Nothing happened. Rodriguez didn’t jump, didn’t bleed, didn’t blink.
“You do know he’s dead, right?” Hooker asked Gobbles.
“Yeah. I knew that.”
“Feel better?”
“Yeah,” Gobbles said. “But I surely would like a turkey sandwich.”
I noticed a shoebox left on the table. Gucci. “Someone buys expensive shoes,” I said.
Rosa picked the box up and looked inside. “Uh-oh.”
Felicia, Hooker, Suzanne, and I looked over Rosa’s shoulder. There were two cylinders attached to a small electronic component with a clock counting down. Two minutes left on the clock.
“Bomb!” we all yelled.
Hooker grabbed the box, ran outside, and heaved it toward the water. It hit the dock, went into a skid, and exploded. We were all knocked back, and half the windows blew out.
We didn’t waste any time getting off the property. Too much trouble to alley-oop over the wall again. We ran to the water’s edge, carefully stepped into the waist-high water, scooted around the protruding stucco wall, and dragged our soaked selves onto the bank on the other side.
The white light from headlights and blue emergency strobes raced down the street and stopped in front of the gated house while we tiptoed across the backs of yards. We got to the Camry, squeezed six wet people and a big wet dog into the car, and Rosa drove off, down the street then across the causeway, toward South Beach.
I had so much leftover terror my teeth were chattering and I was shaking.
“D-d-do you think it will work?” I asked Hooker. “D-d-do you think they’ll connect Rodriguez and Lucca with the m-m-murders?”
Hooker had his arms locked around me. “There will be a lot of unanswered questions,” he said, “but I’m hoping we left the murder weapon in the kitchen. I don’t see where the police can dispute a murder weapon loaded with fingerprints.”
“Guess we know why they weren’t worried about leaving you behind,” Rosa said to Hooker. “They were going to blow you up.”
“That charge was left in the kitchen, next to the gas cooktop,” Hooker said. “I’m guessing it would have blown everything up and probably burned the place down.”
I woke up in the little bed in Felicia’s house. Beans was on the floor, still sound asleep. Hooker was on top of me, wide awake, his hand on my breast.
“Your hand is on my breast again,” I said.
“And?”
“You might want to move it lower.”
He slid his hand down a couple inches. “Here?”
“Lower.”
The hand went to just below my hip. “Here?”
“Yeah. Now a little to the right.”
“Darlin’!”
Okay, big surprise. I was going to succumb to his charms…again. And I’d probably regret it…again. But I wouldn’t regret it short term. Short term was going to be good. And who knows, maybe it would work out for us this time. And if it didn’t, I’d be smart enough to keep the key to the golf cart.
An hour later we were still in bed, and Hooker’s cell phone rang.
“I hear on the news that the police found the Huevo murder weapon in the possession of two dead suspects,” Skippy said. “It sounds like you’re off the hook. Are you planning on showing up here anytime soon?”
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