In the Dark by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online

touches she was giving Seymore were strictly for his benefit, her message clear: Leave me the hell alone, hands off, I’ve moved on.
    How far would it go?
    All right, one way or the other, he would have been jealous, but now he was really concerned.
    A woman’s body had been found on the beach, andhe had not heard back from Alicia Farr—who was a blonde.
    David couldn’t stop the reel playing through his head.
    From what he’d overheard, Jay was convinced a trick had been played, or that Alex had assumed a dozing sunbather was a corpse. David didn’t see that as a possibility. Alex was far too intelligent, and she wouldn’t have walked away without assuring herself that the body no longer maintained the least semblance of a vital sign.
    A trick? Maybe.
    Real corpses didn’t get up and walk away, but they could be moved.
    If there had been a real corpse and it had been moved, it had been moved by someone on the island. That meant Alex could be in serious danger. After all, Len had told David what was going on, so who knew who else he might have told?
    An ex–navy SEAL, maybe? The perfect blond hero—but was that the truth behind John Seymore being at Moon Bay?
    Hopefully he would find out soon enough.
    “So?”
    “I’m sorry, what did you say?” David said, realizing that Jay had been talking away, but he hadn’t heard a word.
    “Well? Is it a photojournalism thing or a salvage dive?”
    “What…?”
    “Your next excursion,” Jay said.
    “Oh…well, I was looking into something, but my source seems to have dried up,” David told Jay. My key source either dried up, or was killed and washed up onyour beach, and then disappeared, he thought. Then his attention was caught by Alex again.
    The band was playing a rumba. She was up and in John Seymore’s arms. Head cast back, she was laughing at whatever he had to say. Her eyes were like gems. She was beautifully decked out in heels and a soft yellow halter dress that emphasized both her tan and her tall, sinewy length. Her long hair was free and a true golden blond, almost surreal in the light of the torches that burned here by night.
    The lights were actually bug repellents. There was no escaping the fact that when you had foliage like this, you had bugs. But the glow they gave everything, especially Alex, was almost hypnotic.
    David turned to Jay. “Sure you haven’t heard about anything?” he asked him.
    “Me?” Galway laughed. “Hell, I’m a hanger-on. The big excitement in my life is when I get a taste of something because of the big-timers—like you.”
    “Well, I’m looking at the moment,” David told him. “So, if you do get wind of anything, anything at all, I’d like to know.”
    “You’d be the first one I’d go to,” Jay assured him solemnly.
    “Interesting that you’d say so—with Seth Granger here and ready to pay.” And in the Tiki Hut at that moment, David realized. Granger was a big man and in excellent shape for his sixty-odd years. He was speaking with Ally Conroy, mother of Zach, at the bar. She was at least twenty years his junior, but he’d gathered from their bits of conversation before the swim that she was a widow, worried about rearing her son alone. Seth wasn’t all that well-liked by many people, yet Ally seemed tobe giving him the admiration he craved. Maybe they were a perfect fit.
    “Seth…well, you know. He’s always looking for something to bug his way into. Hell, why not? He’s rich, and he loves the sea, and he’d like to make a name for himself in his retirement years. Don’t you love it? Tons of money, no real knowledge, yet he wants to be right in the thick of things. Executive turned explorer.”
    “Why not?” David said with a shrug. “Most expeditions need financial backing.”
    “Yeah, why not? It’s what I’d love to do myself. I’ve got a great job here, mind you—but I sure wish I had his resources. Or your reputation. Every major corporation out there with a water-related product