The Darkness Gathers by Lisa Unger Page A

carefully orchestrated. Paying their bill had been a kind of greeting. Following them had been a message. And entering their room but not actually removing anything had been a warning. We know you’re here, we know why, and we don’t like it. But who “they” were and how “they” could have known that Lydia and Jeffrey were in Miami and staying at the Delano remained a mystery. Jeffrey’s office knew. And Detective Ignacio knew.
    “If the police wanted to harass us, they would have been less subtle. Because they can be,” said Jeffrey. “They would have shown up here, made a scene about the weapons, seized the tape. There wouldn’t have been any guesswork.”
    “Well, that means then that either the detective’s phone is not secure or mine isn’t.”
    “Right. But who was listening, and why?”
    “They were pretty showy about it. Trying to scare us off?”
    “Then they clearly don’t know you very well.”
    “Because now I’m hotter than ever to find out what’s going on.”
    “You’re hotter than ever. That’s for sure,” he said, drawing her down onto the bed.
    They hadn’t bothered to call the police, knowing that there was nothing they could have or would have done anyway. Jeffrey had locked the door and placed the chair in front of it, checked the room for bugs. It would require some Mission Impossible– style moves for someone to get onto the balcony. Glocks were loaded on the bedside tables. They felt safe enough for the night.
    He traced her cheekbones with his finger and looked into her storm-cloud gray eyes, moved a lock of her blue-black hair off her face. She smiled into his eyes, and he felt it move him inside. When it was like this with them, when they were close, the future didn’t matter to him anymore. Those moments were so powerful, so right, everything else seemed distant and unimportant.
    Her body was lean and strong beneath him; he could feel her tautly muscled thighs entwining with his. He took in the scent of her skin, feeling her small, warm hands lightly take hold of his back. Just being close to her in this way felt like making love, with no space between them, their softest breaths as loud as the ocean.

chapter eight
     
    H e was sweating, though the air-conditioning was blowing as cold as it got in his black Porsche Boxster. At nearly 1:00 A.M. , Alligator Alley was as dark and quiet as a grave. He opened her up. The car was so hot, so fast, it was a shame that it had to be driven even close to the speed limit. He felt calmer as he watched the speedometer climb toward one hundred miles per hour, the dials glowing neon blue and red in the darkness. He gripped the leather steering wheel with one hand, his other hand resting on the gearshift as if it were the knee of his lover. He was about to push it even further, but he lost his nerve, slowing to eighty-five miles an hour.
    “Slow the fuck down, Sasa,” growled Boris in his heavily accented English. “If we get pulled over …”
    “If we get pulled over? What? What, Boris? What have we got?”
    Boris glared at him for a minute and then looked away, staring out the window into the darkness, turning the back of his shaved head to Sasa. Sasa took more crap from Boris than from anyone. Nobody else would dare to talk to him the way Boris did. Because Boris was older, because he was Sasa’s father’s cousin, because Boris was generally right, Sasa let him speak his mind. But even Boris knew the line, and he was fucking close. Especially tonight, when Sasa was tense and tired, going someplace he didn’t want to go.
    He couldn’t wait to get out of the Everglades and be back in South Beach. All that quiet, all that dark, all the bodies floating gray and bloated out there that no one would ever find—it made him edgy. He thought of the thousand pairs of dead eyes staring sightless, the wrinkled, rotting skin, the blood spilling into swamp water. He turned the radio on but picked up only static. He was glad he had