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“You change your mind?” Gator asked from behind her.
She turned to see that he’d put her suitcases on the dock and was sitting in his boat, obviously anxious to leave. Apparently this was as far as he went with her suitcases and box. So much for chivalry.
She turned to look at the villa again. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?”
He grunted.
She’d rented the apartment sight unseen through a phone number she’d called. Her rent had been paid via mail. So she wasn’t surprised there was no one to meet her. She’d been told that the caretaker lived in the boathouse near the pier but that he might not be around. If there was an emergency or any problems, he was the man to see. Her rent money would be picked up each month when a supply boat came. She was told to talk to a man named Bull to order what she needed since there was no phone on the island. No electricity other than a generator. And cell phones didn’t work from the island.
She’d wanted to disappear to someplace isolated—well, she had.
“Last chance,” Gator said.
She shook her head.
He shrugged and glanced toward the Gulf of Mexico where the sun had sunk into the sea. “Then I’ll shove off.” He looked past her toward the house and seemed hesitant to leave her here—just as he’d been to bring her to the island in the first place. He’d tried to talk her out of it, asking if she knew anything about Cape Diablo.
“Why would you want to go out there?” he’d asked, pinning her with narrowed brown eyes. “Only people who are running from something or searching for it go out there. Few find what they’re looking for. Usually just the opposite. Most wish they hadn’t looked. Why do you think it is called Cape Diablo?”
“What are you telling me? That the island is haunted?” Her graphic artist friend had told her the island had an interesting history but hadn’t elaborated.
“More like cursed.”
Willa had anxiously looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see Landry.
“Running from something, huh?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m trying to get away from my ex-boyfriend, if you must know.” She’d touched the bruise on her cheek that she’d gotten when the safe house the cops had put her in had been attacked.
Gator had given her a slow knowing nod, reached for the cash she’d offered him and hadn’t tried to talk her out of it.
But clearly he hadn’t wanted to bring her out here. Nor did he seem to want to leave her here. She thought about asking him why as he paused, then started the outboard.
“Send word by a fisherman or anyone heading to the mainland and I’ll come get you,” he said, his gaze softening. “Even if it’s in the middle of the night.”
Why would she want to leave in the middle of the night? His look said it wouldn’t be long before she couldn’t wait to get out off the island.
He touched the brim of his cap and turned the bow back the way they’d come. At least she thought it was the way they’d come.
She picked up the suitcases from the pier and started toward the villa, figuring she would come back for the box with her paints and art supplies. She couldn’t help but wonder what Gator would have said if he knew the truth.
That she was the only witness to the cold-blooded murder of a police officer named Zeke Hartung.
Make that missing witness.
The story, complete with sensational headlines, had been splashed across every South Florida paper followed quickly she didn’t doubt by the attack at the safe house and the death of two more officers.
As she looked up at the villa, she wondered if there was any place safe enough or far away from civilization to elude Landry Jones. If it wasn’t Cape Diablo, then no place existed.
The sound of the boat’s motor died off into the distance. She looked back once but the boat had already disappeared from sight. All she could see were mangrove islands on one horizon and the endless Gulf of Mexico on the other.
She couldn’t remember ever feeling so isolated, so alone—not even in the middle of South Dakota, miles from the nearest town. Surely all the people looking for her would have a hard time finding her. But she didn’t delude herself. She wouldn’t be safe until Landry Jones was behind bars.
Willa stopped in front of the villa. She could hear the waves lapping at the dock and the wind whispering in the palms, but also the faint sound of music.
She looked up again to see an elderly woman through the sheer curtains. The woman wore a white gown and appeared to be waltzing to the music with an invisible partner.
“Hello.”
