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“That does sound like fun.” He scanned the parking area. “I assume your car’s still in the shop?”
“Yeah, but I usually walk anyway. It’s good exercise.”
“Do you mind if we walk with you? I’m past due for his afternoon jaunt, and he’s so excited, he can hardly stand it.” He nodded down at Brinks. His breathing was strained, restricted by the pressure he was putting on the collar. The crazy dog was half choking himself.
“Sure.” She glanced over at him. “Are you vacationing or here for an extended time?”
“Extended.” Although how extended was anybody’s guess.
“You said you’re a cop.”
They turned onto Dock Street, where an eclectic array of wooden buildings lined the water’s edge. Ahead, a series of bright blue stairs and landings led to Steamers Bar and Grill.
“I was a cop. Not anymore.”
“Do you think you’ll go back to it once your leg heals?”
So she had noticed. Either she was really observant, or he wasn’t as good at hiding the limp as he had thought. The total knee replacement was a success. The work on the thigh was another story. Reconstructing mincemeat was a bit more challenging.
He shook his head. “Too much permanent damage. I’ve got to be able to run as fast as the bad guys. This has slowed me down. I took seven hits.”
She flinched and offered him a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry to hear that. So what happened? Did you get caught in a shoot-out?”
“Something like that. I was working undercover. A drug buy went bad.”
Of course, there was more to it than that. But he wasn’t going to talk about it. Because if he didn’t talk about it, he would eventually quit thinking about it. Then maybe the nightmares would stop.
“They offered me a desk job, but I’m not a sit-at-a-desk kind of guy.”
She studied him. “I can see that. You seem the type that goes for the action. So what do you do, now that you’re not a cop anymore?”
“I’m still figuring that out. I went for my degree in criminal justice right after high school, and I’ve been a cop ever since. Thought I’d die a cop.” Almost did.
“So you’re in transition.”
“You could say that.”
“That’s okay, as long as you don’t stay there forever.”
She was right. And he wouldn’t. He had always been too driven to sit idle for long. Besides, eventually the insurance money would run out. But long before then, he’d have his head back on straight and be ready to resume the life he had left in Dallas. With a few adjustments.
They rounded the corner, and Allison’s eyes dipped to Brinks. “How often do you have to walk him?”
“Usually four times—when we get up, lunchtime, late afternoon and right before bed. Except this morning. For some reason, he decided at three thirty that he had to go out. Wouldn’t leave me alone. We went up on deck, and before I could get his leash on him, he saw the cat and bolted.”
“Brinks needs to work on his timing. A minute earlier, and you might have been in time to catch the bad guy.”
When they reached her driveway, she turned to face him. “Thanks for walking with me. I enjoyed your company.”
She was smiling, but something had changed. Her posture had stiffened, and her blue eyes had darkened with worry.
He looked past her to the colorful Victorian surrounded by a manicured yard. A polished oak door with stained-glass panels complemented the warm exterior. But inside, the house was cold and empty and silent. And she was walking in alone.
“Would you like me to go in with you? You know, check the windows and doors?”
She hesitated while indecision flashed across her features. Finally, she squared her shoulders and mustered a half smile. “That’s all right. I don’t think he’ll be back.”
“You sure? I don’t mind.” He drew his brows together as another thought crossed his mind. “The window’s been fixed, right?”
“Terrance did it this morning.”
“Terrance?”
“The kid at the marina. Stays on the Bayliner. He does odd jobs for people around town. You’ve probably met him.”
Yeah, he had. He was quiet and tattooed and walked around with a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Blake didn’t know his past, but he had run up against his kind often enough to recognize what was behind that tough-guy facade—a lost kid, trying to prove he could make it without anybody’s help.
Blake watched Allison let herself into the house, then continued down the road. He hoped to see more of her. She was a fellow boater. Someone who loved the water as much as he did. And she was just an all-around nice person. He wasn’t looking for a romantic relationship, but if something developed, he wouldn’t be opposed. As long as it stayed casual.
Keep It Casual—that had been his lifelong motto. Except once. And he was still kicking himself.
Eighteen months ago, both his personal and professional lives took a nosedive. No, they did more than take a nosedive. They crashed and burned. And he’d been trying ever since to regain his equilibrium.
And all the while, Cedar Key beckoned. He had spent a week there every summer for five straight years. That was when he was a kid, and they were still a complete family—him, his mom, his dad and his little sister. Life was perfect then. His police detective dad was good at shielding them from the ugliness he saw every day.
Of all the memories he had of his father, vacations in Cedar Key were some of the best. So last week, he closed up his apartment in Dallas, loaded Brinks into his Explorer, hooked up the boat and made the trip to Galveston. While a friend drove the truck and trailer back home, he headed for Florida. Now he was in paradise, surrounded by the rolling sea, quiet sunsets, quaint shops and friendly people. Hopefully the laid-back atmosphere of Cedar Key would offer the peace and direction that had been missing from his life.
Because if he didn’t find it here...well, he just didn’t know where else to look.
TWO
Allison laid the book across her lap and looked at the clock hanging on the rose-hued wall. It was ten thirty. A half hour past her usual bedtime. She heaved a sigh. She was stalling, and she knew it.
Last night’s break-in had rattled her more than she wanted to admit. During the day, she had done well. First thing this morning, she’d called Terrance and he’d come right out to measure the window and make a list of what he needed. By eleven, the work was done—a new piece of glass installed and paint touched up where the intruder had tried to pry open the window.
The afternoon hadn’t been bad, either. With a charter that included three active young boys, she had had plenty to occupy her thoughts. But once her customers had headed back to their vacation cottage, all the distractions were gone. That was when the uneasiness started. She began to tackle her chores, and memories of the prior night surged forward. As the sun sank lower in the sky and darkness became an imminent threat, her tension mounted. Then Blake had called out his booming greeting six feet behind her, almost sending her into cardiac arrest.
But the walk home had been nice. There was something reassuring about having him next to her, Brinks in front. When he offered to go in first, she almost accepted his offer. Then she changed her mind. It was one random break-in. She would buck up and deal with it. She had certainly been through worse.
Learning that Tom had been murdered had knocked the foundation right out from under her. But his death had been just the beginning. Three nights later, two thugs had showed up—the kind of men who broke legs and threw people in the river in concrete boots. They’d been there to make sure she didn’t talk. But one couldn’t tell what one didn’t know. Apparently, they’d believed her, because they’d left her alone after that.
Over the next two months, her life slowly unraveled. The more the authorities delved into Tom’s death, the more they learned about his life. And it didn’t coincide at all with what she knew. Her Tom was a detective, honest and hardworking. He even moonlighted as a security guard for one of the wealthy Providence families. The Tom the investigation uncovered was a dirty cop owned by the mob. The honorable man she thought she had married didn’t exist.
No, after all she went through two and a half years ago, she wouldn’t let anything steal the peace she had found on Cedar Key. She pushed herself up from the couch and bent to turn off the lamp. With Blake at her side, shaking off the effects of the break-in had been easy. Now, in the dark, while most of the neighborhood slept, it was a little more difficult.
Maybe she should get a dog. A dog would alert her if someone tried to come into the house. And a deep, threatening growl would likely stop an intruder before he even got that far. Yeah, and what would she do with a dog while she was on the boat? A lot of customers would have a problem with a canine guest.
Maybe an alarm. An alarm wouldn’t have to be taken out and walked. It wouldn’t eat much, either.
She sighed and started up the stairs, resting her hand against the bronze angel that stood poised atop the newel post. The angel had been there when she bought the house, and although she had completely renovated the old Victorian, it had remained a permanent fixture. Bronze eyes stared straight ahead, serene but alert, as if watching over the house, guarding the front door.
Except now she wasn’t facing the door straight on, more like she was guarding the sidelight. Had the angel always been slightly turned? Why hadn’t she noticed?
She cupped its back, slipping her fingers between the bronze wings. The chill that had passed over her the night of the break-in crept along her skin again. Did her intruder try to remove the angel from the newel post? No. With all the valuables in the house, and her iPad and laptop in plain view, the intruder wasn’t likely after a bronze finial.
She dismissed the thought and tried to straighten the angel, not really expecting it to move. It did. She twisted it back and forth, pulling upward. The angel didn’t come off, but the tugging was creating a small gap in the seam between the top of the post and its sides. Was it supposed to come apart?
She strode to the kitchen and returned with a table knife, then worked her way along the seam on all four sides. The top wasn’t nailed to the post. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anything holding the two pieces together except countless coats of varnish and decades of swelling in Florida’s relentless humidity. She continued to pry, her pulse racing as the gap widened.
Finally the top came loose from the post. She turned it over, checking the underside. A bolt ran through the wood and into the finial, holding the two pieces together. When her gaze moved to the newel post, anticipation coursed through her. It was hollow, its interior hidden in shadow.
She hurried to the foyer closet to retrieve a flashlight, her heart pounding in earnest. Was something of value hidden inside the secret compartment? Was that what her intruder was after?
When she returned to the staircase, she shined the light into the opening. About eight inches down was a thick roll of yellowed paper about two and a half feet long, judging from the height of the post. Blueprint size. She slid it out and began to uncoil it. Just what she suspected—house plans.
Without fully unrolling them, she laid them aside, and they curled back into the shape they had maintained for the past hundred years.
Surely the secret compartment held something more interesting than house plans. But when she shined the light into the opening again, the beam revealed smooth, hard wood, all the way to the bottom. The compartment was empty.
She sank to the bottom step and rested her chin in her hands, elbows propped against her knees. Maybe her intruder wasn’t trying to get into the newel post.
Then why had he tampered with the finial? It hadn’t been turned accidentally. All the times she had gone up and down those steps, the angel had never moved.
No, he had broken into the house with plans to retrieve something from that secret compartment. He just hadn’t anticipated her being there and the police arriving before he could remove the top.
Which meant he would be back.
The uneasiness she had struggled to keep at bay for the past twenty hours intensified, and she cast a worried glance at the front door. It was locked. So were all the windows. She had checked.
Of course, everything had been locked up last night, too. And that hadn’t stopped him.
Well, if he did come back, he would be disappointed...unless he had a fascination with old house plans. She frowned at the thick roll of yellowed papers lying on the hardwood floor. They were an interesting find. She would have appreciated them under other circumstances. Now she just wanted to know why someone had broken into her house, and a set of ancient house plans wasn’t doing anything to help her figure that out.
She knelt next to them and unrolled them fully to find the bound edge, planning to roll them more tightly. She may as well put them back where she found them. But as soon as she reached the inside edge, a smaller page sprang loose from the bound ones.
It was a single sheet, eight and a half by eleven, unlined. Like copy paper. Except it was old. Or maybe it had just gotten wet. The page was crinkled and unevenly yellow. Three lines had been scrawled across the front—each beginning with a letter followed by a series of numbers. Whatever it meant, it probably had nothing to do with the house.
The old Victorian had been in her family for most of the past seventy years. It had gone from her grandparents to her aunt to her cousin. Then to the investor who snapped it up from the courthouse steps five years ago, after her cousin stopped paying the property taxes. He had probably planned to hold on to it until the housing market turned around. But Allison’s cash offer persuaded him to change his mind.
So who did the paper belong to? It wasn’t the investor. According to the neighbors, he had bought the house, then let it sit empty. Which meant her family had put it there. What did they have that they didn’t want anyone to know about? Money? Gold? Pirate treasure?
Yeah, right. Cedar Key had never been a pirate hideout. Besides, if her grandparents had happened onto anything like that, there would be stories. Small towns were known for their gossip. Cedar Key was no different. Of all the tales about her grandparents that circulated around town, not one gave any hint of hidden treasure.
Allison pushed herself to her feet and strode toward the kitchen. What if the numbers were clues to an unsolved crime, a way for her grandparents to get a bad deed off their consciences before they died? What if she solved the puzzle and found a body?
No, her grandparents were a little odd—okay, from the stories her parents told, they were certifiably nuts—but they weren’t killers.
Of course, she didn’t have firsthand knowledge. Ties had been pretty much severed between her parents and her dad’s side of the family long before she was born. Her dad had gone to law school instead of taking over the Winchester clamming business, and his parents never forgave him. Then marrying a New Englander sealed his fate.
On two occasions, her parents had tried to mend the rift between the elder and younger Winchesters and made the trip to Cedar Key. The rift-mending excursions were a total failure. But on those two brief trips, Allison fell in love with the place. When her life in Providence unraveled, Cedar Key seemed the perfect location to start over.
She flipped the switch on her way into the kitchen and flattened the paper against the butcher block island. Light poured from the four inverted globes of the Albany chandelier. But the random letters and numbers didn’t make any more sense there than they had in the dimness of the foyer.
She squinted at the characters scrawled across the page. They were written with a heavy hand, and judging from the sloppiness, jotted down in a hurry:
R45 87
G45 165
R2.55 282
It looked to be some kind of code. But for what? The numbers weren’t coordinates. The forty-fifth parallel ran across the northern states, and neither latitude nor longitude went as high as 282.
She stared at the page, trying to think outside the box. But the harder she focused, the more she drew a blank. Maybe after a good night’s sleep, the answer would come. If not, she would keep working on it.
As odd as her grandparents had been, they were well liked on Cedar Key. And since Allison had taken back her maiden name and was once again a Winchester herself, it had given her an instant “in.” People still spoke fondly of her grandparents, even though they had been gone for years. But maybe they had harbored some secrets. Maybe there were skeletons in the Winchester closet.
Whatever it was, someone apparently knew. If there was something of value that belonged to her family, no outsider was going to take it away from her.
And then there was the other possibility, that the clues would lead to some kind of contraband...or worse. A knot of dread settled in her stomach. The news would travel fast, from one end of Cedar Key to the other. She knew how it worked. She had experienced it all—the sideways glances, the hushed conversations that came to an abrupt halt, the people suddenly too busy for her, people she had thought were her friends.
She folded the paper and slid it into her purse. She needed to find a better hiding place. Contraband or treasure, someone had apparently found out and come to claim it.
Well, he could look all he wanted. She had the clues. And she was determined to get to it first.
* * *
Blake sat on the deck of his Sea Ray, a glass of green tea in one hand and a Sharpie in the other, the latest issue of the Cedar Key Beacon open on his lap. Brinks lay stretched out in the sunshine, attached to a spare dock line. In another hour, it would be time to walk him again. Maybe by then Allison would be back, and he could combine the dog’s afternoon walk with her trip home. Brinks was great company, but conversation was a little lacking.
Early that morning, he had gone fishing and caught his dinner for the next few evenings. At least, the protein portion of it. Then he had walked Brinks and gone to the gym. After that was a call to his mom. He had already been the cause of enough sleepless nights. He didn’t want to compound her worries by not staying in touch.
He drew in a deep breath and leaned back in the seat. Eventually, boredom was going to set in. Even back home, with physical therapy and vocational rehab and the teaching certification classes the work comp carrier had put him through, there was still too much downtime, not enough activity to work off the energy coiled inside. Tough sessions at the gym helped. But they weren’t the same as rock climbing with his buddies. Or zig-zagging down Vail’s black-diamond slopes.
He looked up from his reading to scan the horizon. Two sailboats cut through the waves, but neither were Allison’s. When he turned back toward Cedar Cove Beach and Yacht Club, the kid he had met yesterday was making his way down the dock in flip-flops, an Old Navy shirt and a pair of plaid shorts fastened a good six inches below his waist.
Blake called out a greeting, and the kid responded with a wave. But instead of boarding the old Bayliner Cuddy, he approached, moving with that cocky swagger so prominent among teens and twentysomethings nowadays. He leaned against the nearest piling. “You staying in Cedar Key awhile?”
“For the time being. Why?”
“I do odd jobs. You need any work done, let me know. Name’s Terrance.” He took a swig of the Budweiser in his hand. Apparently he was at least twenty-one. Or someone was selling alcohol to minors.
“Will do. I heard you replaced a window for Allison yesterday.”
“Yeah.” He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. “Her house got broken into. I hope they catch the guy.”
Terrance turned to go, but Blake stopped him. “Speaking of Allison, did you see her leave this morning?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she happen to say what time she was coming back?”
“Four.”
A little early for Brinks’s walk, but Brinks wouldn’t mind.
Terrance lifted his beer in farewell then headed to his boat. With a cabin just big enough for a berth and toilet, the Bayliner Cuddy was built for the occasional overnight, not living aboard. But Terrance didn’t seem to mind. He was independent and supporting himself. That was probably all that mattered.
Blake closed the paper and capped the Sharpie. He could spend only so many hours fishing, reading and exploring. So that was why he had circled two job postings in the classified section. A third he had looked at briefly, then decided to pass. Cedar Key Auto was looking for a mechanic. He was okay, but not good. Actually, when it came to gainful employment, he was okay at a lot of things—jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Except police work. That he was good at.
Monday he would make the two phone calls. One was The Market at Cedar Key, twenty hours a week cleaning and stocking. The other was grounds work for a landscaping outfit, also part-time. He wouldn’t apply for anything that required extensive training. It wouldn’t be fair to his potential employer.
As expected, Allison’s boat came into view at twenty till four. By four o’clock, she had docked and was telling her charter customers goodbye. Blake stood to take the newspaper and empty glass below and don some tennis shoes. By the time he had traded Brinks’s restraint for a real leash and stepped onto the dock, Allison had finished hosing down her boat.
“So how was the charter?”
“Perfect. This is my favorite time of year.”
“Mine, too.” His gaze swept the length of the hull and came to rest on some simple turquoise script. “Tranquility. Very fitting name. She’s beautiful.”
She looked up from her chores and flashed him a smile. “Thanks.”
He watched her while she finished her end-of-the-day routine. “I’m going to be heading out to take Brinks for a walk, but I can take a different route. I don’t want you to think I’m stalking you.”
“That’s all right. The company’s kind of nice.” She stepped off the boat and grinned up at him. “I’ll let you know when I get tired of you.”
He started down the dock next to her. “Do you have any charters tomorrow?”
“No. I try to take Sundays off. At least Sunday mornings.”
“It’s nice to sleep in every so often.”
A gust of wind swept through and whipped her hair into her face. Several strands had come loose from the braid during her time on the water. She reached up to tuck them behind her ear.
“Actually, that’s not it. I’m an early riser. Can’t sleep past sunup regardless. But Sunday morning I’m usually in church, singing in the worship ensemble.”
“You sail and you sing. Any other talents I don’t know about?”
“No, that’s pretty much it. My parents tried piano lessons, too, but I didn’t take to them like the voice lessons.”
He nodded. Somehow the singing didn’t surprise him. Her voice held an almost mesmerizing quality, a smooth, low timbre that slid over him like fine silk.
“If you’d like to go, I’ll be happy to pick you up.”
Church? He hadn’t been since age sixteen, when he decided he didn’t need some stuffy old man in a robe telling him how to live his life. “I’ll have to pass. I’ve got some things to do.” He wasn’t sure what, but he’d think of something.
When they reached her house, he walked with her to the door, where she stopped to give Brinks some brisk scratches on the neck and throat. Her eyes sparkled, the uneasiness he had seen yesterday gone. Finally, she straightened to give him a parting smile.
“I’ll see you around.”
As soon as she had unlocked and opened the door, he turned to head back to the street. But her startled gasp stopped him midstride. He spun toward her, and his stomach went into a free fall. Her face was three shades lighter than it had been moments ago, and her eyes were wide with fear.