Key West

by Stella Cameron

  She pushed a hand behind his left biceps and held on. “I’ve got to throw myself on your pity.” Leaning, she raised her face to his. From his angle he was presented with one too many scenic choices. Keeping his attention on her face took restraint.

  “Chris?” she said, her voice husky. “I don’t care how tired you are. Listen to me, will you, please? Just come to the club and listen to me.”

  All systems went on red alert. “The club?” he said, and felt like an ass.

  “I’ve got a beautiful room there. You can stretch out and relax, and just listen until you’re ready to say what you think.”

  He’d been offered a lot of dessert trays. This one was higher class than most, but he wasn’t tempted—much. “It’s too late.” He checked his watch. “I really have to get back, but thanks for the offer.”

  Anger hung at the back of those very dark eyes. “It’s about Sonnie,” she said. “There’s a lot you don’t know. If you’re going to do your best for her, you’ve got to have all the parts of the puzzle.”

  He hesitated. “Tell me now. Here.”

  “Don’t be a fool.” She clamped her lips together and he heard the breath she drew into her nose. “You know we can’t discuss something like this in public. My room is private. We won’t be disturbed.”

  Chris walked and she had no choice but to let go of his arm, or trail along with him. She trailed. “I’m partial to the cafe here,” Chris said. “it’s dead this time of night. Come on.”

  He led the way past the ticket counters and into a hallway that led to the neon-lit cafe. Billy had to run to keep up.

  The odd mechanic or pilot had staked claim to a varnished table. The windows were filmed with condensation, and a jungle of green plants showed their appreciation for the growing conditions. Chris led his sulking companion to a table beneath a wall-mounted propeller—the real kind.

  “Cute,” she said, turning down the corners of her mouth. “I bet they think Grand Marnier’s a ski run in the Alps.”

  “Which Alps?”

  She ignored him and snapped her fingers at the woman tending the bar that occupied a good percentage of the room. Chris got up and ordered, and used the time while the drinks were made to prepare himself for whatever was likely to come. He had plenty of reasons to be very careful with Billy Keith.

  He returned to the table, put a Grand Marnier in front of her, and sat down with a cup of coffee. “Okay, fire away.”

  Sipping the Grand Marnier she appeared to be deciding if the drink would do. “I can rub people the wrong way,” she said. “I do it all the time. It’s a hazard I have to live with. That’s my way of apologizing if you think I come on too strong, or say the wrong things, or whatever. I’m sorry. My main reason for waiting around for you was to thank you for everything you’ve been doing for Sonnie. Obviously you’re a very kind man.”

  And what, he wondered, did she really mean by that? “Sonnie’s special.”

  “I know.” Billy flashed another smile. “She’s a sweet little thing. Always has been. As long as I can remember she’s attracted strong people who want to take care of her. Of course, with all the scars and the limp and so on, well, she’s pathetic, but in a very appealing way. I still don’t think a lot of men like you would spend time on her. You’re different.”

  Never having been a high school girl, he hadn’t learned what it was that could make some women so openly catty. The woman who sat beside him was a perfect example of a high school Miss Popularity who’d never grown up.

  “Sonnie is a brave woman,” he said, choosing to study his coffee rather than his companion. “She’s been through so much, but she never complains. And she’s always more interested in what she can do for other people than what other people can do for her.” He glanced up in time to see Billy grimace.

  She recovered at once and said, “You’re right. I’ve got an idea, Chris”—she put a hand on top of his—”and I want you to at least think about it I’ve known Sonnie since she was born. I know all about her. You’re trying to help her find peace with what’s happened to her, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” The waters were getting very muddy.

  “That’s what I thought. But you can’t be sure that what she tells you is exactly right, can you? You don’t know if a lot of what she says comes from her imagination. I do. Why don’t we work together to help her?”

  He barely stopped himself from laughing. “What a great offer. Thanks. Billy, but I’m a loner when it comes to this kind of thing.”

  “I can help,” she said. The studied hoarseness dropped from her voice. “I know I can. And I need you as much as she does. I’ve suffered through everything Sonnie’s suffered through.”

  Disgust made it hard to look at her. He said, “Really? You weren’t in the crash, were you?”

  “No, of course not. But my life’s been turned upside down by what happened. My father and step-mother are grieving because their youngest child is crippled and disfigured. They loved Frank dearly, but he’s dead. You know that from what Romano told you.”

  “Yes.” And he’d bet neither Romano nor Billy spent many lonesome hours in their respective rooms. “How’s the doctor? He seems a nice guy.”

  “He is a nice guy,” she said, sounding impatient. “And he’s as good a psychiatrist as they come.”

  “That’s great. I’m sure he’s being very helpful to you.”

  “He is. Now I want you to help get Sonnie to see him.”

  “Does she need a psychiatrist?” Two could play the amateur actor. “She seems fine to me.” Where Billy was concerned he had no choice but to lie, at least until he understood more of what was in the documents he carried.

  “How can you say that?” She downed the drink, got up, and went to the bar.

  Chris made no attempt to go after her. In Sonnie’s records it was noted that the patient’s brother-in-law and her sister took turns sitting with her around the clock. One of them had always been at her side.

  Billy came back and settled in again. “I’m going to be blunt. She’s fooling you. You get one face; we get another. Sonnie calls either Romano or me constantly. She tells the wildest tales. Hobgoblins coming out of the walls. Things that go bang in the night. Fire. Distant singing. Even phone calls from Frank. Frank. The tales go on and on. We’re exhausted and frightened. She needs the best help we can buy her.”

  Once more Billy was holding his hand and leaning against him. “Sounds to me like you’re trying to take away Sonnie’s responsibility for herself,’ he said.

  “We’ve got to before it’s too late. You’ve been with her, haven’t you? A lot?”

  Her meaning didn’t have to be spelled out. “Sonnie and I are good friends.”

  “I’ll bet,” Billy said, and didn’t bother to look embarrassed. “She must think she’s died and gone to heaven.”

  “If that’s a compliment,” Chris said, “it’s not welcome.”

  “It ought to be.” The real Billy had stepped up to the plate. “Help her. I want you to do that. But don’t get so sucked in that you think you have to keep her warm at night.”

  “I’ve got to leave,” Chris said. “Let me see you to your car.”

  Billy didn’t move. “Have you seen any evidence of these things she keeps telling us about? Have you heard voices up near the ceiling?”

  He had chosen to believe there was some form of eerie noise in Sonnie’s house. And Flynn was now convinced that they weren’t wasting their time helping her.

  “Well, have you?”

  “Time to go home,” he said, extricating his hand and standing up. “I know you’ve been through a lot. Sonnie has told me that you and Romano have been very good to her.”

  That bought him a sharp stare. “She has?”

  “Of course. Why don’t you make a note to get in touch with me if you think of something that might help Sonnie deal with her past? And I’ll tell her we’ve spoken.”

  “No. No, don’t tell her that. She’s always w
anted to try being independent. Why not let her think she is, at least for a little while?”

  On the walk to the airport drive, he contrived to keep himself out of holding range.

  “I could leave my car and ride back with you,” Billy said. This one didn’t know when to give up.

  “I’ve never been on one of those Harleys.”

  “You’re not dressed for it,” he said. “And I don’t have the passenger seat on anyway. We’ll save it for another time.”

  Her sandals clacked as he walked her to her car. A tomato red Porsche, it was parked beneath a light in the lot. Chris held the door while she got in, then slammed it and ducked down to say, “Good night. We’ll be talking.”

  “You can bet your…” Her smile was sly. “Just bet on it.”

  She gunned the engine.

  Chris laughed and yelled, “Eat up those roads, tiger. And get someone to wash that thing.” He slapped his palms together to dislodge dust.

  He waited just long enough to see her turn onto the highway before leaning against the lamp standard and taking out his cell phone and dialing.

  While he listened to the ring, he brushed the pale dust from Billy’s car off his jeans and studied the angle of South Roosevelt.

  It was Roy who answered. “Is that you, Sonnie?”

  Twenty-six

  “Driving,” Romano said, “calms me down. It always has. There was a time when I thought I would race, but responsibility got in the way. I am a better tennis coach than I am a race-car driver, and my brother needed me.”

  Although she could see little but dark, sucking water on either side of the overseas highway that connected Key West to the rest of the Keys and to Miami, Sonnie kept her face toward the passenger window. “Yes,” was all she could think of to say. They’d been gone for hours, many more than the two hours she’d mentioned to Roy, yet she didn’t dare ask Romano to take her back. He drove alternately incredibly fast and at a crawl.

  “You see how it is here,” he said. “So easy to be cut off from everything, to become lost to the world. One long road and so many little islands. I wonder how many people are supposed to be living on those islands when they are either far away or dead.”

  “You think of the strangest things,” she said, and forced a laugh. “Such an imagination. You should write books.”

  “True,” he said. “I’ve thought the same thing. When I can spare a few days, I will do that.”

  He had driven her all the way to Miami and back, stopping time and again to point out some remote key. He hadn’t mentioned what he’d said he wanted to discuss with her, and there was a recklessness about him that cautioned her not to cross him.

  “This is Marathon.” he said, as he had when they’d crossed the island on the way north. “The main golf course is here.”

  He’d also mentioned that. She couldn’t see much in the dark. Midnight had come and gone. She couldn’t bear to think of Roy and Bo worrying, and probably Chris and Aiden by now. But at least Romano was on his way back to Key West.

  “We should talk about Frank,” she said tentatively. “I know it hurts you to think about him, but you said—”

  “I know what I said. Why would I speak with you about my brother? What did you ever know about him?”

  She turned her face away again.

  “I worry about you all alone in that big house,” Romano said, his voice unnaturally soft and distant. “Frank would not want that for you. You need people around you.”

  Her ribs didn’t want to expand. The spaces between the bones went into a spasm. “I’m very fond of the house.”

  “But it frightens you. When you are there you see and hear things that come from your mind. I’ve put off confronting you with your irrational behavior, but now we’re out of time. You must take responsibility for your behavior. And you must do what is best for your family. I am part of that family.”

  He held her captive in his luxurious car, captive with the onslaught she expected to start now.

  “Answer me,” he said sharply. “I am not that policeman gone soft. You think he is a big, strong man to lean on. He is a failure. He could not do his job, so he ran away.”

  “You don’t know him,” she said, unable to choose her own safety over defending Chris.

  “I know far more than you think. Be silent. Do not contradict me; is that understood? In the Giacano family, women do not argue with their men.”

  “Υοιι are not my man.”

  He slammed on the brakes so hard the car fishtailed back and forth across the road for many yards. Despite her seat belt,

  Sonnie was thrown from side to side. In the past hour, the wind had picked up to the highest velocity she’d seen since she arrived, and seawater roared over the roadway, leaving it wet and slick.

  “See what you do when you make me angry?” Romano said. “You make me forget myself. Remember, I know everything about you, everything. I know you were a terrible wife for Frank but that he championed you against all odds. I know your family has spoiled you, coddled you, allowed you to have your own way even where you are unfit to make any choices for yourself.”

  She took short breaths and struggled against rising nausea.

  “You argue with me, just as you argued with Frank. You were the wrong woman for him. I should not have allowed them to play such a dangerous game.”

  “Them?” He confused her. “What game? I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you do. Billy and Frank played with you. She was disappointed by her career, her failures, but she peaked early. And the alcohol was poison to her. It still is. Alcohol pushed her out of the game in the end.

  “She and Frank were too well suited. At least they knew that. And they didn’t have enough money to satisfy themselves. But they needed each other, and you became the game they played together. He married you because they decided he would. You were their bank, my dear. When Frank looked at you he didn’t see a woman; he saw a bank.

  “Your sister would sit with us and laugh at your foolishness. She has always needed power. It thrills her—fills her hunger. She could have her lover marry her sister to provide for her own needs, and Frank’s. You see, she was in control all the time.”

  Sonnie crowded against the door, putting as much distance as she could between them. Great gusts buffeted the car, and she felt Romano work to hold the vehicle steady.

  “All of that silliness is behind us. Now you will play your part and do everything you can to help me,” he said. “Is that understood?”

  She shook her head. He wanted her to be terrified. He wouldn’t get his way—or know he’d gotten his way. “No. I don’t understand you at all, Romano. You said you wanted to talk to me. You’ve said almost nothing that makes sense, and we’ve driven over three hundred miles. You said you needed me, but I don’t know what for, especially when you say I’m useless and you don’t know why Frank married me—except for this fantastic story you’ve invented about Βilly and Frank.”

  “Fantastic?” He turned sharply toward her. “Why do you think he married you?”

  “Because we were in love.” She had been in love, and Frank had declared his love over and over.

  Romano laughed. To Sonnie’s horror, he stroked the side of her face and tangled his fingers in her hair. He pulled until she was in pain and tried to pry him loose.

  He dropped his hand lower. From her shoulder, he moved to run a forefinger over Frank’s medal where it hung between her breasts. And he made sure the contact was intimate.

  “Please don’t,” she murmured. “What have Ι done to you?”

  “Nothing. That’s the whole problem. You have done nothing for me or to me. You have shunned me. You consider yourself too good for me.” With that he undid the top button on her blouse and pushed his hand inside, and then inside her bra to cover her naked breast. He laughed again. “I’m trying to make myself believe the old saying: The closer to the bone, the sweeter the meat.” He pinched her nipple. “Perhaps I can learn the
wisdom in that after all.”

  Very firmly, Sonnie grabbed his wrist. For a moment he showed her how incapable she was of making him do anything he didn’t want to do. Then he took his hand away. He looked her in the face, then administered a light but stinging slap to her cheek.

  Tears burned her eyes and she shrank from him.

  “Don’t bother to tell anyone Ι did that. They’ll never believe it. That’s the beauty of an impeccable reputation. You are with me now, Sonnie. I am in charge and you will do only what I tell you to do. I’m even thinking of marrying you. After all, my brother would approve. He’d like the idea of my looking after you, don’t you think? Of my teaching you how a woman should behave toward her husband?”

  “Frank called me again,” she whispered, desperate to shock him back to reality. “I didn’t imagine it was his voice. I am sure he’s being kept captive. What he said was so close to what he said before he was to come to Key West the last time. But there were other things he would have said only if he knew nothing about what had happened to me.”

  “Shut up,” Romano said, slipping the car back into gear and driving away. “Nothing would please me more than to think my brother would return. My sources say that will not happen, and they have no reason to lie. Now I want you to talk to someone. He is waiting. He’s been waiting for some hours.”

  “Don’t do this to me,” Sonnie said. “You’re frightening me. Why would you do that? What have I done to you?”

  “You have complicated my life,” he said shortly and in the toneless voice he’d used almost from the moment she’d gotten into the car and he’d locked the doors from his controls. “You have not done as you were told. You have put yourself first. You sicken me, but I will try to save you. If you do as I tell you now, I will make sure you are comfortable and very, very safe. And I have made up my mind, yes. I will make you my wife and give you my protection.” He settled a hand high up on her thigh where the edge of his small finger rested in her groin.

  “I want to go home,” she said, no longer able to hide the fact that she was falling apart.

  “Which home would that be? With the fairies on Duval Street, or the haunted house on Truman Avenue? Not a very good choice, hmm? I think I shall take you back with me. I will soon make you forget the muscle-bound policeman. Despite the things that would turn some men off, I can make you a happy woman.”