Hurricane Bay by Heather Graham Page A

was right behind her, Andy Latham still standing at his door. Dane waited until she had gotten in the driver’s seat, closed her door and started the engine.
    Then he walked to his own car, a Jeep with oversize tires. Necessary, she knew, for living out on Hurricane Bay. The road to the little island was private, not state or county. Dane’s grandfather had built it; his father had improved it. Now Dane kept it up. It still wasn’t much of a road. During a heavy rain season or after a storm, it was often underwater, sometimes so deep that the only way on or off the island was by boat.
    Dane started up his car but didn’t start moving until she did. She drove away with Dane just a short distance behind her.
    In the rearview mirror, she could see that Latham was still standing in his doorway. Watching.
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    Andy Latham muttered as he watched the cars go. Then he walked back into his house, cursing his stepdaughter and her friends. In the kitchen, he reached into the refrigerator for another beer. There was a big fat palmetto bug, a winged cockroach, sitting right next to his beer, waving his antennae.
    He cursed the cockroach and reached for the can, then splatted it down on the roach before the filthy creature had a chance to move.
    He thought about cleaning the carcass out of the refrigerator, but it seemed like too much of a project for the moment. He hadn’t really wanted another beer; he’d wanted to get going. He liked nightlife. No, he loved nightlife. Nightlife took him away from his hell of an existence and made him feel like a man. He’d been ready to go when Sheila’s little buddy had shown up. Kelsey.
    Drinking his beer, he decided to make a pit stop. In the mirror over the sink, he surveyed his features. Good. He was still looking pretty good. He really wasn’t old at all; those kids just didn’t realize it, because he had made the mistake of marrying an older woman.
    Well, she’d had some money. A virtue. She’d had her faults, as well. A hell of a lot of them. Who would have thought that she considered herself a match for any man?
    And worse, who would have thought she’d leave the money tied up in a trust that could only be accessed little by little, and then only by him and Sheila at the same time.
    He picked up the comb sitting on the sink and ran it through his hair. The face that greeted him in the mirror pleased him. He had good features and fine eyes. His skin was tanned and creased, but women seemed to like the weathered look. He was built just fine. Not muscle-bound, but tight as piano wire. Sleek, hard-toned. He was in good physical shape. The whole package was still just fine.
    Funny. Once upon a time he’d had a thing for older women.
    Now he liked them younger.
    Yep, that Kelsey was looking darned good. Too bad he’d been saddled with Sheila. The girl had poisoned everyone against him. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Sheila, he might not have known Kelsey at all as a kid. Who knows? She might have let him buy her a drink at a bar.
    She might have let him do more.
    He tensed, remembering the way she had looked around the house. As if he were lower than a pig.
    Lower than the cockroach he had crushed in the refrigerator.
    He shrugged. Imagine that. The damned thing had been in the refrigerator. Maybe that was why it had been so easy to kill. Maybe it had already been cold, shaking in its little cockroach boots, frozen right to the spot.
    He looked around the bathroom.
    Hell, maybe he should get a maid.
    Of course, it would have to be someone who wasn’t afraid of cockroaches.
    He exited the bathroom, humming to himself. He started to leave the house, then paused and looked around, damning Sheila once again, thinking of the way Kelsey Cunningham had looked around his house. Fuck them both. Fuck them all. Everyone knew that Sheila took off whenever the hell she felt like it. Everyone but Kelsey, coming back here as if she were something