High Tide (14 page)

At that Fiona drew her breath in sharply and thought about how she could run. To where? For that matter, from where, since she hadn't any idea where the hell she was.

“I killed him just so I could get into bed with you.”

“What?” Fiona asked as she brought her mind back to the current situation. “You did what?”

“I planned everything. I planned going to the motel, then the house, then to my uncle's cabin, all of it, just so I could pounce on you.”

“Aaaarrrgh,”
Fiona groaned. “You are a real jerk, did you know that?” she said; but his joking had made her relax. “The first thing I do when I get out of here is send Miss Lisa Rene Honeycutt a sympathy card.”

“And I'm sending ol' Jeremy the lawyer congratulations on finding the last virgin in the country.”

“Virgin? I'll have you know that I—” She broke off because she could feel his suppressed laughter; it was shaking his body. “If you think you're going to get any info out of me about
that
side of my life, you are mistaken. Now, give me that pillow.”

For a moment Ace rolled off the bed, and Fiona almost asked if he was coming back. But in seconds he returned, with the pillow from the other bed. “Okay, now let's get comfortable. In what position do you sleep?”

The way he asked made it sound almost scientific. “Left side,” she said.

“Perfect. Me too. Turn over.”

She did, and the next moment he had snuggled up against the back side of her and his arms went around her. Maybe she should worry, she thought. Maybe she should consider that this man actually had murdered Roy Hudson. But she didn't think of anything bad, because for the first time in days she felt safe. She snuggled back against him, her head on his arm, and closed her eyes.

“Not so much wiggling, if you don't mind,” Ace said sleepily into her hair. “I am human, and you may be skinny, but …” His voice was fading into sleep.

“But I do have other assets,” she said, and smiling, she drifted into sleep too.

When Fiona awoke, it was daylight, and at first she couldn't tell if it was very early or a cloudy day, and for a moment she had no idea where she was. She was lying on her side, and as her eyes began to focus, she saw something scurry across the floor.

But she didn't jump. Two days ago she would have leaped up and started screaming, but now she turned onto her other side and tried to go back to sleep. But there was a second pillow beside her, and it had a smell on it that was familiar and strange at the same time.

Abruptly, her eyes opened, and she lifted her head enough to look about the room. It was not a room that one should look at in daylight. By candlelight it was bad enough, but
full morning showed the holes and the dirt and the rot and …

Where was he? she wondered, frowning, then told herself to calm down. Just because her entire existence depended on this man who was a stranger to her and now he'd disappeared was no reason to panic.

But in spite of her good intentions, she leaped from the bed, ran through the living room, out the front door and into the Florida wilderness. She was surrounded by palms and vines and more palms and things that looked as though they were just waiting for a human to step into them.

“What happened to dear ol' concrete?” she whispered as she looked about her. If there had ever been a path around the horrible old shack, it was gone now. And looking at the vegetation in front of her, she was sure that if she stepped into it and stood still for the length of time that it took for a crossing light to change, she would be enveloped. Or maybe eaten, she thought with a grimace.

“Over here, and be quiet,” she heard a whisper; then when she looked toward the sound, she could barely make out the shape of a human form.

“I will not run toward him and throw my arms around him,” she said aloud as she forced herself to walk slowly toward the shadowy outline. In New York, three times she'd walked through scuffles that could have been bad. In one there were a couple of knives being brandished. But nothing that had happened in the city was as frightening to her as walking through those bushes.

“Do you always talk to yourself?” Ace asked, annoyed. He was sitting on a tree stump, his profile to her, as he stared
out at something that Fiona couldn't see. There was a little opening between the trees that almost allowed what one could call a view.

“And good morning to you, too,” she said. “And, yes, I slept very well; thanks for asking.”

He didn't stop frowning, and he didn't look at her. “Sit down and be quiet. There's fruit and bread over there, and since you ran out of the house in terror, you can use the bushes back there.”

“Terror?” she said, annoyed with herself for showing her fear and with him for seeing it. “I live in New York City, and I'll have you know—”

“Quiet!” he said as he lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

It took Fiona a few minutes to relax, to get over the sense of panic she'd felt when she'd awakened alone in this wilderness. She stepped a few feet away, took care of necessities, then went back to where he was sitting.

So they'd slept together, she thought as she sat down a few feet away and picked up a slice of melon from the plate near him. So what? What did that mean in this day and age? Even if they'd had sex, it wouldn't have been any big deal.

So why was she feeling so warm and cozy toward him? Because she'd not slept so well in years? Was that why? She'd read about that Ann Landers survey in which women said they'd rather cuddle than have sex, but Fiona had never believed it. She liked sex.

But then, Jeremy wasn't much of one for cuddling. No, he was more of a wham, bam, I've-got-to-go-back-to-work sort of guy. But then, so was Fiona. She'd always had a thousand things to do for Kimberly and time to do only twenty of them.

“Sleep well?” she said, looking at him but pretending not to.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, but it was more of a grunt than words.

“So what's made you so bad-tempered this morning?”

Putting down his binoculars, he glared at her. “Have you forgotten why we're here? We're the objects of a major manhunt because we're accused of murder. By now, I'd hoped to have found out what it is that connects you and me and the answer to why Hudson left his money to us, but I've found out nothing. Zilch.”

The truth was, Fiona couldn't really grasp the reality of why they were there. Finding Roy's dead body seemed to be something that she'd seen in a movie or maybe dreamed about. Perhaps it was the way a person's mind had of coping with intolerable situations: She couldn't really believe that it had happened. At least not to her, anyway.

“What are you looking at?” she asked as she picked up a piece of buttered bread. There was a single, chipped glass full of orange juice near him, and she drank from that. Why not? If they could share a bed, they could share a glass.

“Birds,” he said flatly. “Remember? I'm the bird man. I was trying to make a go of this place before you destroyed my tourist attraction.”

She ignored his snide remark; she wasn't going to let him draw her into an argument. “This place? You mean we're on your property? Your park?”

“Of course. Where did you think we were?”

“Had no idea,” she said, her mouth full. “My father was a brilliant cartographer, but he used to say that I had inherited none of his ability to ascertain direction. I can get lost inside a closet.”

When Ace didn't say anything, she said, “What's that bird? The little green one?” She was pointing above her head, but Ace didn't bother to put his binoculars down to look.

“Parakeet,” he said tersely.

“You mean like you buy in a pet shop? That kind of parakeet?”

“That kind exactly.”

“No kidding? I didn't know those things came from Florida. I figured they came from someplace exotic, like … like Borneo, maybe.”

“That particular budgie escaped from somebody's cage, but the species originally came from Australia.”

It took her a moment to decode what he was saying. When it came to birds, he seemed to talk in shorthand. “You mean the poor little thing escaped from some kid's cage and now lives out in the open?”

Turning, he gave her a look that said he thought she was an idiot. “It was a poor little thing when it was in the cage, but now it's better off. There are thousands of them around, and they breed and live naturally, in the ‘open' as you call it.” With that he turned back and put the binoculars up to his eyes again.

“So. Are you going to be in this bad mood all day?”

“I'm going to be in a bad mood until we find out why we were named as some dead man's heirs.”

“Maybe you and I aren't connected. Maybe Roy just liked us.”

“And when did you meet him?” Ace asked sarcastically.

She was not going to allow him to draw her into his snippy manner. Maybe a change of subject was better. “My
father died in Florida,” she said softly. “Because of that I never wanted to visit this place. I had to get rip-roaring drunk the night before this trip to give myself courage to get on a plane.”

When Ace said nothing, just kept looking through his binoculars, she continued. “Just before my father died, he and I made plans for me to visit him in this state. I'd never done that before; he always came to me. He said that his map-making jobs were too rough for me, that I was a city girl and wouldn't like to go traipsing across alligator country. Or cannibal country. Or through tribes of natives that carried poison blowguns.”

“How did he die?” Ace asked, this time his tone gentle, no more snapping at her.

“A heart attack. He was in the wilds doing some work for a man when his heart gave out. I was told that the end was very quick.” For a moment she was silent, looking out across the narrow open space that seemed to fascinate him.

“He was everything to me,” she said, then sighed and tried to smile. “My father was a very happy man, and he wouldn't like for me to get maudlin.” For a second she closed her eyes, and she could almost see her father. “He was a beautiful man, very distinguished looking. I never saw him in anything but the most beautiful suits. And he always wore charcoal gray because he said it went so well with his hair.”

She smiled, completely forgetting where she was and why. “He had the most beautiful hair ever put on a person. It was gray and very thick, so it clouded about his head. He used to say that his hair was like smoke. In fact, once he made a joke that
he
was the original Smokey, not some overweight bear.”

Slowly, Ace put down his binoculars, then looked at her. “What did you say?”

She was startled by his wide-eyed look. “Nothing. I was just talking about my father. He died in Florida.”

“No, not that part. You said something about his clothes. No, something about his hair.”

“Great listener you are,” she snapped, getting him back a bit for his earlier bad temper. “I said that he had beautiful gray hair.”

“What about the bear?”

Fiona looked at him in consternation. “There are bears here? In addition to alligators and a million creepy crawlies and—”

Ace leaned toward her and put his hands on her shoulders, his fingers digging into her flesh. “What about the bear? What did you say about that fire bear?”

She drew back from him. “I said that my father said that he was the original Smokey the Bear. It was just a joke.”

When Ace spoke, his voice was very quiet. “Did your father have a scar across the back of his left arm?” He held out his own arm, then drew a line with his finger all the way from the elbow to between his two smallest fingers.

“Yes,” Fiona said, blinking. “At least he had a scar across the back of his hand. I never saw my father undressed, so I can't tell you about his arm, but it was there on his hand. He was injured while working in South America where he was charting an area of the Andes. Wait a minute,” she said. “Did you know my father?”

For a few seconds Ace just blinked at her; then he stood up and raised his arms skyward as though in prayer; then he
looked back down at Fiona. “We found it. That's the link. Your father is the link.”

Fiona was aghast. “Then you
did
know my father?”

“Smokey? Are you kidding? Everyone knew Smokey.”

At that Fiona began to smile.

“Every person in this state and I imagine quite a few of the residents of several other states knew Smokey. If you've ever been down on your luck, if you've ever been involved in some shady, underhanded deal, then you've met Smokey. I met him when I inherited the park and found out that my uncle had gone to loan sharks to borrow money to keep the place afloat. I don't know why he didn't go to my father and ask for help, but instead he contacted Smokey, who put him in contact with—

“Hey!” Ace said. “Where are you going? We need to talk. Now that we've found the link, we can figure out how we're connected to Hudson.”