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too, and see what we have.”
    Steve had been fishing Choctawhatchee Bay for more than seven years now, but still didn’t know all the inlets and coves branching off the vast body of water. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. After ascertaining the approximate location of Harry’s Bayou from Wilena, he signed off and scrutinized the oversized map of Walton County pegged to the wall behind a thin, protective sheet of Plexiglass.
    “It empties into Indian Bayou,” the shift officer volunteered, peering at a section of the map. “Should be ‘bout…here.”
    The inlet appeared to be little more than a shallow cove, probably clogged with weeds and inaccessible by anything other than a shallow-bottomed boat. Great for gigging bullfrogs, Steve thought. And for hiding dead bodies.
    “If I remember right,” the shift officer volunteered, scratching a patch of chest covered by dark green uniform shirt, “there’s a dirt road leads off highway 20 that runs down almost to the bayou. Kind of hard to find the road now. Used to be a dive right where it turns off. The Crab Shack, or something like that. Pretty lively place until it burned down twelve, fifteen years ago. If you look close you can still see the ruins under the kudzu.”
    “Martin will mark the turn,” Steve replied, thinking of the stream of official vehicles that would find its way down to the bayou in the next few hours.
     
     
    The drive to Harry’s Bayou took Steve north across the Mid-Bay Bridge and then east along Highway 20. For some miles, signs posted on either side of the road indicated the land was part of the Eglin Air Force Base reservation, with no trespassing allowed. Another, larger sign indicated the turn-off for Site C-6, which housed the 20th Space Surveillance Squadron.
    Steve had visited the isolated complex several times, originally on a familiarization tour when he’d first joined the Walton County Sheriff’s Department, again some months later to pick up poachers detained by the security forces who patrolled the site. He still marveled that a phased-array radar some five stories high, which tracked over nine thousand near-earth and deep-space objects, was tucked right here amid the tall, spindly pines of the Florida panhandle.
    Once past C-6, he drove through several villages clinging to water’s edge. Backed by the vast Eglin reservation and fronted by the bay, they consisted of little more than a handful of structures.
    Three miles beyond the scatter of buildings with the fanciful name of Villa Tasso, the cruiser’s headlights picked up a small white sign informing Steve that he was entering Choctaw Beach, population 306. He slowed to the posted 45 mph, squinting through the darkness at the weathered bayside cottages, the occasional trailer, the convenience store still open for customers.
    Odd that Jessica Blackwell had lived in this tiny hamlet as a girl. Odder still that she hadn’t mentioned that fact during Steve’s visit the night of Ron Clark’s death. He’d driven away from her condo with the definite impression she was new to the area. To be fair, though, he hadn’t asked about her past, only her connection to the dead realtor.
    There had to be a connection, something more than a lease. Or was his cop’s sixth sense working overtime? Could he be speculating about a link that might or might not exist because the woman intrigued him?
    Okay, she more than intrigued him. She turned him on, in a way no woman had in a long time. Too long. Not that Steve had remained celibate since his marriage to Christy went bust. An all-too-willing co-worker on the Atlanta PD had helped him work through his anger and frustration after the divorce. Since moving to Florida, he’d enjoyed several mutually satisfying “friendships” which he was careful to keep casual.
    Yet no woman since Christy had hit him with the same punch as the self-contained and completely disinterested Lieutenant Colonel Jessica Blackwell. Shaking his head