Key West Read Online Free PDF

single, mighty slam came from somewhere high up in the house.
    The wind had blown a door shut.
    The doors were already all shut. And the windows.
    Sonnie reached the foot of the stairs and stood, gripping a newel post with both hands while she listened. The storm moaned outside, yet there was stillness inside. Her heart beat hard, almost painfully. Her back, still healing from torn muscle and ligament, ached from holding herself stiff. So did the areas where her ribs had been crushed on impact—and her left leg, her right foot.
    Why tonight? Why would she be jumpy tonight when she’d been fine, or more or less fine, since she’d returned?
    Somewhere in this house other ears strained to catch sounds, the sounds of her movements.
    She shook her head, her throbbing head. Billy was right; she shouldn’t have come here alone. But why not? If everything she’d been told she should believe was true, she had nothing to fear.
    She wasn’t alone.
    A presence filled what should have been a void. No one would understand if she tried to explain, but she was right. Someone was in the house, biding time, waiting to…Waiting to what? Kill her?
    Sonnie backed from the staircase until she connected with a wall. Then she turned, wrenched open the front door, and fled back the way she’d come.
    Still it rained.
    And still the wind blew.
    There was nowhere to go—except a motel, maybe—until it was light. She didn’t have a purse with her. No credit cards.
    Ahead, several figures, their arms linked, swayed and roared out the incoherent lyrics to a song she didn’t recognize. Sonnie ducked behind a wall and waited for the drunks to pass. This wasn’t a good idea, not in any way. She was putting herself in fresh, unnecessary danger, and dragging back the phobic state she’d taken months to overcome.
    There was someone in her house.
    She ran, and felt every recovering injury protest. She dragged in air that burned her throat, and dashed as fast as she could.
    Not fast enough to quell the panic. Her body wasn’t ready for this, but she couldn’t stop.
    At Duval—she’d known she would go to Duval Street because the only people she could ask for help were there at Duval she hovered at the curb, panting and shaking.
    Roy and Bo had been good to her, more than good, and they owed her nothing. There wasn’t a soul here who owed her anything.
    But she could pay for what she needed—someone to help her sift through the past, a particular part of her past, and find out the exact details of a night filled with fire—and blood.
    Christian Talon’s opinion of her had been as clear as if he’d told her aloud. He thought her colorless, uninteresting, and not worth his time. She might be colorless and uninteresting as a woman, in his eyes, but she could turn out to be a whole lot less than boring, and she could certainly be well worth his time.
    Also, Mr. Talon had given himself away. While he’d been so busy convincing her that he wasn’t what she wanted or needed, he’d shown a piece of his own vulnerable underbelly. She hadn’t been married to Frank Giacano for three years and learned nothing from him. Frank had believed that the way to bind an ally to you was through discovering their weakest point. Chris Talon had a weak point that had made him, carelessly, refer to himself as dangerous. If necessary, she’d find out what he really meant.
    He’d made a mistake. She might be colorless in some ways, but she had a big will that had brought her from death when there’d supposedly been no hope of her living.
    She had never, ever, forced herself on anyone. But she had never, ever, been as out of options as she was tonight.
    The weather had all but closed the street down. The shutters were up at the Rusty Nail, and several lights showed in the apartments above, where Bo and Roy lived. Sonnie knew that if she went to them, the two men would do their best to comfort her, but comfort wasn’t what she needed anymore, not the kind of