Carolina Isle Read online

  In spite of her fear, Sara could feel herself relaxing. “How many of your hundreds did you leave them?” she murmured.

  “What hundreds?”

  Sara was too tired to argue. “The ones in your shoes. Each pair you own has a hundred-dollar bill folded under the insole. Two shoes, two one hundreds.”

  “Both of them,” R.J. said sleepily. “Do you mind?”

  “No. They need them.”

  “They have each other. I’ll bet you fifty grand that by Monday your little cousin will no longer be a virgin.”

  “You touch her and—”

  “Keep your knickers on. Mr. President is going to do it, not me.”

  “How did you know about him, about his … wanting …” She was more asleep than awake.

  “To be president? You told me. You’re no good at keeping secrets.”

  “Secrets about the man I love,” Sara whispered, then fell asleep.

  R.J. lay awake for a few minutes, looking at the stars over his head. There was a hole in the porch roof. Yeah, he thought, Charley better get here soon before the old houses rot into a pile. He glanced at Sara, looking at her profile in the dim light. I know who you love, but you don’t know, he whispered. Smiling, he went to sleep.

  In the bushes, their every movement was watched.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I HEAR FISHING BOATS,” R.J. SAID, HIS face close to hers. “I want you on one of them. I want you off this island.”

  Sara opened an eye enough to see that it wasn’t quite daylight, which meant that they’d had maybe two hours’ sleep.

  She was tired, hungry, and dirty—but she still knew a trick when she heard one. R.J. was trying to get rid of her. “And let you have all the glory of solving the mystery?” She hadn’t quite opened her eyes, but she heard him chuckle as he stood up.

  “Today I’ll talk to some of the fishermen and make arrangements for the lot of you to return to the mainland. Are you going to lie there all day?”

  “Maybe,” she said, stretching, her eyes still closed. It was cool and pleasant in the early morning on the porch and she didn’t want to face reality.

  “Sara,” R.J. said in a tone she’d never heard before, “if you don’t get up, I’m going to join you on that couch. Think we’ll put on a show for the neighbors?”

  She refused to let him bully her. “Naw,” she said lazily, “they only look out the windows to see dead dogs.”

  When she heard him chuckle again, she opened her eyes. He was looking down at her in the way she’d seen him look at several women, but she didn’t react as they did. She knew what happened to women who fell for that come-tome look. Sighing, she sat up and looked out at King’s Isle. There was no one in sight, just a lot of empty-looking old houses.

  As she remembered Fenny Nezbit’s dead body and all that the four of them had done to conceal it, Sara had to fight down the fear that rose in her throat. She ran her hand through her slightly greasy hair, and her tongue over teeth that felt as though they had green stuff growing on them. “Does prison have a bathroom?” she asked. “I need a bath, some deodorant, and clean clothes.”

  R.J. didn’t seem to have heard her as he looked out at what they could see of the town. For all their ordeal, he didn’t seem to have changed much. How was it that men could sleep in their clothes and wake up with them unwrinkled? And why did the stubble on his cheeks only make him look more rugged? If he stepped onto a fishing boat right now, he’d look like one of them.

  Reluctantly, she got up. Minutes later, she was following him along the same road they’d been down the night before. Each step took them farther away from Phyllis Vancurren’s house, farther away from Ariel and David. “Think they’ll be all right?” Sara asked.

  “I think they’ll be ecstatic. They have enough money to live on for a few days, so they can do what people like them are so good at doing: nothing.”

  “You don’t like them much, do you?”

  “Who was it who came up with that idiot scheme of trying to make me think the two of you were each other?”

  “It wasn’t about you,” Sara said, but then thought better of it. As far as she could piece together, Ariel had seen R.J. at a party in New York, thought she was in love with him, and so had asked Sara to change places with her. And because Ariel thought she needed Sara with her, she’d arranged for the four of them to go to King’s Isle together.

  “If it wasn’t about me, then who was it about?” R.J. persisted. “You and the prez? You wanted to be part of his snobby little set so much that you tried to make a fool of me?”

  Sara was too tired to put up with his accusations—and she wasn’t about to try to defend herself. “Did you forget to take your arthritis medicine this morning, old man? Is that why you’re so cranky?”

  “No,” he said slowly. “I’m trying to be unpleasant enough that you’ll go back to your friends.”

  “Won’t work,” she said, giving a huge yawn. “I’m used to your bad temper. Besides, who said they can go back? If anyone is going to get us out of this mess it’s you, so I’ll stick with the winner.”

  “I’d think that was a compliment, but that would mean the world is ending, so I know it can’t be.”

  “Where are you taking us?”

  “To breakfast. That sound good?”

  “And how do you plan to pay for it? Washing dishes?”

  R.J. held up a folded hundred-dollar bill.

  “Does that mean you gave Ariel and David only one bill?”

  “Nope,” he said. He was walking so fast she was having trouble keeping up with him.

  “You lied to me, didn’t you?”

  “Nope.”

  “When we get out of this I’m going to quit working for you.”

  Turning back, R.J. smiled. “Belt.”

  “What?”

  “You think you know all about me because you snooped in my closet and found out that I keep emergency money inside my shoes. But you didn’t find out that all my belts are custom made and they have money in them too.”

  “I have never snooped in your closet! If you remember, you told me—” She cut herself off. What did it matter now? “How much do you have?”

  “Humph!” R.J. said as an answer. “There’s the restaurant for the fishermen. It opened at four A.M. Ready?”

  Sara was still thinking about how to defend herself from his accusation of snooping in his closet when she saw the fishermen leaving the open restaurant. She then realized that maybe they could leave the island after all. If R.J. had a few hundred, maybe it would be enough of a down payment for an escape.

  “You can go,” R.J. said softly, looking at her. “I’m sure I can work out a deal.”

  The vision of Fenny Nezbit dead in the bathtub sat down in front of her eyes. If she left the island, she could get help. She could return with a whole herd of lawyers. She could … she glanced up at R.J. If she left, she’d be leaving him here alone at the mercy of the police. “I think you should send Ariel and David,” she said. And if they left the island, what would the police do to her and R.J.?

  “I’ve thought better of the whole idea. We’re being watched and I think we’re expected to try to leave on a fishing boat, and if we did try, they’d put all of us in jail. Minutes later, they’d find the body and we’d never get out of here alive. I think it’s better for us to stay in sight, so we can keep our freedom, such as it is. Everything we do that we shouldn’t do needs to be done in absolute secrecy.”

  “I agree,” Sara said, relieved that she wasn’t going to have to choose between staying and leaving.

  He held the door to the restaurant open to her and as they entered, silence fell over the customers. There were eight Formica-clad tables, all but one full of men wearing heavy trousers and boots, ready to go out on their boats. Sara looked at the clock. It wasn’t 5:00 A.M. yet. She gave as much of a smile as she could manage to the men in the restaurant and to the waitress behind the counter. No one smiled back. The men looked d