Key West Read Online Free Page B

life back together. She wasn’t sure she could anyway—too much had happened that couldn’t be reversed—but she had to try.
    “Too dangerous to afford.”
    Why? He hadn’t been referring to money at all, had he? He’d been a detective somewhere up north, he said. And he’d retired—quit—at thirty-four or thirty-five. Old enough, he’d said. But there’d been something else, something he wasn’t talking about.
    Chris Talon was hiding out. Of course he was; that was why he gave an impression that he needed a solid barrier between himself and any intruder-even a harmless one, like one crippled and not very impressive woman. Used up. Worn-out. Or whatever he’d said to discourage her. It all amounted to his having something to hide—just like she did.
    Maybe she didn’t want help from someone with baggage. But maybe that was just what she did want—a man who, no matter how hard he protested, had his own reasons for needing to find new focus.
    Sonnie checked her uneven stride and looked back. Shadows punctuated garish light. She’d known Roy and Bo only a short time, but she trusted them. Roy wouldn’t suggest his brother could help her if he’d thought it was a bad idea.
    This was what being absolutely alone felt like. And the feeling should be an old friend by now.
    She continued on to Truman Avenue. The street was a hodgepodge of nineteenth-century wedding-cake mansions—most of them converted into boardinghouses—and tiny, three-room clapboard houses that had once belonged to cigar makers.
    The house Sonnie’s father bought for her when she’d convinced him she intended to marry Frank Giacano had two stories. In front, a balcony ran the length of the second story. On the ground floor a veranda wrapped around the entire house. A pretty place with old-island charm. Bob Keith hadn’t understood his daughter’s choice in husbands, or Frank’s complete lack of interest in the house, other than wanting his name on the title. But Sonnie’s dad had gone along anyway and presented her with the deed. Frank’s name had not been on that deed.
    Sonnie’s sister Billy had brought home Frank and his brother Romano. Billy had shown great promise as a tennis player in the junior leagues. And she might have gone far as an adult if she’d been able to control some of her habits. As it was she’d hung on for several years, occasionally qualifying, but always going down to an early round defeat. She met the Giacanos on the circuit. The family liked Frank’s brother, Romano, who had originally dated Sonnie. They did not like Frank.
    Sonnie slipped rapidly past the low white stucco wall in front of the grounds and turned in at the driveway. She kept the iron gates open. When she’d flown down from Denver, home of Keith Beers, she’d rented the Camry, but she rarely drove anywhere.
    Everything was dark. This was the season of the year—the low season for tourists because the heat kept them home—when the locals ventured forth again, but they’d gone to ground to wait out the storm. Between July and November, tropical storms were a way of life, and hurricane was a word on everyone’s mind. This storm was predicted to blow itself out by morning.
    Despite the heat in the wind and rain, Sonnie shivered. She rubbed her arms and glanced at the house. It seemed unbelievable that she and Frank  had lived there as man and wife…when he wasn’t on tour. He’d spent most of their married life on tour, and he hadn’t liked her tο travel with him. He said she was a distraction.
    The key to the front door was in the pocket of her cotton wraparound skirt.
    The fronds of a fan palm swayed sideways to the ground before her, and the branches of a giant poinciana tree rustled. In the morning, petals from the red poinciana blossoms would carpet the ground.
    Sonnie stood still beside the fan palm.
    Her skin prickled.
    She narrowed her eyes to look upward, toward the small, rightmost second-story window. She’d caught sight