“I’m dyin’ to hear your plan for getting us out of here,” Shreave drawled.

Light spilled into the cloudless sky like a blazing puddle.

Honey said, “I’ll go see the Indian and get my kayaks. Then you and I will head back to the mainland and say our good-byes.”

“Right. Genie’s Indian.” Shreave laughed harshly. “You’re gonna straighten his ass out, are you?”

“Would you please shut up? Look what you’re missing.”

The moment the sun cleared the horizon it started draining from red to amber. Simultaneously the wind died, and a crisp stillness settled upon the island.

The vista from atop the poinciana was timeless and serene-a long string of egrets crossing the distant ’glades; a squadron of white pelicans circling a nearby bay; a pair of ospreys hovering kitelike above a tidal creek. It was a perfect picture and a perfect silence.

And it was all wasted on Boyd Shreave.

“I gotta take a crap,” he said.

Honey rocked forward, clutching her head. The man was unreachable; a dry hole. For such a lunkhead there could be no awakening, no rebirth of wonderment. He was impervious to the spell of an Everglades dawn, the vastness and tranquillity of the waterscape. Nature held nothing for a person incapable of marvel; Shreave was forever destined to be underwhelmed.

It’s hopeless, Honey told herself. The cocky telephone hustler would go home to Texas unchanged, as vapid and self-absorbed as ever. That a dolt so charmless could attract both a wife and a girlfriend was as dispiriting as it was inexplicable. Once again, Honey felt foolhardy and defeated, the queen of lost causes.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Shreave snapped. “I gotta climb down pronto and pinch a loaf.”

Honey straightened herself on the bough and breathed in the morning. The salty cool air had cleared her sinuses. “All right, Boyd, let’s go.”

“What is it you wanted to show me up here, anyway?”

“You missed it, I’m afraid.”

“Missed what?”

Honey heroically resisted the urge to knock him out of the tree.

“Come on,” she said, “before you soil yourself.”

In his tenuous and trembling descent Shreave resembled nothing so much as an arthritic sloth. Twice Honey caught hold of him when he lost his grip, though it never occurred to him to say thanks.

Upon reaching solid ground, Shreave snatched his copy of Storm Ghoul from the Orvis bag and hurried into a stand of buttonwoods. “Don’t forget to clean up your mess!” Honey called after him.

Shreave scoffed, dropped his pants and started to read:

All during the trial I acted strong and composed, but on the inside my heart was in shreds. The haunting truth was that I still cared for Van Bonneville, even though he was a monster. When the day came to take the witness stand, I vowed not to look at him. I kept reminding myself that what Van had done to his wife was unforgivable and wrong, even though he’d done it for me. He was a cold-blooded killer, and he deserved to be locked away.

For the first hour or so I was fine. The prosecutor asked his questions and I answered promptly and honestly, the way I’d been coached. But as time wore on, everything blurred together and my own voice began to sound flat and unfamiliar, like a stranger was reciting my testimony. Soon my gaze wandered to the defense table…and Van. His sexy tan had faded in jail, and they’d dressed him in a cheap blue suit that barely fit. He could have split the seams just by flexing his arms!

In his eyes I expected to see hate or at least disappointment, but I was wrong. Van was looking at me the same way he had that morning we met by the grapefruit tree in front of the Elks Lodge; the same way he looked at me that night in the cab of his truck as he unbuttoned my Lilly Pulitzer blouse. The harder I tried to vanquish these moments from my mind, the more vivid and arousing they became.

Then I made a foolish mistake. I looked at his hands, those incredibly strong and knowing hands. His fingernails had been scrubbed for the trial, but the scars were still visible-those mysterious pale marks on his knuckles. They would never wash away, nor would my memories of the wondrous ways his hands had touched me during our many nights together. When I looked up I saw Van smiling fondly, and I knew he was thinking the same thing. My eyes brimmed with tears, so quickly I turned to the judge and begged for a recess…

Boyd Shreave tore the page from Eugenie Fonda’s memoir and, with a contemptuous flourish, wiped his ass with it.

Had he screwed up the courage to confront Genie, she would’ve willingly informed him that the best-selling account of her affair with the notorious wife killer had been ludicrously exaggerated to juice up the sales, and that Van Bonneville had turned in an unskilled and utterly forgettable performance the one and only time they’d had sex. Clueless as usual, Shreave believed-and suffered over-every salacious sentence in the book.

“Boyd!” It was Honey shouting.

“I’m not done!”

“Boyd, hurry!”

“Leave me alone, for Christ’s sake.”

“Please! I need you!” Then she screamed.

Awkwardly he shuffled out of the trees and was instantly poleaxed by the stench of dead fish. Beneath the poinciana stood Honey with a rope cinched tightly around her neck, possibly the same rope she’d used on him. He was about to say something snarky when he noticed movement behind her.

It was a man. The end of the rope was tied around his chest and secured with a substantial knot. One hand was wrapped in dirty bandages and the other hand hefted a branch of gumbo-limbo.

“Can I help you, fuckwad?” the intruder asked.

It was the same voice that had hissed at Shreave from the shadows in the dead of night.

“Boyd, for God’s sake,” Honey said. “Do something.”

Shreave blinked.

The stranger peered. “Darlin’, who is this noodle dick?”

Humiliated, Shreave looked down at what was left of himself after a shriveling by cold fear. He was too petrified to pull up his pants.

“Boyd, he doesn’t have a gun or even a knife. All he’s got is a stupid stick!” Honey winced as the man twisted the rope.

She was right. There was no good reason for any young able-bodied man to stand by and let her be hauled off by some teetering, drool-flecked deviant. Obviously he was in sorry shape. His swollen face had a greenish tint, his shrunken eyes were bloodshot and he carried himself stiffly, as if riven with pain. To further advertise his sickliness, he was gnawing like a starved squirrel on a capped pill bottle.

“Boyd, please,” Honey implored. “For once in your life.”

“Wh-what?” Shreave thinking: You’re a tough broad. You can take this loser. “What d-do you expect m-me to do?”

“Come on! You outweigh him by forty fucking pounds!”

That was undeniably true. All he had to do was sit on the guy, and Honey could free herself. Still, Shreave didn’t move.

The foul-smelling stalker seemed richly entertained by the standoff-Honey shouting at Boyd, and Boyd standing there half-naked, cupping his privates.

“You’re bettin’ on the wrong rooster,” Louis Piejack said to Honey. “Come on now, angel. Let’s go make us some magic.”

With a stained and lopsided grin, he yanked roughly on the rope. Honey let out a small cry as she was led away from the campsite and, ever so slowly, up the slope of the oyster midden.

And Boyd Silvester Shreave-mouth open, eyes dull, respiration shallow-stood with his Tommy Bahama boat shorts bunched around his bug-bitten ankles, doing what he did best.

Absolutely nothing.