Paradise Burning

by Blair Bancroft

  Aw, hell. This wasn’t at all what he’d planned.

  But he savored the look on Mandy’s face when she saw his central greatroom, its white walls the perfect backdrop for a fine collection of Florida art. Mandy’s eyes widened at the office he’d outfitted for her, a corner room with a view of both woods and river. Peter felt a surge of hope. So far, so good.

  Postponing a full house tour—the moment didn’t seem right for viewing bedrooms—Peter steered Mandy back to the greatroom and waved her to a seat on a burgundy and gray-striped sofa before sitting in a matching upholstered chair across from her. “You really have to do this?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you get a divorce and no one bothered to tell me?”

  “No. Did you?”

  Peter slumped back in his chair, his gaze fixed on the coffered ceiling. “Well, ain’t we just two sorry sons of bitches.”

  “That’s not quite the prose or accuracy I expect from a best-selling author.”

  “As I recall, you enjoyed flaunting that famous prose, ‘Whither thou goest.’”

  “Ouch,” Mandy murmured.

  “I begged you to come with me, Mouse, you know I did. And now, when it’s obvious I’m trying to maneuver another chance, you rent an RV!”

  “And what about when I went to Manhattan all starry-eyed and gullible and found you shacked up with some nubile fair maiden? A farewell fuck, isn’t that what you told me?”

  “Mandy!” Peter scrubbed a hand over his face. Silence. “O-kay,” he drawled, “so you’re not ready to share the same roof, but an RV? In a campground?”

  “It’s the Season.”

  “What?”

  “The Winter Season. No rents available. And the campground was convenient.” Morosely, Peter nodded. “And, besides, I like the idea of being able to drive off into the wild blue yonder if the notion strikes me.”

  Peter held up his hand, palm out. “Okay, okay, threat understood. Say no more.”

  As the silence lengthened, Peter’s eyes took on a predatory gleam. “Scared to live with me, are you?”

  “Just cautious.”

  Peter leaned toward her, lips curling into a taunting grin. “Come on, Mouse, admit it, you find me tempting.”

  “If I’m ever that stupid,” Mandy retorted, “all I have to do is think of that silly young thing trying to skitter out of your apartment while hopping on one foot and trying to get a spike-heeled shoe onto the other.”

  “Dammit, Mouse, I’ve paid for that with two years of celibacy!”

  Mandy opened her eyes wide. “Oh, poor baby. My heart bleeds.”

  “Cut the sarcasm, Mouse. If you’d come with me when I left AKA–-as I asked, begged you to—we’d probably have three kids by now.”

  Double ouch. Miserable underhanded wretch.

  Mandy dug her toe into the thick pile of the silver gray carpet. “So we’re both stubborn, wrong-headed idiots. With a long way to go before we find out if compatibility is an option. She lifted her head, looked her husband in the eye. “Shall we get to work?”

  Mandy pried her eyes open, winced at the red numbers on her bedside alarm, and burrowed her head under the pillow. Sleepless for half the night, and she’d waked at the ungodly hour of six-thirty. A. M. Mandy didn’t do mornings. She hated early mornings. Yet here she was, not sleeping, in the queen-size bed that took up most of the floorspace in her RV’s bedroom, with a dawn as cold and gray as New England peeking around the edges of the window drapes.

  Numbers skittered through her head. Mind-numbing numbers. Twenty-seven million victims of human trafficking world-wide—and that estimate could be low. Eight hundred thousand women and children trafficked across national borders each year. A million children a year brought into the sex industry. One hundred and sixty-one countries involved. Profits, $32,000,000,000 and counting. And those statistics didn’t include the several million women listed under Foreign Brides, the softer underbelly of the trafficking marketplace.

  “Cull and file the most pertinent articles off the Net,” Peter had told her. “Try the state and university libraries––I’ve already exhausted the county system. Newspaper archives—there was a case only ninety miles from here. Mexican girls imported for use by migrant workers.”

  “So, basically,” Mandy declared, “you got me down here, at AKA’s exorbitant rates, to research sex.”

  “I’m covering all kinds of slavery,” Peter intoned after thirty seconds of dead silence.

  “But I bet it’s sex your editor wants. That’s what sells, right?”

  “You know, Mouse, I never thought the day would come when you’d begin to sound like Eleanor.”

  A low blow. And it hurt. Particularly when Mandy had always preferred working Jeff’s side of AKA’s business. Fast action, with obvious results, instant gratification. Trafficking in human beings was as all-pervasive and elusive as the drug trade. Shut one route down, another took its place. Whatever customers wanted, there was someone ready to supply it. Money was king. Anything could be bought.

  Peter’s book might help—his name would count for something—but so few people really cared. “Nasty foreigners,” Grandmother Kingsley had sniffed to Eleanor on more than one occasion. “Not our problem.”

  If Gramma only knew. Five minutes on the Net had produced a whole slew of articles on trafficking in the U. S. In the twenty-first century.

  Mandy shifted her pillow, tweaked aside the obscenely bright print of the short window drapes next to her head. Outside, the gloom was lightening to silver gray. The prelude to another disgustingly cheerful sunny day in Florida. Mandy crawled up onto her knees, pressed her nose to the glass. All quiet. Evidently, the seniors at Calusa Campground weren’t much given to mornings either.

  What the heck . . . Mandy scrambled out of bed, pulled on jeans and a tee, flung open the RV door . . . and returned to her closet for a jacket. At this hour even Florida showed traces of winter.

  As she made her way to the dock, not a person, dog, or cat could be seen, but the squirrel was there, flipping his tail and racing across the branch of a live oak. And to the right of the path, something moved. Mandy stared, fascinated, at what appeared to be a large armored rat rooting through the soil with its oversize snout, seemingly unconcerned by her presence. Armadillo, that’s what it was! A slow-moving, rat-tailed rodent protected by armored sides it might have borrowed from a turtle.

  Nature certainly had some very odd quirks.

  Gingerly, Mandy sank down on a wooden bench, damp with morning dew, and watched the armadillo, while also making a half-hearted effort to find the birds that were loudly celebrating the sunrise from well-hidden perches in the surrounding trees. Mist was rising into the cool morning air from water still warm from the previous day’s heat. Moisture clung to every leaf and branch. Even the Spanish moss hung heavily from the trees. It was as if she’d entered some enchanted forest where anything could happen. Like catching a glimpse of prehistoric times. Armadillos were almost as far out of her spectrum as unicorns. What other creatures might rise up out of the mist?

  A flutter of huge wings. A bird with beanstalk legs and gray-blue feathers stalked toward her across the narrow patch of grass. It had to be a heron. Maybe, just maybe these moments of soul-soothing tranquility were partial compensation for working with Peter.

  Besides the obvious.

  Mandy stared back at the heron, who was giving her the beady eye, undoubtedly hoping she’d just returned from a fishing trip and was willing to share. “Sorry,” she murmured. “No fish, no meat. I’ll try to do better tomorrow.”

  Amanda Armitage of AKA talking to wildlife. Now there was a bulletin no one would believe.

  So who else could she talk to? Since most of her problems began and ended with Peter, she couldn’t very well talk to him.

  There was always Ed Cramer. Mandy’s lips curled in a thin smile. When she’d come back from Peter’s last night, she’d ventured a guess that the north end of the campground abutted
the south end of Amber Run, where Peter lived. Was it possible she could actually walk to work?

  The elderly camp manager had done his best to put an end to that notion. “Gotta be careful out there,” he’d said. “You can find most anythin’. Rattlesnakes, wild boar, maybe an alligator sunning itself. Even the ticks and spiders ain’t friendly,” he’d added kindly, sending shivers up Mandy’s spine. “Don’t go walkin’ on nothin’ but a road or a clear-cut path, y’hear what I’m tellin’ you, girl?”

  She heard. No walks through the woods to Amber Run.

  Mandy stared upriver, wishing the new development was on the map so she could estimate just how far she was from Peter’s house. Maybe one day, just to be daring, she could row to work. She craned her neck, trying to see some sign of Peter’s towering Key West home, but the river had as many twists and turns as the snakes in these parts. She could see nothing but low-lying mist and dripping greenery.

  Except . . . on the far side of the river something caught her eye. On the opposite bank that was supposed to be uninhabited, untouched Florida wilderness.

  Mandy scrambled up on the bench, shaded her eyes against the sun, which was now just high enough to be a nuisance. She squinted, polished her misted glasses on her T-shirt, then balanced on tiptoe, took another look.

  Perhaps a hundred yards upriver there seemed to be a small clearing, a grassy break in the jungle. Sitting on a fallen palm trunk was a woman with long blond hair. Mandy couldn’t tell her age, height, or the shape of her face, but the mist-kissed ethereal stranger seemed to be slim and supple. Odder yet, in the midst of the Florida jungle she was wearing a dress.

  The woman lifted her gaze above the rapidly dissipating mist and looked downriver. Clearly startled by the sight of Mandy standing upright on a bench and looking straight at her, the woman shot to her feet, poised to run away. Yet something seemed to hold her back. She froze in place like a deer pinned by a hunter’s spotlights. Mandy raised her hand and waved. One lesson she’d learned in the past few days—Floridians were friendly. And polite to strangers.

  Unmoving, the woman continued to stare at Mandy. For the space of perhaps ten seconds the world along the river seemed to stand still. Then a sudden loud squawk, a shrill squee echoed through the jungle as some predator satisfied its craving for breakfast. The woman turned and ran inland so fast her loose-fitting dress flapped around her ankles and her long blond hair streamed out behind.

  Both Ed Cramer and Peter had told her no one lived on the far side of the river. As far as Golden Beach was concerned, it was the end of the world. Nothing but Florida wilderness for miles.

  Fine. The girl would give her a topic of conversation with Peter other than sex.

  Sex. Sexual slavery. The idea was so repugnant, no wonder she’d left the fight to Eleanor. Oh, Mandy had done her job. Research, planning sessions, running scenarios, hacking computers far, far away. But she hadn’t dug in, done more than she was asked.

  Not our problem. Like Grandmother Kingsley, she hadn’t wanted to know.

  And Kira had died.

  While precious privileged Mandy was being given a season in paradise. And a chance to restart her life.

  It seemed so grossly unfair. Kira had died on Mandy Armitage’s watch, and her punishment was being force-fed Peter Pennington. One thing was certain. The book research was going to be a hell of lot easier than mending her love life.

  Mandy parked her car next to Peter’s 4Runner, taking advantage of the shade beneath his towering house. No sense in driving home in an oven at the end of the day, even if she had to cozy up to Peter’s SUV to stay cool.

  There had to be irony in there somewhere, Mandy thought, as she walked up the L-shaped ramp that led to the kitchen. Remaining cool when cozied up to anything of Peter’s was well-nigh impossible.

  Forget Peter. She’d had a good morning in town, establishing rapport with the local Reference Librarian, who had found and ordered books from libraries in Tampa, Orlando, and Atlanta. Oh, the joys of interlibrary loan. The accommodating librarian had found everything from the confessions of a pop singer sold into a brothel in Japan to the documentation of an investigative reporter shocked to find forced prostitution in Israel, to a compilation of reports on international trafficking in women and children published by the UN. The writing on that would probably be dry, but the content hot to the point of incandescence. How such horrors could occur on a daily basis and receive so little attention was beyond Mandy’s comprehension.

  Yet she had to step back, look at the statistics clinically. Refuse to think beyond the facts, beyond the research task at hand. Statistics, just statistics. She mustn’t personalize it, musn’t think about the individual suffering. It would destroy her.

  Mandy Mouse, clinging desperately to her hole. Safe. Sane. Untouched.

  Wise mouse.

  Cowardly mouse. Voyeur. The mouse who could plan, control, wrap up problems and lock them away. But never touch. Or be touched.

  Shoulders slumped in chagrin, Mandy stared blankly at the door at the top of the ramp. She hadn’t wanted to be on the outside of life, looking in. It had simply . . . happened.

  She bit her lip, squared her shoulders, tried the door knob.

  The house was unlocked and utterly still, a stage set waiting to be brought to life. Peter must be upstairs, she decided, working in his office aerie. Heaven forbid she should disturb him while he was working . . . so now would be a good time to explore.

  The day before, she’d come away with little beyond an impression of elegant space surrounded by a broad deck and a spectacular view of the Florida wilderness. Now, however . . .

  The door had opened into a gleaming white kitchen with state-of-the-art gadgets. As Mandy looked around, her eyes lit with secret amusement. She actually knew what all these appliances were for and how to use them. Last night she’d turned down Peter’s offer to stay for supper, scooting home like the devil was after her, leaving him standing on the deck, glowering. But intimacy, even a simple dinner, must be shunned. She was weak, she knew her limits. And that included revealing she’d taken a comprehensive course in cookery. Which was much too much like groveling. But one of these days she’d surprise him.

  Maybe.

  Mandy wandered into an adjacent room that seemed to be a cross between a classic library and a traditional family room. Pausing to examine a floor-to-ceiling collection of books, she ran a finger along the row of Jack Higgins and James Patterson, scowled at Hemingway. Her hand lingered over the frayed binding of Pride and Prejudice. Surprisingly, it seemed to be one of Peter’s favorites as well as her own. A vision of Keira Knightly as Elizabeth Bennet wandering, awed, through Pemberley filled her head. Mandy frowned. The implications of Jane Austen’s study in the fallacies of stubborn pride and misconceptions were not comfortable. She was having enough trouble dealing with Peter without a reminder that she too might be at fault.

  Abruptly, Mandy abandoned the cozy family room, but paused on the threshold to the vast central greatroom, seeing not the living area, but only the view. The east wall was nothing but panels of glass opening to the broad, partially covered deck and to the endless uninhabited expanse of river and jungle beyond. A primeval Eden. As if the world had dropped away, leaving Peter and herself to renew civilization. And themselves.

  A powerful, seductive thought. She doubted Amanda Armitage, the keyboard mouse, was up to such earth-shaking responsibility. But what about the daughter of that dynamic duo, Jeffrey Armitage and Eleanor Kingsley? That Amanda would never let a man get away twice.

  Mandy forced her gaze back to the room around her. She didn’t have to be an art expert to recognize that the oils and watercolors adorning the off-white walls were all originals. And by artists of exceptional talent. The coffee table, formed by an oval of glass laid on top of an artistic tangle of thick grape vines was also a work of art. And the glass collection . . .

  All else forgotten, Mandy rushed to the lighted display case, the sudden sparkle in her ey
es matching the shimmer of the objects inside. She had been only four years old when her Grandmother Kingsley had introduced her to the infinite possibilities of glass. One trip to see the glass flowers at Harvard, and Mandy was lost. The museum became her second favorite spot, right behind the swanboats on Boston Common. As she grew older and acquired money, she had begun her own modest collection.

  And, amazingly, Peter must have remembered. Mandy’s eyes devoured the beautiful objects in the case. Colorful paperweights, a plate of red and gold glass fit to serve a queen, glowing multi-hued flowers inside a rounded crystal bowl, a delicate goblet of midnight blue, glittering geometric shapes and free-form sculptures. The collection, though small, was excitingly lovely. Eclectic. Chihuly, Dejonghe, possibly a Heilman . . .

  She re-examined the collection, piece by piece. And there . . . how could she have missed it? Crouched at the front of the second shelf from the top was a small glass mouse. A shy creature, dwarfed by the more ostentatious beauty surrounding it. A fragile translucent rodent not more than three inches nose to tail.

  Mouse. When Peter had first called her Mouse, it had been all too fitting, for that’s exactly what she’d been. Meek, mild, low-fat vanilla. With odd moments of artistic temperament not unknown in spoiled geniuses. And yet . . . even now, after so many years, the little glass mouse brought not anger or sadness but a moment of nostalgia, of whimsey. And magic.

  Peter had assembled this collection for her.

  Stupid! No way. It was just Peter being Peter. He had always had superb taste.

  Except for his inexplicable interest in Amanda Armitage.

  Mandy swallowed a sigh. Reluctantly leaving the glass collection behind, she continued her exploration.

  She paused in the doorway of the master suite, her brain—or was it her wounded soul?—balking at setting foot in Peter’s bedroom. Very much a bachelor’s pad, it was decorated in black and white with occasional splashes of red. It even smelled masculine. Designer after-shave, deodorant endorsed by some multi-millionaire from the NBA, the faint whiff of hampered laundry, and something less definable that was simply Peter.