Miss Bissett’s room off the veranda?” he asked. “Maybe the guy climbed in that way. April Jane could have heard him and gone up to investigate. The struggle might have started up there and ended up down here when April Jane ran down to call the cops.”
“Interesting theory,” Santos said with something like a sneer. “Did you think that up all by yourself, or do you have an inside source of information I should know about?”
“I was making the point that the guy could just have happened to come in through Taylor’s room.”
“Maybe.”
Santos was looking Taylor over again. She might have been unsettled by that, but her attention seemed to be stuck on the way her name sounded when Des spoke it and how that sound spread over her like heat, the same way the touch of his gaze had done. Once again, she told herself that such thoughts were only the effects of exhaustion on her overtaxed mind. Unfortunately, she wasn’t as sure that was true as she would have preferred to be.
“What makes you think there was a struggle?” Santos was asking Des. “I only said there were signs of a disturbance.”
“I assumed you were talking about the same kind of thing as out there.” Des gestured toward the entryway with its shattered lamp and general disarray. “That looks like the scene of a struggle to me. Besides, I knew April Jane. She would have put up a fight, and she was strong enough to give the guy a pretty hard time.”
Taylor had to agree. April Jane hadn’t come across as a woman who would sit still for being pushed around, or for letting somebody rob the place, either.
“What about you, Miss Bissett?” Santos asked. “Do you think the perpetrator just happened to be in your room when the victim found him and decided to give him a hard time, like Des says?”
Hearing April Jane repeatedly referred to as a victim brought the body bag and the city morgue to Taylor’s mind once more. She swallowed the lump of sudden grief in her throat.
She hadn’t known April Jane Cooney personally, but the woman had to have deserved something better than to be a live human being one minute and a victim the next. The true horror of what had happened here tonight was beginning to impress itself upon Taylor. She was seized by a terror that felt familiar somehow. Why familiar? She had experienced very little violence in her life. Yet, this deep-down fear had been with her before. It had been with her in her dreams.
“Miss Bissett, is there some reason you don’t want to answer my question?” Santos was studying her with continued interest.
“What was the question again?”
“Do you think that the perpetrator just happened to be in your room?”
“I can’t think of any other explanation.” Actually, she couldn’t think much of anything right now. “Detective Santos, would it be possible to continue this in the morning? I’ve had an exhausting day.”
“Murder can do that to you.” Santos was at it with the sarcasm again. “By the way, do you have somewhere else to stay? This place will have to be closed down, at least for the next few nights.”
Taylor searched for an answer. She didn’t really know anybody here in the Keys. She didn’t know the hotels either. And, she didn’t want to stay at Stormley. She wasn’t ready for that yet.
“You can come to my place,” Des said.
Santos glanced back and forth between them with obvious interest. For the moment, Taylor couldn’t think what to say, especially since the suggestion had tripped loose that flutter in her heart she’d felt earlier.
“There’s a room at the Beachcomber over the café,” Des said. “It’s quite comfortable and very private.”
He’d emphasized the privacy part. Taylor wondered if his offer might be her only recourse. She thought of asking Santos if he had any recommendations. She was wavering between taking a chance that he’d offer her a cot in the local jail and taking a chance on Des’s invitation when a flurry of motion turned everyone’s attention toward the door.
The woman who had swept in was dressed all in white, from her turbanned head to her slippered feet. Her clothes appeared to swirl around her—a loose tunic top, full-legged trousers and a kind of shawl or train draped over her shoulder—all in soft, mobile fabrics. Her skin was light by Key West standards, but brightened by dramatic makeup, as were her very round eyes, which were almost as dark as Detective Santos’s.
“My dear child,” she exclaimed as she advanced on Taylor with open arms.
Santos stepped into the path of this swirling, white onslaught. “Mrs. Starling,” he said. “I believe we’ve met.”
“Of course,” she replied. “I have met everyone on this island.”
Jethro appeared in the doorway, confirming Taylor’s guess that this woman was Winona Starling.
“May I ask what you’re doing here?” Santos inquired.
“I have come to the rescue of this beleaguered young woman,” Winona pronounced. “It is what my dear friend Netta would have wished.”
Taylor had spent entirely too much of her life being hovered over and protected and rescued. She had vowed that wasn’t going to happen anymore, but right now that vow felt less crucial than usual. She did her best to ignore the twinge of regret that it wouldn’t be Des Maxwell’s brown, muscled wing under which she would find shelter from what was left of this harrowing night.
Chapter Four
Folds of dark trees, rolling and rippling, soft as velvet on her body. Sliding over her, along her skin, clinging to the roundness of her breasts, catching on the hard points of her nipples. Fingers of leaves, satin-smooth, slipping between her thighs, whispering there till a moan rose in her throat and her body rose to meet the lover.
In the background, like a rising wind, another moan, repeated in rhythm, first too faintly to be understood, then louder, Danger. Danger. Danger. Something spoke in her mind for a breath of a moment of her having heard that warning rhythm before. But that thought was being rapidly swallowed by sensations so intense that there was no possibility of thought left. The warning rhythm remained, but only as an echo now, far off at the edge of her beyond the sensations. At the center of her there was no longer room for anything other than the lover.
The leaves had suddenly turned to flesh. They were his fingers now, opening her wide and wider while she drew deep breaths, as deep as the probe of his touch. He moved astride her and plunged inside. She arched to meet him with a cry of triumph and pleading. They rode one another, desperate and groaning. The power of their thrusting slapped the bed against the wall to punctuate their passion—thump, thump, thump—drowning out even the faint remaining echo of the danger warning...
Thump, thump, thump.
Knock, knock, knock.
The sound was transforming yet again, to become different but the same. Taylor knew the ache deep inside her was real, but the man had melted away in the light that greeted her fluttering eyelids. He had been a dream. She could barely stand to discover that, the ache of missing him was so strong and torturing. The velvet leaves
