Redemption Key (A Dani Britton Thriller) (23 page)

Out of habit, Dani grabbed the bucket and towel hanging off the side of the deck and began bussing tables. She felt separate from the scene around her. She’d fallen in love with this island at night. At night everything was soft—the warm, moist air, the breeze off the water, the light from the moon. People spoke more softly and Peg kept the reggae low through the speakers. At night she often sat on the railing, listening to Mr. Randolph entertain tourists, watching stars come out, and thinking of nothing.

Nights like that were far away now.

But there wasn’t anything she could do about it. The Wheelers were on their way with their shipment of God only knew what. Sunset was hours away. Choo-Choo was off talking to Casper about a job and Mr. Randolph, well, she didn’t want to think of Mr. Randolph right now. She didn’t want to spy on him for Bermingham and she didn’t want to see the way he looked at her, thinking she was already guilty of it.

By dawn, the deal would go down and nothing would be the same again. Maybe she’d wind up working for Bermingham and have to say good-bye to Mr. Randolph. Maybe the Wheelers would start blowing people away. Maybe the Feds would crash everything. She didn’t know much about this Vincente character but what she had learned didn’t suggest he’d add much sunshine to any of the above. She might as well save the thinking for another time. She had cash; she had a car. Hopefully she wouldn’t get shot again. Funny the things a person can get used to.

Without the
Lady of Spain
, it wasn’t as crowded inside as yesterday. Dani could just make out the faces in the shadows after squinting into the brilliant sunshine. One of the Australians slumped unconscious at a corner table, abandoned by his friends when they’d headed out to snorkel. Angel Jackson played dominoes with one of the fishing boat captains. Peg checked her phone by the window to the kitchen, ignoring the couple making out in the center of the bar and a lone guy at the far end. Dani slung the bucket under the bar’s flip-up gate and ducked underneath it. Peg ignored her too as she dumped bottles into the garbage and moved on to put the glasses into the sink. The couple kept making out with a lot more tongue than Dani would have thought absolutely necessary, so Dani looked away toward the far end of the bar.

And saw blue eyes.

It was too dark to see the color but Dani knew exactly how blue those eyes were. She knew the shape of his head, the curl of his black hair and where it would fall over his pale forehead. She knew what the smile would look like.

All she could think was, “Boy, it’s not like it is in the movies.”

If this were a movie, she’d scream or faint or at least drop the bucket. She’d reel. He’d sneer and one of them would say a line worthy of the coming attractions.

None of that happened.

Dani felt that all-too-familiar sensation of her thoughts scattering, fleeing to the edges of consciousness to decide who would handle the scene before her.

Tom Booker sat less than ten feet from her, looking exactly as he had when he’d tried to kill her, exactly as he had in every dream she’d had since being pulled from the Tidal Basin, shot and broken and terrified.

No. Not exactly. He looked kind of shocked.

It would have taken a much more naïve person than she to think
his presence here was coincidence. But he looked shocked, uneasy. Dani stood still, the fact-checker in her brain trying to pin down what that expression was.

He looked nervous. Imagine that. Tom Booker, the man who orchestrated the murder of all of her coworkers, the man who had pursued her relentlessly one icy night in November, who had tried to gut her with a knife while still handling her with that terrible tenderness—that man looked nervous to see her. Huh.

His tongue flickered across his chapped lips.

“Hello, Dani.”

The voice did it. The sound of her name in his voice snapped her from the fugue of disbelief. That reeling she’d wondered about smashed into her and if she hadn’t already had a hand on the metal bar sink, she’d have stumbled against it. She didn’t think she’d moved—she didn’t know if she could—but every fiber in Dani’s body wanted to throw her head back and let out a howl of primal rage.

Instead she said, “Hi, Tom.”

And there was that smile. She stepped closer, thoughts of a mongoose and a cobra flickering somewhere in her head, although she couldn’t remember which one hunted which. She stepped closer and could see her memory had been correct. His eyes were still the blue she remembered, still strangely beautiful.

In one step she calculated how quickly he could reach her and snap her neck and how hard she would have to swing the bucket to smash his face and how sorry she was that the bucket was plastic and not metal and how useless it would probably be and how strange it was the men she found attractive.

She thought how far the universe had gone to prove to her that she could never get away.

It kind of seemed like overkill.

She got it. There wasn’t a safe place on this planet.

2:00pm, 104° F

Oren slid the screen door closed behind him and dropped into the chaise lounge on his porch. His house looked out over the open water, the inlet to the right on the other side of the thick hedge of sea grape. At night, if he tilted his head just right he could hear soft music coming from the deck of the bar on the other side of the hedge. If trouble broke out, he’d be able to hear it without tilting his head. That was as far as Oren went with security systems.

Not that they would have helped him today.

After tomorrow, Jinky’s was going to hell. He knew that with the certainty of a man whose drug habit had kept him circling the pit for too many years. There was only so long a man could bump shoulders with darkness before stepping all the way through. He should have put his foot down with the Wheelers years ago. He should have faced them down before they’d taken over the local underworld the way they had. They hadn’t always been as dangerous as they were now. Sure, they’d always been batshit crazy and armed to the teeth, but by avoiding the ugliness, he’d let them gain inches that turned into miles that turned into a road that ran smack-dab into the middle of his life.

And Bermingham had found that road and ridden right in on it.

That was the problem with predators. There was always another bigger, scarier, more persistent predator right behind them. And people like Oren were just side dishes to the main meal.

When he heard careful footsteps crunching the gravel beside the house, Oren fully expected to see Bermingham or his thug emerge from the shadows, gun in hand, to end his life. As a testimony to his train of thought—and to the vodka—the thought didn’t make him panic. It just made him tired.

Caldwell crept onto the porch, pulling the screen door closed silently. When Oren sat up, the agent put his finger to his lips and tipped his head in the direction of Oren’s living room. Oren followed his friend inside, sliding the inside door shut, not saying a word as Caldwell moved to the stereo system on the far wall. In seconds, guitar music flooded the room, louder than Oren usually played it.

Caldwell stepped very close and grabbed his arm. Oren kept his voice just above a whisper. “I never thought I’d say this, buddy, but I sure hope you’re getting ready to kiss me.”

“I wish,” the agent hissed. “But I think it’s likely we’re both getting ready to get fucked. Have you noticed anything rearranged in here? Anyone on the premises that shouldn’t be?”

“You’re kidding, right? Nobody’s had a key to this door since Carter was in the White House. As for the bar, half the regulars there probably have warrants out. What is this?”

Caldwell sighed. “I just had a very unpleasant phone call from my superior after I ran a check on your girl.”

“You already ran a check on Dani.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I ran it on Dani and got nothing. I ran it together with her friend, blondie. Turns out Choo-Choo is a Charbaneaux, something of a society celebrity, and running a check on any Charbaneaux is bad news; running it together with one Danielle Britton gets my dick slammed in a drawer. Come on; let’s get away from the window.

Oren followed him to the little breakfast bar that marked off the kitchen. Caldwell knew his way around as well as Oren and pulled the vodka from the freezer. Neither bothered with ice.

2:00pm, 104° F

Booker didn’t think he’d be able to speak. He rarely felt the air temperature around him, was only aware of it in a passing way, so the heat he felt moving through his muscles unsettled him. This wasn’t how he had expected to feel. It certainly wasn’t how he had expected Dani to react.

He’d expected rage, fear, tears. Staring into her soft brown eyes, though, Booker realized how stupid that expectation was. This was Dani Britton. She always surprised him.

How cute she looked. More than cute. He’d known she was tiny; he’d been in her closet, seen her little shoes. But he’d met her in November when she’d been bundled up in layers upon layers of woolly shirts. She didn’t wear those layers now.

She didn’t wear much at all.

He wanted to let his eyes roam over the tan expanse of her little arms. He wouldn’t have imagined her to be so toned. Or so dark. Of course they had met in November, winter, miles from the equator, months ago. It felt like only days had passed.

She was still his Dani. She still met his gaze with that calm, easy stare. She wasn’t hiding behind bundles of clothes and bags now. She wasn’t hiding at all, and as much as he wanted to let his eyes take in the smooth shoulders and to follow the seam of the little dress where it headed south, he didn’t want it to be like that. He didn’t want to ogle her.

“Hi, Tom.”

Another shiver rushed beneath his skin. Her voice. He thought he remembered everything about Dani Britton; he’d replayed their phone calls over and over in his head. He remembered the unhidden fear in
her voice, the way she’d listened to him and talked to him—really talked to him. He thought he remembered everything, but nothing prepared him for the sound of her voice again, face-to-face.

“Did you come to kill me?”

He laughed out loud. That was his Dani, getting right to the point.

“I don’t think so.” It was a strange way to answer. It just popped out. “I’ve never been to Florida before. I was surprised to find out you were here. It’s a long way from Oklahoma. And DC.”