Paradise Burning (24 page)

Fire control. The chopper scooped up water
from lakes, even the gulf, and dumped it on fires. He’d seen that
on TV too, yet never anticipated any personal danger. The thick
woods around the old house was excellent camouflage, not a
menace.

He had, perhaps, made a mistake.

Karim loped back up the road and jumped into
his black Jeep Wrangler, one of the percs of his job. They’d
actually let him choose it himself. The leafy canopy flashed
overhead. He activated the electronic device that opened the gate.
His body thrummed with impatience, hands clutching the wheel, as
the gate inched open.

Karim drove rapidly down the long dirt road,
with suddenly ominous woods closing around him on either side. As
he hit the paved road, his foot pressed even harder on the gas
pedal, the Jeep careening around a corner as it approached the
small cluster of houses east of the river. Where children were
playing, people mowing their lawns, tending their gardens. One man
was washing his boat. All totally unconcerned.

Karim’s foot came off the gas. He drove
sedately past. Obviously, he’d missed something somewhere. In just
over a minute he was out of the populated area and there, about a
hundred yards up the road, was an array of fire trucks blocking the
entrance to a large county park noted for its wilderness hiking
trails. The cloud of smoke behind the trucks was larger, darker
than before, towering at least a thousand feet into the sky.

A roar from behind. The helicopter was making
another run. This time Karim could actually see the bucket open,
the water tumble down near the edge of the column of smoke.

The last thing he wanted to do was call
attention to himself, but he had to ask. As Chief of Security, it
was his responsibility. Karim pulled the Jeep up behind a private
car. The man standing beside it, gazing at the towering smoke, was
fiftyish and not wearing a uniform. Hopefully, just an interested
spectator.

Karim joined him. “What is happening?” he
inquired.

“
Controlled burn that almost got out of
hand,” the man said without turning his head. “That’s why they
called in the chopper. Burn like this got away a few years back,
roared all the way to Pine Grove, licking up a couple of houses
with it. So they’re being extra careful.”

“
No one back there seems concerned.” As
the man glanced at him, Karim waved a hand toward the small
settlement east of the river.

“
Burn was announced. You live in the
woods, you get used to it.” The man’s eyes suddenly grew cautious;
his body stiffened ever so slightly. “Say . . . you’re the guy from
the house at the end of line. The one with the humongous fence. Not
a great place to be in a wildfire. Come out to look it over, did
you?”

“
Ah . . . yes. I did not know the smoke
was from a controlled burn. I was concerned.”

“
Your English is pretty
good.”

Karim sensed the unspoken:
For a raghead
. “Thank you,” he said
through gritted teeth. America was supposed to be a melting pot,
yet Middle-Eastern males seemed destined to be the ingredients that
would pop to the top for decades to come, rejected and
indigestible.

Unfair! He wasn’t a terrorist. Maybe not
quite on the right side of the law, but . . .

The black smoke was dissolving to gray, with
puffs of near white here and there. The cloud was not so broad, not
so high. A small plane was making slow circles over the area.
Probably a spotter plane. The helicopter did not return.

The danger was past. For the moment.

When Karim drove back toward the house
surrounded by woods, he allowed a scowl to crease his handsome
face. Wildfire could leap through the chain link, soar over the
barbed wire, consume the signs that said, “Private Property, No
Trespassing.” It could swallow up the house, the staff, the
clients, the girls.

Imagination was his curse. A soldier was far
better off without it.

And fire was not his only problem, Karim
thought as he waited for the gates to open. Lately, there was
something different about his lovely, his very special, Nadyenka.
An air of suppressed excitement, sparks of hope in her eyes,
quickly extinguished when she thought he was looking.

Why?

Not that he hadn’t seen flashes of defiance
from time to time. For one so fragile, she was spirited, his little
Nadya. But her present mood was something stronger, more concrete.
As if . . . as if she were no longer alone.

Impossible. The jungle around that clearing
was impenetrable, the river full of alligators and snakes, the
campground far downriver on the opposite bank. And yet . . .

Had he been careless? Too lenient? Perhaps
besotted was a better word. He had wanted her to owe him. To like
him . . .

The next time Nadya went to the river, he
would follow.

From the co-pilot seat a thousand feet above
the wildfire, Special Agent Doug Chalmers peered out the window of
the small private plane. How very fortunate he had an accommodating
friend with an airplane at the small Golden Beach airport and even
more fortunate that the county’s burn provided such a perfect
excuse to patrol the area from Golden Beach to Pine Grove and back
again. And he was willing to bet that the picture that was coming
together was going to be of great interest to the Pennington
oddcouple—and what a surprise when his team turned up the fact that
they were married.

What he’d seen from the air, plus information
rolling in from agents in the field, was enough to make Doug’s
heart sing. Mandy Armitage was on to something. He liked Florida,
but things had been pretty tame at the Manatee Bay field office
since he’d left the New York, following the lure of a sweet-faced
woman with blue eyes who’d promptly fallen in love with someone
else. In the past six months there had been no challenges like the
kidnapping of Jamie Langdon, Claire Blue’s son by her first
marriage. And no killers like the psycho who had stalked Claire in
the early days of Amber Run. Lately, Doug had been stuck searching
for terrorists in a county traumatized by discovering that fifteen
of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers had, at one time or another, been
their neighbors. One of history’s nasty jokes on a sleepy Gulf
Coast town.

Not surprising, then, that local agents had
leaped at a new kind of puzzle. By the time Doug got back to the
office, the picture was taking shape.

The old house in the woods had been recently
renovated. The workmen, who had been paid well to keep their mouths
shut, spilled the beans with eager relief the minute they saw the
FBI badges. A “really nice” living room, they said. A billiards
room with plasma TV and four bedrooms in the house, six more fitted
into an old barn and stables. Outside, the workmen agreed, the
place looked like a wreck. Inside, it was state of the art,
everything painted and polished and decorated like a picture in a
magazine.

Why had no one noticed all this activity?
Easy, the men said. What had once been an old horse trail, barely
passable with four-wheel drive, had been widened and smoothed into
a marl highway, mostly through the woods. The road ran four miles
southeast to within a hundred yards of a public road in the
neighboring town of Pine Grove. The last bit of road beyond the
woods had been left untouched. To the casual eye, it looked like
nothing more than a horse trail or a cow path, winding through a
sea of palmetto fronds and plunging across a narrow, deliberately
uninviting, unrailed wooden bridge over a deep drainage ditch
before finally reaching the safety of county-maintained macadam.
And even that road was in an area of no houses, no one to notice
the comings and goings to the old house in the woods.

Nice, very nice.

The workmen, shame-faced, seemed to have no
doubt about the what all those bedrooms were for. Well, sure, hey .
. . world’s oldest profession, wasn’t it? You had to admire all
that enterprise. And who was getting hurt?

There was a general groan around the
conference table when that particular comment was repeated.

Doug shook his head. That was the trouble
with trafficking. Hard to get men to take it seriously. They never
seemed to think about the women whose lives were being ruined.
Tomorrow he was going to take a boat ride. Hire a skiff at Bud’s
Fish Camp and go trolling for something larger than snook.

Peter scowled at the perfectly straight mile
of road that connected Amber Run to Calusa Campground. Five minutes
door to door wasn’t enough to settle his unease. Mandy had ignored
him all day. Except for a brisk Happy Birthday as she’d arrived
that morning, plus an admonition to ignore any clouds of smoke, he
might as well have been invisible. She hadn’t even stopped to share
the morning newspaper, just poured a cup from the Mr. Coffee on the
counter, informed him she couldn’t waste time because she was
leaving early today, and disappeared into her office.

At lunch she’d made such a stealthy visit to
his aerie that he hadn’t realized she’d come and gone until he
caught a glimpse of a roast beef sandwich out of the corner of his
eye.

She was avoiding him. Sorry she’d invited him
for dinner.

So no wonder butterflies were beating their
wings against the lining of his stomach as he drove toward Calusa
Campground. An ache in the groin he could understand, but he’d been
less nervous on his first date. More confident of success the night
he’d lost his virginity.

Mandy didn’t use to drive him nuts. She
was
his
, marriage a foregone
conclusion. Seven years her senior, he’d been the wise one.
Experienced. All-knowing. Patronizing as hell.

Yet she’d seemed a willing, even eager
participant in her parents’ marriage scheme.

Not seemed.
Was
. Everything had been great. Until he’d wanted
to spread his wings, and Mandy refused to leave the nest.
Shit!

She could have refused to be his research
assistant, whispered the small voice of hope. Refused to come to
Florida.

She’d invited him to her RV for dinner. That
said a lot.

But she’d looked preoccupied all day today.
Worried. As if some imp of nostalgia had offered the invitation,
and Amanda the Sensible wanted to rescind it.

Well, she hadn’t. She’d zipped out the door
just before four o’clock, after reminding him to meet her at the
campground office promptly at seven, lest dinner be ruined, and
scooted off down the driveway, presumably to begin preparations for
the grand occasion.

Well, hell, there was nothing grand
about being wifeless and childless at thirty-seven, Peter reflected
gloomily. Which was precisely why his hands were as shaky on the
wheel as the wings of the butterflies in his stomach. Tonight
was
big
. What if he blew
it?

What if dinner was merely the opening gambit
in a complicated chess match that might, if he was lucky, lead to a
reconciliation in a month or two? Or three. What if he was
salivating for more than dinner while Mandy only wanted compliments
on her cooking and a goodnight handshake?

Shit!
Was he
going to have to court his own wife?

Probably.

Very likely.

Peter groaned. His body was
screaming,
Now! No waiting. Hell,
no!

Glumly, he turned left into the campground,
driving slowly down the dirt road until he saw the building marked,
“Office.” With Mandy standing on the porch, haloed by spotlights.
Her hair, unfettered by scrunchies or butterfly clips, fell to her
shoulders, reminding him of the teenager he first met so long ago.
She was wearing a slinky ankle-length dress in a black and white
flower print and one of those sexy little jackets that tied just
under her breasts and was enough to have the hands of any
red-blooded male twitching to get at the knot.

Whew!
Was she
sending the message he wanted to hear? Or was that outfit donned
with the specific intention of torturing him?

Probably the latter. Face it, the chance of
both of them being on the same wave length tonight was slim to
none.

Peter found a parking space, pasted a
nonchalant smile on his face, and got out of the car. Striding up
to the porch as if he hadn’t a care in the world, he offered his
arm to Mandy. “So where’s this RV I’ve heard so much about? Lead
on, Mrs. Pennington.”

He would swear he saw her wince.

Mrs.
Pennington
. When Peter used those red flag words
yesterday, the arrival of Special Agent Chalmers had distracted her
from the sudden churning in her stomach. Saved by the doorbell. But
tonight the name was an intimacy that sparked a strikingly
different reaction as a shiver of excitement swept her from head to
toe.

Impossible. Not going to
happen
. No matter what ridiculous feminine weakness
had prompted the invitation to dinner, she was living in a fish
bowl. Surrounded, cheek by jowl, by a hundred nosy neighbors. With
every last one of them peeking out a window, watching them walk to
her RV. Not to mention Orion peering down from the dark
not-quite-spring sky above.

Technically, she and Peter were married. But
no one at Calusa Campground knew that.

Did it matter?

Mandy recalled the sly jokes and innuendos
that circulated so freely, spicing up the doldrums of the elderly
residents’ days. One trailer even sported a small wooden sign that
read, “If this trailer’s rockin’, don’t bother knockin’.”

Damn right it mattered—if Peter thought her
invitation included conjugal rights for dessert . . .