Read Online Shimmer by Hilary Norman - Free Book Online Page B

silence.
    Witch.
    â€˜Don’t imagine you can come back when you choose,’ she’d told him, ‘after all this time pissing around.’
    Like he was yearning for her.
    The early TV reports – still being generated mostly by residents, all jumpy as popcorn but milking their big news-maker moments – had been shifting the possible location and cause of the explosion back and forth. One minute, it was a bomb at Miami Beach Marina, next it was a gas cylinder explosion on a sail-boat in Biscayne Bay, then an accident involving illegal immigrants on the Miami River, then a terrorist attack on a cruise ship in the port.
    Cal enjoyed a good shiver of speculation same as the next guy, but all he really wanted right now was a chance to check out Baby , make sure she was whole, and for Christ’s sake, he was paying good money he could ill afford to keep her safe and legally docked, which still seemed to him the best way to keep from attracting any interest from Customs or cops or even thieves. Not that she was exactly the style of cruiser anyone was going to be standing in line to steal.
    If Baby had been blown to kingdom come, at least that would be one whole set of potential crime scene problems pulverized along with her.
    He reached for his notepad and pencil, made a note of that word – pulverized – for the Epistle.
    Nice word.
    He’d felt it when the boat went up – and that was the one and only thing the news people seemed sure about, that it had been a boat, so someone had to know where, stood to reason. He’d been sleeping, so perhaps it had been part of a dream, but he thought that the shitty old window frames in his room had rattled, that even the cruddy bed, with him lying on it, had shuddered, which had made him think, seconds later, of sex.
    Not a bad feeling at all.
    Probably not so good if you were inside the explosion.
    Or maybe that could be the best possible way to go.
    Not yet though.
    Right now, Cal wanted two things. To go see Baby and to start going out again, at the right time, the best time of night, seeing his kind of people again. Doing his thing, maybe making some money.
    What he could use, financially, was another trick like the Wilmington woman, someone of means, preferably someone who’d stay alive after they’d paid him, so he didn’t have to go through all that hassle and angst again.
    Angst was another good word.
    One he was familiar with.

21
    In the house on the island, the phone rang at four-fifty, after Sam had come in off the deck where he’d been standing with Woody, listening to not-too-distant sirens, trying to pinpoint the location, wondering which of the TV reports was going to turn out to be right, knowing that he could have either made a call or simply listened to the police dispatcher to find out more, but actually glad, for now, not to be directly involved.
    Grace and Claudia were at the kitchen table when the ringing began, had been about ready to go back to their beds.
    â€˜A bomb then,’ Grace said as Sam came in to pick up the phone.
    Nothing more than that occurring to her, no fears, just a general grim certainty.
    â€˜Oh my,’ Claudia said, thinking of her boys.
    â€˜A fucking boat blew up,’ Martinez was telling Sam. ‘Alvarez wants us all in.’
    â€˜Where?’ Sam asked.
    â€˜Biscayne Bay, south-east of Treasure Island.’
    Too damned close.
    â€˜You picking me up?’ Sam asked.
    â€˜In fifteen,’ Martinez said.
    Sam pondered as he dressed for work – suit, holster, Glock, the usual, since this early Sunday shift would be followed by a full day’s work and maybe more – what exactly they might be up against here. It was too soon for anyone to know the cause of the explosion, unless there had been confirmed intelligence or perhaps a coded threat, in which case Homeland Security would be calling the shots, and then at the very least the FBI’s Miami Field