He flicked the blinker and pulled onto the highway. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Will you tell me what Joel said that upset you?”
“He implied that I might have something to do with the missing fortune, and he doesn’t like that you’re nosing in on his turf.”
“He’s never liked me. He’s a stand-up guy, an agency man to the core, but very competitive and jealous. Don’t let him bother you.”
She nodded, trying to take the advice to heart, looking at the traffic out her window. “He also said you and your boss were an item.”
“Then really don’t take anything he says to heart.”
He whipped the car into the next lane and accelerated, weaving through traffic as if it were the Indy 500. They skirted a truck, and threaded between a van and an SUV. She filed his silent but powerful response and stayed quiet all the way to Coral Gables.
Each mile, the landscape grew more and more familiar, and as he maneuvered through the lush hallways of banyan trees that shaded the pricey neighborhood, she broke the silence. “I remember the first time I came here.”
“You were, what? Seventeen?”
“Eighteen.” Scrawny, scared, and scarred by Baba’s death and the harsh reality that her mother, wherever she was, didn’t want anything to do with her. “In fact, I met Ramon on my eighteenth birthday and, of course, I took that as a sign that he was meant for me.”
“You were here a few months before I was,” he said.
“I remember,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment. “I remember the day I met you.”
“You do?” He seemed surprised.
Of course it wouldn’t have left an impression on him. “I was so happy there was another gringo around. Someone who would speak English to me other than Ramon and Lourdes.” She laughed softly, shaking her head. “I had an instant crush.”
“Me, too.”
“You did not,” she shot back. “You had an instant insider.”
He turned onto Granada, then cut his gaze her way again. “Maybe crush is the wrong word. But there was instant . . .”
“Lust.”
A smile pulled at his lips. “That, too.”
Funny thing, lust. She’d felt the same chemical response when he’d walked into her bar that she felt when he’d walked into the dining room at Viejo’s house. Like wings were fluttering in her stomach and her whole body wanted to just . . . attach to his.
“Here we are,” he said. “Just like old times.”
They were on Alfonso Street, which looked even more rich and elegant than she remembered. Until they reached the gate, where signs of abandonment flourished.
“It doesn’t look like anyone lives here,” Maggie said as they drove the length of the two adjacent lots Viejo owned. The house was blocked by live oak trees and thickets of palmetto palms, except for one little corner of the second floor that rose above the highest branches.
They exchanged a look, and he slid the Porsche up to the curb about a block away. “Let’s check it out.”
Dan shook the wrought iron gate set into the chipped and faded stucco privacy wall. The entire place felt forgotten and neglected, except for one addition to the entrance: a state-of-the-art security access keypad on the other side of the gate. That, oddly enough, looked sparkling new.
“I remember the old key code,” Maggie said. “Oneone-two-nine.” She used to wonder if November 29 would be a lucky day for her.
Dan tried it, but, predictably, nothing happened. “Let’s go around to the side entrances,” he suggested.
They started down the eastern perimeter of the property, moving along a narrow pathway between the stucco wall and a wild, ten-foot-high jungle of shrubbery, so thick that Dan had to hold branches back for them to pass. When they reached the side gate, that whole section was buried by oleander and hibiscus trees.
“If only we had a machete,” Maggie said, pulling back thick palm fronds to get closer. “See that row of bricks along the foundation of the wall? One of them, the third from the left, I think, wasn’t grouted in and Ramon hid a key there so he could get in after El Viejo locked up for the night. But I doubt it’s still there, or still works this gate.”
Dan tore at some of the branches and ivy covering the large iron gate, testing it. “No keypad access here. Maybe all this shrubbery is enough to keep someone out.”
“Can you hold these branches back while I dig down