bones where she was born.

“Leave well enough alone,” Aunt Pearl would have said were she still alive. “Don’t ask for trouble.”

But the dreams felt to Taylor as if she already had trouble. Not even her long, soothing talks with Early Rhinelander could erase those shadows from her mind. Early, the dear family friend who had brought her north from the Keys as a toddler with Pearl, had stayed in New York and become Taylor’s most trusted confidant. Unfortunately, even Early couldn’t resolve this restlessness in Taylor’s spirit. She’d known somehow that only returning to her birthplace could accomplish that. So, here she was, damp and uncomfortable in her too-heavy clothing, standing on the low curbstone of the Key Westian Guest House on Amelia Street.

It was after ten at night. She had taken the last commuter flight from Tampa on the mainland. She wasn’t even sure there would be anybody around to check her in at this hour. She should have mentioned the time she’d be arriving when she made the reservation. She didn’t ordinarily neglect details like that, but her whirlwind decision and departure had been anything but ordinary for her. It occurred to Taylor that there might be a price to be paid for that hastiness.

What looked like a single lamp burned behind the lace curtains of the guest-house door. Maybe she should go up there and see if anybody was available to help carry her bags. She was about to do that when she noticed something peculiar down the block, back along the way the cab had driven.

The streetlights were far apart and shadowed by the thick greenery of tropical trees. The moon was also barely visible through the veil of foliage. Taylor could feel the dark blue of the sky more than she could see it. Still, she was sure she had seen a car being driven slowly along the opposite curb with its headlights off. That car had stopped a few houses from where she stood, and was still there. She couldn’t make out who was inside the car from this distance in the near darkness. Why had the car been driven without headlights? Why did the driver just sit there now, without getting out?

Maybe a pair of lovers were lingering for a last kiss in the tropical night. The car appeared to be dark in color, but Taylor couldn’t really tell. The shadows here might make anything look dark. Taylor remembered the pink cab. Hadn’t she noticed the cabdriver watching her a bit too attentively in his rearview mirror? She strained to make out the contours of the car down the street. Had the cab looked like that? She usually noticed such things. Tonight she had not, another example of not being quite herself in this place.

Maybe the lovers didn’t want the neighbors to see them drive up and start kissing in the car, so they turned the headlights off. That scenario was preferable to imagining she was being stalked by a cabdriver. Taylor shook her head in wonder that she was even taking time to contemplate such theories about the simple presence of a parked car. The heat, which her north-country metabolism found so difficult to assimilate in mid-February, must be addling her brain. She bent down to pick up the bigger of her bags in one hand, then balanced it by slinging the smaller duffel over her opposite shoulder along with her purse. She straightened up slowly and was about to turn toward the guesthouse when she saw that the car had begun to move.

It crept along even more slowly than when she had first noticed it coming down the street. For a moment, she wasn’t entirely certain the car was moving at all. Then she saw that the gap had widened between the body of the vehicle and the curb. The car was creeping in her direction with its headlights still off, like a dark, crawling hulk in the night. Taylor shuddered, causing the strap of the carryall to slide down her arm, shifting the balance she had so carefully adjusted and pulling her precariously to one side.

Taylor tried to hunch the strap back upward. Rough fabric chafed her neck as her jacket was pulled askew. She could feel her clothes sticking to her everywhere. She longed to drop the bags right here and make a beeline for what she hoped would be the air-conditioned lobby of the guesthouse. But what if that was exactly what the driver of the car wanted her to do? What if he was after her luggage? She’d heard about thieves who prey on tourists in resort areas.

The car was close enough now for Taylor to see it more clearly. It was either dark green or navy blue. She recognized now why she hadn’t been able to see inside and still could not. The windows were tinted and opaque from the outside looking in. The wide, blank eye of the windshield made a sinister image as the car continued its slow, steady advance.

This was definitely not the pink taxicab she had taken from the airport. This car was not only darker in color, it was also of much more recent vintage. Its sleek surface glistened like brand-new in the occasional patch of streetlight. Taylor’s common sense told her that this was not the kind of vehicle likely to be owned by a petty luggage thief. She held tight to her bags anyway and staggered toward the guest-house steps. Meanwhile, her overheated brain registered the fact that the car was picking up speed.

She struggled through the opening in the white picket fence that surrounded the guesthouse. Her suitcase bounced clumsily as she thumped it upward from step to step. She looked over her shoulder to see the car almost at the curb where she had been standing only a moment ago. Her heart jumped, and her right shin bumped sharply against the edge of the top step, almost sending her sprawling across the porch floor. Taylor lunged onto the porch just as the light behind the lace curtain glowed suddenly brighter, and the door opened.

“What’s goin’ on out here?” drawled an amused female voice. “You’re makin’ enough noise to wake ‘em up all the way over at City Cemetery.”

“I’m sorry,” Taylor gasped as she struggled toward the door, “but I have to get inside.”

“Slow down, honey,” the woman in the doorway said. She touched Taylor’s arm. “Heaven’s sake, you’ve worked yourself up to a mighty sweat.”

Taylor pressed forward, but the tall woman’s strong grip restrained her.

“What’s eatin’ you, girl?”

“That car,” Taylor blurted out, jerking her head toward the street.

“What car might you be referrin’ to?”

Taylor spun around, half expecting to see the dark hulk with its blind, black windows crash through the white pickets and mount the porch steps after her. What she did see made her let the carryall and purse drop to the floor on one side of her and the suitcase plop down on the other. The street appeared even more shadowed in contrast with this lighted porch. The opposite side was lined with frame houses set close to the sidewalk. She could just make out the clusters of bougainvillea tumbling everywhere, from the balconies and along fence tops. But there was no dark car in sight.

Taylor hurried to the edge of the porch and peered down the street in the direction the car had been headed. The roadway was empty, except for a few parked vehicles along the nearer curb. Could the dark car have slipped into hiding among those vehicles? Taylor moved down a step, as if she were about to run to the street and check the parked cars. She hesitated. Did she really want to do that? Her heart was still pounding from the fright her stumbling flight had given her.

“Wait up, hon.” The tall woman was beginning to sound concerned. She crossed the porch to Taylor. “Where are you dashing off to?”

“There was a car....” Taylor gestured down the street.

“I didn’t see any car. I didn’t hear one, either.”

Taylor dropped her arm to her side. Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t heard the car herself. Maybe she couldn’t have heard anything above the thumping of her heart. Or, maybe the car’s engine had purred too smoothly to be noticeable. But would that still have been the case after it picked up speed?

“You just flew in from up north. Right?” the woman asked.

“What?” Taylor looked up at her. “Yes, that’s right. I flew from New York State.”

“Well, that explains it.” She took Taylor by the arm and urged her back toward the door. “You snowbirds sometimes get a little rattled when you first wing it down here to the tropics.”

“Snowbirds?” Taylor bent to pick up her bags, but the tall woman beat her to it.

“I’ll get those,” she said. “Paradise can be disorienting, you know, especially at first.”

Taylor glanced back toward the street one more time before stepping through the doorway. “I’m not so sure about this being paradise,” she muttered.

“I didn’t catch that.”

“It’s not important.”

“Whatever you say, hon.” The woman set Taylor’s bags down in front of a high registration desk that looked as if it must be a valuable antique—oak, aged to a reddish grain, topped with a slab of white marble veined by rose-colored streaks. The woman walked behind it and extended her hand across the marble. “My name is April Jane Cooney. I run this place.”

April Jane was tall, all right. Taylor hadn’t imagined that part at least. However, she was beginning to question her perceptions about the dark car. Maybe April Jane was right. The drastic transition from driving through a northern New York blizzard this morning to stepping into this land of exotica tonight might be enough to distort anybody’s perceptions.

“Now, let’s get you checked in so you can settle yourself down and take a nice, long bath. That’ll have you a hundred percent again in a jiffy. There’s even some stuff in your room that makes heaps of bath bubbles. Look in the cupboard under the bathroom sink. Or maybe you like showers best. Lots of New Yorkers don’t like to take the time for a bath.”

“I’m not from New York City. I’m from rural New York State,” Taylor said, feeling she was being put on the defensive. “There’s a big difference.”

“I suppose there is,” April Jane said, turning the leather-bound register toward Taylor. “Sign here. We do it the old-fashioned way at the Key Westian.”

Taylor managed a thin smile. She did want to get to her room. Whether she would shower or bathe once she got there wasn’t important to her right now. She did not want to hear anymore about how uptight snowbirds are or what a paradise this place was supposed to be. She was even beginning to resent the golden-brown tan above the curve of April Jane’s peasant-style blouse. Her hair was streaked with blond as further evidence of how much time she clocked in the tropical sun. Suddenly, Taylor was more aware than she wanted to be of her own hair clinging to her neck, the damp wrinkles staining her jacket, the perspiration trickling between her breasts. Suddenly, she wished she could will herself back to this morning’s frigid blizzard. She would be comfortable there, where the chill made her feel sharp and alert the way she liked to be. Aunt Pearl’s warnings about what happened when you strayed too far from home echoed in Taylor’s brain as she scrawled her name in the register. She dropped the pen and grabbed her bags from the floor.

“Let me help you with those, hon,” April Jane drawled.

“I’ll get them myself,” Taylor said a little too harshly.

“Suit yourself.” April Jane sounded amused again. “Second floor.”

Taylor hoisted the bags as best she could and struggled toward the stairs. She knew what a pathetic, bedraggled sight she must be right now, but she didn’t care. She told herself that if she could just be alone, she’d be able to sort everything out. She’d know what she was or was not seeing. She would be able to tell the difference between a harmless illusion and real danger. And, there would be no more overwhelming urges to run back home like a frightened child. She chose not to remind herself that it had been an overwhelming urge that had brought her here in the first place.

* * *

IT WAS LESS THAN AN HOUR later when Taylor wandered out onto the terrace of her second-floor room two blocks off Duval Street. She had taken a shower after all and put on a sleeveless cotton dress. The night air rested on her bare arms, warm and slightly moist and unbelievably warm. The fronds of a tall coconut palm brushed the terrace railing. The scent of night flowers surrounded her, as soft and shimmering as the silver light from the haloed moon or as a whisper of romantic memory. She understood how someone might be so seduced by this place that they could never leave. April Jane might be right. This could possibly be paradise after all. Taylor walked back inside where a circling ceiling fan had cooled the room to a pleasant evening temperature. The shower had revived her from her previously overheated state. What couldn’t be so easily cooled was the reason for her visit to the Keys. She had come here with a burning need to find out why this place haunted her so, and she had very few clues to go on—except for three names.

She had already unpacked the leather portfolio and slipped it between the bed and the nightstand. It contained a copy of Aunt Netta’s will and descriptions of the three heirs she had mentioned in addition to Taylor. There were two relatively small and perfectly understandable bequests, one to Violetta Ramone who had cooked for Netta and kept house at Stormley, where Netta had lived after it was rebuilt, and another to Netta’s longtime friend Winona Starling. The third bequest was larger and more mysterious. Netta had left it to a man with the unlikely name of Destiny Maxwell and the enigmatic instruction “he will know what it is for.”

The description of Mr. Maxwell was not so mysterious, but it was definitely troubling. He was in his late thirties, a lot younger than Aunt Netta had been. Yet, he had apparently been her frequent companion both socially and privately. He owned and operated a Key West saloon called the Beachcomber on lower Duval Street. Had he been Aunt Netta’s young lover? Was that what she meant by his knowing what the bequest would be for? Taylor wasn’t really bothered by that possibility. Aunt Netta had been free to spend her time with whomever she chose and to leave her money to them if she wished. Taylor respected that, though she didn’t like to think that her aunt might have been taken advantage of by an opportunist.

What Taylor was more curious about, however, was if Netta might have confided in Mr. Maxwell. Had she told him things about the Bissett family and its history in Key West? If so, Taylor wanted to know those things, along with whatever Violetta Ramone and Winona Starling might have to tell. It was too late at night to go calling on either of them right now, but a Key West saloon was sure to be open at this hour.

Taylor picked up her small handbag and the room key on her way to the door. She took a few steps toward the front stairway then thought better of it. She had a feeling that, despite April Jane’s casual manner, she kept a close watch over things around here and would be far too interested in the reason for Taylor’s going out alone so late. She used the back stairs to avoid that interest. The back door had a release bar across it. That meant it could be opened from the inside only. Taylor would have to take the front entrance back in. She could see herself tiptoeing barefoot up the stairs like a teenager out past curfew. The thought made her smile, but that smile disappeared as soon as she stepped outside and the door clicked shut behind her.

The back door did not open onto a street or a well-lit path as she’d thought it would. Instead, a pattern of flat stones led from the stoop through an overhang of foliage with no visible light along the way. Taylor moved cautiously down the steps to the stone walk and the entrance to the overgrown pathway. She could see that the foliage actually arched over the path for some distance to the street beyond. The light from the opposite entrance was just bright enough to reveal that much. There must be a wood or wire trellis structure that kept the greenery from filling in the opening altogether.

A shudder ran through her. She had been suddenly reminded of her dreams. There was a tunnel much like this in one of them, made up of long, undulating fronds that reached out to grab her as she ran through. She still trembled at the remembered sense of great danger lurking among those wild, grasping, green things. Taylor’s experience with the dark car had made her skittish already. She would have preferred not to be reminded of her nightmares right now. She told herself that there was no person lying in wait along this passageway or she would be able to make out their shape even in the dim light. She couldn’t be accosted from the side because of the trellis and the thickness of the shrubbery.

But what about non-persons? Wasn’t this the tropics, after all? Weren’t snakes and other creepy-crawly things common to this part of the world? She took a deep breath against that possibility. Another deep breath and Taylor was into the tunnel, which smelled faintly of leaf mold. She hurried but would not allow herself to run. Her heart tripped at the sound of her own footsteps and the attention they might arouse among whatever beings lurked within the green wall that surrounded her.

“Stay where you know the territory and the territory knows you.” Aunt Pearl’s words rang in Taylor’s head as haunting accompaniment to her hurried steps. She could almost feel Aunt Pearl keeping pace and whispering, “I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.”

Taylor didn’t take a full breath again until she was out of the passage. She didn’t slow her pace until she was standing beneath a street lamp where she was forced to stop for a moment to get her bearings. She had studied a Key West street map on the way down here in the plane. She knew precisely where the guesthouse was located in relation to the place she was now headed. Her exit through the backyards had taken her one block closer to her destination. She took a few more deep breaths to slow the tripping of her heart then set out along the cracked pavement toward Duval Street.

Small, modest houses lined the block on both sides. She was alone on the street—no people, no vehicles parked in possible ambush, no leafy nightmare creatures in evidence. Duval Street was famous for its noisy nightlife, but all was quiet here. She had deliberately chosen an address near the center of things but still at some distance from the hubbub of Mallory Square, with its sunset worshippers and late-night revels. Her guesthouse was only a few blocks from the southernmost point on the island, which the brochures all bragged of as also being the southernmost point in the entire United States. Almost not in the same country with the rest of us, Taylor thought, and wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She was reminded yet again of being out of her element.

The tropical air caught in her heavy hair. She could feel it there like a gossamer web among the strands. She raked her fingers through it and felt the coolness of that web and the fullness of the waves made suddenly untamable by this place. She pulled the strap of her handbag from her shoulder and began fishing inside for a wide-toothed comb that might bring the honey-colored mass under control. She was still poking around in her purse when she felt a movement behind her.

“What’s an angel like you doin’ out here on her own?”

He must have come out of one of the shop doorways that bordered the street. She was on Duval now. The shops were all closed along here, and there was no one else on the street, at least not near enough to be of help if she needed it. He was tall and very thin. His clothes hung loosely on him. His shirt was open several buttons at the neck, and his pants fit more like pajamas than trousers. She thought he might be wearing sandals from the sound of his shuffling along the pavement, but she couldn’t see his feet in the shadowy night.

She began walking fast away from him, down Duval Street toward the bright neon and the sound of music ahead. She could see that the lighted shop fronts were closer on the opposite side. She would cross the street when she got there, maybe step inside one of the open boutiques till she was sure she wasn’t being followed any longer. She could hear him, still laughing softly behind her. She glanced back over her shoulder.

“Fluff out your wings and fly away, angel,” he said. “There ain’t no heaven hereabouts.”

Chapter Two

“Desiree,” he breathed.

Des Maxwell was behind the false mirror over the Beachcomber’s long, teakwood bar. This observation post had been here when he bought the place. He’d thought about getting rid of it. He didn’t like keeping tabs on people when they didn’t know he was doing it. Instead, he told everybody who worked for him that from back here he had a clear view of everything, including the cash register. He figured that would keep most of them honest. There’s no such thing as being too careful in the bar business.

You can’t be too careful about a lot of things. Like letting yourself get blindsided the way he just did when she walked in and sat down. Of course, he knew she wasn’t Desiree. He’d seen Taylor Bissett’s photograph at Netta’s house, and Desiree had been dead almost twenty-four years now. That was just about time enough for him to get used to how much she had meant to him and how much of his life had died with her—like the only chance he’d ever had of anything even close to a family. Now, as he stared through the one-way glass at the woman who was the vision of her mother, he knew there hadn’t been time enough to get over his loss after all.

Des had half expected the daughter to show up here someday. Then again, he’d half expected her not to. Either way, she’d caught him by surprise tonight. It had never occurred to him that in real life she would look almost identical to her mother. Not even the photograph had convinced him of that. Nothing could have convinced him that anybody could look so much like Desiree. Nobody ever had. He pressed closer to the glass. The hair, especially, was as he remembered, and the skin he knew would be moist and cool in the night air, the way Desiree was cool while being warm and caring at the same time. He couldn’t tell if Desiree’s daughter might be warm and caring too. She was certainly beautiful. She was also subdued and aloof in that white dress, at least a world away from the halter tops and jeans cut off high enough to show some back cheek along the bar. She didn’t flash her body around that way any more than her mother would have done.

Still, there was something different about her, some way she wasn’t Desiree. Des couldn’t put his finger on it. He felt he needed to know what that difference was. He had to set her apart from Desiree, especially considering what a lot of people suspected about that night twenty-four years ago, and the fire. Taylor was only a kid then, younger than he was by several years. Even if what they said about her and the fire was true, she couldn’t have really understood what she was doing. Knowing that hadn’t kept him from wishing a thousand times that he’d done what he first meant to do that night and saved the mother instead of the child.

That regret rose in him now. Suddenly, he felt the need, stronger than ever, to set them apart from each other in his mind, these two women who would have looked like sisters, were they standing side by side. He knew he would be able to tell from the eyes. Unfortunately, Taylor Bissett was halfway across the room, and the mirror glass on the other side of here could stand a polish to clear up the view. He would have to go down there for a closer look.

Des headed for the steps that led to a side door at the end of the bar. He glanced one more time through the back of the mirror. “Damn,” he cursed as he saw a lanky man walk up behind Taylor with a smile on his face that said he intended to get to know her very well, very fast. Des quickened his pace toward the door.

* * *

WHEN TAYLOR FELT someone at her shoulder, she thought it might be the person she had come here to find. She looked up to see a dark-haired man of wiry build, attractive in a rawboned sort of way. He leaned over and flashed her a quick smile that told her he was just a stranger trying to pick her up, after all.

“I bet you won’t believe this, but I know you,” he said, starting out with the most clichéd of pickup lines.

“I beg your pardon. I don’t think I know you.”

“It was when you were a kid,” he said. “May I?” He gestured at the chair next to hers and sat down in it before she could say whether she wanted him to or not. His movements were abrupt, like a darting animal’s, so much so that there was no time to react.

Taylor hesitated. Was this a new twist on an old line? “Are you trying to say you knew me when I was a child here in Key West?”

“That’s right. I did.”

Taylor almost laughed at him. She had left here as barely more than an infant, and she hadn’t been back since. How could he possibly recognize her now as an adult?

“That was so long ago. You probably don’t remember,” he said. “Your aunt used to bring you to my mother’s house almost every day. I’d sneak around corners to get a look at you. You were almost as pretty then as you are now.”

“Thank you for the compliment. But you’re right, I don’t remember you. What did you say your name was?”

“Oh, sorry. I was so surprised to see you I forgot my manners. I’m Jethro.”

He took her hand and shook it briefly. His grip was firm, but darting like the rest of him.

“Was it my Aunt Netta who brought me to your house when I was small?”

“That’s right. That was her name. But you weren’t so small. I could already tell you were going to be tall like you are now.”

Taylor was again tempted to laugh. She had seen pictures of herself at three years old. She had been average size then, maybe even a bit small for her age. Her first growth spurt hadn’t happened till a couple of years later, at least. She was about to throw this guy some lines of her own, of the brush-off variety, when she noticed a man coming through a doorway at the end of the bar that extended the length of the room. He stopped for a moment to say something to the bartender. Taylor was looking at him with such concentration that, when he turned, he caught her staring. The directness of his gaze connected them, one to another, across the room with a flash of electric intimacy that almost made Taylor look away. She felt suddenly apprehensive, but she held his stare despite the flutter in her chest that was her heart picking up speed.

He was powerfully angular, almost too imposing for the low-ceilinged barroom. The lines of his face might have been chiseled from the rich-grained wood of the beams supporting that ceiling. His cheekbones were high and resolute, like the ridge of collarbone below his square, dimpled chin. He seemed out of place somehow in this smoky barroom, as if he was meant to be out-of-doors, among trees and landscapes as rugged as himself.

He began walking across the room. He was headed, in as straight a line as possible, directly toward her. She had guessed who he was the moment she saw him. He walked as if he owned the place, and that meant he had to be Destiny Maxwell. She felt that ownership reach out toward her the way it sometimes did with very strong-minded men. She steeled herself against its strength. She wasn’t about to be dominated, especially not by this particular man, no matter how strong-minded he might be. If this was to be a test of wills, she was determined to come out the winner.

Still, she couldn’t deny how attractive he was. She had seen it in the photographs in her portfolio, but those had only been pictures. The man in the flesh was even better-looking, almost disturbingly so. She would have preferred that not to be the case, but Taylor wasn’t accustomed to lying to herself. She had to admit, if only in private silence, that even the way he walked was somehow unsettling to her. He moved fast across the room without appearing to hurry at all, as if he wanted to make it clear that he wasn’t the kind of man who hurried for anybody. He might put on a little speed when his priorities required it, but he didn’t hurry. That would mean behaving as if something really mattered to him. Taylor guessed that this man didn’t like things to matter to him, or to let anybody know they did.

Des Maxwell might possibly be the handsomest man she had ever seen. He might also be the coolest and the most detached, and that coolness and detachment intrigued her. It also made her increasingly uneasy with every step he took because, the closer he got, the more striking he looked. As he approached she noticed more details about him, such as that he was quite tall, six feet or more. She couldn’t tell exactly from this angle. His hair was bronze and gold, much like April Jane Cooney’s. His deep, copper tan made Taylor aware of her own snowbird-pale skin.

Taylor felt a sudden shift of perspective, as if she had turned abruptly at an angle to see something not visible in her former line of vision. However, she hadn’t moved a muscle. She knew what was happening. She had experienced it before. The barroom scene disappeared for her for an instant and was replaced by something much more disturbing. She could see her body stretched out full length and naked. His nude body lay atop hers. Their skin touched, almost blended, but remained mysteriously different, like night from day.

Then the image was gone, as suddenly as it had materialized, and she was watching him stride toward her once again. Unfortunately, as with other such experiences, the shadow of the vision remained, along with its aura of strong sensuality. Taylor struggled to erase that sensation from her consciousness. She reminded herself that she’d always been put off by men who were what she thought of as too handsome. Vanity usually came along with such physical gifts, and arrogance. The way this particular man moved led her to suspect a generous portion of both.

Still, Taylor had to concede that the very sight of him had shaken her. Or, could it be just the vision she was reacting to? She hadn’t gotten over being startled when this kind of thing happened. She doubted she ever would. The experience made her feel unprotected, as if her usual defenses had toppled and she was left completely vulnerable. She definitely didn’t want to feel that way now, in front of Des Maxwell. She stifled the impulse to swallow hard against the rapid beating of her heart.

“Well, Jethro,” the tall man said when he reached the table. “You usually don’t prowl your way in here till the weekend.”

She wouldn’t go so far as to say there was a sneer in his voice, but it came very close to that. Meanwhile, though he was talking to Jethro, Destiny Maxwell was staring at her. His green eyes didn’t waver an instant from their study of her face. She felt their imposition so keenly that she was tempted to slap him for his rudeness, or maybe to dispel the shock his close-up gaze seemed to be causing to her system. She could actually feel her stomach tightening into a knot under his scrutiny. The vision of herself naked under him had already unnerved her. His stare couldn’t help but add to her uneasiness. She felt the warmth of a blush rise unbidden beneath the white cotton of her dress. The thought that he deserved a slap grew stronger, as if he might, in some deliberately insolent manner, be forcing this blush upon her, all the while enjoying her embarrassment.

“You two know each other. Right?” Jethro asked, glancing from one icy stare to the other.

“Not really,” Taylor said.

“I’m afraid you’re wrong about that. I’m Des Maxwell, and you are Taylor Bissett, which means I’ve known you almost all your life.”

Maxwell sounded so aloof he might not have been there at all, as if his words had been spoken with no connection to the rest of him. Taylor found that aloofness as provoking as his rude gaze and his calculated movements. Besides, she was getting tired of being declared an old acquaintance by men she had no memory of ever meeting.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said. “I do not know you.”

The waitress walked up behind Maxwell with a frothy white drink on her tray. “He ordered you a piña colada,” she said with a nod toward Maxwell in response to Taylor’s inquiring glance.

Taylor caught the flash of adoration in the young woman’s eyes as she looked up at her boss. Unfortunately, Taylor couldn’t help understanding that look. In addition to the attractions she had already noted, his hair fell winsomely across his forehead, and a thatch of sun-blond curls peeked through the open neck of his shirt in disturbing contrast with his tanned skin. He was positively spilling over with masculine charm, and she was keenly aware of the danger in that. She told herself she was determined to avoid such danger and that it was the power of this determination which made her hand tremble as she reached into her purse for her wallet.

“The drink is on the house,” he said and took hold of her wrist before she could pull out her money.

His fingers were warm against the thin skin above her pulse. She felt that pulse quicken as if it might begin at any moment to pump visibly beneath his touch. She pulled her hand away from him before that self-betrayal could happen.

“I prefer to pay my own way,” she said, handing a bill to the waitress, who had watched this exchange with considerable interest.

“Suit yourself,” Maxwell said with a shrug.

“Say, you two, what’s all this sparring about anyway?” Jethro darted halfway up from his seat and yanked the chair opposite Taylor’s away from the table. “Why don’t you sit down and take a load off, Des?”

“What do you say, Ms. Bissett? Should I take a load off, as Jethro puts it, or take a walk?”

Taylor stared straight back at him. She forced herself to be just as cool as he was. “Suit yourself.”

“In that case, I accept your invitation, Jethro,” Maxwell said, sitting. “How’ve you been, anyway?”

“I’ve been super, Des.” Jethro looked bewildered, as if he might be surprised by Maxwell’s acknowledging him at all.

“And how’s Winona?”

“Oh, Ma’s always tip-top.”

“That’s when she isn’t over the top,” Maxwell said almost under his breath.

“Wait a minute,” Taylor interrupted at the sound of the less than common female name. “Is your mother Winona Starling?”

“She sure is,” Jethro said enthusiastically. “That’s who your aunt used to bring you to see when you were a kid, like I told you.”

“I remember that,” Maxwell said.

“Well, I don’t remember any of it.”

Taylor felt her annoyance deflate suddenly. Too many people seemed to know more about her life than she did. Meanwhile, Maxwell was watching her. He appeared more thoughtful than arrogant this time.

“What exactly do you remember?” he asked.

His green-eyed gaze had turned unexpectedly warm as honey, or at least it felt startlingly that way to her.

“I remember almost nothing,” she said.

“Loss of memory can come in handy sometimes.”

The warmth had vanished from his eyes and his voice, as if she might have imagined them there, like one of her visions. Taylor had been about to lower her barriers against him long enough to ask what he might know of her early childhood here in Key West. His renewed coolness put a stop to that.

“Are you accusing me of lying about what I do or do not remember?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I was only making an observation.”

“You really don’t remember anything about being a kid here?” Jethro chimed in.

Taylor didn’t answer him. The fascination in Jethro’s voice and the quizzical way he was looking at her made her feel like a specimen in a jar. Des Maxwell’s smart-aleck detachment had revived the urge to slap him, hard and fast, straight across his sneering face. Taylor wished she had stayed in her room at the guesthouse and taken a bubble bath as April Jane Cooney advised.

Taylor pushed her chair back from the table and stood. “I have to be going.”

Maxwell took a moment to let his smile appear, so slow and wide that she could tell it was insincere. “Don’t let me chase you away.”

Taylor picked up her purse instead of doing what she really wanted to do with her hand to his arrogant smirk.

“I never let anyone chase me anywhere,” she said.

Despite that declaration, Taylor walked fast to the open doorway and out into the street. “Calm down,” she said, then glanced around to see if anybody had noticed her talking to herself. Two young men in T-shirts with beer bottles in their hands turned from lounging against the building to look her up and down in impudent appraisal. She avoided their eyes and would have begun walking back toward Amelia Street, when a recollection of the shuffling bum and his sly laugh kept her riveted where she stood, uncertain for the moment what to do next.

Emotion burned her cheeks. She had kept herself in check through all that had happened these past weeks, so soon after the death of Aunt Netta, Taylor’s last real remaining family. Her sense of loss, the trip down here, her scare outside the guesthouse earlier this evening—each pressure had piled upon the others. She had been closer to her saturation point than she realized when she walked into Maxwell’s bar. Then she saw him, with his brazen attitude, as if he couldn’t care less about any of it. That was the last straw. Tears trembled on Taylor’s lashes. She didn’t want anybody to see her wipe them away or know how upset she was. She wouldn’t give Des Maxwell that satisfaction, even if he didn’t know about it. She willed the tears to dry where they stood and vowed there would be no more.

“Are you all right?”

Taylor whirled around. She half hoped to find Maxwell standing there, so she could deliver the slap she’d resisted giving him in the bar. Instead, it was Jethro Starling.

“You looked so upset when you left. I thought I should come after you.” He seemed pretty agitated himself, with his eyes wide open in a startled expression.

“Thanks,” Taylor said, after a deep breath.

“One reason Des gets to people is that they know they can’t get to him.”

Taylor was surprised to hear such a sober assessment from someone so high-strung he could hardly stand still on the pavement.

“I noticed that.”

“Look. Why don’t you let me give you a ride home? It’s late for you to be out here on your own.”

Taylor hesitated, and that made him fidget more than ever.

“I wouldn’t hurt you or anything like that. I could get you a cab if you don’t want to drive with me.”

Taylor glanced up and down the street. It was late. She didn’t see any taxis, but she could call one as Jethro said. She remembered the creepy guy in the pink cab from the airport, almost as scary as the shuffling bum had been. Her instincts told her Jethro was harmless. Besides, Aunt Netta had known his family.

“I’d like a ride, thank you,” she said.

“Great. My car’s right over there.” He pointed to a red Corvette at the opposite curb.

As they walked across the street, Taylor caught sight of a dark sedan parked farther down the block. She stopped short, but then she saw that the windshield was transparent, not black glass. She continued walking.

“Maxwell really did get to you, didn’t he?” Jethro said as he opened the car door for her.

She didn’t feel like explaining about the sedan. “Maybe,” she said. “Does he ever get to you?”

“As long as I’ve got my good luck going for me, nothing bothers me.”

Taylor couldn’t help smiling as he slammed her car door and hurried around to get in the driver’s side. She would have guessed that there was hardly anything that didn’t bother Jethro. He flipped the car into gear and made a U-turn in the middle of the block, causing a pickup truck to screech to a halt in the opposite lane. The truck honked noisily, and Jethro honked back before taking off southward on Duval Street.

“How did you know my guesthouse was in this direction?” Taylor asked.

“Guesthouse? I thought you’d be staying at your family’s place by the shore.”

“No. I have a room not far from here on Amelia Street.” Aunt Netta might have been able to live with the ghosts of Stormley, but Taylor wasn’t. “Your family must have known mine pretty well.”

“Just about everybody knows my mother.”

“That reminds me,” Taylor said, thinking of the question she’d had earlier, before her encounter with Des Maxwell knocked it out of her mind. “Exactly how old was I when you last saw me?”

“I’d say you were about six or seven.”

Taylor needed a moment to take that in. “I don’t see how that could be possible. I left Key West when I was three years old, and I haven’t been back since.”

“Oh, no. That’s not right. You were six or seven like I said. I remember you used to bring your library book with you sometimes. Three-year-olds don’t read library books. You were old enough to be in school last time I saw you.”

“Maybe you have me mixed up with somebody else,” Taylor said.

“It was you, all right. I wouldn’t get that mixed up. I had kind of a crush on you.” He smiled over at her. He looked embarrassed. “I used to watch you especially.”

Taylor didn’t feel entirely comfortable with Jethro’s infatuation story, whether or not he might be correct in his memory of her as the object of those affections. She was even less comfortable when he took a sudden right turn off Duval Street.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “I told you my guesthouse was off Duval.” She slid her hand onto the door handle and got ready for a fast escape.

“Amelia Street is one-way. I can’t turn onto it from Duval.”

“Oh, I see.”

Taylor relaxed some, but she kept her grip on the door handle. At the end of the block the headlights picked out white letters on a telephone pole. Vertically they read Whitehead Street. Jethro made another turn, to the left this time. It was definitely darker here, with far fewer people around than back on Duval. If Jethro Starling intended to do her harm, she was giving him every opportunity. She could hardly believe she had climbed into a car with a stranger, and a strange-acting stranger at that. She was about to make her move and shove open the door when the car slowed. The pole marker on the corner ahead said Amelia Street, and Jethro was signaling to make a left turn.

Taylor was about to breathe a sigh of relief when she heard sirens. A whirling light reflected in the sports car’s rearview mirror. She turned to see two police cars behind them. Jethro steered to the side of the road. The police cars sped past and around the corner onto Amelia and the block where she was staying. She was surprised by that. This had seemed like such a quiet street, not at all the kind of place she would expect screaming sirens.

Then, Taylor remembered the dark sedan and the certainty that it was stalking her down that same quiet block. A wave of apprehension swept over her even before she saw that the police had stopped in front of the Key Westian and were already headed toward the porch. Jethro turned the Corvette onto the same block and slowed to a stop near the corner.

“Which house are you staying at?” he asked.

Taylor didn’t answer right away.

She lowered the car window to get a clearer view. She didn’t like what she saw. Two policemen had stationed themselves on either side of the guest-house door, and their guns were drawn.

Chapter Three

Des turned out the headlights of his Jeep and coasted to a stop within sight of the scene. Following Jethro’s flashy car had been easy. Des hadn’t really decided to follow them. It just happened. She’d marched out of the place, twitching her hips in that white dress. Was she aware that he could see the outline of her body through the fine material? Had she planned to use her charms to get what she wanted out of him, whatever that might be? Then she saw him and lost control for some reason and went running off before she could put her plan in motion. Was that what happened all those years ago? Did she lose control back then too? That’s what everybody said at the time.

Des let out a deep sigh. For almost as long as he could remember, he’d been pushing the past as far out of his mind as he could get it, especially his memories of that night. The air heavy with smoke, the running, choking, eyes raw and red, his heart screaming with the pain of being left alone again. He had been the beachcomber boy. Desiree had been the lovely lady from the beautiful house who walked the beach alone. He made her laugh sometimes. She gave him a pair of jeans without holes in them and boots made of real leather. She had given him books, too, and helped him learn to read as well as the kids who didn’t have to cut school to do odd jobs for money to live on.

Most important, she taught him things about himself he never knew, such as that he was smart and had courage and could do anything he wanted if he put his mind to it. His Uncle Murph might have done those things himself after Des’s mother died when he was only a baby, but Uncle Murph was generally too drunk to do much of anything but mumble and pass out. Desiree taught Des there was another way to be. It was the most significant lesson of his life. But what had he done for her in return? What if she had known that in the end he would leave her in a burning house to die? He knew the answer. She would say, “Thank you for saving my baby,” with the smile that had always made his heart feel full.

Tonight Desiree’s baby had walked back into his life, and he was trying his best not to care. For the most part, Des had kept himself from caring much about anything after the night of the Stormley fire. Now, he could feel the forces of hurt and memory threatening that resolve, and Taylor Bissett was to blame. Why had she come back here, anyway? What was she after? Anger flared. Des gripped the steering wheel hard, as if to choke the life out of that rage so he could return to the safety of coolness again. He didn’t want any of this to be happening. He wanted to go back to the Beachcomber and joke with the customers and the barmaids as he did every other night. Old tragedies, a beautiful woman with a screwed-up past—he didn’t need any of it.

Unfortunately, at this moment he couldn’t seem to stop wondering whether he would ever get to see Taylor Bissett smile. He forced his temper back under control. His guess was that she wouldn’t be smiling right now. She was too far away for him to make out her face, but he was sure about that all the same. Des had seen the cop cars streak past the Corvette and careen around the corner. He’d pulled over to let them pass. When the ‘Vette turned down the same street as the police cars, he thought Jethro might just be rubbernecking, trying to get a peek at the excitement. He was fool enough to do something like that. Maybe she was a thrill-seeker too.

Des saw the car door open on the passenger side of the Corvette. The police were all out of the two cars now. Two officers were on the path leading to the porch, but off to the side, probably to remain out of range of the front door. Two other officers had assumed break-in positions flanking that door. Des returned his attention to the sports car. Taylor was getting out of her side as Jethro’s door flew open and he jumped out, too. He ran around to her side and appeared to be trying to prevent her from exiting the car.

Through the open window of the Jeep, Des heard the police on the porch shout that they were coming in. He heard the thud of the door being kicked open. Des remembered that his field glasses were in the glove compartment. He pulled them out and peered through the eyepiece. A few adjustments brought the front of the guesthouse into focus. He flashed past the police officers on the walk. Something caught his attention, and he flashed back. There was excitement here, all right. Those cops had pistols in their hands.

Des refocused the glasses to direct his gaze back down the street to the Corvette. Taylor was out of the car now and trying to get to the sidewalk, but Jethro was blocking her way. Her back was to Des. She had managed to move onto the sidewalk, and that put her near a streetlight. She turned to say something to Jethro, and Des saw her face. Her expression was intense. She seemed to be explaining something to Jethro or trying to convince him of something. Des was beginning to doubt that her interest in this situation was limited to idle curiosity over some exciting police action. She looked as if she might be more personally involved than that.

Des saw one of the policemen approach Jethro and Taylor. The magnifying lens showed the policeman talking to them, and her answering. The conversation continued for a few moments, during which she grew increasingly agitated. Jethro was merely listening to the exchange. One of the two cops who had entered the guesthouse came out on the porch and called the other officers to him.

Taylor watched the cop walk away. She had one hand clamped over her mouth, as if to hold back a scream or a sob. Jethro was looking very nervous. He moved toward her and gestured as if he might take her by the shoulders, perhaps to comfort her. Instead, he dropped his arms and began to drum his fingers against the sides of his thighs. Meanwhile, she had started walking slowly toward the guesthouse. Her back was toward Des again, but he could see the tension in her shoulders.

One of the officers had gone down the walk at the side of the guesthouse toward the back of the building. The other officer stationed outside had returned to his patrol car and was speaking into the two-way radio. She climbed the steps, getting close enough to look through the front door into the foyer before one of the policemen from inside came out and backed her off. Des thought he saw her stagger against the cop, but the glasses still didn’t give a good view of her face.

The policeman moved her away from the door and let her sit down on the top step. She put her head in her hands, and could have been crying. Des couldn’t tell. Jethro had kept his distance. Now the policeman beckoned him toward the porch. Jethro hesitated, then shrugged and trudged forward. Des stayed out of sight in the Jeep, despite his sudden impulse to help Taylor. He’d given in to that same impulse twenty-some years ago and lived to regret it. Besides, he wasn’t quite ready to become part of the scene he’d been watching through his field glasses, especially not before he knew exactly what was going on.

He continued watching. Eventually, an ambulance arrived, then the medical examiner’s car. A while later, a stretcher was carried out of the house. The figure on the stretcher was encased in a black bag, completely covered from head to toe.

Des sighed and lowered the field glasses to the passenger seat of the Jeep. “What is it about you, Taylor Bissett?” he asked out loud. “Whenever you’re around, people have a habit of dying.”

* * *

APRIL JANE COONEY had been robbed and murdered. According to one of the uniformed officers who knew her, she never kept much currency in the cashbox. She was too savvy for that. Her assailant had taken whatever little there was, anyway. The metal box had been pried open and left near the body. April Jane must have put up a fight. What was left of the lamp from the registration desk lay in pieces on the floor near the opposite wall. The lamp’s base was shattered, as if it had been thrown very hard. A small dent at about head height on the white wall supported that theory.

One of the policemen had taken Taylor into a sitting room off the guest-house entryway. He had left the lace-curtained double glass doors ajar, so she could hear them discussing what might have happened to April Jane. Taylor heard the words and even put them together into sentences in her mind. Still, they weren’t entirely understandable to her. She guessed that she wasn’t letting herself fully comprehend what she was hearing, because then she would have to believe it. She would have to absorb the very scary fact that a woman she had spoken with less than two hours ago was now on her way to the city morgue, the victim of a senseless, violent crime.

What if Taylor had been here when the thief came in? She felt guilty thinking such a self-centered thought, but she couldn’t help it. What if her uneasiness about walking the trellis path behind the guesthouse had actually been some instinct telling her there was a would-be murderer lurking in the shrubbery? She shuddered at the thought and wished someone would turn off the ceiling fan. The sitting room had turned suddenly chilly.

Taylor had overheard the police saying there was only one guest in the house when the attack happened, an older man on the third floor in the back. He had stayed in tonight and taken a pill to help him sleep off a sunburn. He hadn’t heard a thing. The other guests were out on the town, like most Key West tourists at this time of night. Consequently, there were no witnesses. A neighbor across the street had heard glass shattering and saw the vestibule light go out suddenly. She didn’t see anybody run out of the house, but she suspected something might be wrong and called the police. By the time they arrived, April Jane was dead. Her killer had fled, probably out the back way. The police had already begun canvassing the neighborhood, both on Amelia Street and one block north on Virginia Street, to find out if anyone had seen anything.

Taylor had heard Jethro’s voice out in the entryway shortly after the policeman brought her into this room. Her knees had gone weak, and she had asked to sit down. She couldn’t make out what Jethro was saying. Then she didn’t hear him anymore. Next, she heard a policeman talking to a guest who had returned to the Key Westian and was demanding to know what had happened here. The policeman said that everyone would have to be questioned. He added that the guest-house residents would not be allowed to sleep here tonight because it was a major crime scene and had to be sealed off to all but official visitors.

Taylor was suddenly very tired. A series of adrenaline charges had kept her nerves tingling, through her arrival on this exotic island, her near escape from being run down and her unsettling encounter with Des Maxwell. This most recent jolt—the discovery of a dead body in her hotel—had sapped her final reserves of even that nervous energy. Now, all she wanted was to sleep. The police weren’t about to let her go to her room and lie down there. They might think it bizarre of her to curl up here on this settee, but she was too tired to care much what they thought. She was almost too tired to care where in the devil she might sleep tonight.

“Miss Bissett is a personal acquaintance of mine, and I would like to talk with her.”

The voice from the entryway had obviously been raised for emphasis. That was why Taylor could hear the words so clearly. But it wasn’t the loudness or even the demanding tone, that cut through her head-nodding stupor and snapped her to full attention. She had met very few people on Key West in her few hours here. Yet, she was certain she knew the owner of that deep, resonating voice. One glance at the opening between the double doors confirmed this certainty.

Taylor had no idea why Des Maxwell was here. Nonetheless, the sight of his brown, muscled arm flexing impatiently as he backed the policeman gradually toward the half-open doorway, told Taylor that she was no longer stranded and alone. A wave of relief swept over her, as deep as it was probably irrational. Taylor reminded herself that Des Maxwell was not a likely candidate for friend in need where she was concerned. Still, he was a familiar face in what felt at the moment like very alien territory. She couldn’t help being grateful to him for that.

There was something else about that face besides familiarity, something that struck her with a blow that took her breath away. It had happened when she had first laid eyes on him earlier in the Beachcomber barroom. It happened again now, with even greater force because he didn’t know she was looking at him and she didn’t have to be so careful to hide her reaction. She tried to tell herself she was only tired, otherwise his handsomeness wouldn’t have this effect on her. Still, she couldn’t keep the thought from crossing her mind that the word “manly” had been invented with someone like Des Maxwell in mind. Meanwhile, Des and the officer had walked out of the foyer and through the lace-curtained doors into the sitting room. The two of them appeared to know each other.

“Come on, Tony,” Des was saying. “What do you think I’m going to do? Abscond with your prisoner?”

“She’s not in custody, Des, and you know it. We’re just keeping her here to talk to Detective Santos. He’s on his way.”

“Does he have to talk to her tonight? Can’t it wait till the morning?”

“She may have been the last one to see April Jane alive. Santos will want to question her about that.” Tony glanced over at Taylor on the settee. “There’s something else too,” he added, barely loud enough for her to hear.

“What’s that?” Des asked, also glancing at Taylor then looking away.

She didn’t like the way they were talking about her instead of to her. She was even less pleased when Tony leaned toward Des and said something in a whisper. Des’s expression remained as unreadable as usual, except for a slight tightening around the eyes.

“Wait just a moment here,” Taylor said, rousing herself from the settee and mustering as much indignation as she could manage in her state of near exhaustion. “If you have something to say that relates to me, I want to hear it.”

Des gave her a cautionary look with “Keep quiet and let me take care of things” written all over it. That made Taylor even more indignant. Suddenly, she didn’t want anybody taking care of things for her, not even this man whose brawny body tempted her to do just that—at least until she wasn’t feeling quite so tired and out of sync with everything.

“I appreciate your concern, Mr. Maxwell,” she said, “but I am perfectly capable of handling this myself.”

“I thought you said she was a friend of yours,” the officer said to Des. “How come she calls you by your last name if you’re such great friends?”

“We’re recent acquaintances,” Taylor said before Des could answer.

She was determined to speak for herself in every way. “Please tell me what you were whispering about with Mr. Maxwell.”

“That’s confidential police information.”

“If it’s so confidential, why were you sharing it with Mr. Maxwell? Is he a member of the police force?” Taylor levelled a steady gaze at the officer. “You can answer that question for me, or for my attorney.”

“I think I can help you out with that one, Miss...” The man who had stepped through the doorway consulted a notepad before going on. “Miss Bissett,” he said. “You are Taylor Bissett, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

He was medium height and sallow-complected. Taylor noticed a slight muscle tic in his left cheek. Even without that added clue, his manner told her that he took his job very seriously. In laid-back Key West, he was anything but laid-back.

“I’m Detective Santos. I’ll be taking charge of this investigation. What are you doing here, Maxwell?” Santos shot a dark-eyed, suspicious gaze at Des. “How do you know Miss Bissett?”

“She’s Netta Bissett’s niece.”

“Oh, yes,” Santos said with a nod. “Your friend with the big house in Casa Marina.”

Taylor thought she might have heard a hint of sarcasm in the way he said “friend.” Or maybe she was imagining that. Either way, Taylor didn’t like the tone of the discussion or that her aunt was its subject.

“If you have questions that have to do with me or my family, I must insist that you address them to me.”

“I see.”

Santos looked her over, no doubt taking in her rumpled dress and unruly hair and probably doubting that she was as capable of taking charge as she claimed. Taylor smoothed her skirt and stood very straight. She wasn’t about to be intimidated by this officious man. Des Maxwell was another story. He was looking at her too, and she felt his gaze as if it had fingers to reach out and touch her. Those fingers travelled over her, but not at all in the same way Santos had looked at her. There was nothing in the line of duty about Des’s eyes. She warmed to the tropical intensity of their touch, from the skin on down into the center of her where she suddenly felt desperately in need of warming.

“Since you are speaking on your own behalf,” Santos said, with unmistakable sarcasm this time, “maybe you can tell me why the perpetrator appears to have been in your room when the victim encountered him.”

“In my room?”

“You’re in... “ Santos again consulted his notepad. “Second floor, front left?”

“That’s right.”

“According to my officers, there are no signs of disturbance in any of the other rooms, but it looks like there was quite a disturbance in yours.”

“I don’t know why that would be.”

Taylor was confused. Why would a thief single out her room? She hadn’t brought any valuables with her to Key West. This time, she was relieved when Des intervened.

“Isn’t Miss Bissett’s room off the veranda?” he asked. “Maybe the guy climbed in that way. April Jane could have heard him and gone up to investigate. The struggle might have started up there and ended up down here when April Jane ran down to call the cops.”

“Interesting theory,” Santos said with something like a sneer. “Did you think that up all by yourself, or do you have an inside source of information I should know about?”

“I was making the point that the guy could just have happened to come in through Taylor’s room.”

“Maybe.”

Santos was looking Taylor over again. She might have been unsettled by that, but her attention seemed to be stuck on the way her name sounded when Des spoke it and how that sound spread over her like heat, the same way the touch of his gaze had done. Once again, she told herself that such thoughts were only the effects of exhaustion on her overtaxed mind. Unfortunately, she wasn’t as sure that was true as she would have preferred to be.

“What makes you think there was a struggle?” Santos was asking Des. “I only said there were signs of a disturbance.”

“I assumed you were talking about the same kind of thing as out there.” Des gestured toward the entryway with its shattered lamp and general disarray. “That looks like the scene of a struggle to me. Besides, I knew April Jane. She would have put up a fight, and she was strong enough to give the guy a pretty hard time.”

Taylor had to agree. April Jane hadn’t come across as a woman who would sit still for being pushed around, or for letting somebody rob the place, either.

“What about you, Miss Bissett?” Santos asked. “Do you think the perpetrator just happened to be in your room when the victim found him and decided to give him a hard time, like Des says?”

Hearing April Jane repeatedly referred to as a victim brought the body bag and the city morgue to Taylor’s mind once more. She swallowed the lump of sudden grief in her throat.

She hadn’t known April Jane Cooney personally, but the woman had to have deserved something better than to be a live human being one minute and a victim the next. The true horror of what had happened here tonight was beginning to impress itself upon Taylor. She was seized by a terror that felt familiar somehow. Why familiar? She had experienced very little violence in her life. Yet, this deep-down fear had been with her before. It had been with her in her dreams.

“Miss Bissett, is there some reason you don’t want to answer my question?” Santos was studying her with continued interest.

“What was the question again?”

“Do you think that the perpetrator just happened to be in your room?”

“I can’t think of any other explanation.” Actually, she couldn’t think much of anything right now. “Detective Santos, would it be possible to continue this in the morning? I’ve had an exhausting day.”

“Murder can do that to you.” Santos was at it with the sarcasm again. “By the way, do you have somewhere else to stay? This place will have to be closed down, at least for the next few nights.”

Taylor searched for an answer. She didn’t really know anybody here in the Keys. She didn’t know the hotels either. And, she didn’t want to stay at Stormley. She wasn’t ready for that yet.

“You can come to my place,” Des said.

Santos glanced back and forth between them with obvious interest. For the moment, Taylor couldn’t think what to say, especially since the suggestion had tripped loose that flutter in her heart she’d felt earlier.

“There’s a room at the Beachcomber over the café,” Des said. “It’s quite comfortable and very private.”

He’d emphasized the privacy part. Taylor wondered if his offer might be her only recourse. She thought of asking Santos if he had any recommendations. She was wavering between taking a chance that he’d offer her a cot in the local jail and taking a chance on Des’s invitation when a flurry of motion turned everyone’s attention toward the door.

The woman who had swept in was dressed all in white, from her turbanned head to her slippered feet. Her clothes appeared to swirl around her—a loose tunic top, full-legged trousers and a kind of shawl or train draped over her shoulder—all in soft, mobile fabrics. Her skin was light by Key West standards, but brightened by dramatic makeup, as were her very round eyes, which were almost as dark as Detective Santos’s.

“My dear child,” she exclaimed as she advanced on Taylor with open arms.

Santos stepped into the path of this swirling, white onslaught. “Mrs. Starling,” he said. “I believe we’ve met.”

“Of course,” she replied. “I have met everyone on this island.”

Jethro appeared in the doorway, confirming Taylor’s guess that this woman was Winona Starling.

“May I ask what you’re doing here?” Santos inquired.

“I have come to the rescue of this beleaguered young woman,” Winona pronounced. “It is what my dear friend Netta would have wished.”

Taylor had spent entirely too much of her life being hovered over and protected and rescued. She had vowed that wasn’t going to happen anymore, but right now that vow felt less crucial than usual. She did her best to ignore the twinge of regret that it wouldn’t be Des Maxwell’s brown, muscled wing under which she would find shelter from what was left of this harrowing night.

Chapter Four

Folds of dark trees, rolling and rippling, soft as velvet on her body. Sliding over her, along her skin, clinging to the roundness of her breasts, catching on the hard points of her nipples. Fingers of leaves, satin-smooth, slipping between her thighs, whispering there till a moan rose in her throat and her body rose to meet the lover.

In the background, like a rising wind, another moan, repeated in rhythm, first too faintly to be understood, then louder, Danger. Danger. Danger. Something spoke in her mind for a breath of a moment of her having heard that warning rhythm before. But that thought was being rapidly swallowed by sensations so intense that there was no possibility of thought left. The warning rhythm remained, but only as an echo now, far off at the edge of her beyond the sensations. At the center of her there was no longer room for anything other than the lover.

The leaves had suddenly turned to flesh. They were his fingers now, opening her wide and wider while she drew deep breaths, as deep as the probe of his touch. He moved astride her and plunged inside. She arched to meet him with a cry of triumph and pleading. They rode one another, desperate and groaning. The power of their thrusting slapped the bed against the wall to punctuate their passion—thump, thump, thump—drowning out even the faint remaining echo of the danger warning...

Thump, thump, thump.

Knock, knock, knock.

The sound was transforming yet again, to become different but the same. Taylor knew the ache deep inside her was real, but the man had melted away in the light that greeted her fluttering eyelids. He had been a dream. She could barely stand to discover that, the ache of missing him was so strong and torturing. The velvet leaves and folding trees retreated as well. Only the sound remained.

Knock, knock, knock.

Taylor’s mind began to understand where she was—in a guest bedroom of the Starling house. Yet, part of her longed to stay, if even for only a moment more, in the place of undulating leaves and plunging passion. The cool of the air conditioner chilled the damp places on her body and banished the warm satin that had stroked her skin only an instant ago. Still, the mood of it was with her. She had been making love with a man of power and lust. She even knew who that man was. It had been a long time since she’d made love in real life. Because of that, she had turned herself off till she seemed not to care much anymore.

One night in the tropics, and she was being tormented by erotic dreams of—

The knocking was more insistent now. Taylor’s gradually clearing mind followed the cadence of it to the wide doors, and through them onto what she guessed must be another veranda. There had been a veranda off her room at the guesthouse, but she wasn’t there now. The colors were different in this room—creamy-golden walls and doorways, rich floral patterns in the bedding and on the floors. A stained-glass skylight echoed those patterns in its design, refracting the morning light into pools of color along the walls. Winona Starling was obviously a woman of sensuous tastes. The thought nudged the longing ache to sharpness again. Taylor sat up straight from the rumpled pillows, intending that rapid movement to dispel the last vestiges of the dream as she calmed her still-ragged breath toward its normal pace. At this new angle, she could make out the figure behind the slanted slats of the wooden blinds at the veranda doors. She almost fell back onto the pillows in surprise.

“Oh, no,” she gasped, though something inside her was saying quite the opposite.

It was the man from her dream. There was no mistaking Des Maxwell’s silhouette. She knew instantly who he was. She didn’t know why he was here. She would have to answer his knock to find out. It was also the only way to keep him from waking the rest of the house. But maybe that would be best. Then Jethro or someone would send Des away. Meanwhile, the warning rhythm from her dream had returned. Its chant of danger, danger, danger droned beneath her thoughts. Still, as her head cleared she knew she didn’t really want a scene involving the entire household. She’d had enough of scenes last night. She eased out of bed and tiptoed to the veranda door.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered through the space between the blind and doorframe.

“I can’t hear you,” Des said, more loudly than she would have preferred.

She suspected he wasn’t telling the truth. After all, she could hear him. Why wouldn’t he be able to hear her? She also suspected he wasn’t going to go away without seeing her face-to-face. Maybe she would have a better chance of getting rid of him that way. She unlocked the door but kept her body behind the closed blinds that covered the glass. She was very aware that her nipples were still visibly aroused beneath the oversize, white T-shirt that Winona had taken for Taylor, along with a change of clothes, from the guesthouse. She definitely didn’t want him to see that. Just considering the possibility made her nipples harder still.

Taylor edged the door open a crack and was greeted by the soft, warm scent of the Key West morning. The sun was up, and already brighter than on the sunniest of northern New York days. She was tempted to throw the door wide and be embraced by the fragrance of jasmine and frangipani from Winona’s garden arbor. Taylor had longed for the exhilaration of pure freedom much of her life. In this first instant of her first tropical morning, she felt the proximity of that freedom sweep over her. Then, Des Maxwell stepped across her line of vision through the crack in the doorway, and the sensation disappeared.

“I apologize for waking you up,” he said.

She put her finger to her lips to shush him into speaking more quietly. The sun might be up and bright, but the hour was early. Roosters crowed at the dawn somewhere in the distance. Before she could ask him what he wanted, he went on, but in a whisper this time.

“I didn’t want you to miss your first morning here. I thought you might sleep through it.” He hesitated a moment, as if just now realizing he might have judged the situation wrong. “And I thought you might want to get your stuff out of the guesthouse, at least anything you don’t want the cops pawing through.”

Taylor had been about to scold him for disturbing her so early after yesterday being such a grueling day for her, but what he was saying made sense. Besides, she agreed with him. She wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, anyway. The warning of danger from her dream tried to intervene upon that thought but she pushed it aside.

“I would like to get my things,” she said.

“You might also like to eat something. I have croissants in my car. There’s a place over on Duval that makes them fresh. They’re the best this side of New Orleans.”

The mention of food reminded Taylor of how long it had been since she’d eaten last. Late yesterday afternoon on the plane, which felt like very long ago indeed. The rumbling in her stomach agreed. She was definitely hungry. Still, she hesitated as another recollection of her dream returned, the memory of another kind of hunger. She might have fantasized about Maxwell in the most intimate of ways, but she didn’t really know him. This early morning visit smacked somewhat of the bizarre. She did have serious questions about his relationship with Netta. It occurred to Taylor that he might be trying to work the same spell on her that had charmed her aging aunt. Taylor’s still-damp body might be more vulnerable to those charms than her will to resist was strong. Perhaps it would be wise to keep a safe distance from Des Maxwell, at least until she felt more her usual in-control self than she did at this moment. She didn’t know what to do, which way to choose—another uncharacteristic state for her to be in.

“We could go to the Key Westian,” he was saying, “then drive up to the beach for a little breakfast.”

“Wait a minute.” Something had suddenly occurred to her. “Didn’t the police say they were sealing the guest-house?”

“We can get past that.”

Taylor hesitated.

“Aren’t you curious to see whether the guy who killed April Jane might have had some special reason to be in your room, after all?” Des asked. “The cops suggested that could be the case. Remember?”

Taylor did remember that, and she was definitely curious about it.

“I figured we’d be smart to go there early, before anybody’s around,” Des said. “Less chance of being stopped that way.”

Taylor nodded. He was right, or maybe she merely couldn’t think of a good argument this early in the morning. The soft air from the veranda had cooled her body from the frenzy of her dream. More practical considerations were supplanting her qualms about being alone with Des Maxwell. She could surely govern her emotions as successfully with him as she always had with other men. She ignored the danger warning yet again.

“I’ll get dressed and be with you in a few minutes,” she said.

“You can come out this way,” he said, indicating the end of the veranda. “There are stairs around the corner of the house and a path to the street. I’m parked out there in the red Jeep.”

She might have known he’d have a car like that. Where she came from, mostly oversexed adolescents drove Jeeps, especially red ones.

* * *

DES HAD the T-top on the Jeep. All of a sudden, he wasn’t sure that had been the right choice. Maybe it would be too breezy for her in the open air. He thought of her full, wavy hair, how it had haloed her face last night in curling strands against her long, white neck. Her hair had been wilder a few moments ago. Even through the narrow door opening he could see how tossed and tousled she was. The memory of that wildness, along with the bright flush of her cheeks from sleep, flashed through him now with an intensity that sped straight to his groin. He’d felt the same stab of lust on the veranda, at the first glimpse of her misty blue eyes, so sultry in their sleepy softness. He’d had to hold himself back from shoving through the door and grabbing her. He couldn’t remember ever having the urge to put his hands on a woman come over him so strong. Still, she didn’t strike him as the kind of woman you grabbed.

But what kind of woman was she? Des smiled at the question and at himself. Obviously, she had to be the kind of woman who could get him out of bed at dawn and off to the Croissanterie before anybody was around but the bird-watchers. The buttery aroma from the pasteboard box on the back seat enticed him, but Taylor Bissett had been the real enticement. For what felt like the hundredth time this morning, Des asked himself what was going on with him, anyway. He didn’t run after women. He didn’t have to. They generally came after him. He didn’t kid himself that they thought of him as some kind of stud. He figured his general lack of interest turned them on. Sandra had told him that. He’d married her thinking she could break through the wall he’d had around him for so long. They’d grown to be friends but nothing more. The deep parts of him remained untouched, no matter how much he’d wished them not only touched but overwhelmed.

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