Брайан Фриман - Alter Ego

“I think Florida suits you,” Cab said with a grin as he watched her.

He was right. This was paradise compared to Duluth.

“In January, definitely. In July, I’m not so sure.”

Cab shrugged. “Heat is mostly a state of mind.”

“Well, you can always put on more clothes when it’s cold. You can only take so many off when it’s hot.”

“Yes, but which is more fun?” Cab asked pointedly.

His ocean-blue eyes glittered behind his wineglass. She realized with a flush of surprise that he was letting her know that he was attracted to her. Maybe it was the booze or the moonlight, but she was attracted to him, too. She felt a strange romantic urge to reach across the table and run her hands through his gelled hair. And then to kiss him. And then to do other things.

She was flustered. She felt embarrassed and tried to think about what to say next.

“So what happened between you and Detective Mosquito?” she asked before she could stop herself. Looking for details about Cab’s ex-girlfriend wasn’t a great way to stoke the fire between them, but Cab didn’t seem to mind.

“Lala and I only have two choices,” he told her. “Everything or nothing. She’ll never be happy with something casual in between.”

“And casual in between is what you want?”

“I guess so, because here I am. What about you? What do you want out of a relationship?”

“My history would suggest that I’m a casual in-betweener, too.”

“Well, what’s wrong with two people who simply want to enjoy each other’s company while they’re together?”

“Absolutely nothing,” she said.

The meaning was hard to miss.

She felt the heat of her arousal as they stared at each other. Somewhere deep down, she felt a twinge of guilt, too, like an unwelcome guest at the party. A few weeks earlier, she’d been happy with Troy. His only mistake had been to do what good men are supposed to do, by asking her to marry him. And she’d responded by blowing up their relationship. Like Cab, she’d chosen nothing instead of everything.

Now here she was on a perfect Florida night. She was being romanced by a tall, rich, attractive man who had no intentions other than a one-night stand. Go away, guilt.

“So this is the place where Haley Adams worked?” she asked, looking around the restaurant.

“It is.”

The waterside bar looked like every other Florida seafood joint, with nautical ropes and kitschy plastic alligators on the walls, wobbly wooden chairs, and ceiling fans pushing the warm air around. The waiters threaded through the crowd with brightly colored drinks. Haley would have been here on her last night, wearing a navy blue polo shirt and khaki shorts like all the other servers. Somewhere after midnight, she would have wandered alone into the dark parking lot near the water. That was where John Doe had shot her in the head.

“I wonder if anyone remembers her,” Maggie said.

“Unlikely. It was a couple years ago. People turn over pretty fast in places like this.”

Maggie drank her beer with a frown at the idea that a pretty young girl could disappear so quickly from the world and leave no ripples behind.

“Did you talk to Jungle Jack?” she asked. “Did you ask him about being here the day Haley was killed?”

“I did,” Cab said. “I interviewed him when I was still part of the Naples Police.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me to try the shrimp nachos.” Cab popped a piece of shrimp into his mouth. “And he was right about that.”

“Anything else?”

“He hit on Lala right in front of me,” Cab said. “As for Haley Adams, he claimed not to remember her.”

Maggie shook her head. “We’re never going to be able to prove what happened to her, are we?”

“No,” Cab replied. “We’re not.”

“I hate that. I hate these people. I hate that sense of entitlement. They think there are different rules for them because they have money.”

Cab shrugged. “There are.”

“Not in my book.”

“I’m not saying I like it, but if you think the world treats Dean Casperson the same as Haley Adams, you’re kidding yourself. Come on, Maggie, you have money, just like me. Don’t you get treated differently as soon as people find out?”

“That’s why I usually hide it,” she said.

“You shouldn’t,” Cab told her. “I never apologize for being rich. That’s my karma this time. For all I know, in my last life I was a street urchin begging on the curb in Pyongyang. And maybe next time around I’ll be a crab scuttling along the seabed until I wind up on somebody’s plate in a place like this.”

“Do you really believe that stuff?” Maggie asked.

He smiled. “If you grow up with Tarla Bolton, you believe it. My mother is a New Age hippy at heart.”

“Well, I believe this is my only shot,” she told him. “Nothing before, nothing after. One and done.”

“Then we really should make the most of it.”

Maggie heard the invitation in his voice. She played with her hair. It was still strange having it long after so many years with short bangs that fell across her eyes. “You are a very good-looking man, Cab Bolton.”

“I know.”

She laughed so hard that she had to cover her mouth to avoid spitting out her beer. “Very few men could get away with that line. I don’t know how you do it.”

“My charm is not pretending,” Cab replied. “I’m equally honest about my faults.”

“Which are?”

“I’m not a team player. I’m a loner. I hate bureaucracy, because I like to do things my own way. I get bored easily. I want to give Lala what she wants, but I can’t. I’m too selfish for that.”

“If you were Chinese and eighteen inches shorter, you could be me,” Maggie said.

“And a woman.”

“Yeah, that, too,” she said.

Cab finished his wine and stared down at her, and she stared back. The music thumped in her ears. Neither one of them needed to say it was time to go. It just was. Cab put a hundred-dollar bill under his wineglass, which was way too much for the bill, and then the two of them made their way out of the restaurant. It was peaceful in the night air, walking beside the docks with the laughter of the crowd behind them. Cab didn’t wait long. Just outside the restaurant, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. She had to get on tiptoes, and he had to bend down to reach her like a heron hunting a lizard. It was still great.

Outside Tin City, the neighborhood turned industrial. They walked next to the warehouse wall of a marine manufacturer on their way back to Cab’s car. Boat trailers and vans lined the street. There were no lights, making the area dark except for the glow of the restaurants on the other side of the water. Cab had his arm slung around Maggie’s shoulder. He hummed a tune under his breath, and she thought it was a Frank Sinatra song, “Ring-A-Ding-Ding.”

His Corvette was parked at the end of the street, near a boat lift that hauled speedboats in and out of the water. The night made it hard to see, but she knew something was wrong when glass crunched under her feet. Ten feet from the sports car, they both stopped dead.

Every window in the car was shattered. Some windows had been broken all the way through, scattering sharp fragments in and out of the car; some were simply dotted with starbursts. The candy-red chassis was a sea of dents, as if it had been caught in a massive hailstorm. The mirrors had been knocked off the car and smashed. The tires were slashed and flat. The license plate, catcha, lay at their feet, bent in half.

Cab bent over to pick up the plate. Doing so saved his life.

They were too shocked by the destruction of the car to hear the man sneaking up behind them and swinging a baseball bat at Cab’s head. As Cab ducked, the man missed, and the bat sailed by with a hiss of air only inches above Cab’s skull.