LITMIR.BIZ

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handsomely through the manicured front lawn of the estate, lay before her. It was nearing twilight and she couldn’t help but notice that the air was perfect—neither too cold nor too hot—and that the setting sun was painting a palette of colors in the sky. She could smell the salt in the air and hear the waves as they splashed against the concrete breakers at the rear of the house.

      All that made the area so beautiful—and, in particular, the house out on the island—had never seemed to be quite so evident and potent as when she walked toward the house. Jimmy Crystal had not actually named the place for himself; he’d written in his old journal that the island had seemed to sit in a sea of crystals, shimmering beneath the sun. And so it was. And now, through the years, the estate had become something glimmering and dazzling, as well. It sat in homage to days gone by, to memories of a time when the international city of Miami had been little more than a mosquito-ridden swamp and only those with vision had seen what might come in the future.

      She and her parents had never lived in the house; they’d stayed in their home in the Roads section of the city, just north of Coconut Grove, where they’d always lived. They managed the estate, but even in that, a board had been brought in and a trust set up. The expenses to keep such an estate going were staggering.

      While it had begun as a simple fishing shack, time and the additions of several generations had made Crystal Manor into something much more. It resembled both an Italianate palace and a medieval castle with tile and marble everywhere, grand columns, turrets and more. The manor was literally a square built around a center courtyard, with turrets at each corner that afforded four tower rooms above the regular two stories of the structure.

      As she walked toward the sweeping, grand steps that led to the entry, she looked around. She had heard one of the other thugs, but, at that moment, she didn’t see anyone.

      Glancing back, she saw that a chain had been looped around the main gate. The gate arched to fifteen feet; the coral rock wall that surrounded the house to the water was a good twelve feet. Certainly not insurmountable by the right law-enforcement troops, but, still, a barrier against those who might come in to save the day.

      She looked back at her masked abductor. She could see nothing of his face—except for those eyes.

      Why were they so...eerily familiar? If she really knew him, if she had known him growing up, she’d have remembered who went with those eyes! They were striking, intense. The darkest, deepest blue she had ever seen.

      What was she thinking? He was a crook! She didn’t make friends with crooks!

      The double entryway doors suddenly opened and she saw another man in its maw.

      Kody stopped. She stared at the doors. They were really beautiful, hardwood enhanced with stained-glass images of pineapples—symbols of welcome. Quite ironic at the moment.

      “Get her in here!” the second masked man told the one called Barrow.

      “Go,” Barrow said softly from behind her.

      She walked up the steps and into the entry.

      It was grand now, though the entry itself had once been the whole house built by Jimmy Crystal when he had first fallen in love with the little island that, back then, had been untouched, isolated—a haven only for mangroves and mosquitos. Since then, of course, the island—along with Star and Hibiscus islands—had become prime property.

      But the foyer still contained vestiges of the original. The floor was coral rock. The columns were the original columns that Jimmy Crystal had poured. Dade country pine still graced the side walls.

      The rear wall had been taken down to allow for glass barriers to the courtyard; more columns had been added. The foyer contained only an 1890’s rocking horse to the right side of the double doors and an elegant, old fortune-telling machine to the left. And, of course, the masked man who stood between the majestic staircases that led to the second floor at each side of the space.

      She cast her eyes around but saw no one else.

      There had still been four or five guests on the property when Kody had started to close down for the day. And five staff members: Stacey Carlson, the estate manager, Nan Masters, his assistant, and Vince Jenkins, Brandi Johnson and Betsy Rodriguez, guides. Manny Diaz, the caretaker, had been off the property all day. And, of course, Jose Marquez was there somewhere.

      “So, this is Miss Cameron?” the masked man in the house asked.

      “Yes, Dillinger. This is Miss Cameron,” Barrow said.

      Dillinger. She was right—this guy’s mask was that of the long-ago killer John Dillinger.

      “Well, well, well. I can’t tell you, Miss Cameron, what a delight it is to meet you!” the man said. “Imagine! When I heard that you were here—cuddle time with the family before the final big move to the Big Apple—I knew it was time we had to step in.”

      The man seemed to know about her—and her family.

      “If you think I’m worth some kind of ransom,” she said, truly puzzled—and hoping she wasn’t sealing her own doom, “I’m not. We may own this estate, but it’s in some kind of agreement and trust with the state of Florida. It survives off of grants and tourist dollars.” She hesitated. “My family isn’t rich. They just love this old place.”

      “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Daddy is an archeologist and Mom travels with him. Right now they’re on their way back from South America so they can head up north with their baby girl to get her all settled into New York City. Yes! I have the prize right here, don’t I?”

      “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kody told him. “I wish I could say that someone would give you trillions of dollars for me, but I’m not anyone’s prize. I’m a bartender-waitress at an Irish pub who’s struggling to make ends meet as an actress.”

      “Oh, honey,” Dillinger said, “I don’t give a damn if you’re a bad actress.”

      “Hey! I never said I was a bad actress!” she protested. And then, of course, she thought that he was making her crazy—heck, the whole situation was making her crazy—because who the hell cared if she was a bad actress or a good actress if she wasn’t even alive?

      Dillinger waved a hand in the air. “That’s neither here nor there. You’re going to lead us to the Anthony Green stash.”

      Startled, Kody went silent.

      Everyone, of course, had heard about the Anthony Green stash.

      Green was known to have knocked over the long-defunct Miami Bank of the Pioneers, making off with the bank’s safe-deposit boxes that had supposedly contained millions in diamonds, jewels, gold and more. It was worth millions. But Anthony Green had died in a hail of bullets—with his mouth shut. The stash was never found. It had always been suspected that Anthony Green—before his demise—had seen to it that the haul had been hidden somewhere in one of his shacks deep in the Everglades, miles from his Biscayne Bay home.

      Rumor followed rumor. It was said that Guillermo Salazar—a South American drug lord—had actually found the stash about a decade ago and added a small fortune in ill-gotten heroin-sales gains to it—before he, in turn, had been shot down by a rival drug cartel.

      Who the hell knew? One way or the other, it was supposedly a very large fortune.

      She didn’t doubt that Salazar had sold drugs; the Coast Guard in South Florida was always busy stopping the drug trade. But she sure as hell didn’t believe that Salazar had found the Green stash at the house, because she really didn’t believe the stash was here.

      Chills suddenly rose up her spine.

      If she was supposed to find a stash that didn’t exist here...

      They were all dead.

      “Where is everyone?” she asked.

      “Safe,” Dillinger said.

      “Safe where?”

      No

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