Excerpt of Key West by Stella Cameron

She shouldn't wake the man. Unless he slept with a light on, he wasn't asleep.

Sonnie approached a door that faced the back of The Rusty Nail. She would convince him of two things. The first, she hoped without clueing him in to how little there was to go on, would be the worthiness and the strangeness of what she needed to find out. The second point, and the one most likely to bring him onto her team of two, was her ability to pay just about anything for his services.

Metal slat shades covered two windows, one either side of the door. Music--violin?--sounded as if it would be loud inside. Sonnie looked down at herself. Regardless of her mood, she always took care of her appearance. Tonight--or this morning now--she could pass for a member of the homeless.

It didn't matter. There was no one to impress. She knocked, and crossed her arms to wait. He was probably the type who wouldn't answer unless he was in the mood.

The door swung open almost at once.

If the man who blocked light from inside were not Roy's brother, Sonnie would flee.

"Holy . . . What are you doing, you little idiot?"

"Coming to see you." She felt horrified, horrified by the disbelief on his face, and horrified that she was there and looking wild.

"I told you there's nothing I can do for you."

"I think there is. You just don't want to."

"You've been walking around in this, haven't you? Walking around in a storm, in the dark? Alone?"

"I haven't been walking around. I went home, then changed my mind is all."

"You should have stayed at home."

Crying wouldn't accomplish one thing with this man--much as she felt like doing just that. "May I come in, please?"

"You don't know when to quit. You just don't know." He stood aside to let her pass. "If there was anything that mattered around here, I'd tell you not to drip on it. You're going to be sick."

"You don't get sick from being wet."

"You do get sick from doing what you're doing to yourself. There isn't one damn thing in this life that's worth that much pain, Mrs. Giacano."

He'd have to be from another planet not to see her desperation, but she didn't like it that he could look at her and see exposed emotion. "Don't mistake sartorial disaster for anything else, please."

"Whatever you say. Get in here before you collapse."

The violin music sounded like something intended for snake charming. "Nice of you to care," she said, entering a crowded room.

"I don't. A body on the doorstep could ruin a man's day."

She smiled and it almost felt good. "I'm not close to death. Just wet and muddy." She looked around, gauging where she could safely stand without making something dirty.

"Ah, hell."

Sonnie looked at Talon sharply. With his hands on his hips, he bent forward so she couldn't see his face. She'd swear he'd spoken aloud without knowing he'd done so. He'd wore only jeans. His feet were bare.

Nice chest.

She glanced around again. A door led to what was probably the bathroom. Everything else was right here, including a murphy bed pulled down from the wall and neatly made, a tiny sink and stove with minuscule cupboards above, a prehistoric refrigerator that clanked, a laptop computer, open, and on a table built into a corner--and a very large, black Harley Davidson parked crosswise, and filling almost every inch of spare space.

"I'm not your man," Talon said.

Adrenalin ebbed, and exhaustion crowded in its wake. "I'm not looking for a man," Sonnie said. "I'm looking for an investigator. Roy told me you're an investigator."

She'd seen him on a number of occasions and noticed he was a big man, a big, muscular man with dark curly hair on the wrong side of too long. She also noticed he might be good- looking without a few days' growth of beard and a tendency to appear too bored, or too cynical to wear any particular expression.

He wore an expression now. The man was angry.

"Did you hear what I said?" She was angry, too. So she'd interrupted his cozy evening with his bike. He was mooching on Roy, and refusing to do anything for himself. That's what this was all about. He was probably every bit as good at his job as Roy suggested, but he was lazy.

"We already had this discussion," he said. "And I already told you I can't help you."

"Won't help me." Her stomach contracted. "Because you're too lazy to help me. That's it, isn't it? You're one of those men in some sort of second childhood. Riding around on the bike you couldn't have when you were the right age to have one."

His dark brows shot up.

He had light brown eyes, or hazel, maybe. And she'd definitely got his attention. Sonnie shifted in her soggy sandals. Her clothes weren't just wet, they were also growing cold.

"Why would a supposedly normal woman decide to come to the home of a man she doesn't know in the middle of the night and insult him? Push him?" Talon's North Carolina roots became more pronounced as his temper deteriorated. He stepped closer, so close she could see the faint sheen on his chest, beneath smooth black hair. "Are you fearless? Or stupid?"

"I'm . . ." Oh, no, she wasn't going to admit to being desperate. "I've got to find something out and I'm not getting anywhere on my own because I don't know how. There. Absolute honesty. And I trust Roy. He said I could trust you, too, so I do." Brave words. A pity they didn't make her feel more confident.

"If you were absolutely honest, ma'am, you'd have finished what you started to say. You're desperate. Isn't that what you mean?"

A mind reader. She thought for a moment before saying, "Close. You seem like a smart man. You've got to know I wouldn't come to you like this if I had anywhere else to turn."

"Thank you," he said, with that smile that only touched one side of his mouth--and slightly. "Flattery like that could go to a man's head."

She didn't want this, this banter. Maybe she just wanted to close her eyes and be silent, feel nothing, think nothing.

The sensation of a large hand closing on her upper arm jolted her and she realized she had actually closed her eyes. She stared at him.

"Are you okay?" He was too close. "Sonnie? You'd better sit down."

Drawing herself up straight took effort. "I'm just fine, thanks."

"I doubt it." He kept his grip on her arm. "You're exhausted, and you're wet. When did you eat?"

"Eat?" She wanted to hire him as a detective, and he'd decided to become a stand-in mother? "I eat regularly. Are you going to take my case?"

"Sit down."

"I don't--"

"Sit down. You're about to collapse and I don't feel like picking you up."

He led her to a sagging chair draped with a brown and orange afghan and plunked her on the seat.

"I'm sorry." She had no right to come here like this. But she would do what she had to do. "I've probably shocked you. Turning up like this."

"It takes a lot to shock me. This isn't the way you are, is it? Not really."

She coughed into a fist. "Annoying, you mean? It doesn't matter how I really am. I have to find some things out. I came back to Key West thinking--I probably wasn't thinking. That's the trouble now, I didn't think anything through. Because I suddenly knew what I wanted to find out, I just came without figuring out how I'd do that."

"So you told Roy all about yourself and he elected me your right hand man."

"No."

"No?" He retrieved a denim shirt from a hook on the wall and pulled it on, but not before Sonnie caught a glimpse of a tattoo on one shoulder. "No, you didn't tell Roy, or no, he didn't elect me?"

"Either. Neither. I mean I didn't tell Roy much except I'm in trouble. Maybe in danger. I could be. I don't know."

He stopped in the act of buttoning the shirt and let it hang. He approached until he stood at a bottom corner of the bed. So large a man who could move so silently disconcerted Sonnie. He sat down and leaned toward her. Their knees almost touched.

"What kind of danger?"

She jumped, then laughed, felt foolish.

"I'm not for hire. Let's be straight about that. But I am interested in what makes a woman like you act out of character. You're scared out of your wits."

Sonnie shook her head, spraying drops of water from her hair. "I'm not the kind who gets scared."

Talon rested his hands on his knees. Spots of moisture had hit his shirt and began to spread. "So you often change your mind about going home. You bang on strangers' doors instead--in the early hours of the morning?"

"Of course I don't."

"Okay." He drummed his fingers. His hands were huge. Not meaty. Lean, but with wide palms and long fingers--and prominent tendons extending to powerful forearms.

Strong hands.

A strong, strange man who kept a Harley Davidson in the middle of his living room and played eerie violin music . . .

"If you aren't afraid of something, and you're here by mistake, we don't have anything else to talk about, Sonnie."

She didn't have a right to be here. He owed her nothing. If he wasn't interested, he wasn't interested.

"Hmm?" He leaned closer. "Do we?"

"I have a house here on Key West," she said, avoiding his eyes. "That's where I'm living."

He crossed his arms.

"After we spoke this evening, I went back there. I went inside and felt as if there was someone there." Sonnie did look at his face then.

The expression in his eyes changed subtly. "Felt?"

"How do people ever explain these things without feeling foolish?"

"If they do, I'm less likely to take them seriously."

"So you do take me seriously?"

"I didn't say that. It was just a feeling?"

He would never give her the smallest break. "A door slammed upstairs."

"You're living there alone?"

"Yes."

"Probably a draft." His stillness didn't help her discomfort. "Either from an open window or when you opened the front door."

Mentioning a light she might or might not have seen was out of the question. "Probably."

"But because of other things you know, you're afraid it might not have been."

The beat of her heart pounded at her eardrums. "I'm just going to tell you what I need to find out. Okay?"

He bent a very long leg and rested a bare ankle on the opposite knee. He did not encourage her to continue.

"I want to know if I'm a wife or a widow."

"If the people who abducted your husband don't make further contact, that's something you may never know. Not for sure."

"How--" Sonnie hesitated, made to get up. "I didn't tell Roy--"

"No, you didn't." He shrugged and indicated the computer. "I did a little checking."

"And found out my history? On the computer?"

"Not hard if you know where to look--and have some connections. Don't worry. Most people don't know. But the question's the same. What I said about your husband's abduction."

Face to face with voicing at least a facsimile of what she believed, Sonnie felt as if her diaphragm had been cut out. She would not say that what she needed most was her memory.

"Isn't it true?"

"It may be. If he was really abducted."

Another subtle shift in expression. His eyes narrowed now, and his nostrils flared.

"I don't think the crash I had near the airport--Smathers Beach--was an accident. I think I need to find out if someone tried to kill me, and I can't risk asking anyone I know for help."

"So you're trying to dump a guilt trip on me. I'm supposed to take you on because I'm too honorable to let you go it alone."

Sonnie stood up. "I hadn't thought about it quite like that. But, since you mention it. Won't it make you feel bad if you send me away now and you read about my murder in the morning?"