When he drove through Big Pine, he realized he was heading to an island that didn’t even have a through road. Redemption Key was a dead end.
Booker pulled the little car under a sign for something called the LADY OF SPAIN PARTY PONTOON. A half-dozen cars were parked across the pitted lot. Nobody would notice one more.
Marlene had told him it was less than a mile from here to the bridge onto Redemption. Less than a mile wasn’t too far to walk, especially if it meant having an unblockable exit.
He turned the car around so it faced out of the lot toward the road, calculating the best angle for a quick departure if needed. He dropped his keys into the pocket behind the passenger’s seat and saw his bags.
He couldn’t check into a hotel—or fishing camp, whatever that was—without luggage. The bag didn’t weigh anything. Carrying it was no problem, and there was nothing in it to identify him if he had to leave it behind. But he didn’t know what to do with the yarn bag. He’d finished the afghan on the flight. The afghan he’d made for Dani.
What had he been thinking?
For one thing, it was hot, almost one hundred degrees. Who needed an afghan in this weather? For another thing, he’d been hired to kill Dani before, and she’d gotten away, damn near killing him in the process. Was a gift appropriate?
He wasn’t sure how he felt about any of this.
He could always come back and get it if things worked out.
That decided, Booker climbed from the car, oblivious to the heat that hammered down on him. He reached into the backseat, tucking the yarn bag down into the floor well and pulling his suitcase out. He almost locked the door, catching it just before it shut. He laughed at his absentmindedness. He needed to get his act together.
He needed to remember where he left the car, to pay attention to how many steps and in what direction he’d need to make it back to this spot. No streetlights, he noted. It would be pitch-black at night, he’d bet.
And he needed to find a bait shop or hardware store. Booker felt naked without his knives.
12:50pm, 104° F
Dani brought Bermingham another Corona.
He shook his head and winked at her as he took the bottle. “You’ve really got to get better taste in beer. This is like water.”
“It’s a good beer in the heat.”
Bermingham’s face brightened at that. “Really? Never thought of that. Maybe I should work on getting a taste for it since it looks like I might be doing a little more business down here. Speaking of which, your boss is picking up the tab for my room. That’s really generous of him.”
“Mr. Randolph is a very generous man.”
“I’m looking forward to doing business with him.” Dani noticed that Bermingham had yet to look anywhere but her face, his gaze never checking out her body in the slight dress. She didn’t quite know what to make of that.
“Where’s your buddy?”
“Ned? He’s making some last-minute arrangements. This deal is taking longer than it should.” Bermingham didn’t look angry. He looked distracted, glancing at his phone.
She hopped up on the bar and swung her legs over the front, beside him. She wanted it to look flirtatious. She wanted a peek at his phone. “Is your room okay?”
“Yeah, it’s good.” He didn’t look up. “Hot though. This fucking heat.”
“You get used to it.” He made a sound of doubt. “Waiting for a call?”
“Picture from the Wheelers of the product.” He chewed on the inside of his mouth, ignoring her as she swung her feet near his side. When his phone beeped, he leaned back, keeping her from seeing it, and stared at the screen for several seconds, his expression dark.
“Bad news? Did it melt or something?”
“What? No.” He closed the picture and looked at her closely. “Melting isn’t really the thing we’ve got to worry about.”
“Oh.” She shrugged, knowing he was searching her face for something. She hopped off the bar and turned away from him. “Well, I have to go set up the other room. I guess I’ll—”
Bermingham was up and on her before she could finish, his hand gripping her arm tightly enough to get her on her toes and just shy enough of bruising.
“What other room?”
Dani didn’t have to feign fear. Tucker Bermingham had over a foot on her and his hand span covered most of her upper arm. Even bent down into her face the way he was, she had to struggle to stay on tiptoe to keep her shoulder from being wrenched.
“The other room. Someone’s renting another room. Mr. Randolph told me to—”
“Who is renting the other room?”
“I don’t know!” She let her eyes go wide, putting on a face she hoped looked as defenseless as she felt. “It’s a hotel. A fishing camp. It’s what we do. People rent rooms.”
Bermingham swore and dropped her arm. The gap between letting her go and apologizing took less than a second, but Dani saw it. She saw the gears switching in his expression.
“Sorry, Dani. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He rubbed her arm and Dani resisted the urge to back away. That long, lanky awkwardness she had found so adorable in the bar just hours ago had disappeared, and she was all too aware of the physical power in the man before her.
“I should go.”
“Wait.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Wait. I’m sorry.” There was that smile again, dimples and all. He carded his fingers through his hair; Dani noticed how he managed to get it to flop just so over his eyes as he grinned sheepishly. “I’m being a jerk. I’ve got a lot on my mind and this deal is a really big thing. But that’s no excuse to be rude to you. Here I’ve got a beautiful girl all alone in a bar and I’m being a jerk. I’m really sorry.”
Dani made a show of hiding a smile she didn’t feel, pushing at Bermingham’s hard chest with both hands. “You are a jerk. I put this dress on for you and you haven’t even looked at me.”
“Oh I’ve looked at you.” He trailed his fingers down her arms and probably would have raised goose bumps if her elbow didn’t still throb from his squeeze. “I keep on looking at you, Dani Britton. And I keep asking myself why a cute girl like you spends her time in a place like this? What’s in it for you?”
“The glamour?” His laugh sounded genuine and, against her natural instinct, Dani stepped in a little closer. “And I get to meet interesting people sometimes.”
“That must be easy for a friendly girl like you.”
“You’re not very observant.”
“But I bet you are.”
The speed with which he answered her put her on alert. “Why do I suspect you’re going to ask a favor of me?”
“Because you’re smart?” Dimples. “And because maybe you’d like to see more of me in the future. Look, I really need this deal to go off smoothly. I really, really need the Wheelers to come through for me.”
“You really need your twenty-five prime units.”
“You were listening.”
Dani let out a low laugh. “You were kind of hard to ignore earlier, what with shoving Juan’s gun into his liver. What is it that they’re bringing you? That has to stay so cool?”
He ran his fingers across her shoulder, up into her hairline. Dani leaned into his palm, letting him tilt her face up toward his. “Your boss didn’t tell you?”
“My boss doesn’t know.” She saw his smirk. “He tries to stay out of the Wheelers’ business as much as possible. Everyone does.”
“And yet, here we are, getting ready to make the deal.”
“The Wheelers can be very convincing. Not everyone has the ability or the nerve to body slam Juan Wheeler.”
“Well I do.” His fingers tangled in her hair as he pressed her against him. She had to keep her head back, her chin against his chest, to look him in the face. His hands were gentle against her and she slid her arms around his waist. It felt like hugging a tree—a warm, muscular, terrible tree. When he spoke, she could feel the words in the muscles of his back. “That’s why it’s good tha
t we’re getting along so well.”
“That sounds mildly scary.”
“This whole situation could get scary fast. I can keep you safe and I will but I need something from you.”
She smiled up at him to hide her nerves. “Something besides low thread count sheets?”
The way he stared into her eyes made her feel like she was right back in that hospital in DC, hooked up to IV drips, being grilled by everyone in the country who had a badge. He was taking her measure and not even trying to hide it. Dani let her thoughts line up in their own particular order, dragging the fear and anger off to a private corner of her mind.
Let him stare.
He smiled. Finally. “I need you to pay attention to what your boss is doing. And his friends. Do you know his friends? Someone named Caldwell?”
That was unexpected.
“I know who you mean.”
He nodded. “Word is he and your boss are good friends.”
“And?”
He splayed his long fingers against the small of her back. In any other situation it would have felt seductive. “And are we going to pretend that neither one of us knows what he does for a living?”
Dani shook her head, her mouth too dry to speak.
“Good.” He leaned in and brushed his face against hers. “I want to keep you safe, Dani, but this deal is going down. Nothing can keep this from happening. Do you hear what I’m saying? So it would really be helpful to me if you would keep your eyes and ears open for me. Your boss is more involved in this deal than he’s letting on and I just want to make sure that everyone sticks to the arrangement.” His hand slid softly under her chin. That her jaw fit easily into the palm of his hand wasn’t lost on Dani.
“I’m calling the shots here now, Dani. Not your boss. Not Vincente. Not those moron Wheeler boys. Everyone answers to me now. I’ve got to know. Can I trust you?”
A yes wasn’t going to cut it.
Dani slid her small hands up the expanse of his chest until they met behind his neck and she pulled him down to her. Even moving with her, it felt like dragging iron, and Dani let him lift her off the floor into his embrace. The kiss deepened and she felt that same breathlessness she’d felt with Bermingham on the porch. She let herself drift in it.
There was a part of her brain for things like this too.
Bermingham seemed reassured and convinced when they pulled apart. He slipped his fingers through hers when she stepped back, begging off to finish setting up the other room. He teasingly grilled her about going to meet another man and Dani answered with mock mystery.
She really hoped the pleasure center of her brain would hold the foreground of her mind long enough for her to get out of the bar without screaming.
Dani exhaled slowly as she headed down to the office to grab a room key and the key to the linen closet to set up the room for the new guest. Mr. Randolph or Peg, whoever had taken the reservation, had set the key out for her as they had dozens of times since she’d taken this job. At this moment, everything and everyone felt threatening to her. She struggled to remember the way it felt when this was her only job, when the biggest irritation was a broken air-conditioner and the only thing she was scared of was facing a pissed-off rat.
Bermingham knew Caldwell was FBI.
And he thought Mr. Randolph was trying something shifty.
Mr. Randolph was openly terrified of the Wheelers and the Wheelers were terrified of Bermingham and now Bermingham was getting nervous. Nerves make dangerous people more dangerous. How much more dangerous could this situation get?
1:15pm, 104° F
Booker climbed onto the oak barstool and hooked his feet over the lower rung. He rolled his shoulders, letting the heat soak into his muscles, loosening them from the walk. He could have gone right to his room. The leathery woman behind the bar had tossed him a key and shrugged in a general direction after swiping his fake credit card, but Booker wanted to sit for a minute. He wanted to get a feel for the place.
Jinky’s.
By the name he’d expected some sort of ’50s-style soda shop, not this rough, bare-floored gin joint. He scanned the walls and ceilings. Every inch of every surface was covered in pictures and postcards and license plates and pieces of underwear, stapled, nailed, taped, skewered, and otherwise attached in what looked like a decades-old patina of debauchery. It felt authentic in a way that newer bars could never hope to achieve.
It wasn’t anything he would have chosen for himself—Booker didn’t drink—but he could appreciate the view out over the inlet and the general sense of Floridian ease. But he hadn’t traveled all this way for either of those things.
He was here for Dani.
He tensed at the shiver that coursed through him. He’d been feeling them all day. They’d been shimmying underneath his skin since he’d manipulated Agent Davis into searching for Dani’s file. Booker had done all he could to keep thoughts of Dani hidden deep within himself. His new employers had asked about his feelings toward her and he thought he’d been pretty successful convincing them she’d just been another target.
Of course, his new employers were stupid in a lot of ways.
They lacked any originality of feeling and couldn’t have collected a splinter’s worth of imagination among the lot of them. He was glad for it because the last thing Booker wanted to do was discuss his complicated feelings toward Dani Britton with some cold-blooded therapist.
He didn’t know how he felt.
That understanding alone added an element of excitement to his anticipation.
He’d been hired to kill Dani and she’d proven a fascinating target. Adorable and underestimated and clever and tough. She’d gotten away from him, damn near killed him.
He didn’t know how he felt about that either.
There weren’t many situations Booker went into with so little certainty. This one made his fingertips tingle. He sipped his ginger ale and watched the sun bake the deck outside.
2:00pm, 104° F
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 o
n 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.
Redemption Key (A Dani Britton Thriller) Page 13
