The Silver Fox and the Red-Hot Dove Read Online Free Page B

withoutrevealing it? She pointed to her-throat and shook her head.
    “Can’t talk? Won’t talk? Here.” Beckel had pulled a grimy notepad from a pocket of her work shirt and thrust it into Elena’s hands. “Can you write?” Elena gave her a fervent nod and quickly put down, I
am honest person. Please forgive intrusion. I can hear but cannot talk. Am running away from home
.
    A home half a world away, but that was beside the point.
    “Where’s home?”
    Elena searched her knowledge of America for a safe lie.
Chevrolet
.
    “A car?”
    Elena groaned at her error.
A town in the next state
, she wrote.
    “What’s your name?”
    She thought furiously, trying to come up with something that sounded very American.
Madonna Sinatra
.
    “Where’re you headed?”
    Elena shrugged. She had no idea.
    “Need a job? If you can hoe weeds, pick vegetables, and clean house, you can stay with me. I live on an island. You can’t crave company, and work for me, I warn ya. It’s a lonely place. You’ll get about ten dollars a week, plus room and board. You want the job or not?”
    Maybe this woman was a little crazy, but she didn’t seem devious. At least she wasn’t going to turn Elena over to the police. All Elena had to do was act like an American and keep out of sight on Beckel Nilly’s island, then.
    “Ain’t got all day,” Beckel Nilly said. “You want the job or not?”
    She would hide with this odd woman and learn how to act like an American while she decided what to do next. She hoped that T. S. Audubon wouldn’t look for her. She suspected he would. She scribbled out an answer.
Okay
.
    *   *   *
    “I’m going in on the south side, where the woods are. Give me that map report again.” Audubon lounged in the captain’s chair, guiding the boat with one hand and holding the radio mike with the other. Artemis Island loomed ahead, looking like any other coastal island, a green-blue mound of forest rimmed with beach. One of his helicopters passed over it lazily like a harmless, oversized bee.
    “Audubon? The house is about a half mile from the south beach. There’s a trail through the woods. And—wait! I see her. She’s walking in from the field. I think I’ve spooked her. She keeps looking up.”
    “Leave.
Now
. I’ll call you as soon as I get back to the boat with her.”
    “Okay, boss. Out.”
    Audubon put the mike aside and straightened in the chair. His heart was pounding with excitement. He tossed a dirty blue baseball cap, with its fish hook decorations, aside, then smiled at his torn sneakers, grimy brown trousers, and sweat-stained shirt. Acting the part of a derelict fisherman had been the perfect way to win Beckel Nilly’s friendship. When he’d helped her load her truck on the mainland docks, she’d told him all about her new worker.
    Audubon threw his head back and laughed. He gave “Madonna Sinatra” points for creativity. His laughter fading, he thought she also deserved points for courage and resourcefulness.
    Not that any of those qualities would help her to elude him. Since Beckel Nilly was on her way to Richmond with a load of vegetables, Ms. Petrovic-Sinatra, alone and unsuspecting on the island coming up close on his starboard, was ripe for picking.
    Elena paced the creaking wooden floor of Beckel Nilly’s living room, her bare feet making worried little squeaks. She took deep breaths of the breeze that curled through every corner of the clapboardhouse. She wrung the sides of her shapeless, sleeveless dress of brightly flowered cotton. It was made from a seed sack, and Beckel Nilly had given it to her, saying it had become too small for her to wear ten years ago.
    When the helicopter flew over her in the vegetable field, Elena had wanted to duck inside the dress and hide. She was terrified that someone had found her. Now, going to one corner of the ramshackle room, she picked up a deadly little harpoon gun and studied it anxiously. The razor-sharp arrow protruding from the end