Miami Midnight by Maggie; Davis Read Free Book Online

water. On Palm Island in the middle of Biscayne Bay, the air was always moisture-saturated. Now, before the oncoming thunderstorm, the downstairs was like a steam room. Gaby put down the last pot and unfastened the braid of her wind-ravaged hair, raking it loose with her fingers. She was still wearing the tailored shirt and skirt she’d put on that morning for work, clothes that she’d walked in, sat in, and sweltered in all day. Pulling down her hair, letting it swing free, gave her a vast sense of relief.
    A second later a burst of lightning, blue-white and blindingly close, hit the island. The lamp in the living room winked, then went out.
    In the sudden blackness there was no holding Jupiter. He threw himself at the sun porch’s glass door in a frenzy, scratching at it with his long claws and yelping. Gaby pushed the door open. The wind promptly caught it and slammed it away, and the old Labrador bolted into the night.
    She stood in the open doorway, savoring the sudden, sharp coolness of the night wind. The storm was rolling across the bay, whipping the black water into whitecaps. Gaby hoped it wasn’t going to be one of the notorious South Florida tempests that pounded boats at their moorings, tore down television aerials, and uprooted trees before going on to set lightning fires in the everglades. If so, there was no telling when the electricity might come back on.
    The leading edge of the storm was both violent and spectacular. In one almost continuous electrical assault, brilliant ball lightning hung over the whitecapped water like a searchlight.
    Gaby squinted. Or was it a searchlight? No, it couldn’t be. Certainly no one in his right mind would take a boat out on Biscayne Bay in such a squall. Another bolt of lightning cracked open the sky. In that brief, blinding moment the world turned dazzlingly, starkly blue-white and black. And what Gaby saw by its light was a huge white power cruiser, streamlined as a space ship, cutting through the black water right in front of the Collier dock.
    The next moment it was dark again.
    She stayed where she was, positive she’d been seeing things. But another flash of lightning showed the cruiser was really there, its ghostly white shape, its searchlight probing the churning black water. The light found the dilapidated pilings of the dock and stayed.
    The storm suddenly threw the full force of its wind at the island, ripping loose palm fronds and hurtling them across the back lawn like missiles. Gaby could still see the searchlight. It was a cruiser, she thought, stunned. And it was putting into her dock!
    In that moment, all that Dodd had said about gangs of robbers attacking waterfront homes leaped into Gaby’s consciousness. It was almost midnight. She was alone except for her mother sleeping upstairs. It couldn’t be happening, her rational mind tried to tell her. But this was Miami. And it was.
    She turned and stumbled back into the sun porch. Hurrying through it to the lightless living room, she hit the edge of a chair in the darkness. She heard something fall. Oh God, why did the lights have to be off?
    Another crash of lightning lit the living room. She blundered into the end table by the couch, then groped across the table for the telephone. Burglars or drug dealers were perhaps, at that moment, jumping from the biggest, sleekest cruiser she’d ever seen in her life, automatic weapons in their hands.
    Her shaking fingers found the telephone’s old-fashioned dial. She had to call 911. She had to be calm. She had to be able to speak when she got the operator. There was a possibility it would turn out to be nothing at all. Just boaters lost on the bay, putting into her dock to wait out the storm.
    She didn’t believe that.
    She lifted the base of the telephone close to her face, trying to see the numbers in the darkness. Trying not to scream.
    She was alone in the house except for her mother, drunk and helpless. There was no gun, no pistol anywhere. But, she