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out on the dock. That’s one of my vessels.”
    Anne stared out at the yacht. The work had finished, the men standing around smoking.
    â€œSo how does it work?” she said. “You commandeer a ship at sea, repaint its name, hoist a new flag, sail it away like it’s yours?”
    â€œThat’s one way,” Daniel said.
    â€œKill everybody, throw them overboard?”
    â€œWe sometimes have to defend ourselves. But no, we’re not killers. Five years, no casualties yet. On either side.”
    â€œBut you would if you had to. You’re armed.”
    â€œIf we had to protect ourselves. Yes.”
    Daniel met her eyes, a defenseless gaze she hadn’t seen from him before. Every spark of cockiness vanished, his debonair smile gone.This was who he was, no hedging, no juking and jiving. Her lover, a goddamn pirate.
    Anne touched a fingertip to her forehead, combed a stray hair back into place. She hadn’t been waiting for this man. She hadn’t been waiting for any man. She was still young; other guys would come along, or no guys. She’d always told herself that either way suited her fine. She could grow old in Islamorada. A weathered waitress with sun-brittle hair, her voice coarsened from secondhand smoke. Take your order, sir? She knew a lot of those. Living in their silver Air-stream with their overfed cat and their quart of rum. Carpenters or boat captains sharing their bed for a week or two. It wasn’t so bad.
    She closed her eyes and listened to her body, felt the alien quiver spreading through her gut. All these years with little more than a tingle. Now this. This man who was way too handsome, way too dangerous. For all these years she’d stayed well inside the lines, a good citizen, invisible. Ten-hour shifts, then back to her apartment. At night in bed she’d read thick biographies from the library, getting lost in other people’s lives, their quirks, the moments of triumph and despair. On her hours off she puttered through the mangroves in her aluminum boat, watched the endless reshaping of the clouds. There were a couple of waitresses she talked to, not friends exactly. Over the years she’d allowed a couple of dozen men to lead her to their beds, but no one who stirred her blood. Except maybe Thorn, and even with him she’d managed to cut it off on the brink of something more. She refused to let them charm her. Always disciplined, drawing back at the first warm shiver. She wasn’t going to sacrifice everything. Hand her life over to a dark-eyed dreamboat. Be a martyr for love like some sappy heroine in a pirate movie.
    â€œWho put that bug in our room?”
    â€œI don’t know,” he said. “It could’ve been a number of people.”
    â€œHow long have you known it was there?”
    â€œSince yesterday.”
    The waitress came back. An older woman with thinning blond hair.
    â€œMore coffee?”
    He turned to Anne and she shook her head.
    â€œJust the check, please,” Daniel said.
    The waitress gave Anne a look, then turned and headed for the register.
    â€œI want you to come with me, Anne. Try it out. If it doesn’t work, if there’s anything at all you don’t like, I’ll bring you back here immediately. No questions, no hesitations.”
    â€œYou can’t be serious, Daniel. Three weeks together, and you expect me to become a pirate? A criminal?”
    â€œI’m very serious. I’ve never been more serious.”
    One of Daniel’s crew had come down the dock and was standing near the patio railing. Daniel looked over and the man touched a finger to his watch.
    Anne watched the family at the nearby table. The mother was feeding the toddler from a jar, the father reading a newspaper.
    Anne Bonny Joy had never needed any man. She’d worked hard to assemble her world, her routine, every austere second under her control. That feeling in her gut was real, yes, this new hum