The Guardian

Oh, to hell with him, she thought tiredly. If he’s a boor, he’s a boor. I didn’t come down here for a friendly guy. I came for a tough one.

He stopped before the luggage carousel. He didn’t say, “How was your trip?” He didn’t say, “How’s my old friend Corbett?” He didn’t say anything.

She didn’t, either. Suddenly all she wanted was a bed and eight hours of sleep. She’d deal with Mr. Charm, here, in the morning, when she’d got her strength back.

She studied him furtively, taking his measure. His eyes had permanent creases at the outer edges. They gave him the look of a man who had spent his life watching the world around him and watching it carefully.

He didn’t look at her. She had the impression he was purposefully ignoring her. But then, almost against his will, it seemed, he gazed down at Charlie. His craggy face didn’t mellow.

“So this is Charlie?” he said.

Kate looked at her son, so young, so innocent of what was happening to him, lying so trustingly against this stranger’s chest. A rush of tenderness swept away her other emotions, and she felt a lump like a fist in her throat.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s Charlie.”

HAWKSHAW HAD WAITED for the plane with deep misgivings. He was a private man about to surrender his privacy, and he had already damned himself for it a thousand times.

And his mood was frankly rotten. Right before he’d left for Key West airport, his ex-wife had called from Hawaii. She had an engagement singing in the lounge of a very upscale hotel on Waikiki Beach. “I’m in love,” she’d announced. “I’m finally over you. I think I’m going to get married.”

Suddenly Hawkshaw had remembered everything he’d worked to forget: the loss, the guilt, the failure, the incredible emptiness.

He’d forced cheer into his voice and congratulated her with all the heartiness he could muster. He didn’t ask her the details. He didn’t want to hear them.

She deserved to be happy, God knew. But basically what Hawkshaw had wanted to do was get drunk and stay that way for about a week. Maybe put his fist through a wall or two, that sort of thing.

But instead of mourning for the woman he wanted, he was stuck baby-sitting for one he didn’t want in the least. The Kanaday woman was prettier than he’d expected, and for some obscure reason, this annoyed him.

Certainly Corbett’s fuzzy photos had given no hint of her attractiveness. She’d looked thin and uninteresting in the pictures.

In the flesh, she was slender, not skinny, and her features, although not perfect, were good enough, and the red-gold of her hair was stunning.

Hell, he’d thought, no wonder somebody’s after her. And then he’d thought, Dammit, Corbett. What have you done to me now?

CHAPTER TWO

HAWKSHAW RECOVERED HIMSELF, more or less.

This woman was one last assignment—and there was a rigid rule about assignments: Do Not Get Emotionally Involved. In his present mood, it seemed a laughably easy rule to keep.

He loaded the woman’s luggage in the back of his van and swung the heavy dog cage inside. The dog snuffled and whined.

It was a basset hound, for God’s sake. One of those low-slung, bowlegged lugubrious-looking dogs with ears that nearly dragged the ground.

Except for the dog, the woman and kid were traveling remarkably light. That was good. That was probably Corbett’s doing. (Couldn’t Corbett have talked her into leaving the fool dog behind?)

The kid was strapped into the back seat. He’d wakened briefly when his mother put him in the van, but now he was dead to the world again.

Hawkshaw got into the driver’s seat. The woman sat in the passenger seat, staring up at the ink-dark sky. The lights of the airport parking lot fell through the windshield, illuminating her profile. It was a nice profile, he noted, but she wasn’t Helen of Troy.

He started the van. From the back, the dog gave a pathetic yodel of canine heartbreak.

Hawkshaw headed out on South Roosevelt Street, toward the highway. The street ran beside the shore of the Atlantic side of the island, and the sea was rough tonight.

“We’ve never been in Florida before,” said Kate Kanaday, staring out at the ocean. Its darkness was dimly streaked with lines of white foam breaking.

She had a low voice, the kind that would sound sexy over a telephone. He hadn’t noticed her voice before. Funny. Maybe it was the darkness that made him notice now. He thought of a man listening in the dark to that voice, becoming excited by it.

She said, “Where are we going? Will you tell me that much? Corbett wouldn’t say. Only that we’d meet you here, in Key West.”

He narrowed his eyes against the glare of oncoming headlights. Traffic was heavy, even at this time of night. Key West was a party town, and the party never stopped.

He said, “It’s in the lower keys. A place called Cobia Key. Not many people know where it’s at.”

Which is to your advantage, he thought. Which is to your very great advantage.

“I do,” she said without hesitation. “It’s the island sixteen miles north of Key West. There’s a heron preserve there.”

He allowed himself to lift an eyebrow in surprise, but kept his gaze fastened on the road. “You’ve heard of it?”

“I read about it,” she said in her low voice. “When we were delayed so long in Miami, I bought a book.”

Of course, he thought. She’d read about it. She would. “Yeah,” he said. “You worked in a bookstore.”

“Yes,” she said. “I used to.”

There was no self-pity in her voice, only resignation.

Hawkshaw stole a sideways look at her. The van’s windows were down, and although her hair was pinned back in some sort of braid, strands had escaped and fluttered around her face.

The van was on the highway now, crossing one of the dozens of bridges that linked the islands that formed the Keys.

The Kanaday woman said, “You live on Cobia Key?”

“For now,” he said. “It’s nothing fancy. It’s in the backcountry. Off to itself.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, still gazing moodily at the Atlantic. “As long as it’s safe.”

In the back of the van, the basset hound gave a throaty complaint followed by a series of mournful snorts.

She said, “You were in the Secret Service with Corbett?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Until he retired, went into business on his own?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve retired, too?”