“Must be a good one,” she said.

“Not really. It’s pretty dull.”

Reading the tree trimmer’s love letter depressed Boyd Shreave, although not because of the kindergarten spelling or even the leering allusion to Eugenie’s seismic sexual energy. Shreave was bummed because the note was a black-and-white reminder that Van Bonneville was all about action. The guy had made good on his written vow, however crudely expressed. He’d actually gone out and killed his wife, in order to spend the rest of his life with the woman of his dreams.

Sure, he was a moron, but he wasn’t a bullshitter. He was a man of his “werd.”

Which was more than Shreave could say for himself.

He dimmed the flashlight and threw off the woolen blanket and followed Eugenie Fonda back to the campsite, where he surreptitiously re-stashed her memoir in the Orvis bag. The space case named Honey was heating a kettle over the fire.

“Green tea?” she offered.

Shreave sneered. “I don’t think so.”

“There was a raccoon over in the beer cans,” Eugenie reported, pointing up the hill. “A big sucker, too, it sounded like.”

“Maybe that’s who stole our kayaks,” Shreave said caustically.

“Honey also thought she heard a guitar.”

“A guitar, huh?” Shreave tossed a broken oyster shell into the flames. “Sure it wasn’t a harp? Maybe we’re all dead and this is Heaven. That’d be my luck.”

Honey handed a steaming cup to Eugenie. “Boyd’s right, it probably wasn’t anything. It was just in my head,” she said quietly.

Eugenie asked about panthers. Honey told her there were wild ones on the mainland. “But only a few. They’re almost extinct.”

“What a tragedy that would be,” Shreave muttered.

“They don’t eat people, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

Shreave laughed thinly. “The only thing I’m afraid of is getting bored out of my skull. I don’t suppose you two came up with a game plan.”

Eugenie said, “We sure did. Our plan is to ignore all your dumbass comments.”

Honey raised a hand. “Shhhh. Hear that?”

“Don’t pay attention to her,” Shreave told Eugenie. “She’s a complete nut job, in case you didn’t notice.”

Honey remarked upon how different Boyd had sounded when he’d phoned to sell her a cheap piece of Gilchrist County. “You’ve got a wonderful voice when you’re lying,” she said. “The rest of the time you’re just a whiny old douchebag.”

Eugenie laughed so hard that green tea jetted through her front teeth. Shreave was furious but low on options. Honey emptied the kettle over the fire and said it was time to hit the sack.

“Big day tomorrow,” she added. “We’re gonna search the whole island ’til we find those kayaks.”

“What if they’re not here?” Genie asked.

“Then I guess we start swimming. Either way, you’ll need a good night’s rest.”

Once it became clear that Eugenie had no intention of ministering to his wounded member, Shreave dragged his bedding out of the pup tent and relocated closer to the fire. He’d been camping only once, twenty years earlier, during a brief hitch with the Boy Scouts. His mother had signed him up as part of an ongoing (and ultimately futile) campaign to imbue her only male child with character. Almost immediately young Boyd had alienated the other Scouts with his nettlesome commentary and disdain for physical labor. By the time the troop made its first overnight expedition, Shreave had been accurately pegged as the resident slacker. Soon after midnight a prankster had opened his sleeping bag and set loose a juvenile armadillo, which innocently began to explore Shreave’s armpits for grubs. The unhappy camper had reacted by clubbing the bewildered creature to death with his boom box, a second-degree misdemeanor resulting in the troop’s ejection from the Lady Bird Johnson State Floral Gardens and Nature Preserve, and of course in Shreave’s lifetime banishment from the Scouts.

Now, lying in the moonlight, Shreave tensely attuned himelf to the many sounds of the night. He felt foolishly exposed and defenseless against feral predators. What did that goofball Honey know about panthers? The hairs on his arms prickled when he heard an animal with heft-surely no raccoon-scraping slowly through the trees. Shreave groped around for a rock or a sturdy stick, but all he came up with was a handful of oyster shards.

“I smell fish.” It was Honey’s voice.

“From the campers before us,” said Shreave. Secretly he was glad to know that someone else was awake.

“Not cooked fish. Raw fish,” she said. “I swear I know that smell.”

Trying to be casual, Shreave said, “I hear that critter you guys were talkin’ about.”

“Sounds substantial, doesn’t it?”

“For sure.”

“So go check it out,” Honey suggested. “Don’t forget your flashlight.”

Shreave rolled over, thinking: She’s quite the comedienne.

“Nighty-night, Boyd.”

“Go to hell.”

After a while the noise in the trees stopped, and one of the women began to snore softly. Shreave had to piss like a fountain, but he was reluctant to venture out among the nocturnal fauna. Besides, the painful Taser mishap temporarily had taken the pleasure out of urination.

With no success he slapped at some gnats that had developed a fondness for his hair. Minute by wretched minute, the mystique of Florida was bleeding away. Bitterly Shreave reappraised his grandiose dream of launching a new life with Eugenie Fonda. If the trip continued on its present downward trajectory, the dimension of this particular failure would dwarf all the others in Shreave’s lackluster past. As usual he deflected both blame and responsibility; cruel chance had imbedded him here-stranded on a scraggly island with a psychotic divorcee, an increasingly unresponsive girlfriend and a half-barbecued cock.

Lulled by the hiss of the dying campfire, Shreave was surprised when his thoughts turned to Lily back in Fort Worth. His longing was characteristically base and unsentimental; the memory stirring him was that of his heiress wife clad in those red thong panties, dry-humping his lap on the living room sofa. Shreave regretted not having taken advantage of that extraordinary interlude, for Lily-who by now must have figured out that he’d flown the coop-was lost to him forever.

He would have been shocked to know that he wasn’t the only man on Dismal Key thinking about her.

The Indian had slipped away, leaving the young woman named Gillian to supervise Dealey. The investigator knew he was in trouble when she said, “I think I’d make a good TV weather personality. They don’t call ’em weathermen anymore-they’re ‘weather personalities.’ Forget the hurricanes and tornadoes, but I’d love to do the winter ski reports. You ever been to Aspen?”

Dealey shook his head.

“Me neither. Park City?”

“I really need to sleep,” Dealey said.

“Let’s make a demo tape.”

At first Dealey refused, but then the girl jabbed his gut with the sawed-off shotgun, a weapon with which she was clearly, and harrowingly, unfamiliar. So he took out the video camera and taped her holding the gun while she pretended to do a television weather report. When he replayed it for her to see, she said, “Jesus, my hair’s a wreck. Did you bring some conditioner?”

“Oh sure. And rose-petal bath crystals.”

Gillian said, “Maybe I’ll switch my major to communications. I can’t see myself in a classroom full of third graders.”

“It’s a stretch,” Dealey agreed.

“Or maybe I won’t go back to college at all. I’ll just stay here on the island with you and Thlocko.”

“Look, I need a favor. I want to call home and let my wife know I’m okay.”

Gillian looked more amused than sympathetic. “You got a cell phone, Lester?” She’d decided he looked like a Lester and to address him that way.

“Two minutes is all I need. She’s probably worried to death,” Dealey said.