CHAPTER 5

Saturday, November 3

4:30 p.m.

“Hey, boss man,” twenty-year-old Mark Morgan called as he entered Rick’s Island Hideaway. “What’s shakin’?”

Rick sat with his back to the door, head angled toward the television mounted from the ceiling behind the bar. He was watching the five-o’clock local news.

He glanced over his shoulder at him and smiled. “Not much. There was an anthrax scare up in Homestead. A jealous husband sent his soon-to-be ex a letter containing a powdery substance.”

“Which turned out to be?” Mark asked.

“Cornstarch. But the hoax closed the entire office building where the woman works. What’s with these people?”

“No joke. Sick.”

Rick glanced back at the tube. “It’s official. Fantasy-Fest attendance was way down this year. No surprise there.”

Fantasy Fest, a nine-day adult Halloween celebration that culminated in a huge costume party on Duval Street, was the wildest thing Mark had ever seen. “If attendance was down this year, I’d hate to be around when it’s up.”

Rick snapped off the TV. “Libby called. She’s running late.”

“No problem. I’ll clock in.”

Libby, one of the nighttime bartenders, was consistently late. The original party girl, she stayed up all night and slept most of the day. In anticipation, Rick had begun scheduling her an hour before he needed her.

Mark smiled to himself, crossed to the time clock and punched in. That’s the kind of guy Rick was. Flexible but demanding; a laid-back perfectionist, if such a thing was possible. He wanted what he wanted but wasn’t averse to finding a roundabout way to get it.

Mark liked that about his boss. He enjoyed working for him. He figured God had been looking out for him big time when he sent Rick Wells his way.

Like a lot of folks on the island, Mark was relatively new to Key West. Two years before, he had graduated from high school in Humble, Texas, concluded much to his family’s dismay that he’d had enough of school for a while and set off to see a bit of the world. After bumming around the Southeast, he landed in south Florida, then Key West.

He had found Rick’s Island Hideaway by chance. A Help Wanted sign in the window had propelled him inside. Rick had hired him on the spot. Mark wasn’t sure if Rick had given him the job because they’d hit it off right away-which they had-or because Mark didn’t touch alcohol, a rare commodity on this island.

“How was your day?” Rick asked from the doorway.

Mark thought of Tara, his girlfriend of three months. He had beeped her half a dozen times throughout the day, but she hadn’t responded.

Had she tired of him already?

He lifted a shoulder, feigning indifference. “It was pretty cool. How about yours?”

“Good. Business was steady, but not nuts. Val stopped by.”

“Great.” Mark slipped on an apron and headed out to the bar. Florida law required a person to be twenty-one to serve alcohol, but he did just about everything else around the Hideaway, from washing glasses and replenishing stock, to mopping behind the bar and sweeping the walk in front of the Hideaway. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but then Mark wasn’t qualified for glamorous.

“Anything in particular you want done first?” he asked Rick, who had followed him out front.

“Glasses, then straighten up for the rush. Wipe all the tables and chairs, sweep the floor.”

“You got it, boss.”

Mark worked in silence, his thoughts turning to Tara once more. They’d met shortly after he’d gotten the job at Rick’s. He’d been working; she’d been out partying with her friends. They had looked at each other and something had happened-it had been instant and electrifying.

Love at first sight.

Problem was, she was only seventeen and still in high school. A senior, she would graduate in May. Worse than her age, however, were her friends. She was part of a closely knit group, more a club than simply a clique of friends. They partied, used drugs and were sexually active. They espoused ideas that went against Mark’s upbringing, materialistic ones about the existence of only the here and now, about living for today not tomorrow, about enjoying the moment and all it had to offer.

Once he had learned what she was a part of, he’d told her it was over between them. But she had begged him to see her again. She loved him; she would break away from her friends, distance herself from their beliefs.

So far, she hadn’t been too successful at doing that. But then, it didn’t seem to him that she had tried all that hard.

Is that where she had been all day? he wondered, hoisting a tray of clean glasses onto his shoulder and heading out to the bar. Running around with her friends? Seeing other guys? Partying the way she used to?

Anger rose up in him, swift and white-hot. He fought to get a grip on it. Anger was a powerful, destructive force. One of the seven deadly sins. The one he had to battle often. The one that had gotten him into trouble before-big trouble.

Tara had changed, he told himself. He had to believe in her, he had to trust. He loved her.

Mark sighed. Tara didn’t understand his religious convictions; he didn’t understand her lack of them. Raised in a strict Southern Baptist family, the church had played a major part in his childhood. In fact, in first grade he had announced that when he grew up, he was going to be a preacher. His conviction to do so hadn’t wavered until just months before his high-school graduation.

Suddenly, he had felt called in another direction.

His change of heart had both shocked and dismayed his family. They’d begged him to reconsider, had asked their pastor to intervene. But Mark had held fast to his decision. He had argued that he needed to experience sin firsthand before he preached against it. After all, how could he counsel others on spiritual strength if his had never been tested?

Mark loaded the glasses onto the shelves behind the bar, aware of Rick at the other end, chatting with a pair of tourists about the area’s best bone fishing and where to hire a guide. He swallowed hard and acknowledged the irony of it all: he was knee-deep in sin and spiritual warfare, and most days, not faring so well in the battle.

Glasses done, Mark moved on to the tables and chairs, aware of time passing, and that the trickle of customers entering the bar would soon be a surge. Libby had arrived and was flirting with a pair of guys drinking shots and beer. Locals, Mark recognized. They came in a couple times a week, always together and always wearing matching Miami Dolphins caps.

So, where had Tara been all day? Why hadn’t she returned his pages?

She had been acting strangely of late, jumpy and distracted, crying a lot. She’d lost weight and looked tired all the time, with dark circles under her eyes.

Maybe she didn’t really love him. Maybe she loved her friends and their wild lifestyle more.

Business grew brisk, and Mark managed to put all thoughts of Tara aside until a lull offered him the opportunity to call her.

Using Rick’s office phone, he dialed. At the sound of her voice, twin emotions of relief and anger cascaded over him. “Where have you been?”

“Nowhere,” she answered immediately, tone defensive.

“I paged you five times today. You didn’t call me back.”

“The battery’s dead. Geez.”

A twinge of guilt speared through him. He quashed it by mustering indignation. After all, she could have called him. “Did you do it today? Like you promised? Did you tell your friends you didn’t want to see them anymore?”

“Why are you acting this way!” she cried. “I didn’t do anything wrong! I didn’t even see my friends today.”

He let out a sharp breath, wishing not for the first time that he had broken it off with her when he discovered who her friends were. “You made a promise to me, Tara. You haven’t kept it.”