Downstairs, she found their common area empty. Whoever the man had been, he was gone. She headed back up for her things, told Adrianna she was leaving and headed out. Instead of leaving through the gift shop area by the exit, she slipped out the key-operated gate to the parking lot.
It was an easy shot over the causeway onto I-95, exiting on US1 to head for her house. Without the usual rush-hour traffic she faced on most days, it just took only a matter of minutes. But as she drove, she considered the man she had seen standing at her door; she probably should have checked out the rest of the facility and made sure that he’d found his party—or the way out. They didn’t employ private security at Sea Life, since both the City of Miami and Miami Beach police were always in the area, not to mention the Florida Highway Patrol and the Miami-Dade force. The fences that surrounded the property were set with alarms, and the main entrance also had cameras. Besides, there was almost always staff on hand. Rick and Adrianna lived in a small apartment at the back of the “office building” where she worked. Grady had a bedroom in the back of his office and sometimes stayed over, and there was talk of creating housing for the interns when one of the storage sheds—an old sound studio from the property’s earlier incarnation—was remodeled. That was a plan for the future, though, and would require its own capital campaign. The day-to-day running of the place was expensive and depended upon sponsors with deep pockets, like the people they had entertained the night before. She smiled, thinking about what they called the “attack cats” that roamed the property. There were three of them—Meatball, Mama and Massey—all strays that Grady had rescued and brought to the property. They ruled the place, along with a few of the resident iguanas and the peacocks that had wandered in from somewhere. They weren’t far from Jungle Island, a wonderful small zoo that had once been in Miami proper rather than on the water; after Hurricane Andrew had devastated what had then been Parrot Jungle, it had reopened under a new name and in its new location off the causeway. Grady had once told her after Andrew, many of their birds had ended up living in the wild.
Lara’s rental was a pretty duplex on Virginia Street. There was a gate—which she’d been advised to keep locked, so she did—a small private yard, and then the entrance to her half of the row house–style building. The gate and the wall that surrounded the property were covered in beautiful purple bougainvillea. She hadn’t really brought much with her yet; most of her belongings were with her aunt in the Richmond house where she’d spent most of her childhood. Her parents had been killed in an automobile accident when she was young and Aunt Nancy had stepped up and done a remarkable job of parenting her. She would be coming down to spend a month soon, and Lara was delighted.
Though this was Florida, the building was older and had a fireplace. The mantel was the first place she’d chosen to make the home hers. She had set out pictures of herself when she was very young with her parents, their wedding picture, one of Aunt Nancy and herself and several of her with Meg. While she had come from Richmond and Meg hailed from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, summer vacations with their families had made them the best of friends as kids. They’d even gone to college together. After that, media and promotion work in politics—finding a candidate who wasn’t for sale and was motivated purely by love for the country—had been her passion.
A passion that had almost killed her. It was only thanks to Meg and the Krewe of Hunters that she was still alive.
“And now I’m out of politics, but not exactly living the quiet life I’d expected,” she murmured aloud. She closed her eyes. She did love it here.
The past two days had been stressful, of course, but that didn’t mean she’d stopped loving her new life.
Her town house had a small living room that led to a cute little kitchen with an entertainment room behind it. Her yard was tiny but serene, walled in and smelling of bougainvillea. Upstairs she had two small but charming bedrooms. The place was perfect for her. She’d bought a good-size television and a fancy stereo system for the entertainment room, and brought down her old Victorian desk and desktop computer, which were set up there, too. She loved noise when she was working.
She went back there now and turned on her computer. All in all, she wasn’t home that much earlier than she would have been normally. She knew she didn’t need to work, but she wasn’t really sure what else to do with herself. The only friends she had made thus far were her coworkers. And her coworkers were still working.
Lara flicked on the television. The news had moved on, as she had expected. Not surprisingly, it was all about the man who had been killed on the Metrorail platform. The police rendering of the suspected killer came up on screen, followed by a photo of the victim, followed by one of his best friend, a man named Randy Nicholson.
Nicholson had died of natural causes and been buried three months earlier.