Pain blinked in and out of the woman’s expression. “Check with her other friends. Laurie doesn’t know.” She moved back quickly and slammed the door shut, the lock clicking into place.

  Michael squeezed Kyra’s hand, transmitting his tension, before releasing his hold. “She’s never been very friendly but this is…” His words grounded to a halt.

  “It doesn’t look like we’ll get anywhere. Maybe Gabe can.”

  He let the screen bang closed. His glare drilled into the wire mesh.

  Kyra descended the porch stairs. “Is she that way with everyone?”

  Michael pivoted and accompanied her toward the car. “Amy assured me after my first run-in with the woman she was that way with all men and not to take it personally. It seems her husband left her a few years back. Didn’t come home from work but called her the next day to tell her it was over.”

  What was it with married couples? First her mother walked out on her dad when she was ten. Her father had been devastated. She had been too, but she’d spent the next year consoling her dad. He was never the same after her mother left. “Something like that happened to my older sister who lives in Boston now. Except thankfully she didn’t have any children to worry about.” And that was why she wouldn’t marry. She had seen too many broken marriages to want one for herself. Her job was her life and that was the way she wanted it.

  After Michael settled in the front seat and started his car, he pulled away from the curb. “Why didn’t you ever marry?”

  “Who said I didn’t?”

  “I assumed since Ginny never said anything about it to me that you hadn’t.”

  “Do you two make it a habit of talking about me a lot?” The fact Ginny and Michael might have made Kyra feel strange. When his attention zeroed in on her face, she grinned. “Don’t you know it’s not good to gossip?”

  A smile touched his blue eyes, sparkling them. “We never gossiped about you. I inquired about how you were doing from time to time. That’s all.”

  She wouldn’t tell him that she’d asked about him once. After his older sister kidded her about robbing the cradle, she’d never asked again. Ginny was right. There was five years’ difference between them. Kyra fastened her gaze on his strong jawline, wanting to know about this man. Did he feel like she did about marriage? Was his job his whole life? “I didn’t want to marry. Being a cop would have been hard on a marriage. How about you? Did you ever marry?”

  For a few seconds a shadow flittered in and out of his eyes. “You mean Ginny never told you about me? I’m crushed.”

  Didn’t Ginny mention that Michael was getting serious with a woman in Chicago, even thinking about marriage? What had happened? Her curiosity spiked. Did he marry the lady? Were they divorced?

  He turned onto Pelican Lane, and all evidence of a smile vanished as he stared at the house at the end of the road.

  She noticed Gabe’s police cruiser was still at the Pattersons’. She’d thought he would have left by now. “You okay?”

  “What am I supposed to do? Go back to the house and twiddle my thumbs?”

  “Do people do that anymore?”

  “Okay. Wear a path in my floor pacing.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  He parked in his driveway. “Go looking for Amy. If the police are covering the town, then I’d like to go into the swamp. I know a couple of places where Amy has mentioned she’s gone. I’d like to check those out. I’ll have enough time before dark.”

  “No, we’ll have enough time. I’m coming with you.”

  “Are you sure? Aren’t you the lady who doesn’t like swamps?”

  “Swamps are fine. It’s the snakes that inhabit them that I don’t like.”

  “Alligators are all right, then?”

  “Sure. They’re big, and I can see them coming.”

  “Not always. They can hide under the water and surprise their prey.”

  “Are you trying to scare me away?”

  “No, but I don’t want to be responsible for anything happening to you.”

  Weariness infused each of his words and something else that Kyra couldn’t quite grasp. Possibly regret? Guilt? As a police officer she’d had to deal with both those emotions quite a bit. “Oh, nothing’s going to. I’m very capable of taking care of myself. I’m taking my gun.”

  “You carry a gun all the time?”

  “When I think it’s necessary, and it might be necessary in this case.” She began to stroll toward her house. “I’ll just be a sec.”

  Kyra ran up the stairs to the front porch and let herself into the house. Rock-and-roll music blasted from the speakers in the great room, pulsating the air. Kyra smelled the faint odor of something burning. Aunt Ellen was cooking again. She did that when she was upset. With all the patrol cars on the street today, she couldn’t blame her aunt for being agitated.

  She hurried and washed her feet then grabbed a clean pair of shoes and popped into the kitchen to tell her aunt where she was going.

  “Oh, dear, I’ve burned the cookies again. I was so looking forward to them.” Her aunt donned her hot-pink mittens to take the baking sheet out of the oven. When she opened the door on the stove, dark gray smoke poured into the room.

  “Aunt Ellen,” Kyra called out over the noise of the music. “I’m going with Michael Hunt into the swamp.” Her gaze glued to the charred pieces of cookies, she added, “Don’t wait dinner for me.”

  Aunt Ellen opened the window above the sink and turned on the vent over the stove. “He’s such a nice young man. I just hate what he’s going through right now. I was going to make a second batch for him.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to go to the trouble.”

  “Oh, no. I am.” Aunt Ellen pitched the burned cookies into the sink and ran water over them, then reached for the mixing bowl. “It’s no trouble. Keeps my mind off what’s been happening on our street. In the very house next door to us.”

  She crossed the kitchen and hugged her aunt. “Are you worried something will happen to you?”

  “No, dearie. At the last Founder’s Day shooting contest, I bested Gabe, and everyone knows he’s the best shot in the area.” She grinned. “Well, until that day.” She slipped her hand into the large pocket on her hot-pink-and-white apron and pulled out a pistol. “I’ll be all right. You go help Michael.” She patted Kyra on the arm, then twisted around and began measuring flour. “You know, Michael is single. It’s about time you got married.”

  Not in this lifetime, Kyra thought and hurried from the house. Her partner in the Dallas Police Department had struggled with his marriage for years. When his wife had asked for a divorce, he’d nearly lost his job over it because he’d started drinking heavily. She never wanted to be that emotionally connected to another person that her happiness depended on him. Her father had taught her to stand on her own two feet and protect her heart at all costs.

  As she hurried toward Michael’s house, he emerged from the front entrance. Anger shot out of his eyes. His gaze zeroed in on her and beneath the fury lurked fear.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Someone has been in Amy’s bedroom while we were gone.”

  “Amy?”

  “I don’t know.” He reentered his house and strode down the hall toward his sister’s bedroom. “The window wasn’t open like that when we left.” Michael gestured toward the one across the room. “She has a key. Why would she come through the window? It’s not like I was here and she would have to sneak in.” His eyes stinging from lack of sleep, he rubbed his hands down his face. Not knowing what to think was putting it mildly. His head pounded with each attempt to make sense out of what was happening.

  “Other than the window being open, do you see anything else out of place? Something gone?”

  He slowly made a tour of Amy’s bedroom, noting the usual disarray. When he came to the desk, he stiffened. “The laptop is gone.” Hidden behind a stack of books on wildlife, the space where her computer usually sat was empty. “You left it in here, didn’t you?”

  Kyra closed the distance between them, a frown lining her forehead. “Yes. I was going to work some more on it later, then see what Gabe wanted to do with it.”

  “Why would someone take it?”

  “Maybe there’s something on it the killer didn’t want us to see. There was a folder of photos she deleted I wanted to go through as well as another one still on her hard drive.”

  “Or maybe it was Amy and she didn’t want us to see something.” He plowed both hands through his hair. “But that doesn’t make sense. None of this does to me.”

  “As you said, she could have used her key. Why come through the window? I hadn’t had time to check all Amy’s files when Gabe called about the ID of the second dead person at the Pattersons’. I tried tracking the IP address of skullandcrossbones from one of the emails the person sent Amy, but it led me to an internet café in Naples, which could mean a dead end.”

  “So our one lead has been stolen?” He turned, closed the window and locked it, then headed for the hallway. “We need to let Gabe know about this.”

  As Michael and Kyra traversed to the last house on the road, he couldn’t shake the feeling he should have been able to prevent this somehow. If he hadn’t had to deliver the baby last night, maybe Amy wouldn’t have snuck out of the house and gotten caught up in whatever was going on. The pressure behind his eyes intensified. If anything happened to his little sister, he would never be able to forgive himself.

  Memories of Sarah intruded into his mind. How long had he been unconscious at the wreck? If he’d awakened sooner, could he have somehow saved her from dying? Why hadn’t God helped him? Michael had pleaded with Him to give him the ability to keep Sarah alive. If only he…

  He shook his head, trying to rid his thoughts of the same what-ifs he’d been going over for the past year. A doctor dealt with death—especially an emergency-room physician. He’d been contemplating resigning his position as an E.R. doctor when Ginny asked him to come back to Flamingo Cay to be Amy’s guardian until she graduated from high school. The town had been without a doctor for a while and needed another one. He’d thought returning home had been an answer to his dilemma, that it would give him the time to reevaluate his life. Now he wasn’t so sure. Now he’d added more emotional baggage on top of what he already carried.

  Kyra approached Gabe in the Pattersons’ backyard near the beach where the first victim had been found. “Someone was in Michael’s house while we went to talk with Laurie. Amy’s laptop is gone.”

  “Did you get anything off it?” Gabe chewed on a toothpick.

  Kyra told him about the journal and their visit to see Laurie. “The IP address for the message from skullandcrossbones leads to a place called Kava Net in Naples.”

  After removing the toothpick from his mouth, he snapped it in two and stuffed the pieces into his top shirt pocket. “We can check it out if we don’t find Amy today. If it’s okay with you, Michael, I’ll have Nichols check the window and desk area for fingerprints.”

  “Sure.” He unsnapped a key from his keychain and gave it to Gabe.

  “Amy’s kayak is still at the Main Street dock where she keeps it. Right next to yours, Michael. So your sister isn’t likely in the swamp,” Gabe said.

  “Kyra and I are still going to check some places in the Glades. I can’t shake the feeling when Amy has been upset with me or someone, she often went into it.”

  “Fine. I’m not gonna stop you.” Gabe shifted his attention to Kyra. “I seem to remember it wasn’t your favorite place to be.” Amusement laced his voice.

  Kyra grinned. “I seem to remember rescuing you from a wasp in your office once.”

  “Hey, they sting and I swell up like an overinflated ball. Let me know if you find anything.”

  Kyra turned to leave, paused and glanced back. “Aren’t you through with the crime scene?”

  “Something’s been nagging me. I thought another walk-through would jiggle my mind.”

  “Has it?”

  “Nope.” Gabe ambled toward his car and slipped behind the steering wheel. “But it’ll come to me, probably in the middle of the night.”

  Kyra walked beside Michael as Gabe waved and drove toward the end of the block.

  “I never bothered to ask, but do you have a boat? Please tell me you do, that we aren’t hiking into the swamp and that the boat is bigger than a canoe or kayak.”

  Michael chuckled as he opened the passenger door for Kyra. “I’ll borrow my partner’s boat. It’s an airboat, and it can cover a lot of ground.”

  “That’s great,” she said, climbing into the front. “Being several feet above the water is better than in the water. Do you know how to drive one? I seem to remember they aren’t easy, and people have accidents when they don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “You would never know you grew up on the edge of a swamp, and yes, I know how to drive one.” Michael turned the ignition key, backed out of the driveway and headed toward Bay Shore Drive. He thought of her aversion to snakes. He had enough guilt to carry around, first with Sarah and now Amy. He didn’t need to add Kyra to his baggage. “Are you sure you want to go with me? I can do this alone.”

  She twisted around and captured his attention. “I’m sure. If Amy is in trouble, two people are better than one.”

  A vision of Amy running for her life took over his thoughts. A tremor shimmied down his length.

  “I’m kinda surprised you don’t have an airboat since as a kid you spent a lot of time in the swamp.”

  Kyra’s comment lured him away from the disconcerting direction his mind was taking him. “My two-man kayak is all I need. I’m usually not in any hurry when I do get to go into the Glades. I like to park it somewhere and watch the birds and animals. An airboat scares the wildlife away.”

  “How often do you get to do it?”

  “Not nearly enough. A lot of my older patients need special care. More than a ten- or fifteen-minute office visit allows.”

  The care she heard in his voice gave her a glimpse into the man Michael had grown up to be. She wanted to know more. “You enjoy working with older patients?”

  He pulled up into a driveway of a large house that backed up to the main canal. “Yes. I didn’t realize how much until I moved here. I saw my share in the emergency room, but managing an older patient’s health on an ongoing basis is so different.”

  “Then it looks like you came to the right place since a lot of people retire here. What made you go into emergency medicine?”

  “I liked the challenge, trying to figure out what was wrong, often quickly, and do something about it.” A terse undercurrent threaded through his voice.

  Kyra studied his face, wiped of all expression as he stared straight ahead. “I imagine that can be quite hectic at times.” She could identify with that. Going into a situation where a suspect might have a gun. Having to make a spur-of-the-moment decision on the person’s intent. “You must still have challenges with your patients.”

  He dragged his gaze to hers. “Yes, and even some decisions that have to be made quickly.” His features still were neutral except for a sadness in his eyes. Fleeting before he masked it. “This is Ken’s house. He told me where he keeps the key to the boat out back off his dock.”

  “Let’s go.” She exited his Saturn and strolled next to him to the patio where he retrieved a key hidden in a frog.

  Michael was wrestling with something beyond his sister missing. Something that happened in Chicago? Something to do with the woman he’d thought of marrying? She’d learned to read people well in her line of work, and this man beside her was struggling with a problem beyond what was going on in Flamingo Cay. The curiosity that had aided her as a police detective surfaced.

  He boarded the boat first, then turned to help her. Placing her hand in his, she stepped onto the craft bobbing in the water.

  Instead of immediately releasing his grasp, she squeezed his fingers gently, looking up into his eyes. “We’ll find her.”

  A few seconds passed, their gazes bound, before Michael cupped her hand between his two. “Thank you for coming. This means a lot to me.”

  His attention totally directed at her cleared all words from her mind. Her attraction to him grew. She swallowed, tried to come up with something to say and settled on giving him a nod. He was Ginny’s little brother. What was she thinking? She couldn’t rid her mind of a nine-year-old kid hiding under his big sister’s bed, listening to Ginny and Kyra talk about boys. He only got caught because of his snickers, then for weeks he kidded both of them about the guys they liked.

  A fleeting half smile graced his lips. “We don’t have a lot of time, but we should be able to check out her favorite haunts, at least the ones I know about.”

  He let go of her hand and moved toward the driver’s seat. Leaving her to deal with myriad sensations rolling through her. The one that overrode all others was that her attraction to Michael Hunt had come at the worst possible time.

  As the sun sank toward the horizon, the shadows crept farther out into the water. Sitting in front of Michael, Kyra hugged her arms to her. In spite of the warm, humid air, coldness embedded itself in her from the moment Michael had left the dock and grown to encompass her whole body the farther away from Flamingo Cay they had traveled.

  A memory, buried for years, overwhelmed all thoughts. She remembered the sensation of falling through the air into the murky swamp. The sound of the splash as she hit it. The frantic flapping of her arms tangled in the lily pads on the surface of the stream. The dirty taste of the briny water. Her father’s shouts to move fast. A large snake—later identified as a water moccasin—headed straight for her. She hadn’t recalled that until she saw a snake slither across the canal and disappear among the overhanging branches of the mangrove island nearby.

  After an unsuccessful search, Michael directed the boat back into the main canal that led to town. A scowl etched deep lines into his tan face. Over the noise from the huge fan, he shouted, “I don’t know of any other places to look. She hasn’t said much lately about where she likes to go in the swamp.”