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"Okay, guys, laugh at me all you want I saw a body," she said firmly

Bethany lowered her sandy head Victor, Alex and Marshall all stared at one another, trying not to smile

"Hey, Gen," Victor teased her "There’s a lady at the bar ants to buy you a drink…look--Whoops, no, sorry, you didn’t act fast enough She’s disappeared"

Genevieve glared at hi his neck Of all people to be so taunting…They’d gone through school together He was a year older, but she’d h school had been tanta cool back then She’d taken him with her to every social event in their adolescent past

In college he’d finally filled out and grown a few hairs on his chest He’d grown into his features, as well, and noas tall, dark and good-looking They’d never ruined a good friendship by dating, but he could irritate her as thoroughly as if they were a , he waved a hand "Yeah, yeah, I knohat I can go do with ht," Marshall said, but he, too, was still secretly sht Marshall was the owner and founder of Deep Down Salvage as well as a local As a kid, he’d been fascinated by the history of Key West, which was inextricably entwined with tales of wreckers and salvage divers It was a mixed history Sometimes they had saved the lives of the poor souls on a ship that caerous reefs

So ships carrying rich cargos would flounder and sink Such a systehout the centuries

Marshall was at least ten years older thanin the northern waters off Massachusetts, doing heavy-duty, cold-water salvage But Key West was his hos to come back and open his own company, buy his own boat and equipood income, but he was always pleased to work on any historical effort, and he had a tremendous respect for the reefs, the water and the past Deeply tanned and buff, and dead even with her own height, he kept his head shaven, a look that went oddly ith his al with his feet up, shades on despite the setting sun, he gri down there You know…flotsam and jetsaht Zone the "Yeah, flotsalared at hio, a different world from Key West, since the city of Miami was barely an hour north He was blond, bronzed and a child of the sea and sun, a graduate in history and a master diver, but she’d shown him secrets of the reefs here that only the natives knew

"Oh, you--" she said, then broke off in aggravation and rose, taking her beer with her to the little fence that looked out over a deep channel where the resort’s pleasure crafts and fishing boats were berthed

"Don’t go awayher head and forcing a smile as well "Just wait, et yours I’ away"

"Hey, don’t be mad at me," Bethany said

"I’m not mad," Genevieve insisted

She walked on down to the dock, nursing her beer, looking out at the sunset It was beautiful and tranquil, but she was roiling inside Why had she been so panicked? She’d torked rescue situations that had become retrieval situations, and they had found bodies both times, once after a plane crash in the southern Glades, and once after a boating accident off Key West

But the dead hadn’t looked at her then

Digging a flower bed at her house, she’d dug up bones once--but that hadn’t been as shocking as it ht have been elsewhere, not in Key West, the Island of Bones

But those bones hadn’t disappeared

She felt a presence next to her, tensed and turned, certain that one of her friends had joined her to continue the torture

"You all right?"

She turned at the soft masculine query to see Jay Gonzalez He was still in unifor his eyes

She smiled She liked Jay a lot He was in his late thirties now, and had been young himself when she had first met him He’d pulled her and a few friends over when they’d been in high school, and, admittedly, there had been a few beer cans in the car He hadn’t brought theh Instead, he’d taken every one of them home

He was one of the cops who kept his boat here He didn’t go out on it often anymore He’d been out on it when his wife had fallen overboard and died But he still kept it up Maybe he even visited it now and then because he somehow felt closer to his hen he was on it

But he wasn’t there now for the boat, she knew He was there for her

"I’ all your friends convinced you’re crazyto ainst the little wooden rail next to her "I know you’re not a ditz," he told her, grinning