"Do you know Brian Keyes?"

"Sure," Wiley said, "we worked together."

"Was he a good reporter?"

"Brian's a good man," Wiley said, "but I'm not so sure if he was a good reporter. He wasn't really suited for the business."

"Apparently neither were you."

"No comparison," he scoffed. "Absolutely no comparison."

"Oh, I'm not sure," Kara Lynn said. "I think you're two sides to the same coin, you and Brian."

"And I think you read too much Cosmo."Wiley wondered why she was so damned interested in Keyes.

"What about Jenna?" Kara Lynn asked. "You serious about her?"

"What is this, the Merv show?" Wiley ground his teeth. "Look," he said, "I'd love to sit and chat but it's time to be on my way."

"You're going to leave me out here in the rain? With no food or water?"

"You won't need any," he said. " 'Fraid I'm going to have to douse the fire, too."

"A real gentleman," Kara Lynn said acerbically. She was already testing the rope on her wrist.

Wiley was about to pour some tea on the flames when he straightened up and cocked his head. "Did you hear something?" he asked.

"No," Kara Lynn lied.

"It's a goddamn boat."

"It's the wind, that's all."

Wiley set down the kettle, took off his baseball cap, and went crashing off, his bare bright egg of a head vanishing into the hardwoods. Thinking he had fled, Kara Lynn squirmed to the campfire and turned herself around. She held her wrists over the bluest flame, until she smelled flesh. With a cry she pulled away; the rope held fast.

When she looked up, he was standing there. He folded his arms and said, "See what you did, you hurt yourself." He carried her back to the bed of pine needles and examined the burns. "Christ, I didn't even bring a Band-Aid," he said.

"I'm all right," said Kara Lynn. Her eyes teared from the pain. "What about that noise?"

"It was nothing," Wiley said, "just a shrimper trolling offshore." He tore a strip of orange silk from the hem of her gown. He soaked it in salt water and wound it around the burn. Then be cut another length of rope and retied her wrists, tighter than before.

The rain started again. It came in slashing horizontal sheets. Wiley covered his eyes and said, "Shit, I can't run the boat in this mess."

"Why don't you wait till it lets up?" Kara Lynn suggested.

Her composure was aggravating. Wiley glared down at her and said, "Hey, Pollyanna, you're awfully calm for a kidnap victim. You overdosed on Midol or what?"

Kara Lynn's ocelot eyes stared back in a way that made him shiver slightly. She wasn't afraid. She was not afraid.What a great kid, Wiley thought. What a damn shame.

They huddled under a sheet of opaque plastic, the raindrops popping at their heads. Wiley tied Tommy's red kerchief around the dome of his head to blot the rain from his eyes.

"Tell me about Osprey Island," Kara Lynn said, as if they were rocking on a front porch waiting for the ice-cream truck.

"A special place," he said, melancholic. "A gem of nature. There's a freshwater spring down the trail, can you believe it? Miles off the mainland and the aquifer still bubbles up. You can see coons, opossums, wood rats drinking there, but mostly birds. Wood storks, blue herons. There's a bald eagle on the island, a young male. Wingspan is ten feet if it's an inch, just a glorious bird. He stays up in the tallest pines, fishes only at dawn and dusk. He's up there now, in the trees." Wiley's ancient-looking eyes went to the pine stand. "It's too windy to fly, so I'm sure he's up there now."

"I've never seen a wild eagle," Kara Lynn remarked. "I was born down here and I've never seen one."

"That's too bad," Skip Wiley said sincerely. His head was bowed. Tiny bubbles of water hung in his rusty beard. It didn't make it any easier that she was born here, he thought.

"It'll be gone soon, this place," he said. "A year from now a sixteen-story monster will stand right where we're sitting." He got to his knees and fumbled in the pocket of his trousers. He pulled out some damp gray newspaper clippings, folded into a square. "Let me give you the full picture," he said, unfolding them, starting to read. Kara Lynn looked over his shoulder.

"Welcome to the Osprey Club ... Fine living, for the discriminating Floridian.Makes you want to puke."

"Pretty tacky," Kara Lynn agreed.

"A hundred and two units from two-fifty all the way up to a million-six. Friendly financing available. Vaulted ceilings, marble archways, sunken living rooms, Roman tubs, atrium patios with real cedar trellises, boy oh boy." Wiley looked up from the newspaper advertisement and gazed out at the woodsy shadows.

"Can't someone try to block it?" Kara Lynn suggested. "The Audubon people. Or maybe the National Park Service."

"Too late," Wiley said. "See, it's a private island. After old man Bradshaw died, his scumball kids put it up for sale. Puerco Development picks it up for three mil and wham, next thing you know it's rezoned for multi-family high-rise."

"Didn't you do a column on this?" she asked.

"I sure did." One of Wiley's many pending lawsuits: a gratuitous and unprovable reference to Mafia connections.

"Back to the blandishments," he said, "there'll be four air-conditioned racketball courts, a spa, a bike trail, a tennis complex, a piazza,two fountains, and even a waterfall. Think about that: they're going to bury the natural spring and build a fiberglass waterfall! Progress, my darling. It says here they're also planting something called a lush green-belt,which is basically a place for rich people to let their poodles take a shit."

Kara Lynn said: "How will people get out here?"

"Ferry," Wiley answered. "See here: Take a quaint ferry to your very own island where the Mediterranean meets Miami!See, Kara Lynn, the bastards can't sell Florida anymore, they've got to sell the bloody Riviera."

"It sounds a bit overdone," she said.

"Twenty-four hundred square feet of overdone," Wiley said, "with a view."

"But no ospreys," said Kara Lynn, sensing the downward spiral of his emotions.

"And no eagle," Wiley said glumly.

He acted as if he were ready to leave, and Kara Lynn knew that if he did, it would be over.

"Why did you pick me?" she asked.

Wiley turned to look at her. "Because you're perfect," he said. "Or at least you represent perfection. Beauty. Chastity. Innocence. All tanned and blond, the golden American dream. That's all they really promise with their damn parade and their unctuous tourist advertising. Come see Miami, come see the girls! But it's a cheap tease, darling. Florida's nothing but an adman's wet dream."

"That's enough," Kara Lynn said, reddening.

"I take it you don't think of yourself as a precious piece of ass."

"Not really, no."

"Me, neither," Wiley said, "but we are definitely in the minority. And that's why we're out here now—an object lesson for all those bootlicking shills and hustlers."

Wiley crawled out from under the plastic tent and rose to his full height, declaring, "The only way to teach the greedy blind pagans is to strike at their meager principles." He pointed toward the treetops. "To the creators of the Osprey Club, that precious eagle up there is not life, it has no real value. Same goes for the wood rats and the herons. Weighed against the depreciated net worth of a sixteen-story condominium after sellout, the natural inhabitants of this island do not represent life—they have no fucking value. You with me?"

Kara Lynn nodded. She still couldn't see the big bird.

"Now," Wiley said, "if you're the CEO of Puerco Development, what has worth to you, besides money? What is a life? Among all creatures, what is the one that cannot legally be extinguished for the sake of progress?" Wiley arched his eyebrows and pointed a dripping finger at Kara Lynn's nose. "You," he said. "You are, presumably, inviolate."