the hedges and set the garden gate creaking. Anastasia, sprawled before the cold fireplace, favored her mistress with a cool glance and an interrogative whine.
All right, so he was lying. That much was certain.
But what exactly was he lying about? And why?
A vague scenario took shape in her imagination like the outline of a movie plot. Jack had found the gun. Somehow he was using it to intimidate Steve, forcing him to go along with something Steve didn’t like.
Great theory.
Except Jack was absent at the moment. Nothing prevented Steve from hustling Kirstie and Anastasia onto the motorboat and fleeing to Upper Matecumbe Key.
No, whatever he was doing was of his own free will.
Besides, there was no longer any particular reason to suspect Jack of criminal behavior. Had he wanted to hurt Steve, he could have done so at the reef. Could have stabbed him with the knife. Could have killed him.
But he hadn’t. Which proved he was no threat, regardless of her intuitive forebodings.
Of course it did.
She got up, paced. Anastasia watched her, fascinated by her restless prowling.
The living room was normally her favorite spot in the house. Today it was a cage. The decorative ironwork on the windows had become the bars of a cell. The thick, moist air was suffocating; it clogged her lungs.
She found herself drawing rapid, shallow breaths and forced herself to stop. Hyperventilating wouldn’t help.
Too much nervous energy. That was her problem. Well, there ought to be some way to work it off.
The garden. She’d amused herself several times in the past two weeks, pulling weeds and trimming shrubbery. The work was by no means necessary-the Larson heirs paid a maintenance crew to attend to the upkeep of house and garden-but she’d found it relaxing.
Some relaxation was precisely what she needed right now;
In the kitchen she collected scissors, work gloves, and a small plastic bag for cuttings. She carried the stuff into the garden and set to work, humming to herself.
The tune, she realized with a small shock, was “Stranger in Paradise.”
It fit. But who was the real stranger? Jack… or Steve?
Jack switched off the radio when he heard Kirstie’s footsteps in the kitchen. He sat stiffly in the straight-back chair before the worktable, listening to the rattle of drawers, a hummed melody that diminished with distance, and finally the muffled closing of a French door in the dining room.
Then there was no sound but the throb of the generators through the thin wall and the answering beat of his heart.
He had spent the past fifteen minutes in this narrow hideaway that Steve, in his guided tour, had somewhat incongruously referred to as the maid’s room, though there was no maid in residence at the Larson house now. The radio room-that was what it should be called, since the two-way radio on the worktable was the sole object of interest in the place.
Part of his time had been occupied with a small but important operation requiring some minimal mechanical skill. Only when that chore was done had he switched on the radio, dialed the volume low, and found a news channel. Ear pressed to the speaker, he’d waited for an update on the manhunt.
According to leaks from anonymous sources “close to the investigation,” the FBI had tracked him at least as far as Miami International Airport. Meanwhile, Sheila had achieved the status of a minor celebrity, peddling her story to a tabloid television show for $25,000.
There had been more, but he hadn’t heard it. He’d been afraid to leave the radio on with Kirstie in the next room. His behavior-sitting alone by the radio with the door shut-would only deepen her suspicions and perhaps prompt her to listen to the news herself.
He wondered what she had been doing in the kitchen… and what she was up to now.
Rising, he crossed the room and eased open the door. The kitchen was empty.
He remembered the sound of the French door shutting. She’d gone out onto the patio. Perhaps she was sunbathing.
His blue jeans, which he’d donned again after the trip to the reef, swelled slightly with the beginning of an erection.
Voyeurism was not his usual mode of operation. But he wouldn’t mind a glimpse of Mrs. Kirsten Gardner stretched in a lounge chair, wearing a swimsuit, skin oiled with suntan lotion.
Cautiously he passed through the kitchen into the dining room and approached the French doors, their square panes dappled with sun. He peered through the glass and felt a brief plunge of disappointment.
She wasn’t sunbathing. She knelt in the garden, her back to him, pulling dandelions.
No swimsuit, either. Her outfit was the same one she’d worn all day: sandals, shorts, yellow tank top.
Still, even that attire was revealing enough. Save for the tank top’s straps, her shoulders were bare, the upper part of her back exposed. Her muscles flexed as she worked. Firm, well-toned muscles.
He watched as she leaned forward, still humming the same melody he’d heard in the kitchen, and uprooted another weed. He thought of kneading her shoulders, her back.
Her lean, sinuous arms reached for a clump of ragwort. The weed was unexpectedly stubborn. She pulled hard, muscles stiffening. Jack thought of Ronni Tyler in her last living moment, her body snapping taut, head thrown back, arms extended like rigid poles. And years earlier, Meredith thrashing in the pool-her muscles had been well- toned also-she’d reached up for the surface, grasping desperately for life…
A shudder moved through him, the shock wave of some internal explosion, and abruptly he knew what he had to do.
His need was suddenly too strong, the blind, raging need that had been building steadily throughout the day. He had no choice but to satisfy it. Will, self-control, his very sense of self melted away in the furnace heat of the fever within him.
Distantly he recalled Steve’s warning, but the memory seemed remote and unreal. Steve wouldn’t shoot him. Little Stevie? No way. He didn’t have the nerve.
The door opened soundlessly under his hand. No creak of hinges. No squeal of wood.
He stepped into the humid air, heavy with flower scents. For a moment he stood in the shadowed coolness of a portico, peering out at the garden like a predator lying in ambush in its den.
Then silently he advanced into the heat, the light.
She was only six feet away. Her suntanned shoulders were dusted with soft freckles. The down on her nape shivered in a lazy current of air. She went on sweetly humming, the tune hypnotic and gently sad, haunting as a lullaby.
Regrettably he didn’t have his knife. It must still be packed with the snorkeling gear, which Steve had concealed somewhere in the house.
Well, his bare hands would do.
Her neck was thin, delicate.
If he grasped hold of her head from behind, gave it a good sharp twist He could almost hear the wet crackle of snapping bone.
With luck he would merely paralyze her when he broke her neck. Then he could finish her more slowly while she watched with wide, helpless, staring eyes. Blue eyes. Meredith’s eyes.
He took another step.
A hand closed over his arm from behind.
His heart stuttered, missing a beat. He jerked his head sideways.
Steve was there, his gray eyes cold behind his glasses.
Slowly, wordlessly, he nodded toward the house.
Making no noise, the two men retreated, leaving Kirstie to continue her work, unaware.
Steve didn’t speak until the French door was shut, and he and Jack were in the living room. Then: “You son of a bitch.”
Jack was certain the Beretta was concealed under Steve’s jacket. And equally sure Steve was very close to using it.
