Miami Midnight by Maggie; Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

remembered, there were knives in the kitchen. In the next instant she knew she couldn’t use a kitchen knife to defend herself. Even to hold off robbers coming from the water. She was helpless with anything violent.
    She clutched the receiver to her ear, waiting for 911 to answer, when the next realization hit her.
    Just as the storm had put out the lights, the telephone, too, was dead.
     

 
    Chapter 4
     
    Outside, Jupiter began to bark.
    Gaby stood trembling, rooted to the spot. She was a coward, just as her mother had said. She’d run away to Europe when the man she loved had married someone else, and she had fled in one way or another from Paul and Jeannette all her life. But now for the first time, there was nowhere to run. She was trapped!
    The dog’s frantic yapping rose to a frenzy over the noise of the storm. Jupiter , she thought suddenly. They’d kill him if he tried to protect the house!
    She dropped the telephone. It hit the edge of the table and crashed to the floor, but she was already groping through the living room toward the sun porch, not even sure what she was going to do.
    Violent cracks of lightning, like flashbulbs going off, booby-trapped the darkened house. One minute it was glaringly bright, the next pitch black. At the door to the sun porch she missed the step and nearly fell. She lurched into the dinner table, her cry of pain lost as a sudden downpour added to the uproar.
    She knew it was foolish to panic over Jupiter if the house was being attacked, but she couldn’t abandon her old pet. She threw open the sun porch door. The wind yanked the knob from her hand and slammed the door shut again. Lightning blasted the sky, going to ground somewhere on Palm Island. Beyond the porch the glare of lightning showed the figure of a man picking his way across the littered back lawn, a drenched white shape in the slanting torrent of rain, before the world went dark again.
    Frozen with fright, Gaby strained to see through the storm. Had she really seen anything out there? One man? Or a whole gang of burglars with guns in their hands?
    Lightning split open the sky once more, and Gaby clapped both hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. The porch door rattled, then flew open in a gust of wind.
    Another stroke of lightning hit close by. In the moment’s earsplitting dazzle she saw a man’s white shirt, white trousers, the blur of his face. Then she was being propelled backward by an unseen hand. He slammed the door shut and leaned against it.
    They tried to see each other in the dimness, breathing heavily.
    “Jupiter!” she croaked. It was the only thing she could think of. “My dog!”
    “He ran off.” The voice in the storm-wracked darkness was husky, “Miss Collier?”
    She backed away as lightning again crossed the sky. “What have you done with my dog?”
    The tall figure straightened away from the door. “He ran off when the lightning hit. This is the right place, isn’t it?” He turned his head, trying to locate her. “Gabrielle Collier?”
    Gaby trembled violently. She was sure he was wearing the same clothes—white trousers, white shirt, and dark tie. He seemed only to have discarded the elegant suit jacket. It was the same man she had seen that afternoon, with the Colombian kneeling before him and kissing his hand. She didn’t know what James Santo Marin was doing in her home, but it didn’t matter. There could be a team of robbers from his boat racing for the house at that very moment!
    She stumbled backward toward the door to the living room, hands held out to ward him off. Her mind wouldn’t work, it was blank with fear. The crashing of thunder and lightning seemed to have paralyzed her brain.
    She heard the shadow that was James Santo Marin move toward her and hit the card table. “Did the storm knock your lights out?” He rubbed his knee. “Miss Collier?”
    “W-what are you doing here?” She backed away again, carefully. “How—how did you know where I