The Killing Edge by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online Page A

possibly by someone involved with the Bryson Agency.”

THREE

    T he Stirling was one of five boats berthed at the rickety docks off the Florida Bay side of Key Biscayne.
    They would be tearing down the docks soon, along with the old bait-and-beer shop that had been there since the 1920s. Miami had officially been a city then, incorporated in 1896, but to many it had still been nothing but a mosquito-infested swamp, stuck between the Everglades and Biscayne Bay. Technically, the Everglades wasn’t a swamp—it was a literal “river of grass,” and a slow-moving river at that. It wasn’t that the city had been kept secret from the world—Fort Dallas had been erected on the Miami River in the early 1800s as an outpost in the Seminole Wars. After that, the city, and all the smaller municipalities that made up Greater Miami, had grown slowly. Hurricanes, heat, humidity, snakes, gators and other pests had combinedto limit its expansion. There had been boom in the 1920s, but the hurricane of 1926 had stopped development in its tracks for a while. The thirties hadn’t done much for the area, either, but since the 1940s and the advent of army bases and the industry of war, the city had continually grown. Castro’s rise to power had brought a massive Cuban influx, and soon after, Miami had become the haven of choice for people from every country in the Caribbean, and South and Central America.
    A lot of what had first brought Luke Cane to the area was part of a dying past. Didn’t matter. He liked the diversity of what was going on. He regularly heard Spanish, German, Russian and British accents, all in a normal day, just going out for coffee, stopping for a beer.
    He would miss it, though, when the old shops and docks finally went down under the wave of the future.
    The old way in the Florida Keys—especially the middle Keys—would perish more slowly. He could always move the Stirling farther south.
    The causeway led to the luxury residences on Key Biscayne, to the aquarium, the beaches and one of the city’s finest magnet schools. There were research laboratories, boat rentals, picnic areas. His own little patch of heaven was behind a forested road that only the natives tended to travel. Boaters knew the bait shop, where you could also buy beer and exactly two menu items: boiled shrimp and burgers.
    When he drove back home that night, he immediately recognized the visitor sitting at the end of the dock as Octavio Gonzalez.
    He parked his Subaru on the sand spit that was assigned to his slip and got out. Octavio stood right away and approached him. It was almost 3:00 a.m.
    He wondered how long the other man had been sitting there. Probably most of the night.
    “Did you see her? Did you?” Octavio asked anxiously. “Is she all right?”
    “I didn’t actually speak with her, but she was there, and I know she’s all right,” Luke assured him.
    Relief flooded Octavio’s face, but then he turned anxious once again. “But you went as someone else. Why wouldn’t she see you? They have her imprisoned, don’t they?” He was about five-ten, stocky, bald on top, mustached. In his youth he had probably displayed the machismo that went with his heritage, but now he only looked broken and desperate. He set his hands on Luke’s chest, as if he could force him to make everything all right. “That woman—that Myra woman!” he continued. “She won’t let me speak with my daughter. She won’t let me on the property. She called the police when I insisted on speaking with my daughter. She even told them that she didn’t know where Rene was!”
    “She told the police she didn’t know where Rene was when they went to see her. If Rene wasn’t there when the police arrived, then she wasn’t lying. She did tell the police that Rene was all right, and they’ll go back to see her again.”
    “They should camp outside her door!” Octavio said furiously.
    “Octavio, I know how you feel,” Luke said patiently,gently grasping