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‘Nicely done,’ he said aloud in a harsh, rasping voice that was almost a whisper. He leaned up on one elbow and crooked a finger toward her, inviting her closer, and she swam up close to the window, rolled on her back and spread her legs, tantalizing him. He leaned down and pressed his lips against the window and she moved slowly through the water, rising up against it, pressing first her breasts, then her stomach, then her thighs, against it, and he opened his mouth slightly, flicking his tongue against the inch-thick window, and she began to slowly wiggle, taunting him as he moved his head over her breasts, down to her hard, flat stomach and then down farther, to the matted hair that was pressed on inch away from his mouth. Then she was gone.

He lay there, watching the fish darting in and out of the coral cluster, thinking about Ginia. He was lucky. She was bright, beautiful, and sensuous. They had been lovers for almost a year.

It had been Cirillo who found this island. And it was to Cirillo and his wife, Millie, that Hatcher had come after Los Boxes. He had walked away from Sloan’s rescuers, hitchhiked from Miami and arrived at Cirillo’s door in the middle of the night, a gaunt hollow-eyed replica of himself, wet to the knees from stumbling through the marsh. The Cirillos had asked no questions; they simply had nursed him back to health, providing the care and understanding necessary to heal this shattered mind and body.

The years after Los Boxes had been almost as traumatic as the experience itself. His emotions had become so armored, so distrusting and involuted, that he had spent the first months alone, wandering the bases of his past, looking for someplace to sink a root, something to hook him to reality. The closest he had come was a boat, but there were no roots in the sea. For a year he had indulged himself, cruised the Caribbean, lain in the sun, gorged on good food and wine, read constantly, and made love to women of every possible persuasion — white women, black women, red women, married women, unmarried women, smart women, dumb women, old women and young women.

Ultimately he had returned to the island. Hatcher had learned to love the place; to love the marsh that insulated the island from the rest of the world, and the island itself, so teeming with new life that it had rekindled his own spirit after Los Boxes. It had become his first real home. The isolated corner of the world was a perfect refuge for him.

There had been rumors about him, this strange, quiet man with the shattered voice and the haunted eyes, who sat night after night in Murphy’s Tavern, nursing brandy. That he was a doper on parole, that he was a doper who had never been caught, that he was a narc looking for dopers on the isolated island, that he had served twenty years for murdering a faithless wife. All fictions written with whiskied tongues by the women he ignored and the men whose women were attracted to him.

He laughed at the stories, flattered by a status that had become mysterious and legendary and gradually the islanders had accepted him, attracted by his sense of humor, his independence and a sense of loyalty to fellow islanders that was revealed slowly and without fanfare. He was one of them now and the stories had been put aside. Like many others who had escaped a checkered past and sought refuge in the small waffle of land two miles off the coast of Georgia, his past remained a mystery.

Ginia had her eye on him for a couple of months before he finally moved on her. She asked no questions, nor did he, although he knew she was a native of the island, had graduated from the Wharton School with honors, had been one of the most respected brokers on Wall Street, married a wealthy attorney and then, on her thirtieth birthday, had chucked it all and returned to the island and set up a small brokerage firm. That was all Murphy talk, and he never asked her anything about it, just as she never questioned him. It was as if they had no past, only their future.

It was two months before he asked her to dinner, a dinner he cooked and served a mile offshore, anchored over what since had become their favorite reef. They sat on the floor and ate dinner and watched the sea creatures at play through the glass bottom and drank a lot of wine, and when she finally left the boat two days later, she knew nothing more about him than she had known when she came on board — except for his taste in furniture, clothes and art, all of which were impeccable — not what he did for a living or where he came from or what he had done before he came to the island or whether he had ever married, had children, was wanted by the police r was dying of an incurable disease. Now, nine months later, she still didn’t know. And she didn’t care. He was a tender lover, an experimenter, considerate, unhurried, aware of her wants, unthreatened, funny, and she responded in the same way. Sex had remained a joy rather than a task. He never showed anger, never judged anyone, and he treated her with uncommon respect. That was good enough for her.

It was around noon when the Lear jet whistled over the island, banking sharply to the east, circling out over the Atlantic and sweeping back over the island a second time.

Sloan studied the island as the pilot circled it. It was shaped like the island of Manhattan, but there the similarity ended. Ten miles long and barely two miles wide, it was little more than a thin strip of hard land surrounded on three sides by a sprawling marsh and on the east by the Atlantic Ocean.

A tiny village squatted at the southern point of the island, its fishing pier pointing a hundred yards out into the ocean like a finger pointing toward Florida. A whitewashed old lighthouse seemed to guard the three-block- square shopping area, which was surrounded by moss- laden oak trees that hid most of the inland houses populating the south end. Weathered old homes of tabby and wood lined the ocean like sentinels, defying the unpredictable Atlantic.

On its leeward side was a shopping center and a handsome new redwood marina, where several large yachts were moored among the smaller sailboats and fishing boats. A small jetport was located just north of the village, and north of it the upper half of the island was heavily forested and uninhabited - You could walk the inhabited part of the island in an hour, thought Sloan.

A tall man slender as a reed and wearing a battered captain’s hat pulled up in the fuel truck as the Lear howled to a stop near the low-slung terminal.

‘Anyplace to get some good home cooking?’ Sloan asked, climbing out of the plane.

The man, who seemed to be on about a ten-second delay, stared at him and then said, ‘Might try Birdie’s over in the village.’

‘Can I get a cab?’

He thought about that for another ten seconds.

‘No cab out here.’

‘How can I get over there?’

‘Well,’ the man in the peaked cap said after some thought, ‘you can walk, takes ten or fifteen minutes.’ Another delay. ‘Or you can rent a car inside.’

‘Actually I’m looking for a friend of mine. Maybe you know him — Christian Hatcher?’

After half a minute: ‘Wouldn’t know.’

‘Birdie’s you say?’

‘Uh-huh.’

It was a beautiful day, the temperature in the eighties and a cool breeze hustling through the trees from the beach.

‘We’ll walk.’

The island, a quaint bit of Americana worthy of a Rockwell painting, had changed little in twenty years. Its charm lured the big cruise ships from Miami and Charleston. They came once or twice a week, tied up at the pier and spent the night. The cruisers, as its passengers were called by locals, ambled down the fishing pier and checked out Tim’s gift store, pored over Nancy’s used books, stocked up on T-shirts and stuffed animals at the Island Hop, got the latest magazines and paperbacks at Doc Bryant’s drugstore, had a drink at Murphy’s Tavern or homemade ice cream at Clifton’s and then wandered off the Main Drag — the only drag, since the village was a single street a mere three blocks long — and did some sightseeing. In that short main stretch, the cruisers could eat home cooking at Birdie’s, hamburgers at the Big T, barbecue at the Rib Shack or seafood at Mallory’s before returning to their ship for the night. By the next morning they were gone.