Red Tide (27 page)

We made that good time last as long as we could. All too soon we would have to go back, back to the everyday pain and hassle of the real world. I didn’t want to. Neither did Anna. Maybe we were afraid that what we had worked so hard to find with each other, what we had finally found only by being here, away from everything but each other—maybe that couldn’t live anywhere else. It was so new, special, delicate—maybe it couldn’t live in a place like Key West.

So we stayed there, anchored in the lee of our little island. We swam, snorkeled, and fished. We built bonfires on the beach until we ran out of driftwood, and then we just sat under the stars and held hands like a couple of kids. We stayed, and we were down to a box of crackers and a quart of grapefruit juice when we finally pulled up the anchor and headed south to Key West. We would have stayed longer if we could. You don’t find perfection very often. You don’t let go of it if you have a choice. But there never is a choice. Something disguised as need always pries it out of your fingers, and tells you it’s time, you had your piece of wonderful, and anyway, nothing lasts forever. Especially perfection.

I just hoped we were taking some of it back with us. I hoped it would be enough. Here at the end of that hot summer of death and nightmares, I hoped Anna and I had found just enough in our time together, and that it would turn into something we could hold onto together as much as we shared the bad dreams.

When we came in to Key West at last, even the crackers were gone and the only thing left of the grapefruit juice was the awful bitter aftertaste. It didn’t matter. We could have dropped the sails and motored home a lot quicker. We didn’t. We made it last. We kept the sail up until we had the dock in sight, and then I motored on in at dead slow. Neither one of us wanted this trip to end. We both knew that coming back to Key West would change things. Would it kill what we had? There was no way to know, except by stepping onto the dock and finding out what happened next. A big part of me didn’t want to risk that, a nasty, dark-edged little voice that came at me from the shadows, that deep and powerful place where the drums still played and the snake writhed and reached for me with smiling coils.

I told myself it was only fear, and I’d lived with that same fear since Nicky woke me up in the broom closet on the 
Petit Fleur
. But the closer I got to the dock, the stronger it became, and this time, it was based on something real.

What had we really found together, Anna and me? Was it real? Or just something that had happened because we were on a boat all alone and we both needed something to hold onto until the nightmares rolled away? I didn’t know. I only knew that whatever it was, I didn’t want to lose it.

I looked at Anna. There was a slight frown on her face, a face now nearly as tanned as mine. I knew the feel of that face—its texture, its taste, and I wanted to keep knowing it for a good long time. I wanted to see it when I went to sleep at night, and when I woke up in the morning, and as often as possible in between.

Anna must have felt me staring. She turned her head, and for just a second there was nothing in the world but the endless deep blue of her eyes. And then her small frown fell away, replaced by a smile, and not just any smile. It was the smile she wore after lovemaking, the smile that had been on her face each night as the motion of the waves rocked us to sleep, still holding onto each other. It was a smile that stopped time and nearly made me turn the boat back around and head for that little island again. I was willing to live on sand and salt water if I could keep looking at that smile.

Anna put her hand on top of mine, where it rested on the sailboat’s tiller, and she gave it a little squeeze.

I looked away from her, back to the dock, now only twenty-five feet away. I still didn’t know what we had or how long it would last, but I knew we were both in it, together, until we found out. That was enough for now. Nothing is ever guaranteed in this life except that sooner or later it ends. Until then, you have to live like it matters, and hold on as tight as you can to the people that make it seem like it does. No guarantees. In the end, you can only try, and if you can manage it, try together, with somebody that matters. Maybe it works, and maybe it doesn’t, but you try. Anna and I were going to try. It might last fifty years and it might be over by lunch tomorrow. But we were through the hard part, and the time for those bad dreams was over, too. They might come back now and then, but we would deal with that when it happened.

I thought about that word: we. It had a brand new feeling to it, and a kind of strength that made me think it just might be enough to see us through. I might turn out to be wrong about that. I didn’t think so.

I took Anna’s hand and held it as I brought us in to the dock. Only time would tell. But for now, I didn’t mind the wait.

Before there was Dexter, there was Billy Knight.

New York Times
bestselling author Jeff Lindsay mastered suspense with his wildly addictive
Dexter
series. Before that, however, there was former cop and current burnout Billy Knight. When a hostage situation turns deadly, Billy loses everything—his wife, his daughter, and his career. Devastated, he heads to Key West to put down his gun and pick up a rod and reel as a fishing boat captain. But former co-worker Roscoe McAuley isn't ready to let Billy rest.

When Roscoe tells Billy that someone murdered his son, Billy sends him away. When Roscoe himself turns up dead a few weeks later, however, Billy can't keep from getting sucked back into Los Angeles, and the streets that took so much from him.

Billy's investigations into the death of a former cop, and his son, will take him up to the highest echelons of the LAPD, finding corruption at every level. It puts him on a collision course with the law, with his past, with his former fellow officers, and with the dark aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement. Jeff Lindsay's considerable storytelling gifts are on full display, drawing the reader in with a mesmerizing style and a case with more dangerous blind curves than Mulholland Drive.

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