The water warmed, and he lifted his head, letting it stream over him. Maybe he shouldn’t have accepted this assignment. There were criminals all across the country. He should never have come home.

The phone was already ringing when he left the shower. He picked up the receiver. His assistant, Ricky Haines, was calling from Virginia. They hadn’t found any matchups with the rose tattoos so far, but he would keep looking.

Kyle thanked him, hung up and glanced at the clock. Nearly eight. He called Jimmy, who was usually in by seven-thirty, if not earlier.

Jimmy was in, and he had information.

There had finally been an identification on their Jane Doe. She was in fact Julie Sabor; dental records brought in from Cincinnati had clinched the ID.

“We think we’ve got a name on our weekend victim, as well,” Jimmy told him. “Holly Tyler, twenty-eight, worked as a receptionist at a med-tech lab. Only child, parents deceased, friendly, well liked at work. She was incredibly excited and secretive Friday afternoon. She was getting off early for a ‘wild weekend’—and she told the girls at work that she wouldn’t whisper a word until she saw them again come Monday.”

“She never showed up on Monday?”

“Her friends in the office even hesitated about calling in this morning—they thought she might be planning to call in sick or something. But then one of them noticed an article in the paper this morning about the torso we found yesterday and decided to call in. I’m expecting Larraine Harrison and Betty Kilbride, two of the girls she worked with, to come down and identify the body—well, the head—in about an hour.”

“I’ll be there,” Kyle said, and hung up.

He dressed quickly, then tried Madison’s number. He still got the answering machine.

He swore, then decided to drive by her house.

Her beige Cherokee was in the drive, but she didn’t answer the bell. He knocked on the door, then walked around the house, pounding on the windows.

“Damn you, Madison!” he muttered out loud.

Finally he used his cellular phone and called Jimmy. “Have you got Madison with you down at the morgue again?” he demanded angrily.

“No, I don’t have Madison at the morgue,” Jimmy informed him irritably. “What the hell’s eating you?”

“She didn’t answer her phone last night, and she’s not here now.”

“Well, you know, Kyle, she is over twenty-one.”

“I’m going in, Jimmy.”

“Kyle, I’m sure that—”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m going in.”

“Fine. I’ll be there in five minutes. Five—”

Kyle had already hung up.

8

“Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Now, no smiles for this. Be sultry. Seduce the camera, Madison. We’re not being playful here, we’re smoldering, my darling. You are pure sensuality…. Give me movement, subtle movement, just a tiny bit of movement, face, eyes…Part your lips, just a hair. That’s it, perfect, perfect….”

Jaime Marquesa’s camera clicked away as he gave her his instructions. It was an outdoor shoot, on a small private spit of beach at Key West, and as Jaime moved around with his camera, his two assistants hovered in silence behind, ready to move any obstruction or raise aluminum sheets against the sun if the shot demanded it.

Madison liked Jaime, and she liked working with Michelle Michaux, a local woman who had come from Miami’s inner-city area to excel in fashion design. Of Haitian descent, Michelle had a beautiful, soft accent. Her swimwear was becoming so popular that the onetime dollar-an-hour seamstress was frequently quoted in Forbes. But she also had a deep-seated belief in giving back to her community. Today, she, Jaime and Madison were all donating their time and talents for a poster campaign to support the local arts and students interested in pursuing careers in fashion and the fine arts. The concept was Michelle’s. The theme was To Soar Where We Can Dream. To Madison, with Darryl working in Miami and anxious to spend time with Carrie Anne, the opportunity to take the few days necessary to work on the project had seemed incredibly fortuitous. She’d also been anxious to get away.

She’d been curious to discover if she had the willpower to force herself to leave Miami and slip away, knowing that Kyle was there. But if he and Jassy were getting together, she needed to keep herself out of the way. And if she had been misreading the signs…

“Sand!” Jaime exclaimed suddenly—and unhappily. He took up an admonishing stance and stared at one of his young assistants, a handsome New Yorker of Nicaraguan descent named Hector. “Sand!” he repeated.

Hector shrugged and came running forward with his little brush, carefully removing every spec of the offending sand from Madison’s buttocks.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

He winked at her with a casual shrug. “Bugger of a job, Madison, but someone’s got to do it.”

She smiled back. He wasn’t being offensive. He was Jaime’s lover.

“And I get to hold the sun shields!” George Nathan, Jaime’s other assistant, said with a sigh as he checked a light meter. George was sandy-haired, lanky, a recent graduate of the University of Miami. He’d already won a number of prizes for his own photography, but he was working with Jaime to learn from the best.

“Sun shields are important,” Hector assured him.

“But sand is more fun.”

“Boys, we’re working here!” Jaime commented with an exaggerated sigh. “Once again, same look, Madison, sultry, dreamy…Okay, she needs the scarves now. Okay, with the scarves, Madison, you play. Just play. Have fun. Run with them, keep them flying in the breeze. We are showing that dreams are spun like fine silk, that they float in the air, that they are what we make them, yes, you understand? Go with it, run with it….”

She did. Jaime was good, the best. She was certain he could have talked a five-hundred-pound bearded lady into feeling that she could be dressed up and dusted off to look just like Cinderella on her way to the ball. Playing with the silk scarves, running up and down the sand, was fun. Hard work, because—despite the fact that it was growing late in the afternoon—the sun remained intense and Jaime seemed to be taking thousands of pictures. They’d been at it all day. The stylist and makeup woman had left after the last break, and Jaime kept promising that they would be done any minute. His concept of a minute was apparently a bit different from the norm, but he brought out the very best in her, and she knew it.

At a brief pause in the shooting—with Hector once again dusting her flesh free from sand—she was stunned to look up and see Kyle Montgomery standing in the back, beside Jaime and Michelle. He was talking with them but watching Madison. He was dressed for the beach in nothing but a pair of pale blue cutoff jeans. His head was bare; he wore sandals on his feet and, in the sun, his inevitable sunglasses. He looked a lot more like part of the shoot than a dedicated FBI agent. Dark hair fell casually over his forehead; his flesh was incredibly bronzed and covered with a sheen of sweat. He might have been a lifeguard.

At times, she mused, he had been. He had worked as a lifeguard during his last two summers before college.

That was a long time ago. He was no longer a local boy.

So what was he doing here? He was supposed to be working.

Despite herself, she felt her blood begin to race. Her heart pounded; breathing became difficult. She wished Kyle had stayed in Washington.

She commanded her knees to quit feeling so weak. She chided herself in silence for letting him affect her in any way. She wondered whether, if she closed her eyes, he would disappear.

She tried it. He didn’t.

Jaime indicated with a smile that Kyle was welcome to go talk with Madison. Kyle nodded, then started walking toward her. The casual beach-boy look of his clothing was immediately belied as she felt his damning stare, despite the darkness of his glasses. He stopped dead in front of her, and she was certain that he was using all his willpower not to reach for her and shake her.