Meryl Sawyer - Better Off Dead

She poured herself a mug of coffee and added a splash of milk before taking a sip. “You make great coffee.”

“I’m a good cook, too. I’m making blue corn enchiladas tonight. Join me for dinner?”

“I’d love to. What can I bring?”

“Nothing. Just close up the gallery for me. I’ll need to leave around six. Enchiladas taste better if they set for an hour or so before you eat them.”

“No problem. I’ll lock up.” In the summer, they closed at eight to take advantage of the tourists who lingered in the historic area.

“You know, I was thinking.”

Something in the timbre of Romero’s voice brought up her guard, and she tried for a joke. “Thinking? That’s a first.”

A beat of silence.

She plunged on, her instincts telling her to change the subject. “I heard a good one. What do you call a woman who knows where her husband is at night?” She paused. “A widow.”

Romero didn’t crack a smile. “You’re very beautiful, but the way you dress…your hair.”

“I like the way I dress,” she fibbed. Drab clothes helped her blend in. “My hair. What can I say? God screwed up.”

A total lie. She had glossy black hair and violet-blue eyes. They couldn’t change her eye color as easily as they could her hair. WITSEC insisted she strip it with bleach and dye it barnyard brown. They made her cut it to chin length, and she now wore it ruler straight.

Romero studied her. She was lying and he knew it. She could almost hear him asking: Why?

He’d never gotten this personal, never asked about her past. His comment had taken her by surprise. She needed him in her life more than he would ever know, but if he breached the invisible barrier she’d put up to protect herself, she would have to back off.

The bell on the door to her shop tinkled, saving her and announcing the arrival of the first customer of the day. “Gotta go.”

She quickly walked back into her gallery. A lookie-lou, she thought. The petite brunette was dressed in matching powder-blue Bermudas and twin set. She could have been in an L. L. Bean catalog.

Lindsey’s experience told her the type of woman who would be interested in her jewelry dressed more adventurously. They experimented with clothes, hair.

The kind of woman she had once been.

Another lifetime, she thought, even though it had been only a little over a year. Now she didn’t experiment. The last thing she wanted was to call attention to herself.

“That bracelet is by my premier artist, Ben Tallchief,” she told the woman who was looking at a hammered silver cuff set with deep lavender sugilite stones. “Madonna, Julia Roberts, and lots of other famous women collect his work.”

She didn’t add how lucky she’d been to lure him away from the gallery where he’d been featured when it changed hands.

The woman studied the unusual piece for a moment. “Too trendy for me.”

“You might try Zazobra Gallery on Canyon Road. They have a nice selection of jewelry.” She didn’t add that it was conservative, unimaginative and overpriced.

“Thanks. Great dog,” the woman said as she headed to the door.

Lindsey sat at her desk to do some work on her computer, and Zach settled at her feet. She finished in less than ten minutes. What she was doing wasn’t much of a challenge for someone who had a CPA license.

In WITSEC you weren’t allowed to work in your own profession. That would make it too easy for enemies to find you. They insisted you take a job in a new, unrelated field.

Boy had she ever. If only her friends could see her now. And Tyler. What would he say, if he knew she owned a jewelry shop?

Don’t go there.

Dwelling on the past only meant depression. And anger. She was entitled to a normal life.

The life that rightfully belonged to Samantha Robbins.

She shouldn’t have to reinvent herself. They’d broken the law—not her. But in one of life’s baffling ironies, they were free—pending trial—and she was in hiding.

A cell without walls.

That’s what she’d been told in the safe house where they’d debriefed her and prepared her for a new life in WITSEC. They had been more right than she ever could have imagined.

Provo, Turks and Caicos Islands

SITTING IN A CABANA-style beach lounge, Chad Langston stared out at the expanse of blue water beyond Grace Bay’s twelve-mile crescent of sugar-white sand. He’d just finished reviewing the coroner’s report. Cause of death: drowning.

“Yeah, right,” Chad said out loud, half-listening to the melodic sound of the surf gently breaking on the shore.

Robert Townsend IV had been an experienced master diver who’d come to this swank resort in the Caribbean specifically to dive “the wall” on Long Cay. The steep wall plunged seven thousand feet and was rated expert. How could he successfully complete that challenging deep water dive, then the following day go on a newbie’s dive and drown?

Not only didn’t it make sense, the coroner’s report sucked. No tissue samples had been taken. No toxicology report. Nada.

Okay, okay. What in hell did he expect?

The coroner was the local mortician in the capital of Grand Turk, which wasn’t surprising. Turks and Caicos Islands were a British colony half an hour southeast of the Bahamas. Once a hideaway for notorious Caribbean pirates, the eight islands were now a haven for divers and fishermen.

Serious crime was rare. They weren’t geared up to investigate the way cities in the States were. The coroner had taken one look at the body and decided drowning was the cause of death.

Townsend had been found floating, facedown, in his scuba equipment on Iguana Key. Air was still in his tank and he was close enough to shore to have waded in.

“Go figure.”

The place to start would be with Townsend’s diving gear. The coroner should have spotted an obvious problem, but experience had taught Chad that even the most competent professionals overlooked things. The local mortician didn’t rank high on anyone’s competency list.

Townsend had been a sixty-two-year-old man with a wife thirty years younger and a considerable fortune. Fidelity Insurance had hired Chad to see if his death could be suicide. If it were, they wouldn’t have to pay the five mil life insurance policy. If Townsend had killed himself, he’d used a unique method.

“Yo, Langston.”

Who in hell knew him here? He peered out from under the lounge’s blue canvas shade and saw Archer Danson strolling across the sand in front of Ocean Club West—all white skin that hadn’t seen the sun in years and skinny legs with knock knees.

“Son of a bitch! What are you doing here?”

“Tracking you down.”

Chad moved his legs to one side, and Danson sat on the end of Chad’s lounge and pushed his shades to the top of his head. He always tried to be cool but ended up looking even nerdier—if that was possible. Danson’s slathered-on sunscreen made him smell like a French whorehouse, overwhelming the pleasant scent of frangipani drifting through the tropical air.

Who could look down at a sweet little baby in a crib and call it Archer? They must have had a nickname for him. As Archer grew up, the kids would have teased him, Chad decided.

Chad had been lucky—if you called growing up in a small house with three sisters lucky. Being tall with dark hair and having a gift for sports meant he’d been popular. And happy. He sensed Danson had never been happy. The man lived for his work.

“Danson, how in hell did you find me?”

With a shrug, Danson grinned. “Your secretary said you were out of town on business. I—”

“Gimme a break.” He knew Danson must have hacked into the airlines’ databases and seen he’d flown out of Honolulu to Turks and Caicos through Miami and the Bahamas. “What’s so important?”