“And, I found him,” she said. “At least, I thought I had. Diego DelRey was…everything I’d hoped for…dreamed of. He was handsome and charming, of course-very sweet, really, like a little boy, sometimes. A spoiled little boy. He was incredibly rich-or his family was. They actually owned the resort, and Diego managed it for the family. At the time, that’s all I knew about Diego-that he was from some South American country, well-known and liked in the world of the rich, famous and beautiful people. And very, very rich. That, and the fact that he was crazy in love with me.” She paused to glare at him. “And I don’t care who you are, Sheriff, you don’t need details about that, either.”

“Fine with me,” Roan growled, in complete agreement with her on that point, for reasons that had nothing to do with him being sheriff. He cleared his throat-not that it helped much. “Just one question, though. Were you in love with him?”

She smiled, a little sadly. “I wanted to be. You have no idea how much I wanted to be. At the end of my two weeks, when he begged me to stay, asked me to marry him, I said yes. He gave me a hugely expensive ring, and took me to his family’s estate, on this private island.” Her smile vanished-as suddenly as if she’d put her foot down and discovered the ground wasn’t there. So suddenly, Roan had to fight an urge to reach for her. She gulped coffee. “Then…things changed.”

“Changed? How so?” He leaned forward, focused on her, his hands clasped on the table in front of him. Heart quickening.

She waved a hand…frowned. “Oh…it’s hard to remember now. Hard to put my finger on what it was, at first. The atmosphere just felt…wrong. Diego’s father-they called him Señor-and his uncle…they were nice enough to me, I guess, but for some reason they scared me. Maybe it was their eyes…they seemed so hard. The fact that they never smiled. And there were all these dangerous-looking men around-I know they carried guns, I’d seen them-and everywhere I went, one of them seemed to be right there, watching me. I wasn’t allowed to leave the island unless Diego was with me-I didn’t mind that so much; after all, he was my fiancé, I didn’t have any reason to go places without him. But then…they wouldn’t let me use the phone, not even to call Joy. I didn’t understand that. I knew she’d be worried about me when I didn’t come home after my vacation. She’d even given me a prepaid phone card to use to call her.” A smile flickered. “That was the way she was.

“Anyway, I began to realize I was pretty much a prisoner on that island. Diego tried to tell me it was just temporary, that the family was getting ready to close down the estate and leave for their home country-just for the summer, he said, and so I’d have a chance to meet the rest of his family. He told me we’d be married down there. I told him I wanted Joy to be there-to be my maid of honor. He promised me that once we got to his family home, I could call Joy and have her come for a visit. I really missed her-and that was another thing; there weren’t any other women on the island-except Anita, the housekeeper.” Her throat rippled, and she continued in a whisper, “She was nice to me. I liked her. She-”

“She was the one they killed-the DelReys?”

Mary nodded. She spoke rapidly, trying to get through it. Her voice shook. “And her husband, Eduardo. He took care of the grounds. They-I think they killed them just to cover their tracks. As if they were nothing-loose ends to be tied up, trash to be thrown away. Because the feds were closing in on them and they didn’t want to leave any witnesses behind. Or maybe they thought they knew things. They-” she swallowed again “-the DelReys-they’d rigged the whole island with explosives, probably to take out as many of the federal agents as possible when they came for them.

“I didn’t know any of that at the time, of course, except…I knew Anita and Eduardo were unconscious, because I’d seen them-or maybe they were already dead. Anyway, that was when I understood, finally, who-and what-the DelReys were. All I could think about was how I was going to get away from them. How to keep them from getting suspicious of me. I knew they wouldn’t hesitate to kill me too, no matter how Diego felt about me.”

Her eyes focused on something far away, she picked up her coffee cup and took another thoughtless gulp. He could hear her swallow. “That evening a helicopter came for us-all of us. We were flying away in it when the house blew up-the whole island was exploding. It looked like a movie. Señor DelRey said the feds were responsible for it. Meanwhile, I was trying to act like I was so crazy in love with Diego I didn’t care about anything else. Flying away in that helicopter…watching the fire, and the explosions…knowing Anita and Eduardo were down there-” Her voice rose to a squeak. “I didn’t know Joy was there, too-on the island. She’d come looking for me. She was there-she almost got killed-because of me.”

“Easy…” Roan gave up fighting it and reached for her hand.

Chapter 12

His hand might have been the head of a rattlesnake, from the way she shied back from it.

“Mary,” he said in a gravelly voice, “You weren’t responsible for your friend-”

“Yes-yes, I was.” She was on her feet again, pacing the small sunlit room and throwing back quick, furious glances. “Joy came looking for me. She came because I hadn’t called, and then I wasn’t on the plane, and she was worried about me. She came because she loved me. And when she knew I was in trouble, she risked her life for me. Not just then, on the island, but later.” She paused, one hand gripping the back of a chair, the other brushing at her cheeks and nose. “See, the helicopter took us first to one of the DelReys’ manufacturing plants-there was an air strip there, and they were waiting for their plane to come and fly us out of the country. They didn’t know the feds had them under surveillance all the time, that they were just waiting for the plane to land before moving in and arresting everybody. But what the feds didn’t know was that I was there, too. They thought-”

“I got some of this from Cavanaugh,” Roan said in a soothing tone. “The feds had found your purse with the housekeeper’s charred body and assumed you’d been killed in the explosions and fire.”

“But Joy knew I wasn’t dead. She knew it, but nobody would believe her. The feds were ready to take down the DelReys with guns blazing, and Joy was sure I’d be hurt or taken hostage, or worse, so she-God, she’s just this little tiny short person-you should see her-but she came for me. All by herself. And she got me out of there, Roan. She saved my life. And the worst of it is, I never even got to say thank you. I never even got to say goodbye.” She rounded on him one last time, fists clenched, face blotchy, nose red, eyes streaming and at the same time shooting fire.

He thought it the most beautiful and amazing thing he’d ever seen, like witnessing a rare natural phenomenon-the northern lights, or a moonlight rainbow.

She went on in a choked voice. “Do you understand what that was like? They took me away that very night. I had to leave everything-didn’t even have a toothbrush, a change of clothes. Nothing whatsoever that was mine-or that had been Yancy’s. It was like…I’d died. My life-who I’d been, the people I’d loved-was over. I couldn’t contact anyone-I didn’t dare. They’d told me about cases where people had broken security, and then their bodies were found a few days later-God, Roan, they even showed me pictures.” She had her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes focusing on horrors only she could see. But Roan had seen enough crime-scene photos to know the images wouldn’t be pretty.

He sat very still, cradling his empty coffee mug with both hands to keep himself from doing something stupid-stupid and dangerous-like getting up and going to her and pulling her back into his arms. Some inner sense told him she wouldn’t want that, not right then, anyway. And considering what had happened the last time he’d done that, maybe he didn’t either. Shouldn’t, for sure.

He cleared his throat. “Well, now your security’s broken all to hell. If DelRey still wants to kill you, he knows right where to find you, thanks to me and that news broadcast.”

“No.” She turned to face him, the sunlight from behind haloing her hair so that for the first time he saw hints of fire in it that even the dye couldn’t hide. “No-it wasn’t your fault or the news media’s or anybody’s.” She came toward him slowly, her body quiet…something different about the way she looked, the way she held herself.

Then she began to speak again, and once again it came to him what the difference was. The fear was gone.

“I’ve been thinking about it…after I heard the news this morning…before you got here. Just now. And what I think is, this is Fate.” Roan made a sound, an involuntary gesture, and she held up a hand to forestall the protest. “No-these last ten years-they’ve been such hell. You have no idea. Running…hiding, afraid to trust anyone, afraid to get close to anyone, all with one purpose: Running away from my…well, Destiny, I guess you could call it. Only now I think all that time I thought I was avoiding Fate, I’ve actually been on a collision course with it. It’s like…every step I’ve taken in the last ten years has been leading me to this. It’s brought me here.” She caught a hitching breath. “For better or worse, this is where it ends. I’m done with running. One way or another, it’s going to end here.”

Watching her, listening to her, he’d managed to keep his face blank, his body still and his mouth shut, while a whole kaleidoscope of emotions and sensations rolled through him-rage…both icy and hot; rejection and annoyance, tenderness and sorrow. And finally, a fierce and powerful resolve that should have surprised him, but didn’t.