Paradise Burning (3 page)

Juggling seven plastic bags of groceries,
Peter strode up the L-shaped ramp that led directly into his
kitchen, some fourteen feet above his garage. While steadying one
of the bags in his teeth, he managed to enter his keypad code.
Times like this, he wished he’d put in an elevator. But before he’d
signed a building contract, Brad Blue, the developer of Amber Run,
had pointed out a ring around a live oak about four feet off the
ground. From a flood, he’d said. Worst in forty years, but anyone
building this close to the river had to expect to get wet feet at
the end of the rainy season, every other year or so. Had to expect
to park out near the highway, maybe even pole home in a skiff.

Peter had signed the contract anyway.
In fact, after searching Florida trying to find an upscale design
that wasn’t a stucco Mediterranean Revival wall to wall with its
neighbors, he’d been intrigued to discover his choice of a stilt
house along a jungle river was even more adventurous than he’d
anticipated. Mandy would like the wildness of it, he’d thought.
Mandy, who was on her way. Driving south. To him.
Oh, yeah!
That’s why he needed all
the groceries. Mandy. In his house. At his table.

Peter flashed a grin. Good thing he
could cook. He bet she still hadn’t learned how.
Spoiled brat. Okay, so pampered genius was more
accurate.

After putting the groceries away, Peter stuck
a glass under the ice dispenser, topped it with single malt scotch.
A heresy, some would say, but this was Florida and ice was a
necessity, even in February. Glass in hand, he walked out onto the
twelve-foot deck that surrounded the house and tried to picture it
as Mandy would see it.

Every house in Amber Run was built on the old
Florida style known as Key West, and surrounded by as many trees
and original vegetation as the builder could leave in place. The
House of Peter was simply larger than all the others. A glorified
tin-roofed tree house, built on stilts, and topped by his
third-floor office, an oversize Widow’s Walk that flirted with the
treetops, eye to eye with birds and squirrels. Close around the
house, gray-green Spanish moss dripped from century-old oaks. Pine
trees towered over rustling cabbage palms. The chittering of birds,
squirrels, and insects provided a constant background hum.

On the west side of the house was the main
entrance with curved double stairs leading up to an elegantly
carved front door that, so far, had never been used. To the east, a
small swath of green lawn led down to the tea-colored Calusa River.
Dyed brown by massive amounts of live oak leaves, Brad Blue had
told him, and chock-full of alligators.

Across the river . . . nothing but pristine
Florida wilderness. Peter had heard that Brad Blue’s grandfather
ran cattle over there, but nothing could be seen beyond the tangle
of greenery lining the riverbank. To a world-roaming investigator
turned author, the dark mysteries of the Calusa and the land around
it were just another perc. Peter had bought two lots the first day
he’d discovered Amber Run.

Home. A real home. A forever home. All it
needed was Mandy.

“
Hey, up there!”

Speak of the
devil
. Peter waved to Brad Blue, who had just skidded
his blue pickup to a halt in the driveway below. Brad’s pale blond
hair, long enough to be tied back at the nape of his neck, gleamed
in the late afternoon sun. According to rumor, he wore it that way
because his Grandfather Whitlaw, the one with all the cattle, hated
it. Fact, not rumor, added that Brad’s uncle, heir to all those
cattle, was married to Brad’s ex-wife, Golden Beach’s hottest real
estate broker.

Peter grinned. Golden Beach might appear to
be a somnolent retirement community, but it had its moments. Rather
like the dark river below, slowly gliding toward the sea . . .
until the rains came and it turned into a swollen, raging torrent
sweeping away everything in its path.

“
Saw you drive by,” Brad called. “Been
wanting to catch you when you weren’t working. Good time
now?”

“
Sure.”

Brad was also a fan of single malt scotch. A
few minutes later, drinks in hand, the two men stretched out on the
comfortable patio furniture under the roofed portion of the rear
deck that overlooked the river. Brad took a hefty swallow of
scotch, shifted in his chair. An uncharacteristic gesture for a man
who tended to be confident to the point of arrogance. Peter’s lips
quirked. It looked like Amber Run’s developer might be looking for
a favor.

“
I don’t like to trouble you,” Brad
said, “but I have a couple who fell in love with your house. None
of my models were good enough. They drove the whole site and only
your house would do. They begged to see it. Look, man, I hate to
ask, I know how you value your privacy, but—”

“
But you have to make a living, and
another house fifty or a hundred thousand more than your largest
model is not to be sneezed at.”

Brad flashed a rueful grin over the rim of
his scotch. “You got it.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “So when do you
anticipate this invasion?”

“
They’re renting for three
months—through the end of March. You set the date and
time.”

“
But the sooner the better.”

His eyes carefully fixed on his drink, Brad
nodded. Peter almost laughed out loud. Seeing the kick-ass Brad
Blue beg a favor made his day. One of the many rumors he’d heard
was that Blue spoke fluent Russian. Now how intriguing was that? To
someone who’d spent the last fifteen years of his life as an
investigator of one kind or another, it was like waving a red
flag.

Peter let Brad talk him into showing
the house the following week. That would give Mandy time to settle
in before being invaded by strangers. And now . . . time for
the
quid pro quo
.

“
Hey, Brad, is it true you speak
Russian? I only ask because I was born Peter Rodcyzk. Third
generation from somewhere in Poland. You a newbie too?”

“
Second generation,” Brad admitted.
“Father jumped ship off a Russian trawler. Married the daughter of
an old bastard who used to run cattle on this land. By some miracle
the land on this side of the river came to me, and I’ve betrayed my
responsibility to the land—so my Grandfather Whitlaw says—by
building houses on it.”

“
Hard to fight the
inevitable.”

“
Yeah, but the hell of it is, I don’t
want to see Florida paved over any more than my grandfather
does.”

“
Yet even old spooks have to make a
living.” Peter endured Brad’s basilisk stare.

“
Takes one to know one,” Brad ground
out.

“
Right. But I managed to get out while
I was still on my feet. I hear you zigged when you should have
zagged.”

Deadpan, Brad shook his head. “Just goes to
show that beneath the building boom Golden Beach is still a small
town. With big mouths.” He didn’t, Peter noticed, deny the
rumor.

So . . . they understood each other. The
builder and the author. The two men whose ancestors came from
Eastern Europe. Whose previous lives had been anything but
peaceful.

As they shook hands and said goodbye, neither
had any idea they were living their last quiet moments before the
storm.

“
No apartments?” Mandy sputtered.
“
None?
”

“
I’m so sorry,” the young woman behind
the desk at Tierney & Tierney Realty apologized, “but there’s
only one apartment building in Golden Beach, and it has a waiting
list about a mile long. And our rentals for the winter season are
always snapped up by the end of August.”

“
What about other agencies?” Mandy
demanded, suddenly very much aware she was out of her element.
Golden Beach was almost as alien and inhospitable as the time she’d
exited her LearJet only to have a black
chador
tossed over her head by two equally black
anonymous gliding tents. To the accompaniment of clicking tongues
and admonishing hisses, they’d whisked her off to ugly female-only
accommodations. The next day she’d been delivered to work in a room
full of computers, with not another human in sight, the work
stations deserted by male operators who seemed to fear their
immortal souls might be contaminated by her presence.

After that, she’d dug in her heels, told
Eleanor no more Middle Eastern consults. She might not be a brave
and daring field agent, but she didn’t have to work for countries
who treated women as pariahs. To her astonishment, Eleanor had
simply nodded. One small victory for Mandy Mouse.

“
Let me ask my broker,” the Realtor was
saying. “She’s lived here all her life. If anyone can help you, she
can.”

In only a few minutes the young woman was
back, accompanied by a strikingly attractive woman of perhaps
forty. The perfection of the broker’s grooming, the cut of her
silver gray suit trimmed in black, the subtle glitter of her gold
jewelry proclaimed her a poster example of the Successful
Realtor.

Shit! Give her a decade or so and it was
Eleanor.

“
Phil Whitlaw,” she announced, holding
out her hand. “It
was
Tierney,
but my husband’s in politics and prefers to have his name as
prominent and wide-spread as possible.”

Okay, Phil Whitlaw might look a bit too
perfect, but Mandy suspected she might like her anyway.

“
So what’s your price range?” T &
T’s broker asked, plunging straight to the point.

Mandy leaned back in her chair, offered a
lop-sided smile, green eyes meeting Phil’s nut brown straight on.
“Not a problem. I can live without a condo on the beach”—though
relinquishing that cherished hope was tough—“but ratty doesn’t do
it for me. Any suggestions?”

Phil rested a hand with a diamond the size of
Mount Washington on top of the rental desk’s computer monitor.
“Lizbeth tells me you’ll be working at Amber Run. That’s almost ten
miles out of town. There’s nothing there but jungle, cattle, a few
private homes and”—she paused, a gleam lighting her eyes—“a
campground.”

Campground. She had to be
kidding
. Mandy had visions of a canvas tent. Or maybe
one of those nylon igloos too low to stand up in. Or would there be
log cabins? Bears?

Lions and tigers and . . . alligators, oh
my.

“
Not quite your style, I know,” said
Phil, “but Calusa Campground’s a good bet for a last-minute rental.
It’s mostly RVs and trailers. Lots of full-time or full-season
residents. And, frankly, Miss Armitage, since Golden Beach has the
second highest median age in the country, someone’s always going
into a nursing home. Or passing on.”

Embarrassed at what must be showing on her
face, Mandy ducked her head. Was she a snob? Is that what living in
the sheltered world of AKA had done to her?

“
Or,” Phillippa Whitlaw added hastily,
“you can rent an RV from a dealer. Something almost new. It
wouldn’t be so much like living in someone else’s home.”

Mandy didn’t hear that last. An RV. Big and
shiny. Easily mobile. She could stay . . . or go. Complete her
assignment . . . or lose herself on the vast network of roads that
led from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.

Freedom
. Until
this moment, as her blood surged, Mandy hadn’t even caught a hint
of how much the thought appealed to her. Something inside her had
changed. Was Kira’s death a catalyst? The thought—the threat—of
seeing Peter? Or was it simply the loosening of the chains that
bound her to AKA?

No matter. “How much?” Mandy asked.

By late afternoon Mandy had tramped up and
down the steps of more RVs than she had thought existed. And then
she’d found it. A thirty-footer with a bedroom in the rear, plus a
living area with a sofa, a small dinette, and a nearly full-size
refrigerator and freezer. The bathroom? Well, she was glad she was
skinny.

She filled out the paperwork, gratefully
accepting the dealer’s offer to have the RV delivered to the
campground the next day. She’d done it, she’d actually done it. As
Mandy signed her name on the rental contract and wrote out the
necessary check, she felt a surge of grim satisfaction. Peter was
going to have a fit.

A few hours later she sat in front of her
laptop in the only motel room she’d been able to find in Golden
Beach and stared at her screen. It was now the night of her fourth
day out from AKA. Peter had probably been expecting her since
yesterday. Was he worried? Pacing up and down? Calling Jeff,
calling Eleanor? Well, too bad.

After reporting her arrival to AKA the day
before, Mandy had left word with the main switchboard that she’d
been delayed, then turned off her phone. No explanations, just
that. Let them make of it what they would. With every breath of
freedom, she was getting feistier.

Peter
.

Mandy flashed a wicked grin as she typed a
long-dormant e-mail address. She stared at the screen, her grin
fading in a rush of old memories. There was a time when she and
Peter had e-talked nearly every day . . .

Hi, Mouse. It’s damn hot in
Durban. Do you expect snow for Christmas?
Not exactly
intimate prose, but they’d kept in touch.
The Yangtze gorge is glorious, kid. You should have come
with.

What if she had?

Miss ya, Mouse. London next
week. Grab a ticket and join me
. Somehow it never
happened. The gap between their lives was wider than the
Atlantic.