felt a moment’s unease, hoping that Stuckey wasn’t already calling him, warning him that Chloe was getting herself too involved with the Colleen Rodriguez disappearance. No, Stuckey wasn’t a tattletale. And even while he was telling her to keep her nose out of things, she knew he also realized that she was in a perfect position to obtain information the police might never discover themselves. Like so many Miami-Dade officers, he had been touched by the desperation of Colleen’s family, and he had been on a task force assigned to search the area from Florida City to the Broward County line, but all the cops had been reassigned after six weeks. The case wasn’t closed, but it wasn’t anyone’s priority, either.
Her phone rang again, and as she turned to answer it, she let out a little cry of surprise.
And fear.
Someone was there, watching her. A woman, transparent and ethereal.
Oh, God, no! Not again.
She’d fought so hard for her sanity. She’d thought she was finally done seeing people crying out to her for help—dead people—done with longing to help them when she couldn’t. After the massacre, she had seen images, dreams, ghosts, ectoplasm—whatever. She had seen them in hospitals; she had seen them on the streets. Strangers who had stared at her beseechingly and, even more terrifyingly, her own dead friends. She’d had therapy, lots and lots of therapy. But now she was regressing, seeing things again, no doubt because her world was changing. No, she told herself. She was stronger than that. She did not see things! Or if she did, then if she was strong, then they would fade away.
Her throat constricted, her muscles tensed, and then she blinked and the image was gone. She laughed nervously at herself; she must have seen the drapes reflected in the mirror.
She had stopped seeing ghosts long ago.
They were nothing but remnants of the fear and trauma.
A decade had passed, and she was fine. She was just imagining things because of Colleen.
She still felt shaken.
She left the window and went to stand over the phone, waiting for the answering machine to pick up. When she heard Victoria’s voice, she grabbed the receiver.
“Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Are you ready?”
“Am I ready for what?”
“Third Sunday of the month. Meeting of the Fighting Pelicans.”
“Oh. Yeah, of course. I’d forgotten all about it. You didn’t mention a word last night,” Chloe told her.
“Last night. Well, last night was just weird,” Victoria said.
“I’ll say.”
“I’ll be by for you in twenty,” Victoria said.
“All right.” Chloe hung up and headed straight for the shower.
They had been meeting Brad and Jared at an old breakfast place out on the Rickenbacker Causeway since forever, when they had all attended a magnet high school for the arts out on Key Biscayne. They called themselves the Fighting Pelicans because even though their school had no sports teams, it had been overrun by pelicans, since it sat right on the water.
Chloe showered and threw on a long casual halter dress, then headed down the stairs. She keyed in the code to open the gate in the fence that surrounded the property, and waited on the sidewalk for Victoria. She thought back to the ghost she’d thought she’d seen and gave herself a shake to banish the memory.
She saw Victoria’s little Subaru sweep into the cul-de-sac and hurried out to meet her. As she slid into the front seat, she asked, “Are you sure Brad and Jared are showing up today? I’m not sure I’m ready to be awake, and they were still at the party, last night, when I left.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Victoria asked her. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”
It was just an expression, Chloe told herself. And here, in the bright light of the sun, sitting next to Victoria, the memory seemed absolutely ridiculous.
“I’m fine. So what do you think? Are they going to make it?”
Victoria shrugged. “They were talking to Myra when I left, but it looked like they were getting ready to leave, so I imagine they’ll drag themselves out of bed.”
“I like Myra,” Chloe said. “When you think about her position, it’s pretty amazing. She’s not cold or snobby or any of that.”
“Yeah, but she can be hard as nails, too. You should see her when she’s negotiating,” Victoria said. “Watch out, that’s all I can say.”
“Well, I know she was questioned intensely when Colleen Rodriguez disappeared, and the cops were impressed with her.”
Victoria glanced over at her. “And you know this because …?”
“Because my uncle’s office was involved.”
“But Colleen disappeared in the Keys and he’s Dade County.”
“Doesn’t matter. Both counties were involved in the investigation, not to mention that cops talk. My uncle doesn’t believe for an instant that she just took off.”
Victoria flashed Chloe a glance as she drove. “You’re forgetting that I was on that shoot, too.”
“I know you were.”
Victoria shook her head. “There was nothing, just nothing, to suggest that anyone did anything to her. I do know she’d sort of been seeing one of the bar managers down there, a really nice guy. He’s half American, half Bahamian, and he’s so gorgeous he should be modeling himself, but he wants to go into hotel management. He wasn’t with her that night, though. And even though they seemed to really like each other, they hadn’t been together all that long. Who knows? Maybe she did meet someone else. Or maybe—just maybe—she disappeared on purpose. You know, some kind of a publicity stunt.”
“I doubt it. From what I know about Colleen, neither scenario sounds like her.”
They had reached the restaurant by then, so they stopped talking and turned the car over to the valet. Brad came walking down the steps just as they started up them. “I was afraid you two had forgotten about breakfast. I just sent you a text message, Vick.”
“I was driving, and I don’t text and drive,” Victoria said.
“Sorry,” Brad said. “Anyway, come in. Jared is holding down the table.”
They walked through the crowded restaurant and found Jared at a table next to the plate-glass window that overlooked the bay—one of the best in the place. It wasn’t that they were such big spenders, just that they showed up regularly, in season and out, and had been doing so for years.
“Hey there,” Jared said, standing and giving them each a kiss on the cheek as they were seated.
“You’re looking good,” Victoria told him.
He blushed, and Chloe wondered if Victoria had any notion that Jared was in love with her, that he had been forever. She didn’t understand why he tried so hard to hide his feelings. In the beginning, she was certain, he hadn’t let on because he was convinced, as they all were in those days, that they were damaged goods, too scarred psychologically to form relationships based on anything other than shared trauma. They had lived through a nightmare, and the aftermath had just been a nightmare of a different sort. They had been hounded by the media, and whenever they met people, whether at school or work, or even casually at parties, they were items of curiosity. Everyone wanted to know the gory details, details the four of them were trying hard to forget.
At least the killers had been found.
Dead.
The sketch Chloe had done of one of them—an image burned into her memory when she and the killer had stared each other in the eye—had