The dead still talk if you know how to listen...

Every case that Claire Britten cracks is a win, not only professionally but personally. The forensic psychologist has spent a lifetime fighting a neurological disorder, and her ability to conquer it is a testament to her razor-sharp intuition.

Nick Markwood is used to winning in the courtroom, so when his latest case is overthrown by Claire’s expert testimony, he can’t help being impressed by her skill. He needs her on the team of his passion project—investigating unusual cases involving mysterious deaths. Her condition doesn’t deter him, and neither does the attraction that sparks between them...even if it should.

As they join forces to investigate a murder in St. Augustine, Florida, Claire is thrust into a situation far more dangerous than she’d anticipated, pushing her disorder to a breaking point. Just when she fears she can’t trust her own mind, she discovers Nick’s personal connection to the case—and wonders whether she can trust anyone at all.

Praise for the novels of Karen Harper

“The thrilling finish takes a twist that most readers won’t see coming. While intrigue is the main driver of the story, the able, well-researched plotting and sympathetic characters will keep romance readers along for the ride.”

—Publishers Weekly on Broken Bonds

“Haunting suspense, tender romance and an evocative look at the complexities of Amish life—Dark Angel is simply riveting!”

—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author

“A compelling story...intricate and fascinating details of Amish life.”

—Tami Hoag, New York Times bestselling author, on Dark Road Home

“Harper, a master of suspense, keeps readers guessing about crime and love until the very end...of this thrilling tale.”

—Booklist on Fall from Pride (starred review)

“Danger and romance find their way into Ohio Amish country in a lively and endearing first installment of the Amish Home Valley series.”

—Publishers Weekly on Fall from Pride

“A tale guaranteed to bring shivers to the spine, Down River will delight Harper’s current fans and earn her many more.”

—Booklist (starred review)

“Well-researched and rich in detail... With its tantalizing buildup and well-developed characters, this offering is certain to earn Harper high marks.”

—Publishers Weekly on Dark Angel, winner of the Mary Higgins Clark Award

Also available from New York Times bestselling author Karen Harper

Cold Creek

BROKEN BONDS

FORBIDDEN GROUND

SHATTERED SECRETS

Home Valley Amish

UPON A WINTER’S NIGHT

DARK CROSSINGS (featuring “The Covered Bridge”)

FINDING MERCY

RETURN TO GRACE

FALL FROM PRIDE

Novels

DOWN RIVER

DEEP DOWN

THE HIDING PLACE

BELOW THE SURFACE

INFERNO

HURRICANE

DARK ANGEL

DARK HARVEST

DARK ROAD HOME

Look for Karen Harper’s next novel

DROWNING TIDES

available soon from MIRA Books.

Visit karenharperauthor.com for more titles.

Chasing Shadows

Karen Harper

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Bill and Sunny

for their great St. Augustine hospitality

and, as ever, to Don.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Booklist

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Author’s Note

Extract

Copyright

1

Naples, Florida

Collier County Courthouse

2014

Surely nothing else could go wrong now. As Claire Britten and her client left the courtroom in triumph, she was convinced she was on a roll. She felt like making a fist pump in the air but she kept her cool.

As a thirtysomething single mother struggling with building a career and coping with a dreadful disease, this high-profile victory had to help. Her interviews and testimony had made all the difference in the trial. A guilty man was going to prison instead of hiding out so he and his family could enjoy a three-million-dollar death settlement. Her current client, Lifeboat Insurance, small as it was, had beaten out the vaunted law firm of Markwood, Benton and Chase. She’d helped to best the best in the business.

Claire was swept outside with her boss and their lawyer, past the big pillars holding up the shaded, covered walkway. They hit a wave of humidity and reporters, washing toward them in the mid-September afternoon. She fumbled in her purse for her sunglasses amid shouted questions, the thrust of arms with recorders...padded microphones on poles...jostling, shouting...

Over the crowd noise, her client Fred Myron shouted in her ear. “That fancy defense lawyer’s the one who needs a lifeboat now. I’m going with this for all it’s worth. I see cameras from Ft. Myers, even Orlando! Look at that—CNN!”

A long pole with a padded microphone brushed Claire’s shoulder and someone shouted, “Ms. Britten, tell us how you first knew the wife and son were lying! Hadn’t Sol Sorento covered his tracks to make everyone think he drowned in Key West? What were the clues he wasn’t dead?”

“As I testified on the stand,” Claire answered, “Mrs. Sorento and Mario sometimes slipped into the present tense when talking about him. I theorized they knew he was alive and were in contact with him. Then a call they made was traced to the Bahamas where the insurance firm detective took over to locate him.”

Another voice, a woman’s: “Ms. Britten, can you explain for our viewers what you mean by a forensic autopsy you did on the accused? You’re not a doctor, but that sounds really medical, and you didn’t even have a body to work with.”

“I am not a medical doctor or a psychiatrist, but a forensic psychologist. A forensic autopsy, which some call a psychological autopsy, means taking apart and studying a person’s life—often their motives and alibi. I do interviews, not interrogations, of those close to the deceased to learn who might be responsible for foul play. Please take a look at my website and...”

Someone bumped into her from behind, pressing closer. The crowd noise and a small jet going over made her shout to be heard. Oh, it wasn’t a jet but a drone. Could the media be filming from it, or could it belong to security here? Its whine was like a screaming mosquito, and it wasn’t even directly overhead. It seemed to hover above the Sorento defense team. A few others looked up at it, too.

She asked the reporter, “Can we just step over there a minute in the grass in the shade of the palms?”

Surely this publicity would lead to more future clients than her business Facebook page and website had brought in. This would be a starred item in her meager resume. She’d already been covered in The Naples Daily News so she was banking on that to promote her struggling one-woman Certified Fraud Examiner and Forensic Psychologist business she’d named Clear Path. Despite Jace’s monthly child support, she wanted to stand on her own for herself and little Lexi. Besides, she believed in her work and maybe now could start believing in herself again.

But had she remembered to take her meds on time? Spending so much time in court had played havoc with her schedule. She’d like to pop a piece of chocolate for some quick caffeine, but not with everyone watching. She’d had to miss her short afternoon nap. All week she’d had to cut back on her regular jolts of caffeine so she didn’t have to run to the bathroom during testimony and so she could be there for the reading of the verdict. All she needed was to doze off or have a horrible hallucination triggered by all this emotion.

Fred kept a firm hold on her arm. No doubt he wanted in on this interview. She wondered if any of these reporters would turn up that having to pay the huge death insurance benefits for Sol Sorento would have sunk little local Lifeboat Insurance into the depths of bankruptcy. Her theory was that, desperate to prove the Sorento family’s claim was bogus, Fred had borrowed money to investigate and fight the claim. She’d like to deal with larger, more reputable firms, but she needed to build her bank account.

Trailing reporters, they moved down the walk toward a patch of grass near the four-story parking garage. Claire noted the lead lawyer for Sorento, Nick Markwood, walked away from his group and made straight for her, his suit jacket slung over one arm, his shirt blinding white in the sun.

The man had been amazing in court, forceful, clever. She knew he wasn’t used to losing. Was he going to shove his way in here to make his point in the interview? His law firm was a force around here, powerfully promoted on billboards and through TV spots, but with his looks and voice, she supposed he could usually sell anyone on anything. He was a commanding figure, tall and tanned with a sculpted face and physique, maybe forty, going silver at the temples, which matched his steely eyes. She’d had plenty of time to study him and she had to admit she’d enjoyed watching him work and psyching him out when he spoke in that deep, commanding voice.

“So,” the first reporter, a blonde woman with a Live at Five cameraman, was saying, “what other hints besides verb tense that his family was lying? A lot of our readers might not get that.”

“As I testified, besides verbal cues, I rely on body language, the closed, defensive look liars often use with legs and arms crossed,” Claire explained. “If you mention my website—here’s my card—you’ll find my list of other signs that can suggest a witness, acquaintance or family member is lying. I also—”

A loud crack slammed through the noise. People stopped and looked around and up. Fred let go of her arm and stepped away. Someone screamed, “Gun! Gun!”

People scattered, ducked, shouted. A voice screamed, “Oh. He’s been hit!”

A second shot, a breaking of the sky. Pain, searing pain in her arm, her body, somewhere. Had she fallen into a fire? Was this a narcoleptic nightmare?

She fell back onto the green sea with royal palms swaying overhead, and she was with Jace and Lexi. At the beach by the pier. But the sun burned her skin, her arm.

“Call 9-1-1!” someone shouted.

A man’s deep voice, maybe Jace. But he was flying from LA to Singapore now. No, not Jace bending over her, wrapping his necktie around her upper arm, then pressing his hand hard against her. It was that lawyer, that man who had studied and glared at her when she testified, the one who had cross-examined her. The one who had almost made her doubt her own words. Nick Markwood, still watching her, what she said, her mouth. That mouth—she screamed.

“Don’t move,” he said. “You’ve been shot. I know I’m hurting you, but I have to stop the bleeding. Lie still. Help is coming. Is there a doctor here?” he yelled.

More screaming. Not hers, maybe sirens coming closer. Strobe lights, or was that the sun?

Someone shouted, “Is anyone else down?”

Down? They couldn’t keep her down. Never. But red-sunset blood shone from the man’s shirtsleeves, his hands. Hands on her.

Someone cried, “I think the insurance guy is dead. Did anyone see who shot them?”

“From the parking garage. Didn’t see him. One cop car went after him when he fled...only two shots...”

Searing red burning pain made worse by the man staring down at her, bending over, pressing into her hurt arm. Did he know she could easily fall asleep? Did he know the high school bullies had taunted, “Claire Fowler, Claire Foul-up! Foul-up!” when she’d fallen asleep reading, eating, sitting on the volleyball bench, even standing up? Her disease had ruined her marriage—her fault but Jace’s, too. Would her sister keep Lexi if she died, or would Jace try to take her away, far away?

She heard someone sobbing from fear and pain. It was so close. She guessed it was her.

* * *

Nick Markwood fought to keep Claire Britten conscious, tried to stop the bleeding from her upper left arm. Maybe all the blood made her wound look bigger than it was. He’d seen gunshot wounds before, in his worst nightmares of finding his father, even worse than this.

Now, both of them and the grass were spattered with her blood. She was slender, maybe didn’t have much to lose. Too slender. And that bounty of stunning red hair and alabaster skin stood out in this sunny South Florida of bottled blondes and bronzed skin. With her green eyes, he’d thought she looked like some Irish colleen off a St. Patrick’s Day card, here among the snowbirds and native Floridians. But she had those eyes tight shut now in pain.

In court, he’d had to fight to keep his mind off her looks and on her testimony so he could tear it apart, but she’d torn their case apart. He didn’t need the loss, hated losses. Too many from too far back. But maybe it had all worked out for the best—if she’d trust him and if she didn’t die like her boss who’d been standing close to her. The shooter had been really good. But had he meant to kill them both and just wounded her? He’d evidently blown away Fred Myron with one hit. A shooter out for revenge from Sol Sorento’s big family?

Or—and this scared and angered him too—since he’d been moving close to the two victims, Nick’s next thought had been that the bullets could have been meant for him. Clayton Ames had his ways of ruining things. He must know Nick would never give up his crusade to nail the bastard. Ames and his lackeys managed to wreak havoc and then disappear just that fast. Talk about Sol Sorento vanishing for two years to try to pull off this fraud. The master murderer Clay Ames had reeked of deceit and danger for years but stayed too slippery to prosecute or even locate lately.

Shrill sirens came close, drowning out other voices, even the ones in his head. The court staff and reporters shouted and pointed to bring the rescue squad to Claire. Running steps; the joggling sound of the equipment in their bags. Reporters’ cameras still rolling.

Though they were heading right for them, like some damn idiot, Nick shouted, “Here! Here! She’s shot in the upper left arm and bleeding bad!”

They knelt, bent over her. “Should I let go?” he asked them. “I don’t want to let go.”

“Good job, sir. We’ll take over now,” a medic said. Nick watched as they put a better tourniquet on her and some sort of a plastic patch over the wound. Tears streamed down her cheeks so she was conscious.

Nick sat back on his haunches. His muscles ached. He was a mess. He stood, moved away, ignoring questions shouted at him by the press. He usually kept his comments—especially after losses—to a minimum. They’d done him and his mother no favors when his dad died. Talk about blood on someone’s hands...

Sean, one of his associates, pulled him away, but he didn’t want to go. Nick wanted to know she’d be all right. If he hadn’t wanted to talk to her, he wouldn’t have been near her when she was hit. But he needed to make her an offer she could not refuse.

Police pushed everyone back, wound some police tape between a courthouse pillar and two royal palms. He watched the second rescue squad bend over the dead man, feel for a pulse, then stand, whispering, shaking their heads. One guy got on his cell, probably to the ME. A police officer of the growing number of them covered Fred Myron with a body bag, but they didn’t move him yet.

They were getting ready to move her already, Claire Fowler Britten, the sharp little expert who had done his case in with her clever questioning of Sorento’s family and her steady testimony he couldn’t shake. He wanted her for that.

He let Sean carry his briefcase and started dazedly toward the parking garage before he saw that was being cordoned off, too. He got only a few steps before one of the officers hurried up and asked, “Did you see the shooter, counselor? Anything that would help?”

“Nothing. I was going to talk to her—the forensic psychologist. Tell her she’d done a good job. I—I was looking at her. I saw her go down from the shot, tried to help her.”

“You did. They’re taking her to the hospital downtown.”

“Did they say she’ll be okay?”

“We’ll know soon. We’ve got to notify Mr. Myron’s next of kin, then notify hers. It’s bad when NOK learn things from the media, and they’re all over here.”

“You know I’m available if you have more questions,” Nick said.

He had already checked out where Claire lived, an attached villa in the Lakewood area, evidently so she could be near her younger sister, Darcy, who did her daughter’s child care. He’d researched Claire’s family, education, marital status. Divorced for a year with a four-year-old daughter. Her ex, Jason “Jace” Britten, was an international airline co-pilot living in Los Angeles and sometimes Singapore, though he kept an apartment here in Naples. Nick had wanted to move on his plan—on her, but this was sure screwing up his schedule. Claire Fowler Britten might have gotten the best of him in the courtroom, but he had to get the best out of her and soon.

* * *

Jace Britten yawned and stretched out in the backseat of the taxi as it pulled away from Changi Airport where he’d just left the Airbus after an eighteen-and-one-half-hour flight from LAX. A great airport here, a great destination where he spent his time when he wasn’t in LA or making a quick trip home to see Lexi. Smooth flight as usual with a pilot he liked, but, as first officer, he was always itching to get into the captain’s seat.

He glanced down at the three stripes circling the sleeves of his uniform jacket on the seat beside him, and thought about Claire. When he’d gotten this promotion, the two of them had celebrated at Stoney’s Restaurant, and the next day at McDonald’s with Lexi. Slender, like her mother, that little kid could put food away but never seemed to gain weight. He hoped like hell that was all his girl had inherited from Claire.

He tried to put his past life—and past wife—out of his thoughts. She’d betrayed him, though not by being unfaithful. A woman with a career exposing liars had lied to him, hid things, and he couldn’t take that. Absolutely unacceptable. He’d have tried to take Lexi if the child hadn’t been so close to her mother and her aunt Darcy, if he hadn’t always had wanderlust for exotic places and Claire had argued that Singapore or even LA wasn’t the place to rear a child. Hell, Singapore was just a foreign version of Naples: heat and humidity, tourism, traffic, beaches, great restaurants, crocs instead of gators—that’s all, if you ignored the mosques and Buddhist temples.

“Very nice day,” his taxi driver said. “No monsoons yet in ‘Garden City.’”

“I like the nickname ‘fine city’ for this place,” Jace told him, partly to head off the next punch line he figured was coming. “A six-hundred-dollar fine for littering, a twelve-hundred-dollar fine for speeding.”

“I not speeding. No, sir.”

So much for that conversation. English might be the main language here, but the place was a real scramble of people, just like the mix of skyscrapers and sampans they drove past right now.

At his favorite, familiar hotel on busy Orchard Road, he paid his fare, hefted his small bag and walked past the gorgeous garden with flowers and a fountain. Under the spray of water was a statue of the so-called merlion, the mythical beast that was the symbol of the tourism industry here. Its top half was a lion and the bottom half a fish. A couple of years ago, when he’d taken a stuffed merlion home to Lexi, she’d insisted on calling it Lion King Little Mermaid from her two favorite Disney movies at that time.

Ginger at the desk saw him coming, smiled and winked, then handed him a key card and a note. Call Darcy, it read.

His stomach flip-flopped, especially when he remembered he hadn’t even taken his phone out of airplane mode after the flight. What if something was wrong—really wrong?

He hurried to his usual room and linked into the hotel Wi-Fi. He looked at his list of numbers, Claire’s at the top. Once a week, he Skyped with Lexi and Claire just to keep in touch with Lexi. He hit the line with his former sister-in-law’s cell number. Darcy answered right away.

“Darcy, it’s Jace in Singapore. What’s up? Everyone okay?”

“I thought you should know Claire had an accident so they won’t be Skyping with you tonight.”

His voice rose with his pulse rate. “An accident with Lexi in the car?”

“No, not exactly an accident. Someone shot her in the arm, coming out of the courthouse after that trial which she—they—won. I still have Lexi, so don’t worry. It’s just that it got a lot of publicity here, and I thought you might stumble on it in the news somehow.”

Claire hurt. That hit him so hard it scared him.

“In the arm. Is she okay? How bad is it?”

“I don’t really know yet, but not life-threatening. Just a day or two in Naples Hospital. They want to be sure infection doesn’t set in. And they haven’t found the shooter, who killed her boss—you know, from that insurance company—and they aren’t yet sure who was the intended victim.”

Jace swore under his breath. Just like Darcy to hold back the worst news. Claire’s boss was shot to death? Why did Claire insist on being in this type of business? Why didn’t she just stick to online consulting? She was just looking for trouble, hanging around shady characters like frauds and liars. Damn, it took one to know one, so no wonder she was good at that.

“Jace, are you there?”

“Yeah. So they didn’t get the shooter?”

“Escaped. The theory is it was a member of that Italian Sorento family that won’t be getting the millions in death benefits. They’re thick as thieves.”

“Did Claire ask you to call me?”

“Yes. Yes, she did. And I told Lexi a version of events. Steve took her and our two to get ice cream so she’s not here right now.”

“I’m not scheduled to fly back to LA for two days this time. I’ll check in, though, try to change off. Maybe I can get a jump seat back sooner.”

“I’ll take good care of Lexi. It’s not a crisis. Claire’s done with that case. Nothing dangerous on the horizon, and this was just that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yeah,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level. “Tell the little mermaid I love her, okay?”

“Sure. She misses you, Jace, wants you back.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” he said and ended the call. Though he fought it hard, as hurt and angry as he still was, he wished she’d said that about Claire.

2

Claire’s wounded arm hardly hurt at all, that is, until she tried to move it or her shoulder. Then, too, she was on pain pills. Despite this accident—this assault—she was blessed it wasn’t worse.

They had her sitting up in the hospital bed. No cast, since the bullet had missed her bone. Only one of the three major upper arm muscles had been impacted. In the ER while she was sedated, they’d given her a transfusion, probed for and extracted the bullet, irrigated the wound and put her back together with some sort of blue adhesive and a bandage, all supported by a pink sling, no less. The doctor had said her skin would get sticky and itchy but should heal well.

“I see you’ve finished your breakfast. Feeling reasonably okay?” the nurse named Mandy said as she swung the tray table aside and took Claire’s temperature again with an electronic thermometer. Why did doctors, nurses and dentists always start to chat or ask a question when they had something in your mouth?

“Mm-mm,” Claire said.

“Good. We gave you a tetanus booster in your right arm if that’s a bit sore. Sometimes in the panic and pain in the ER, memories can be strange and I know you missed your dosages of meds before we realized you were narcoleptic. You really should wear a bracelet with that info. Your sister had to tell us, you know.”

“Mm-mm.”

Actually, that was a good suggestion, so maybe something positive would come from this mess. She’d been so sedated that she didn’t recall much either from the ER or last night. But she didn’t want to be explaining to people what a NARC bracelet around her wrist meant. The fewer people who knew she was narcoleptic, the better. Thank heavens, she hadn’t had one of her terrible dreams from being even slightly off her meds but she just bet it was the hospital sedation that had saved her from that. Regularity of her meds, her naps and daily stimulants were essential.

Taking the thermometer out of her mouth and squinting at it, Mandy said, “Good, no fever. Now, before we release you later today, I want to warn you not to be upset by major bruising. Your skin will be black and blue like crazy, following lymphatic channels under the skin, maybe looking like a series of stripes.”

Claire heaved a huge sigh. “A small price to pay, considering my client was killed. He’s Jewish, so his wife will want to bury him soon. He has two adult children. I’m so sorry for all of them.”

“They won’t be burying him before the next sunset. An autopsy. Standard procedure for a—a tragedy like this.”

Claire nodded and sniffed back the urge to cry, for Fred, for herself. Dreadful, the thought of a physical autopsy, instead of the psychological ones she specialized in.

Someone called out in the hall, and she jolted. Pain shot into her shoulder. That sound was hardly like a gunshot, but it brought it back. But no way was she going to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, not with everything else she’d been through.

She asked Mandy, who was typing into her small laptop, “Do they know if I’ll need physical therapy to get everything working again?”

“To be decided in a week or so. The Tylenol 3 with codeine you’re on should handle the pain if you don’t use the arm much, but Dr. Manning has also written a prescription for stronger stuff, should you need it. With the powerful meds you take, remember, use the stronger pain meds sparingly, if possible. And no driving for a while.”

Claire sighed again. “I’m used to that, off and on, though I’ve been cleared to drive again recently since I have my narcolepsy meds calibrated just right. Cab fares add up. I can’t have my family always running me around as if I were a kid. And, yes, I’ll be careful. Believe me, I always am. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think the shooter meant to hit Fred, or even someone else nearby.”

“I think that’s what you told the officer who questioned you last night.”

“Oh, right. That’s vague, but I remember it. Not the same man who was guarding my door. It was a detective working on Fred’s murder. I wish I could have helped him.”

“If you don’t mind me asking—well, I’ve never come across someone with narcolepsy before, only read about it in textbooks. The meds keep it under control? Do you have cataplexy, too, lose muscle control when you wake up or get emotional? Do you think that’s why you fell to the ground so fast?”

“I have mild cataplexy that’s controlled by one of my medications. I think I fell to the ground because the bullet spun me around—maybe instinct to get down. Unless I get overly tired or overly excited, the meds plus a mini-nap or two and stimulants like caffeine, even in the form of chocolate, work wonders. I’ve had the disease since eighth grade, and it took a while for it to be diagnosed. It was really hard going when I was a kid. I had terrible nightmares, actually thought I was haunted by ghosts. People thought I was lazy or stupid. I took some ribbing—bullying.”

“I’ll never understand cruel people. I think they’re insecure and strike out at others to make themselves feel better, stronger than someone else.”

“I usually hide my disease from people, because it’s hard for people to trust you when they expect you to just fall asleep at any moment—be out of it,” she admitted, more to herself than to Mandy. Here she was talking freely with a nurse about the nightmare of her life, and she’d kept it from her own husband. She pictured Jace—the handsome blond, athletic, perfectionist Jason Andrew Britten—shouting and stomping around when he finally found her stash of hidden meds and learned what they were for.

“Sorry,” Mandy said. “That must have been really tough.”

Claire whispered, “I never expected to end up in the hospital where my diagnosis would matter. It helps now, to talk about it with someone—someone who understands, like the doctor who eventually helped me. My sister and parents knew, too, but no one else.”

Mandy patted her good shoulder and they were silent for a moment. “By the way,” Mandy said, “there’s major coverage of the shooting on TV and in the papers, even national. It’s in USA TODAY and I caught a story on Good Morning, America before I left the house. ‘Fatal courthouse shooting... Man supposed dead for two years now out of the grave and into prison for fraud,’ that kind of thing. What a way to be famous, huh?”

Claire just rolled her eyes. Suddenly, they were the only part of her that didn’t feel sore. “Is the police officer still outside my door?” she asked as Mandy typed something else into her laptop.

“A new one this morning. Just until they catch the killer,” she said as she went out and left the door ajar.

The killer. She’d been shot by a killer. Hard to believe. Poor Fred and his family. But had one of Sol Sorento’s family been the shooter? Of all the interviews she’d done to try to figure out if Sol was dead or alive, not one of his family or friends had seemed like a killer, even if some of them were temperamental and deeply distressed. But losing hope of a fortune, with Sol going to prison and others up for perjury, their lives ruined, who knows that desperate people couldn’t turn deadly? But that was all she’d been able to give the detective when he’d questioned her.

A knock on her door interrupted her agonizing. A middle-aged, bald and bulky officer stood there with a huge bouquet of red roses in his hands. “For you, with a visitor, if you’re up to it, Ms. Britten,” he said. “It’s been cleared.”

Her first thought was that Darcy and Steve should not have bought expensive roses, even if they were supposed to be from Lexi. Maybe they’d even brought Lexi! Surely, Jace hadn’t sent the flowers, though Darcy said she’d call him.

“Yes,” Claire told him. “Yes, of course, they can come in.”

But it wasn’t her family. It was a senior partner of Markwood, Benton and Chase, Attorney Nick Markwood, not decked out in his lawyer suit but in gray casual slacks and a bright blue golf shirt. He took the roses from the cop and came in to sit in the chair beside her bed, laying the bouquet beside her sheet-covered leg. Like an idiot, she hoped her hair looked okay. At least she had a robe over this stupid-looking hospital gown.

“I know that officer,” he said. “I asked him not to say it was me, or I figured you might not see me. We were adversaries, and I know you probably hate me for grilling you the way I did. But I have a proposal—a job offer—if you’ll just hear me out.”

“I don’t hate you, and I want to thank you for helping me yesterday. They gave me a transfusion, but it could have been worse if you hadn’t stopped my bleeding.” Still, she thought, that didn’t mean she trusted him. But if he was going to offer her a job at that prestigious law firm...

“Okay, here’s the deal,” he said, crossing one ankle over his other knee. “I intended to talk to you about this just before you were shot. I could use your help immediately on an important issue in St. Augustine.”

“St. Augustine? Do you have an office there? With this situation—I have a young daughter, too—I can’t really work outside this area.”

“I need your expertise and talents and so does an innocent woman who’s a friend of mine. If we don’t move fast, she may soon be indicted for murder. Her mother is dead, and the daughter’s innocence hinges on whether the death was an accident, suicide or murder. It will not only impact her, but the state of Florida. Needless to say, I’ll make it worth your while. I’d like to retain you as a consultant, have you conduct some interviews on-site there. We need to prove that her daughter did not commit murder.”

“If it were a local case, maybe, but St. Augustine’s about as far as you can get within the same state. As I said, I have commitments here.”

“I hear you’re being released later today. I’m sure you’ll want to get home to your daughter, but can we meet to talk this over again soon, and I’ll give you more details? I saw your physician in the hall, and he said not to stay long right now.”

Her eyes widened and her lower lip dropped before she got hold of herself. The reach of this man amazed her. He knew the cop on her door; he’d consulted with her doctor. Wasn’t anything about her condition or release privileged? Was this master manipulator the kind of client she could trust? She really should not have trusted poor, dead Fred Myron, either. But, she sure needed that job, and this one could be an entrée to others. It sounded high-profile.

“Claire, could I pick you up tomorrow and take you over to Lake Avalon midday? I’ll bring lunch. We’ll talk, so I can explain everything. The case, the people—your fee, of course. Unless you’d rather not go out into open spaces right now.”

“I’m not going to cower under my desk. Besides, those bullets surely weren’t meant for me. Really, I don’t have any enemies...not someone who would do that.”

Just yesterday, she would have said this man was her enemy from his trying to tear her testimony to shreds. She shouldn’t trust him now. No way she was going to leave Southwest Florida to work for who knew how long in the northeastern part of the state. She might as well be going to Alaska for all she knew of that area. And this was something that would affect the entire state? This guy was good with words, with convincing people, but not her.

“I don’t really want to do profiling of possible murderers,” she told him. “That can be tricky and dangerous. That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it, I mean if it’s an alleged murder? In Lifeboat versus Sorento, I was only trying to establish that Sol Sorento was alive. I turned up nothing to prove his friends and family wanted him dead or would have committed murder.”

He put both feet on the floor and his elbows on his knees as he leaned closer and fixed her with his riveting, silver stare. “Think of it this way then. I’m not asking you to profile a murderer, but a victim. Surely, this woman’s daughter would never have hurt her. The deceased had panic attacks and was on powerful meds, so maybe she accidentally or intentionally overdosed. It would be what you called on the stand a forensic autopsy. I want you for this. And then we’ll go from there.”

I want you... And then we’ll go from there... And the woman had panic attacks...powerful meds... Claire closed her eyes for a moment. She felt for this poor dead woman and her daughter. And, she hated to admit it, but she was moved by Nick’s passion for this case.

She amazed and scared herself by saying, “Call me first. But why don’t we meet at your office?”

“This is ex officio, not under the aegis of the firm. It’s a kind of charity I sponsor, a low-profile company I call South Shores that only takes on certain suicide-versus-murder cases.”

Now she was sure she was crazy to even talk to him about this. But she was curious, too, totally tempted—not by his charisma, of course—but by the mystery of what he’d shared so far.

“I’ll call tomorrow morning,” he said, standing. “I have your number from your website.” He lifted his hand and walked out, probably trying to leave before she had time to change her mind again.

At least, she’d only agreed to hear him out. Too late she realized she’d been gripping the florist paper wrapped around the rose stems. She crinkled it so tight she’d stuck her thumb with a thorn. All she needed was to lose more blood, even a drop. And was it an omen?

She had to admit she wasn’t doing well lately choosing clients. Nick Markwood fit the description of something Claire’s mother, who always had her nose in a book, had said about romantic poet Lord Byron: mad, bad and dangerous to know.

* * *

“Darcy, thanks so much for bringing Lexi and me home, but you don’t have to stay,” Claire told her younger sister that afternoon when they got back from the hospital. “You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty.”

“Not duty, big sister. Love. Love is the key, like in that song our munchkins keep playing over and over. I swear, I’m going to scream if I hear it one more time.”

They hugged—that is, Claire hugged her one-armed and Darcy encircled her very gently, before they sat at Claire’s kitchen table. Darcy had driven her home with Lexi and her own four-year-old Jilly in the car. Lexi had cuddled up to Claire the whole way in the backseat, and she’d managed lots of hugs despite her sore arm.

It was a Saturday, and Darcy’s husband, Steve, was at their house with their six-year-old son, Drew. The girls were in Claire’s living room, playing the song “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen over and over.

Frozen, Claire thought, that’s how she felt. Like her wounded arm was frozen to her side, like her thirty-two years of life were frozen and on hold. Like her feelings for Jace were frozen. She shuddered, remembering how horrible it had been when she used to lie awake and feel frozen for a few minutes, unable to move, helpless...

“But I’m telling you,” Darcy went on, “that you are out of your everlovin’ mind if you even hear out Superman Lawyer, man of steel, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. You need your rest, not some new assignment gallivanting all over the state.”

“I didn’t say I’m taking him up on it. I only agreed to a chat, across the Trail at Lake Avalon. You know I can use the money from a new assignment, and I need to build the reputation and publicity for Clear Path. I have big plans for it, not just to be the only Certified Fraud Examiner for consult or hire, but to have a staff.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. She’d heard all that before. “One more warning,” she said, then took a sip of the strong tea she’d fixed for the two of them. “I’m telling you, Nick Markwood’s a ladies’ man. He’s not married, shows up in the society pages all the time with a string of different, beautiful women. Last week it was some ‘Stomp in the Swamp’ dance for an Everglades reclamation charity. Can’t recall if that was in the newspaper or that glitzy mag Naples Illustrated.”

“Everglades reclamation? Well, see? A lot of charities are worthwhile. Besides, he needs a high profile to be a rainmaker for his firm. But—what? Stop looking at me like that. You think this request for my help is a come-on? I hardly move in his circles. He has some friend who’s in trouble, and he was impressed with how I handled the Sorento interviews, that’s all.”

Claire amazed herself to be defending Nick. No way was she admitting to Darcy that this assignment was not actually for his law firm, but for a sort of secret charity. Actually, didn’t his dedication to such causes mean he was a nice guy after all? But she was too tired to argue that now.

“Okay, okay,” Darcy said, looking hurt. She ran her fingers through her pixie-cut hair.

When Darcy got emotional, it had always seemed to Claire that her freckles popped out. Her hair had never been as red as Claire’s, and her eyes were blue, but anyone could tell they were sisters.

“Listen,” Claire told her, “I know I pay you next to nothing for child care, but I want to thank you again for all you’ve done for me and Queen Alexandra in there.” She nodded toward the door to the living area. “You’ve been a second mother to her, and Jilly’s like a sister. It should be the older sister taking care of the younger, but you’ve always been the steady one. You’ve stuck with me through—through everything.”

“Well, with a hard-driving, hard-drinking traveling salesman father and our nearly unresponsive mother, we needed to hang together, that’s all.”

“It isn’t all.”

Darcy’s lips crimped into a smile, and she crinkled her nose. Here came her make-light-of-their-sad-childhood routine when Claire had always wanted to psych it out. Darcy had majored in elementary education at Florida State while Claire had immersed herself in linguistics and psychology there.

“I mean,” Darcy went on, “maybe you should just psychoanalyze me and be done with it. How many girls do you know who were named for someone’s favorite male character in an English novel of manners, no less? At least she didn’t name me Mr. Darcy. How did you ever escape with Claire?”

They held hands across the corner of the table. Darcy managed a smile, but Claire blinked back tears. “Remember, I got Claire from ‘Clair de Lune’—Claire de Looney.” They smiled at one of their old childhood jokes. “But I have to admit—” Claire went on as their daughters’ song floated in again with both girls singing along “—I still prefer the Hans Christian Anderson story The Snow Queen to Disney’s rendition of it in Frozen. What did she not read to us when we were growing up? At least we had that. You do remember that fairy tale is about two sisters who learn to stick together?”

Pieces of the lyrics floated in again, maybe the tenth time it had been played. The words of the song about the past being in the past and wanting to move forward, despite being unsettled in one’s heart...

Maybe, Claire thought, as they rose and went to join their girls, that song that was driving them crazy was exactly what she needed to hear.

3

“Let’s sit at the picnic table over there,” Nick suggested as they got out of his black BMW at Sugden Park just across US 41 from where Claire lived. The traffic sounded muted here. It seemed like another world.

He carried a cooler and a tartan blanket, no less, when the temperature must be in the high eighties. She couldn’t wait for the weather to break to the clear coolness of autumn days, but the oppressive humidity and the cloudy sky seemed appropriate somehow. She was sure she would—at least should—turn him down.

A warm Gulf breeze rippled the man-made lake that was set back a mile or so from the shore. The park service was giving kids waterskiing lessons today, and several small sailboats zigged and zagged across the surface. The screech of ospreys sailing overhead reminded her of the drone in the sky at the courthouse.

Then, high above the lake, she saw there was a drone, a white one, hard to see in the sun against the sky. She’d read those might be used to spray for mosquitoes, but surely over the Everglades, not in a populated locale like this. She scanned the area to see who might be controlling the drone. Maybe the man way down where the bike trail disappeared into the woods.

She watched Nick flap the blanket over the worn wooden surface of the picnic table. He took soft drinks—with plastic glasses and ice—and two plastic deli cartons out of the cooler. Plastic utensils, napkins, dark rolls and tiny tubs of butter. She saw everything was from Wynn’s, a market uptown she loved but usually avoided because she’d walk out of there with a bill twice what she’d intended.

“Lobster salad,” he said, sitting across from her with his back to the lake, when she was hoping he’d sit beside her so he didn’t seem to be interrogating her. She was really sensitive about body language, and his said impatience and controlled aggression right now. Worse, since his back was to the sun, he took off his sunglasses and regarded her with those disturbing silver-gray eyes. “Hope lobster’s okay.”

“Great. I’d eat that even if I had no hands instead of just one that’s working well. So how is the state of Florida involved in this St. Augustine situation, other than, if your friend is indicted, she’ll go on trial there?”

“So you have been thinking about this case. Good sign.”

“Maybe, but I’m not ready to sign up.”

“Let’s not do a contract per se, except for this.”

He fished a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket, unfolded it and turned it toward her. He was eager now, in a hurry. And he had not answered her question.

She took off her sunglasses to read the paper better. It was not a contract but an offer letter, for two hundred dollars an hour for interviews! And fifty dollars for “general consultation” time! She’d never earned more than seventy-five dollars for an entire interview. It also offered a daily rate of three hundred dollars while in St. Augustine (St. Johns County) and someplace called Palatka (Putnam County) to be paid weekly to her account. Her stomach cartwheeled as she read on. If she helped his South Shores company prove that Jasmine Montgomery Stanton did not murder her mother, Francine Montgomery, there was a $10,000 bonus. He’d signed the paper and had it dated and notarized.

She just stared at the document at first, a forkful of lobster salad halfway to her mouth. She put the fork down and stared into his intense gaze. He moved across from her to block the sun from streaming into her eyes.

“This means a lot to you,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “You said she—this Jasmine—was a friend. Is that why?”

“It’s not the only reason. Through South Shores, I usually take cases in which I believe a so-called suicide or accident is actually a murder. I don’t want to sway what you’ll find out but I don’t think this woman would kill herself. She was influential in St. Johns County, owned Shadowlawn Hall, one of the largest pre-Civil War plantation houses in the area—not a working plantation anymore but a real historic and cultural treasure. It’s been handed down in her family for generations. For financial reasons, she came to the difficult decision to either deed it to the State of Florida or auction it privately. But her daughter Jasmine disagreed with letting it go from the family, despite the financial crunch. I’m convinced Jasmine did not kill her mother, so someone else did. People who knew the deceased are the ones who need to be deposed—I mean, interviewed.”

“And Jasmine herself, of course.”

“Indirectly. She’s been through hell with the authorities, and they still may indict her. She has a small staff and there is at least one other acquaintance who needs to be interviewed.”

“Then let me start briefly with you, since you know her well enough to be quite assertive that Jasmine is innocent. She and her mother did have a disagreement on the fate of the property, which some could construe as a motive for murder.”

“See, I knew you were good. But it isn’t like that,” he insisted, hunching forward. “She loved her mother. I’ve known her—both of them—for years. Francine was a friend of my father, which makes this case more important to me. He thought the world of both of them.”

“I read your father started your law firm.”

“True.”

She’d thought a slight change of subject would calm him, but he seemed even more agitated. And she needed much more information than he seemed willing to share. He gripped his plastic fork so hard he snapped it in half. He sighed deeply, frowned and put the fork down.

“After founding the firm,” he told her, “Dad got into some real estate investment problems that ruined his reputation, but this isn’t about him.” He narrowed his eyes. “So, have you been reading up on me like I have on you?”

“Not yet, but you’re not exactly a private person around here.”

“No, but I’m a deeply concerned person. Claire, I need your help on this. Maybe on other cases, too. I saw how damn good you are. Besides being a Certified Fraud Examiner, I see on your website you’ve trained to be a Forensic Document Examiner, too. I don’t think any forgeries are involved with this case, but that could be important for the future.”

The future, she thought. We’re already talking about a future?

“You’re strong,” he went on, “but you can come off as gentle and nonthreatening. There’s something about you people like and trust, but you’re wily and clever in psyching out and piercing through their armor of lies. Let me ask you the same question I overheard a reporter ask you. Besides verb tense and body language, how do you psych people out?”

She nodded, on familiar ground now, even though she was well aware he’d shifted the conversation from himself. She took a bite of the lobster salad—delicious—though she wasn’t tempted to take a second one right away because he was asking her about her passion. People. People who built walls the way her parents had, people who could help or hurt others and too often did the latter.

“To summarize six years of working my way through college with a double major in psych and English, here it is. When people are lying, they seldom refer to themselves and they tend to talk around direct action. They don’t say, ‘I unlocked the door,’ but ‘The door was left unlocked.’ They speak evasively, try to answer a question with another question like, ‘Why in the world would I kill my own brother?’ They use you’ve-got-to-believe-me language with oaths or vows like ‘I swear,’ or ‘God as my witness.’ They either leave out details or talk too much, often off the subject. So in court, as you saw in the trial, explaining this as I testify makes me an expert witness—hopefully a credible one who can sway the jury.”

“As I’ve seen close up and personal,” he said. He nodded and rapped the table with his knuckles. “You should have gone to law school. And that psyching people out is the way I’m trying to learn to think. Maybe after this St. A case, you can do a workshop for my associates at the firm.”

“I’d rather do that than go to St. Augustine, Nick, because I should stay home. Besides, my sister and doctor will have a fit if I go with this shot-up arm over three hundred miles away anytime soon. You said soon, right?”

“Are the terms suitable?” he countered, pointing at the paper still open before her.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “And evasive people sometimes counter a question with another question.”

“Touché,” he said. “I need to know you’re on board before I tell you everything. Some of this is privileged. But I should have said the offer includes room and board. We’ll be staying at the Bayfront Hilton in St. A. It’s a drive from Palatka and Shadowlawn, but we’ll need our creature comforts. I’ll drive you there, get you settled, help set up your interviews, introduce you to the right people, then be in and out.”

“You’re assuming I’m going with you.”

“Aren’t you? Jasmine needs your help. Shadowlawn Estate does—I do.”

“I’ll need a doctor there to check my arm if it takes over a couple of days.”

“No problem.”

“Nick, there is a problem. It’s leaving my daughter behind for a while, even though my sister’s family is great to her. I need to know exactly how I’ll get around if you’re not there since I can’t drive safely right now with one arm. I can dictate into a computer, but can’t use a keyboard easily without two hands. In short, I’ll need some sort of transportation and digital backup.”

“Heck,” he muttered.

“What? You didn’t think of that?”

“No, Heck—Hector Munez, goes by Heck. He’s my South Shores geek genius. I plan to set things up with you, run you around, but he’ll be available to help you with anything digital and drive you if I’m not there for a while. I’ll have you meet him before we head out tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I couldn’t!”

“Day after tomorrow at the latest. I’ll make things work out for the best. You’ll see.”

The sun came out from the clouds and blazed brightness and heat on them. Their gazes snagged and held. Mad, bad and dangerous to know...

But shouldn’t she tell him her other caveats? Not that she had trouble even dressing herself, couldn’t so much as hook a bra, but she’d get around that somehow. He needed to know that, like some darned little kid, she needed her naps, that she had to get her sleep at night. She absolutely had to calibrate and balance her meds. She had hidden all that from Jace and, since he was gone so much—actually, was so self-centered—she had managed for a while. But all that had caused her downfall, the blowup between them. But this was just a business deal, not a life shared.

“I’ll do my best to give you an answer soon,” she heard herself promise him.

“Your best is all I’m asking.”

* * *

At home while Lexi took the short afternoon nap Claire always insisted on—she watched her daughter like a hawk for early signs of anything—Claire forced herself to take her twenty-minute power nap, at least that’s what she liked to call it. With a cup of p.m. coffee it perked her right up. Of course, she’d rather have dark chocolate, especially from Norman Love’s shop up on the Tamiami Trail, but once she started on that, she couldn’t stop. She might be narcoleptic, but she was also a chocolate-holic.

She played with Lexi for an hour, and yes, read to her as well, since that had been one good thing “She,” which is often what she and Darcy called their mother, had done for them. Claire had a great American and English lit education before she even took English 101 her freshman year.

Today, when Darcy stopped by to take Lexi grocery shopping with her and Jilly, Claire called a cab to take her to Port Royal to give her condolences to Fred Myron’s family. She’d phoned Fred’s widow to be sure it was all right and had been told the family had already gathered in preparation for the funeral tomorrow. They were getting Fred’s body back today from the Collier County ME, and then they’d be sitting shiva for a week.

At the Myron home with its backyard on a canal, everyone greeted her and commiserated. Repeatedly, she was asked if she knew why anyone would shoot at her, because “our Freddie had absolutely no enemies.” Though she felt exhausted by the visit, she was glad she went; that is, until she started to leave, driven home by Fred’s brother, because they wouldn’t hear of her calling a cab again. A small group of reporters, some of whom she recognized from the courthouse, had assembled on the front lawn.

“We’re not talking to them, not one word,” Jerry, Fred’s brother, muttered as he backed out of the driveway past their shouted questions. “I’d like to get poor Sarah away from them for a while. Those vultures keep circling, trying to prove poor Fred did something wrong when he was only standing up for the truth and the business he’d built up with his own hands. You going to get away so they don’t bother you?”

“Maybe I should now that they know I’m out of the hospital,” she said. “Yes, I guess I may get away for a while.”

“Get some good rest. Put everything bad behind you, right? Forget the reporters and that lawyer that tried to rip you apart.”

“I’m sure that’s good advice.” It was the only thing she could think of to say that wouldn’t be a lie. She hadn’t actually decided she was going to trust Nick Markwood yet. But she was going to do two things before she agreed to go north with him. First, she would research him to death—so to speak. Without talking to him or his contacts directly, she was going to do an online study of him. Then she was going to risk telling him the real reason she was afraid to accept his offer, and hope that he would be the one to back out of the deal.

* * *

Jace never liked riding in the so-called jump seat that was available to pilots. Hard to see out the windows. Rode backwards. Could hear the flight attendants chatting when they were in the galley. But worse, he was close to the cockpit but not in it, so he felt completely out of control. And he hated that.

He tried to doze but he kept replaying the last time he’d been with Claire, seven weeks ago, when he’d flown into Miami and rented a car there to go see Lexi. But that had meant seeing Claire, too. She’d changed since their divorce. She’d always been kind of quiet, almost private, probably because of all she was hiding—she and that sister clone, Darcy. Man, Claire had put one over on him, however quick their courtship had been. If he hadn’t been flying so much, he would have sniffed it out earlier.

“Narcolepsy with mild cataplexy!” he’d exploded a little over a year ago when she’d finally come clean with him, after he found her stash of pills and that gross-looking liquid stuff she took at bedtime. “No wonder you sleep like a rock! No wonder you want sex in the daytime but not at night like a normal woman! I thought it was me!”

“It isn’t you, except I know you can’t stand weakness, can’t stand anyone being sick. You’re a driven perfectionist, Jace, and I’m not perfect.”

“Oh, try to blame me for your lies and hiding things. You hiding anything else—anyone?”

“Of course not. Can you keep your voice down? I don’t want Lexi to hear us.”

“Oh, yeah, hear her mother never trusted or loved her father enough to come clean about—about this sleeping sickness and getting paralyzed at times!”

“These pills you’re freaking out over keep me from falling asleep or getting paralyzed at times. I’m dealing with my problem. I’m on an even keel.”

“You could have gone to sleep when Lexi was in the tub or the pool! You could have nodded off and dropped her.”

“I told you, it’s all under control.”

“Well, hell, I’m not. You may not have lied to me, ’cause I didn’t ask, but we’ve been living a lie! Is it too much to ask the person who’s supposed to be closest to me not to lie?”

“I knew it would upset you and drive you away. I didn’t want that. Look, Jace, our romance and eloping happened so fast, and you’re gone so much. I know this is about me, but I found a note to you from someone named Ginger on hotel stationery from Singapore in the pocket of a shirt I laundered, so don’t lecture me on not telling everything. It was a come-to-my-room note. I know you’re gone a lot but—”

He’d slammed out of their condo. He’d divorced her soon after, and she hadn’t contested it, a Marital Settlement Agreement with a Parenting Plan, the state of Florida called it. Looking back, he supposed they’d done it just as hastily and recklessly as they’d decided to get married.

But the kick in the gut was that he still felt for Claire, even after all of that. Too often, even now, he recalled their sunset dinners on the beach, how they would dance in the dark in their own living room. How insanely happy they were when she told him she was pregnant and the first time he saw her holding Lexi. How Claire felt curled up against him, or under him...

The airplane intercom kicked on. The voice of Don Thomas, a pilot he’d flown with many times, interrupted his agonizing: “Good afternoon. We’re beginning our descent into the Los Angeles area. Local arrival time should be 2:14 p.m. with a temperature of eighty-four degrees, cloudy with a light northwest wind. Flight attendants, please prepare the cabin for landing. Welcome to or back to the United States.”

Someone in the plane actually clapped. An attendant began announcements about tray tables, seat backs and turning off electronic devices. Yeah, he thought, welcome back to the United States, but he was going to soon head out on yet another flight, to a state far from California, to see Lexi, of course, but also to see the woman he couldn’t get out of his head and his heart.

* * *

Frustrated she had to move so slowly, typing on the keyboard with one hand, Claire had switched to her smartphone to find websites and articles on a variety of subjects: Nick’s law firm; Francine Montgomery; Jasmine Montgomery Stanton; Palatka, Florida; on and on. There wasn’t much about Shadowlawn besides brief mentions of it. Kingsley Plantation near Jacksonville, rather than the little town of Palatka, got all the publicity, but then it was already open to the public and evidently thriving. Pressed for time, Claire gave everything a mere skim read.

She searched references to Nicholas Markwood, Jr., but she had not found one hint about his under-the-radar company he’d called South Shores.

Still, she could patch together why such an entity probably existed. Nick’s father, Nicholas Markwood, Sr., had committed suicide when Nick was ten, evidently over a bad land development deal that had swept him into debt and ruined his reputation and the reputation of his law firm, which Nick had resurrected later. Nick Markwood, the father, had left investors holding the bag for his bad deals, though he’d claimed he’d been duped. His world—and, no doubt, young Nick’s—had collapsed.

Nick was an only child who had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth that was evidently, she assumed, tarnished by the scandal and his notorious father with the same name. But he had put himself through the University of Miami undergrad and law school on scholarships and hard work, even bought his mother a property in Naples before she died, quite young, of cancer. He lived in that same house in the Aqualane Shores area of Naples when Claire had imagined he at least owned a place in tony Port Royal or Quail Creek West. She looked up a photo of his house on Google. It wasn’t pretentious or even very big, though it was on a canal. And the boat moored behind it was hardly a yacht, more like a fishing boat with an inboard motor.

So—surprises all around about Nick. Still, she was going to use her last ploy to see if he would really trust her to take the case he offered and to let her handle it her way, not his. No coddling Jasmine Montgomery Stanton just because Nick wanted that. Shadowlawn Plantation and the generations of women who had run it, including most recently Francine Montgomery, intrigued her. Nick intrigued her. And if he accepted her restrictions and rules when she told him the truth about herself that she’d shared with few others in the past twenty years—only Jace, who didn’t understand, and a kind nurse, who did—she’d take Nick’s South Shores case.

4

Nick could not believe he was paying to get into the Naples Zoo. He hadn’t been here for years, not since it was small and called Jungle Larry’s and he used to spend time here with his dad. After he lost his father, he couldn’t bear to come back. But he hadn’t protested when Claire had told him that, if she was leaving with him tomorrow, she was spending this day with her daughter, niece and sister, doing something special for her child—bringing her here.

He’d left his suit coat and tie in the car and rolled up his sleeves, but he still felt warm, overdressed and out-of-it with this casual crowd. Running shoes and flip-flops were the order of the day, which made him feel like these Italian leather loafers were screaming, “Look at me!” The crowd was heavy with grandparents doting on kids, especially in the playground area called the Cub Corral. It was a big, much improved zoo over Jungle Larry’s, that was for sure. Hell, this whole mess with Jasmine—and now Claire—was turning into a zoo anyway.

He followed the signs toward the Primate Expedition Cruise where Claire had said she’d meet him. She had to tell him something important, and if that was okay with him, she’d said she’d sign on the dotted line and leave with him tomorrow morning. He admitted to himself that he could have employed any of the three what he privately called psych-out-the-bad-guys consults the firm had used but he wanted Claire. He supposed, if he was honest with himself, he wanted her in more ways than one.

He took the right-hand path that skirted Alligator Bay. Across the small stretch of water, zoo workers were feeding the alligators. The whole thing reminded him of how his father’s former friend, a man he should not have trusted, had turned into a carnivorous beast. The man he’d grown up calling Uncle Clay had turned out to be a monster. Nick had been only ten, but those memories still haunted him.

Haunted: that reminded him that he’d better tell Claire about the ghosts that supposedly inhabited Shadowlawn before he took her there. He’d never seen them, but Francine and Jasmine had sworn they existed. Supposedly, the one who had thrown herself from the balcony only appeared to women. Francine had joked that would be a big draw if the plantation was opened to the paying public: “If you have ghosts, tourists will come.”

He scanned the area near the cruise dock where people were waiting for the boat to leave. Screeches of monkeys pierced the sound of children’s chatter. Claire had a sun visor on, but her red hair shone like a beacon. She spotted him, too, where she was waiting in line with her little group. She said something to the other redhead, obviously her sister, and came over, holding her little girl’s hand.

The child was cute with blond hair barely tinged with red. “Nick, I’d like you to meet Alexandra, whom we call Lexi.”

He smiled at Claire and squatted to get to Lexi’s height. “Are you having fun with your mom today?”

“Lots. We’re going to see everything here, but I don’t like the snakes. Their place here is called Snakes Alive. My cousin Drew threw one at Jilly and me in the backyard. He’s in school today—first grade.”

“Drew should not have thrown the snake. You know, if you pretend you’re not scared of them, maybe tell Drew you really liked seeing them at the zoo, he won’t do that again. He probably just likes to scare girls. Alexandra is a pretty name. There was a Queen Alexandra once.”

“Well, Mommy said so, but I’d rather be a princess. You know, like Cinderella, Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Pocahontas and Jasmine.”

At that last name, he stood. He had business to attend to here. “She’s a walking Disney encyclopedia,” Claire put in. For the first time, he realized Claire was fairly tall at about five-ten. At six foot two, he was used to towering over women.

“And she’s bright, like her mother,” he said. “Your sister’s gesturing. I think the line to get on the boat is moving.”

“I’ll get Lexi to her and be right back. We can talk while they take the little cruise,” Claire said and ran, holding Lexi’s hand, back to deliver her to her sister, who kept looking their way.

He snagged a bench, and Claire came right back. “I don’t know what I’d do without Darcy—even when we were small,” she told him and sat on the bench, angled toward him. He turned to her. The hot breeze ruffled her blue sundress above her knees and she smoothed it down. A moment of silence passed while they just looked at each other. He almost tilted toward her, as if he were drawn to a magnet.

“Shoot,” he said. “Well, I shouldn’t have put it like that,” he added with a glance at her arm. “By the way, I have a doctor lined up in St. A who can check the wound in three days, which is what you said you’d planned to do here.”

“Thank you. Nick, I am intrigued by your offer. I love the challenge of it, and I’m sure the heritage treasure, as you called it, of Shadowlawn, is worth saving—as is your friend Jasmine, if she’s innocent. But I have to level with you about something first, something you may consider a deal breaker.”

She actually looked as if she were going to cry. This must be serious. His stomach knotted. “I checked your CFA credentials, and they’re fine,” he tried to assure her.

“It isn’t that.” She took off her dark sunglasses and looked squarely at him. “I just need to tell you that, since I was thirteen, I’ve had what is a fairly rare but demanding disease, though I have it under control with meds and watchful behavior.”

“The disease is?” he prompted when she seemed to hesitate.

“Do you know what narcolepsy is—with mild cataplexy, actually?”

He sat up straighter. “Exhaustion? Dozing off? No, I don’t know the catalepsy part.”

“Cataplexy. Yes, dozing off big-time with narcolepsy. Those of us afflicted with it prefer to call ourselves PWNs—Persons With Narcolepsy—rather than narcoleptics. That sounds too much like alcoholics, and narcs reminds people of narcotics. But yes, being exhausted continually for no apparent, normal reason. Cataplexy, which often strikes a PWN, is a brief, sudden immobility or paralysis that can occur on waking or dozing off—or when one’s emotions get too strong, so I have to watch that—involvements with that, sudden rushes of feelings...”

Her voice kept trailing off, her gaze darting away. It surprised him, for she usually spoke well and seemed so self-confident. But again, their gazes locked and held. Could she read his mind that he felt a rush of feelings for her, right now, and it wasn’t just that he’d been afraid when she was shot. Watching her in court had almost done him in, and not just because she was ripping his defense of Sorento apart bit by bit. But despite all that—and this—he had the feeling he could trust her. He’d seen her in action.

“Okay,” he said, “but it is, as you said, all under control with your meds? I watched you in court for four days—no apparent problems.”

“Strong meds, pills and a liquid I take at night keep me going. I need one or two brief naps and regular sleep, as well as stimulants like caffeine from coffee or chocolate. No alcohol, or it can mess me up. I need to be disciplined. Another problem, one I’ve coped with well, is hallucinations, nightmares. When I was young—before this was diagnosed—I actually thought I was haunted by ghosts, by things I’d see and feel that weren’t there. I seldom have these waking nightmares now. I tell almost no one all this, but I thought—considering your trust and investment in me—that you should know.”

He reached for her good hand. She held his. She was trembling. Well, he thought, all this complicated things, and he for sure wasn’t going to tell her about the Shadowlawn ghosts right now like he’d intended. But she’d done a great job with the Sorento case—and she’d leveled with him about this. He wouldn’t worry she’d hold other things back, however bad the going got.

“So,” he said, still holding her hand, “we can shake on it.” They did. She managed a firm shake and even a tight little smile. “And if you need some sleep, I won’t think it’s your work or my company that’s boring.”

“Hardly that,” she blurted, obviously relieved he was still all in. She actually blushed. “Nick, just one more thing. Well—when my mother used to say that, it was always time for a double whammy,” she admitted.

“Go on,” he prompted.

“It’s just that—well, I know you’re used to being a senior partner, and you’re the boss here. But I will need to do these interviews my way, with my expertise and knowledge.”

“Agreed.”

“But that means not giving someone a pass just because you have your own theories or prejudices—your favorites, or maybe someone you owe a favor to. I’ll need access to Jasmine, whether you think she’s guilty or not, for example.”

He sat up a bit straighter. “Sure, I get that. I’d want that.”

“Without pressure from you, no matter what I find. I realize you must be tied to her emotionally somehow—”

“Was.”

“All right, was. But I can’t do my job unless it can be mine—then I’ll report to you, of course.”

A strong woman, delicate appearance or rare diseases be damned, he thought. But that was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

“So, let’s make some plans,” he told her. Realizing he still held her hand, and much too hard, he let go. She put her sunglasses back on, but not before he saw her blink tears off her long lashes. He cleared his throat and tore his gaze away, as if he were just scanning the area. He noted a small, white drone overhead, probably one taking pictures for the zoo to sell later. What he used to call monkey island was an appropriate place to be, with the way this woman scrambled his emotions. She really got to him on a personal level when this should be all business.

“Then, fine,” she said. “I’m in. Tell me what time you and your man Heck will pick me up tomorrow.”

“Right. He’ll drive the second car, and I’ll brief you on the people you’ll interview—the ones I know, at least, though you may want to do others. Nine a.m., okay?”

“I’ll be ready.”

* * *

But she wasn’t ready for who rang her doorbell at seven that evening. She’d gotten Lexi, whose head was nodding from exhaustion, bathed and settled down for bed and, since it was easier to have assistance undressing and dressing, she’d taken her shower, too, so Lexi could help her into her cotton nightgown and robe. They were going to have cookies and milk and cuddle, and then Claire had to finish packing for—for how long?

But Lexi heard a car door, looked out the window and went berserk, screaming. “Daddy! It’s Daddy! Daddy’s here!”

And sure enough, there was Jace at their front door.

Furious with him for getting Lexi riled by suddenly showing up, Claire went to the door where the child was already unlocking the knob and bolt. The safety chain snagged until Claire closed the door and slid it free.

Lexi hurled herself at Jace, and he picked her up and walked in. “Glad I caught you,” he told Claire, bouncing Lexi up and down. “How’s the arm? I figured you could use some help for a couple days. They catch the idiot who shot at you yet?”

That quieted Lexi. “Did someone mean to shoot you, Mommy? Aunt Darcy said it was an accident.”

“It was an accident,” she said, glaring at Jace who mouthed, Oops! “No one meant to hurt me. Jace, I wish you had called. As you can see, we’re just settling down, and I have a business trip tomorrow.”

He frowned at her and started to dig small gifts for Lexi out of his pockets as they went into the living area. He hadn’t shaved. Golden stubble dusted his lean cheeks and half-moon shadows hung under his blue eyes. His shirt and pants were mussed, and he was missing his co-pilot suit coat, but he still somehow looked put together, his short hair cut perfectly to frame his broad face. He always had looked that way, especially in the navy pilot uniform he’d worn before she knew him, the picture Lexi kept on her dresser because of “Daddy’s pretty pins and ribbons on his coat.”

She stared at him now, the perfect physical specimen. How many times had she and Jace just fallen into bed together when he’d returned from a flight? How many times had she forced herself awake to wait for or respond to him, so he wouldn’t know she was about on par with the walking dead? She’d even fallen asleep under him once in the throes of passion, slumped like a dead doll, he’d said, and he’d patted her cheeks to wake her up. Sexual desire, just like any other intense emotion, used to set her off before these newly calibrated meds, but she’d never tell him she was better now. He’d relinquished his right to know anything intimate about her.

She left the two of them together and went down the hall to pack for a half hour while he regaled their daughter with tales of foreign places, and she chattered on to him about the zoo and starting preschool after the Christmas holidays, about wishing she’d lose her teeth and get some big ones and how Drew scared her and Jilly with a snake. Claire kept the door to her room open, though, of course, she trusted him not to fill her head too full of travel temptations. But it was sure going to be a battle to get the child settled down in bed tonight when Claire, too, needed her rest—right now.

But Jace knew that. Surely, she could get him to leave soon. Wishing again she could get dressed without help, because she would have changed out of her nightgown and robe, she went back in to join them.

“I forgot, Mommy, you need to go to bed.”

“Yes, but Daddy’s leaving soon. How long a leave this time, Jace?”

“Because of what happened to you, I took a week off. You said you’re leaving on a business trip? With that arm? Like—to where?”

“St. Augustine for a few days on assignment.”

Lexi said, “With Mr. Nick, who is very nice. He said if I pretended to like snakes, Drew wouldn’t try to scare me again.”

Jace’s brows rose. His eyes and lips narrowed. “You’re taking out-of-town assignments now, Claire?”

“This one. Very worthwhile in more ways than one. If you’d like to tuck Lexi in, that’s fine.”

“You’re right, it is,” he groused and stood to take Lexi’s hand and lead her toward the hall.

But Lexi pulled away from him and came back to hug Claire. “You’re the best mommy ever.”

“And you are my best and only sweetheart.” Claire finished their usual good-night with a kiss, despite Jace’s scowl behind Lexi’s back. Who did he think he was, coming back like this and judging her, trying to take over?

At least, she thought, he got the hint not to take long with Lexi. He came back out, and Claire stood so he wouldn’t sit and try to make himself comfortable as he had before when he’d dropped in.

“I’ll be seeing a lot of her this week,” he said, his hand on the front door knob.

“That’s great. She’ll be staying with Darcy, so please clear times with her. If you spoil her as usual, please don’t let her eat all the junk food she wants.”

“So what’s this St. Augustine gig?”

“I’ll be interviewing people about cause of death.”

“What you used to call murdercide?”

“Evidently.”

“Who’s Mr. Nick? He’s obviously met Lexi.”

“Nick Markwood, a lawyer, my client. I had an interview with him today at the zoo, because I wanted to spend the day with her.”

“Next assignment New York City? Paris? Rangoon? Marrakech?”

“You know, that sounds like a list of places you’d rather fly out of than Ft. Lauderdale or Miami, so you could see your daughter more. Look, Jace, sorry to say, this is none of your concern. I’m building Clear Path, this is a good assignment, and you’re not involved.”

“But you just said, ‘sorry to say,’ Ms. Word Maven. So, are you sorry I’m not involved anymore?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she blurted. But had he caught her there? No, that wasn’t what she’d meant. But, darn the man, he still had that swagger, that I-own-this-room attitude, that almost swashbuckling aura that had first attracted her.

“Good night, Jace. And, as I’ve said before, now that you have really, permanently ‘left the building,’ please call before you just appear next time with gifts like—like an off-season Santa Claus or the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

He opened the door, then turned back and put one hand on the frame, almost as if he were blocking her in her own condo.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said. “One place or the other. One way or the other.”

She couldn’t decide if that sounded like a promise or a threat.

5

A light rain glazed the pavement as Darcy’s car pulled away. Claire waved goodbye to Lexi until it disappeared. She’d filled Darcy in on Jace’s abracadabra appearance, but Darcy was used to that, too. Feeling suddenly unsure and alone, Claire was still standing outside under the overhang when Nick pulled into the driveway and another car came right up behind—a black SUV—evidently driven by South Shores’ tech expert, Hector Munez, alias Heck.

The two of them stepped inside where Claire had her luggage ready. Nick made the introductions. Heck was young—maybe midtwenties, but then, weren’t all cyber gurus young? He was short and wiry with slicked, coal-black hair, trimmed beard and dark eyes under thick brows. He spoke with a slight Latino accent. He seemed a little jumpy, probably nervous like her to be heading out on an important assignment.

“I hear I might be a chauffeur, too,” Heck told her with a broad smile.

“And, perhaps a second pair of ears and recorder in interview sessions,” she told him. “It’s important I watch as well as listen. Besides, I can’t type with one hand, and there are lots of legal drawbacks if I record every word, chain of custody and all that. I have to admit you’d be a lot less threatening than Attorney Markwood sitting there, glaring.”

“But I can glare with the best of them!” Heck said and elbowed Nick. Claire saw under the TECH-TOCK T-shirt he wore a thick gold chain to match his earring, which made her remember she hadn’t worn hers.

Nick shook his head and told Heck, “Your suddenly sitting in on interviews, my man, is probably just the first of many surprises from our new partner. But she’s the one calling the shots—on that, at least.”

“You will get used to my name,” Heck told her, while tossing his car keys from one hand to the other. “It always sounds like mild cursing, yes? But where you been, boss?” he said and hit Nick’s shoulder lightly with his fist. “Ladies—they all like that, full of surprise—surprise!”

Heck asked for her cell phone and punched his and Nick’s regular and his emergency numbers and email address into her phone logs in case she needed them, then hefted her single big suitcase and put it in the trunk of Nick’s car. With a wave, he got in his own vehicle and backed out, windshield wipers spitting rain.

Claire got it: they were in a hurry. Nick carried her laptop bag and she grabbed her purse and slung it over her good shoulder. While Nick waited in the covered entryway, she locked up, relieved that Jace hadn’t shown up at the last minute. She’d half expected him to. The first assignment she took after their split, he’d actually followed her to be sure she was safe when she drove into an area he didn’t like.

“I told Heck he doesn’t have to follow us, since he’s a fast driver,” Nick said with a nod at the departing SUV. She saw the back was covered with bumper stickers but they were too far off to read. “Too fast, so if he runs you around, keep an eye on him,” he added. “South Shores doesn’t need his speeding fines rolling in.”

“And where does South Shores billing roll in to?” she asked as he held the car door for her and she ducked in out of the rain.

He closed her door, hurried around and got in. “I’ll explain all that. We’ve got a long drive, and I brought a lot of background information for you to look over so we can hit the ground running. By the way, Heck is staying in a B and B in St. A, because he hates big hotels. I think it’s the fact his grandfather used to own a small hotel in Havana which Castro took over in la revolution, and he really loved the old man. He died just recently in Miami.”

As they left Naples and headed north on I-75, Nick kept his word, not about explaining South Shores, but about briefing her on everything else. “Not a good way to start a long drive,” he admitted as they headed into more rain, and he raised his voice over the thwack-thwack of the windshield wipers. “So, anyway, I think you should look at the Putnam County ME’s autopsy report on Francine first. You have everything you need to read by?”

“I’m fine. Don’t need magnifying glasses quite yet in my dotage.”

He smiled at her, and his gaze seemed to take her all in for a split second before he looked back at the road. “Nope,” he said. “I think you’ve got a few good years left in you. Look in the top folder in the accordion file by your feet.”

Annoyed that that split-second look from him scrambled her brain, she pulled the thick report out one-handed. She’d seen such before and was familiar with the layout. Francine Anne Montgomery, age 61, female, Caucasian... Claire skimmed to the estimated time of death. Her daughter Jasmine Stanton (nee Montgomery), age 41, had discovered her unresponsive at 8:04 p.m. exactly one month ago today, sprawled on her bedroom floor near the French doors to the balcony on the second floor of Shadowlawn Hall overlooking the St. Johns River near Palatka, Florida. Daughter called 911, and the squad pronounced Francine Montgomery deceased at 8:45 p.m. Date and time of the autopsy were listed with the attached, handwritten note that “The deceased’s daughter Jasmine Stanton insisted her mother must have died of a drug overdose and did not want Francine ‘to be dissected like a frog.’ Daughter was distraught and belligerent.”

“Not only poor Francine, but poor Jasmine,” Claire said.

“Yeah. Losing her mother, finding her mother...” His voice trailed off. For one second his deep voice snagged before he went on, “Then being investigated for her possible murder. If we can turn something up fast, it may keep her from being indicted. Did you get to the forensic findings yet?”

“I am now. External Examination. No needle marks, no unexplained scars or bruising.”

Claire flipped pages one-handed, balancing the papers on her knees. Internal Examination. “Stomach contents, food and beta-blocker drug, all listed. Death from cardiac arrhythmia,” she read aloud. “But it says here that leaves no autopsy evidence, so why did the ME put that down?”

“His best guess at first. She was on Propranolol. Ever hear of it?”

“Actually, I have,” she said, looking up at him. “It can calm panic attacks or anxiety syndrome. And, yes—it lowers blood pressure and heart rate, so you have to be careful with it. I only know about it because a friend who does amateur theater in Naples uses it to calm her stage fright. But it says here it didn’t show up on tox reports.”

“Not the first one. Keep reading. Propranolol has to be screened for specifically and, knowing Francine has been prescribed it, the ME ran another test and found it. Lots. Too much. Serious overdose. Otherwise her death could have been declared a heart attack or cardiac arrhythmia, and we wouldn’t be going through all this.”

“Which—if she was murdered—the killer could have been banking on.” She kept skimming the lines of print. “So the question is, did she accidentally overdose—or intentionally—or did someone help her to overdose? Someone who knew the power and danger of this panic attack drug.”

“That’s it. And because Jasmine happened to find her, and they had rather publicly disagreed on whether the mansion and estate should go in trust to the state, be sold or be kept in the family...”

“Jasmine’s their number one suspect, but they can’t prove it.”

“They’re working on it, though. And now you’ve got the case. I won’t say this again or try to push you on it, but I’m telling you, Jasmine’s not a murderer.”

“You’ve evidently known her for a long time and well. Maybe I should interview you first.”

“If I can help—be a character witness, whatever. But I knew Jasmine best years ago. My father’s ties to Francine, not Jasmine, go even further back. He and Francine were romantically involved before he married my mother.”

“You said earlier you aren’t emotionally tied to Jasmine now.”

He cleared his throat, glanced back out his side window, signaled and did a lane change. She saw the sign ahead to I-4 toward Orlando that would take them across the state to the other coast.

“The fairest thing to say is I’m involved with proving her innocence. I still care for her deeply. But not romantically—free as a bird.”

Claire recalled how Darcy had said he was a ladies’ man. He was avoiding her question again. She’d told him that was one way people avoided the truth, so was he testing her tenacity? She had to admit she didn’t really know him, except he seemed a sort of knight in shining armor to want to help Jasmine, evidently others, too, through his shadowy South Shores company. If she didn’t need another quick nap, she’d question him again on that, but there would be time enough. Riding in a car always made her nod off, so if she was the one driving, she prepped herself with stimulants—not only coffee, but her favorite, hand-made-in-Naples dark chocolates.

She skimmed the death certificate itself. Mode of death: cardiac arrest from cardiac arrhythmia. Cause of death, overdose of beta-blocker Propranolol. But under Manner of Death where the boxes to be checked were natural, homicide, suicide and accident was written, UNDER INVESTIGATION.

* * *

As they left the series of Disney World exits behind and passed the tall buildings of downtown Orlando, Nick stole quick glances to watch Claire sleep. He’d done a lot of fast reading last night on narcolepsy and cataplexy. A weird and dangerous disease, but she obviously coped well with it. And with being a single mom and starting her Clear Path consulting firm. He knew how hard it was to get something off the ground from when he fought like hell to resurrect his father’s tarnished law firm.

Claire Britten was innocent-looking, almost angelic, as she slept. Her trust in him moved him deeply. He prayed he would not betray it. She’d shared with him about her Achilles’ heel, so should he tell her about his? That he was hiding one of the real purposes of South Shores, something that was a risk for him. Hopefully, not for her.

One of the secrets his dad had hidden from most people was that he loved writing poetry. Didn’t fit with the image of hard-hitting attorney-at-law. The so-called suicide note left beside his hand holding the gun had one line which read, I will be safe on those South Shores forever more.

No way his dad had shot himself, however bad it looked, despite that poetic touch in the note! If it was the last thing Nick ever did, he’d prove it and nail who killed him. He knew who that was, or thought he did. Trouble was, Nick knew he, too, was being stalked. But by his dad’s killer or by someone else he had let down? He had enemies. Most criminal lawyers did.

Claire stirred so suddenly he wondered for a second if he’d said that out loud. He shot another fast glance at her. Waking, she looked dazed, upset, maybe surprised she was here with him in a rain-coated car. Was that look of dismay she quickly hid part of being between the worlds of sleep and wakefulness? He’d read that PWNs sometimes had terrifying waking nightmares.

“Still raining, I see,” she said, shifting her hips in her seat. She arched her back and stretched her good arm.

He shifted in his seat, too, and cleared his throat. “Letting up a little.”

“I warned you about my naps. That beef sandwich hit the spot. Lexi would have a fit if she knew we were that close to Disney and didn’t visit the Magic Kingdom.”

“Yeah, well, when you see Shadowlawn, that will be enough magic kingdom for now.”

For a few minutes, they talked easily about everything and nothing, though he knew they should be back on track about the interviews she would have. Still, she’d been touchy about choosing those herself. He should have known she was tenacious, because she suddenly asked him in the midst of talk about their alma maters: “So at the University of Miami—is that where you met Jasmine?”

So, no more skirting around that, he thought. Actually, he didn’t trust lawyers who had a personal stake in a case, and here he was, with exactly that.

“That’s where and when I dated her,” he explained. “We discovered our parents’ past connection by accident—that her mother and my father had once been in love but had broken up. She figured it out when her mother met me, and wasn’t too pleased Jasmine and I were a couple.”

“Nothing like a bolt-from-the-blue coincidence—though I’ve learned chance meets often aren’t. Did you two ever figure out why they didn’t end up together?”

“No, but as for Jasmine and me, her mother seemed like a tyrant back then, raising her alone, and the scholarship boy didn’t fit in until later when I’d made good—then too late because Jasmine was married. It was hard to forgive Francine about that for a while, but I didn’t want to marry an heiress and move to north Florida anyway. All the Montgomery women from way back ran the roost and Shadowlawn. I mean from way back. They seemed to devour their men after they mated, like a male gator tried to if it got too near its hatchlings and, hopefully, was run off by the female. By the way, I have a small pamphlet Francine put together on the history of Shadowlawn in that packet with the other information—interesting reading for later.”

“Great, because that’s one thing I couldn’t research yesterday. I found info on a place called Kingsley Plantation but not Shadowlawn. And I can sympathize with Francine being overly protective of her only child and a daughter.”

Curious, she paged through the pamphlet. It included a family tree. The Montgomerys were a matriarchal family with the men dying young of disease or in wars, including the Civil War. Right after the Civil War, one man had met his death suddenly and violently, but it didn’t say how.

“Wow,” she said. “My actor friend Liz is always looking for a plot for a play. Couldn’t do much better than this. What interesting facts if Shadowlawn would become a state site.”

“Which Jasmine doesn’t want. Keep that in mind.”

She stretched and put the book aside. “The rain is letting up a little, isn’t it? Look at that large lake off to the right. I’ll bet this view is great on a sunny day.”

“That’s Lake Monroe on the Volusia-Seminole County line near Sanford, the little town that made national headlines in 2012. Remember the Trayvon Martin shooting by George Zimmerman, who called himself a neighborhood watch coordinator?”

“I do. And Zimmerman got off.”

“The seventeen-year-old was wearing a hoodie and looked suspicious. I always tell myself looks aren’t everything, but I know you read body language and that was a part of the case, too—witnesses were important. Anyway, we’ll soon pass over part of the lake on this elevated bridge, but I don’t know how much you’ll glimpse of the lake or Sanford in this weather.”

“So you’ve driven this stretch a lot.”

“Lately, yes. About two years ago, Francine hired me as a backup lawyer for the estate, so I’ve been back and forth. She still retains her longtime family lawyer who did her will, too, but he’s quite elderly and has been ill, so I’m slowly taking over. I can’t see hiring a plane when I can drive it in half a day. Look, Claire, I don’t want to alarm you, but I swear the white car behind us has been following us and he’s driving too damn close. No—don’t turn around. Just look in your side rearview mirror. Speaking of hoodies, it seems the driver’s wearing one, but it’s a warm day, and in a car...”

“I wish Heck had followed us. Want me to call him, see how far ahead he is, if you really think—”

“Wait. Maybe I’m wrong. The guy is going to pass us, I think. Must have been my imagination about some kind of nut or road rage. But—What the hell!”

They were on the outside lane on the elevated bridge over the water. The white car came abreast of them and swerved close. Nick jerked the wheel, moved them nearer to the edge. The barrier between them and a fall was barely door-handle high.

“Nick! Nick, look at him—the driver!” Claire cried and sucked in a ragged breath. “Am I—am I seeing that?”

Nick twisted his neck for an instant. Within a dark hoodie—no, a black shroud—was the pale, elongated and contorted face of a demon from an old horror movie. Claire screamed.

If that fiend face shoved them any farther, they were going off the edge.

6

Instead of trying to outrun the car or slam into it, Nick glanced behind and hit the brakes. Drop back! Get the idiot’s rear license plate...

But the other vehicle dropped back even slower, moved over, hid behind another vehicle—a big UPS truck, which blew the horn at the shifting confusion. Nick swore under his breath and accelerated. Claire craned around to try to see the white car in the spew of water from their car and the truck.

“I don’t see it now,” she said, her voice shaking. “Should I call 9-1-1 or the highway patrol number?”

“I can’t block a lane or go back. Maybe he’ll get off at the next exit. And what would we say? There’s some nut who thinks it’s Halloween over a month early, some damned kid, and, by the way, we don’t have his license plate, not even sure of the make of the white car. Or someone’s en route to an audition for a slasher movie like that old one, can’t think of its name.”

“It—it reminded me of that painting. I can’t think of its name, either. Actually, it brings back some of the cataplexic nightmares I used to have where I thought I saw dead people stalking me, leaning over me. Do you think it’s some sort of warning to us?”

“I think it’s some SOB jerk who just happened to choose us—and probably some others here where it’s elevated and scary. I’m not stopping, but I’ll contact the highway patrol later to report it and see if anyone else saw the same thing.”

He shook his head and flexed his hands on the wheel. “Maybe we’ve both fallen asleep together and had a bad dream,” he tried to joke, but it came out flat.

“You okay?” he asked. “I still can’t believe that happened.”

“More or less okay. You know, a lot of places are now giving ghost tours. I read St. Augustine is. Maybe he was loose from one of those—or driving home from some Disney haunted-house job and he thinks it’s funny to freak people out.”

He could tell she, too, was trying to make light of it. He appreciated the fact she was made of pretty stern stuff, so now or never.

“In the autopsy report,” he said, wishing his pounding heart would calm down, “you noticed Francine was found on her bedroom floor near the French doors that opened onto the balcony. Actually, it’s a wide gallery that goes around all four sides of the mansion on the second floor.”

“Yes. I thought that was an interesting, very specific detail.”

“I think the ME included it for a reason. I was going to tell you later, but considering what happened, I’d better mention that Shadowlawn is supposed to be haunted—but not by some moron in a car. One of Francine’s ancestors threw herself off the gallery to her death from those French doors.”

“Oh, that’s awful. Then there’s a history of suicide in the family! And that woman supposedly haunts the place? People have seen her ghost?”

“Both Francine and Jasmine say they have. There’s a second one—ghost—supposedly on the premises, one whose story is evidently unrelated. Some kind of overseer was hanged from one of the huge live oaks there on the front lawn, evidently lynched for murdering the owner after the Civil War, maybe late 1800s. When you interview some of the house staff—well, they’ll bring it up. It’s in that history book of the house, too.”

“I saw the mention of an early, violent death, but it didn’t say much else. I really don’t believe in psychic phenomena. As I told you, once I got over thinking I saw dead people and learned it was just my meds and my disease, I was so relieved. Is there a possibility that Francine or Jasmine are unstable or taking some other kind of meds that could make them delusional?”

“If so, their female ancestors and estate workers were, too. Jasmine said once that only the women in the family see the woman on the balcony. The other ghost supposedly wanders the grounds and riverbank at night and has been seen by at least one of the men you’ll interview—Gates. Be sure to ask about that when you talk to him. And the artist Win Jackson.”

She dug out the interviewee list. She’d merely skimmed it because it was only names and titles. “By the artist, you mean the photographer, Dr. Winston Jackson, PhD.”

“Right. His photos are works of art. Wait until you see them.”

“And the house manager Neil Costa and the groundskeeper guy, Bronco Gates? Bronco, really? A cowboy in North Florida?”

“He busts St. Johns River gators and Everglades pythons, not horses, but I’m going to let you make your own judgments on all of them.”

“‘Stranger and stranger,’ said Alice in Wonderland.”

“Yeah. Shadowlawn and its people are a world unto themselves, maybe more like that Wizard of Oz movie.”

“Ever read the book that came from, a children’s novel? My mother read it to us. It’s darker and scarier than the movie by a long shot. Darcy and I used to have bad dreams over it. Crows trying to peck out eyes, horrible spiders. A lot more than just those flying monkeys. That kind of book and those grotesque fairy tales with ogres and wolves in the woods haunted us.”

They were both silent after that. Even when the sun finally broke through, Nick felt a chill. He should tell her more, warn her about some things, but then he’d be not only prejudicing a witness to whatever might happen, but he might scare her off.

* * *

St. Augustine charmed Claire from the first. It seemed compact and welcoming with the small-town ambience that Naples had outgrown. The old, historic part of town where they’d be staying was lovely, with restaurants, shops, a walking mall and Spanish architecture. St. A, as Nick called it, laid claim to being the oldest continually occupied European settlement in the United States, since the Spanish had settled it—the signs boasted—in 1513.

As they took advantage of the valet parking at the hotel on the bay, the sun devoured the shroud of rain and their unease from what they’d been calling the attack of “Fiend Face.” Nick checked both of them in at the Bayfront Hilton, telling her he had some calls to make, including Heck, his home office, the Seminole County Highway Patrol and Jasmine. He said he’d meet Claire in the lobby in an hour and a half, gave her his room number and sent her upstairs with a valet he’d already tipped.

Her spacious room with a balcony overlooked the sparkling bay crowded with boats. She unpacked a bit and took a fast nap. She’d done next to nothing yet, but she felt tired. She knew it was her emotions that needed calming as much as her body. For starters, merely being with someone as compelling and attractive as Nick was a challenge, let alone the task she was facing. She popped a dark chocolate ganache as if it were a pill.

She took a lightning-fast shower, changed her clothes and spread her notes out on the king-sized bed. She’d written four pages of them on her lap as Nick had described the people he wanted her to interview. And first thing in the morning, they were going to Shadowlawn to meet Jasmine.

She called Darcy’s number and talked to Lexi, telling her there were tourist trolleys here just like the ones in Naples they’d gone on last summer. Lexi was going to play miniature golf and eat out with Jace later that evening, but they hadn’t seen him yet today. Then Claire hurried downstairs to meet Nick.

He was waiting for her in the lobby, still on the phone, but he got off as she approached. “Hey,” he said, “don’t want to rush things for you, but Jasmine says Winston Jackson’s art photography shop just down St. George Street is hosting a series of St. Johns River pictures, including some of Shadowlawn. You could see them, meet with him informally before setting up an interview. It’s a short walk from here, but I’m starving, so how about we grab something on the way?”

“Sounds good. I’d like to schedule an interview with him. He may be more objective than the two men who worked for Francine, and it’s best to start with a neutral witness. I know he was a sort of advisor to her about the mansion, but he wasn’t on her payroll. On checking out Winston Jackson and on the food, you read my mind.”

He did seem to do that sometimes. Which, considering how attracted she felt to him, was not necessarily good in this still awkward, strictly business partnership.

* * *

“You mean, you aren’t coming in?” Claire asked Nick as they approached the Jackson Photographic Art Shop after grabbing salads and pizza at a picturesque place called Pizzalley’s.

“I might set off alarms. You can say you’re working on Jasmine’s behalf to get an interview without a lawyer present. But you can say I’ve retained you if he starts asking questions. I’ll sit on that bench over there and get caught up on phone calls.”

“That’s fine,” she told him. “Thanks for not hovering. You’re right that I need to do this myself, with you and Heck assisting when needed. I won’t report everything I’m thinking to you as I work on this. I need objectivity for my report to mean much. Enjoy the sun and the tourist parade.”

The first of two large, framed photos in the window of the shop was of the famous Spanish fort Castillo de San Marcos that still guarded the waterfront here. Each detail of shade and sun, each crevice on the parapet of the solid stone blocks—the photo was a work of art with the blue-green bay, crystal sky and banks of clouds behind it.

Before she went in, she took off her sunglasses and studied the other large, framed photograph labeled simply, St. Johns River Scene. It seemed panoramic with its depth and details. The silvery Spanish moss drooping from the gnarled cypress trees hanging over the curve of riverbank, the patterns of mottled shade on the gray-brown water. She could almost feel and smell the place. There was something otherworldly about it that gave her the shivers.

A man’s voice behind her said, “Immense beauty and primeval rot. Taken last month yet timeless.”

She turned to face a man her height. His hair was shoulder-length and mussed, and he wore dark-rimmed glasses and a flower-patterned shirt that looked Hawaiian.

“Lots more like that inside,” he said. “I’m hosting a juried show, but I never reward my own work.”

“You are Winston Jackson.”

“Guilty. Win Jackson, photographer, collector, movie buff, local historian. And you are a lady with a pink sling that clashes with your stunning Titian hair.”

She hooked her sunglasses over the sling and extended her hand. Bright! Talented! Eccentric! were the words that buzzed in her brain to describe him. He wore the sort of glasses that darkened in the sun because here, under the awning, they were lightening to show intense brown eyes. His mouth was full, his nose a bit crooked, but he emanated intelligence, like a slightly mussed professor.

“I’m Claire Britten. I’ve been retained to gather information about the loss of Francine Montgomery in the hope of helping settle certain legal issues for her daughter, Jasmine. I’ve been told you knew—and know—them both, and I’d be grateful if you could spare me time for an interview, not today, but soon, perhaps tomorrow afternoon or evening.”

He held her hand a bit too long. His grip was steady. Were long, thin fingers part of being an artist? He gave her a little courtly bow from the waist.

“Of course,” he said, releasing her hand. “Anything to help Jasmine, the estate and the unique treasure she’s now been entrusted with. Have you seen Shadowlawn yet?”

“No, I haven’t. Soon.”

“Well, at least let me introduce her, that is, the mansion in some of my work inside. Shadowlawn’s ambience and provenance are definitely feminine. Several others are viewing the photographs, and I only stepped out for a moment, when I realized they weren’t going to buy. Even artists must be practical, you know.”

They went in, and he introduced her to his assistant, Len, a young African-American man who was cleaning what appeared to be a large antique camera with accordion folds behind the lens. Three people perused the hanging works, and “Please call me Win, not Winston,” escorted her to the back of the large display area with two huge photographs of the most magnificent white-pillared, two-story plantation house she had ever seen. It looked as if she could walk from under the gnarled live oaks framing the photo, push aside the Spanish moss and stride right up the velvet green grass into the double doors.

“Gone with the Wind revisited,” she whispered, awed at the stunning photograph.

“Better than Tara,” he insisted. “This place is real. And endangered. I’ll do whatever I can to help Jasmine save it. And save herself.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.