herself, by the sound of screams. And Melody and Hagen were right. They didn’t begin to resemble the knife-wielding apparition that had threatened her guests out by the pool.
She winced. It hurt to lose so much business. Weekdays in the Keys were slow this time of year. The Siren of the Sea wasn’t a major hotel to be found on every travel site on the web, though she did have a great website of her own. During Fantasy Fest and other Conch holidays, she had it made. And she had wonderful reviews on the sites where she could be found. It was still hard to make ends meet, though. She didn’t want to overprice, but she only had six guest rooms.
Her house was worth a small fortune—she knew that. She’d received enough offers for it. But she didn’t want to sell—there was certainly nothing else in the area she could afford if she sold, and Key West was her home. She’d seen a fair amount of the world, many wonderful places, but she loved Key West.
“So...” she murmured aloud, drumming her fingers on the table.
Petrie, her humongous, long-haired, six-toed “Hemingway cat,” leaped smoothly up into her lap and meowed as if in deep sympathy.
“What’s going on, big guy? You’re a cat—you’re supposed to sense things.”
He merely swished his furry tail.
Hannah stood, gently sliding Petrie to the floor, and poured herself another cup of coffee before giving the cat a few treats.
It had all happened so fast. She had heard the screams and shot downstairs to see what was going on. Everyone in the place had been out by the pool within minutes, one college boy wielding a dive knife and Mr. Hardwicke, an elderly regular along with his wife, a heavy boot. But there had been no one there other than Shelly and Stuart, both of them hysterical. Their friends had been less than kind, insisting she’d freaked out over the ghost tour, that was all. But Stuart had been adamant that there had been a ghost—a vengeful ghost—and only their screams had driven him away. Someone had suggested they call the cops; someone else had snorted and said that cops couldn’t arrest ghosts.
The next thing Hannah knew, they were all leaving. And while they’d spent most of the night, she’d decided it would be bad customer service practice not to refund their money.
Now the sun had risen on another beautiful Key West morning. Bright and early, just about 7:00 a.m., a westward breeze was coming in, the foliage was moving gently in the breeze, and the dead heat of midday was not yet burning the pavement.
She went to right one of her Victorian lawn lounges, which had toppled over in the commotion.
And that was when she saw them.
Drops of red that led off through the bushes and...
Disappeared.
She hunkered down to study the spots and froze.
They were blood. Real blood. Not astral blood, spiritual blood, ghostly blood or imaginary blood from an apparition of some kind. Real blood meant that someone or something living had come through the yard—not a ghost. There were outside lights by the pool, but at night these drops would have been invisible.
Hannah pushed her way through the foliage where the blood trail seemed to end, though the drops might have disappeared into thin air or they might have been soaked up by the dirt. She couldn’t really tell. The yard here in back of the pool grew rich and lush all the way up to the bushes that lined the brick wall and the white wooden gate that led to the small alley behind her house. Vehicles couldn’t traverse the narrow way; it was a footpath, normally used only by those who already knew it was there.
The gate was unhooked. There was a bloody handprint on it.
Gingerly, afraid of what she would find, Hannah pushed it all the way open.
And there he was. A man lying just two feet from the gate, sprawled faceup, staring wide-eyed up at the sun.
A brilliant crimson ribbon ran around his neck.
And his fingers curled as if he had been holding something....
Like the hilt of a knife.
* * *
“How did you know there was a body in the alley?” Dallas Samson asked, after introducing himself and flashing his FBI badge.
The young woman who had summoned the police was standing behind the crime scene tape that now stretched across the alley and up to her gate. Detective Liam Beckett was with her. Beckett was a city cop—and a friend of Dallas’s. Apparently Beckett was a friend of the young woman’s, too. She was extremely attractive, Dallas noted almost dispassionately. He filed away everything he noticed about possible suspects and witnesses in the back of his mind, so it was second nature to make a physical assessment. She was about five-five, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, sleek and slim, with deep blue-green eyes and a mane of golden hair. She was, however, tense. She stood straight—almost frozen. Not panicked, but icy. Almost as if she were battling not to show any emotion, doing everything in her power to remain stoic and calm. He realized he’d barely taken his eyes off her. And the tension he was feeling himself was making him come off like a drill sergeant. He couldn’t help it—not with a dead body lying in the alley and her standing there not answering his question.
He sure as hell wasn’t helping her any, but it rankled that she’d been talking easily with Liam when Dallas had arrived, and now she was just staring at him without saying a word.
Her brows hiked up as she finally considered her reply to his query.
She was taking too long to answer. The tension he was feeling increased.
He pursued his question even more impatiently. “Let me rephrase. Do you usually wake up bright and early and come out to the alley looking for bodies?”
Liam cleared his throat reprovingly, and Dallas winced inwardly. He’d let his temper get the best of him, making him rude and sarcastic. He wasn’t usually that way, but he was feeling a hell of a lot more tense than the blonde—than any of them, at the moment.
But, then, he’d known the dead man.
And he didn’t like the way the man had been found.
“Hannah called me immediately,” Liam said, frowning. “And, I assure you, it’s the first time she’s ever called me about a body.”
“Of course,” Dallas said. “Sorry. So, you knew he was here because—” he paused, looking at Liam “—because he was in your yard—and still alive—last night?” He realized the implication that she might have saved him was in his voice. He hadn’t meant it to be, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
He looked around and noticed that there was a lot of confusion at the scene. A couple of uniformed officers had been first on the scene, followed by Liam—and he’d been right behind. Now techs were dusting and setting out numbers by everything they found, and looking for evidence, and the medical examiner was with the body. She had touched the body, trying to see what she could do for him before realizing he was dead. If she’d been a screaming basket case, he would probably be having an easier time dealing with her. But though she was calm now, she had been screaming when she’d dialed 911. The uniformed officers had probably arrived within seconds—they were just down the street from Duval, because the department always patrolled the bar and club scene there, no matter how late—or
