Hurricane Bay Read Online Free PDF

found on a spit of dock on a little island called Hurricane Bay were always good for rational thinking and reasoning.
    And remembering.
    The long summer day was ending; at last the sun was beginning to set. This was the time when the world was most beautiful. He remembered, thinking as a kid, that his dad was just crazy. They’d had no air-conditioning, but his father had pointed out that the breeze always came through. The house had seemed a shack, but his dad had pointed out that they didn’t need any art on the walls, because they had the most beautiful vista anyone could ever imagine, every night. All they had to do was sit on the rustic porch and watch the sun set, watch as colors came out over the Atlantic, pinks, reds, golds, yellows. Sometimes the skies would be clear and the blue would turn slowly to strange pastels, then indigo, and then night would fall. Sometimes there would be clouds in the sky, and they would become a billowy cobalt before turning into dancing shadows against the moon. When storms came, it was just as beautiful, if different. The lightning would strike the water like bolts cast down by a furious god, and the trees would whip and bend in the wind.
    Everything his father had said was true. Now he knew. Just as he knew that no meal in the world was better than fresh fish, just pulled from the sea and thrown on the grill. Odd that he would come to love this place, Hurricane Bay, when he had been so blind to its charms as a kid. Back then, he’d had no idea how great it was to own a private island.
    He was glad he’d had the time to let his dad know how much he appreciated the place and had come to love it.
    Sitting on the wooden dock, staring out over the water, he closed his eyes and heard her voice again.

CHAPTER 2
    â€œH elp me, Dane.”
    Sheila’s voice was an echo in his head. A ghostly reproach.
    He didn’t need to keep hearing it. He’d already damned himself a hundred times over.
    He’d been sitting here that night, just as he was now, the last time he’d seen Sheila arrive at Hurricane Bay.
    But before that…
    Would things have been different if he hadn’t seen her in action just that day?
    He’d been at the Sea Shanty just before she had come over. He’d been drinking soda water with lime, discussing surveillance cameras with Nate. Nothing big had happened. Nate thought that maybe one of his bartenders had decided he wasn’t quite making it on tips and was helping himself to the till. Dane didn’t intend to work for Nate, and he had no intention of charging for the advice he gave. Sheila had been there, too. She came almost every afternoon at about five.
    She never bought her own drinks.
    Maybe she hadn’t known he was there. Maybe she had known and hadn’t cared. Once upon a time, way back when, he and Sheila had been something of a twosome. But he had to admit, he’d never been in love with her. From the time he had been a little kid, he’d had a path in mind for himself, a plan for his life. A lot of that had come from Mr. Cunningham and Joe, but whatever the reason, his future had been the burning essence in his mind.
    He hadn’t wanted to wind up a fisherman in Key Largo, hoping for a catch, dodging the tourists, sucking up to the tourists, watching restaurant managers come and go.
    If anything, he’d been determined he was going to own the restaurants.
    And Sheila…
    Well, at one time she might have loved him in her way. But she’d been just as intent on her own path. She’d wanted out. And getting out had meant more to Sheila than attaching herself to a man with no specific prospects, even if he had ambition. She’d spent her high school years sizing up the tourists and the weekenders—Floridians who usually lived fairly close to Key Largo, where they kept condos or vacation homes, and left their prestigious jobs in the city on Friday after work and returned Sunday night,