Page 40 of Strangers She Knows

“No.”

“Anything else good in here?” He opened the door and looked into the tiny freezer compartment at the foot-long metal cylinders. Gingerly, he picked one up and read the label. “Flares. We’ve got flares. Military flares.”

“Flares, illumination, hand held, star cluster, white, green and multi-color.”

“I always wanted to shoot one off. In the Army, did you shoot one off?”

He didn’t very often look at her with a reverential gaze, and she could not lie—she liked it. “In Afghanistan. You bet. For illumination. Parachute flares, too.” She took the flare out of his hand and examined it. “This is vintage. It’s different than the ones I used. This flare opens like a sardine can. But after that, the theory is the same. Remove the firing cap, place it on the bottom of the tube, align it correctly, aim and strike it sharply on a hard surface. Your palm, if you’re steady, but there’s a recoil, so I prefer to use the ground. They go up as high as seven hundred and fifty feet before the star cluster ignites. The star cluster lasts six to ten seconds. At least…the flares I used did.” She handed it back to him. “I don’t know about the old ones.”

“And what could we do with them?”

“Well, we could…” Kellen shook her head. “No, we couldn’t.”

“What? Shoot them off tonight to celebrate the Fourth of July?”

Great. They thought alike. One of them had to be mature. Didn’t they? “The grasslands are a tinderbox out here. A flare would set the whole island on fire.”

“Come on, honey.” He wrapped his arm around Kellen. “Rae deserves a treat.”

“Don’t try to blackmail me with my daughter. Although…”

“Although?”

She experienced the same feeling she had known those times in the military when her platoon waited and waited and waited for an attack, and finally got wild and rowdy in their need to blow off some steam. “Rae’s right. Wecouldshoot them off over the ocean. We’d set nothing on fire.” Really, it wouldn’t hurt.

“Right! And look.” He pointed toward the corner of the garage. “Big old washtubs, right there. We’d take the washtubs down to the beach with us. If anything happened, like some sparks blowing back at us—”

“—or the flare failing altogether?”

“—we’d be ready to put out the fires.”

“Max, you’re crazy. I’m crazy. That would be wrong. What if we didn’t succeed and the whole island went up in flames?”

“There is nothing you and I can’t do when we try.”

That night a flare lifted off the beach at Isla Paraíso and lit the sky over the Pacific with a blast of multi-colored lights.

Just over the horizon, Mara Philippi stood on the deck of a yacht, and caught her breath in surprise and pleasure. “Look, Owen.” She spoke toward the chair at the stern. “They’re welcoming us to Isla Paraíso! How unexpected—and charming.”

14

Olympia delivered her usual English country house breakfast to the dining room: bacon, sausages, eggs prepared two ways, wheat toast, white toast, French toast, a bowl of oranges from Jamie’s orchard. Kellen thought how lovely it felt to be waited on in such palatial splendor.

Unfortunately, after she placed the dishes on the table, Olympia didn’t leave. Instead she stood, stern and sour-faced, hands wrapped in her apron.

Max was reading his backlog of wine studies and paying no attention. Rae was eating a little of everything. Which left Kellen to ask, “What’s up, Olympia?”

“There are rodents in the kitchen.”

That got Max’s attention. He lifted his head and stared, transfixed, at their cook.

“Some large thing has been in the pantry, moving things around, polishing off the leftovers of yesterday’s cake.” Olympia looked sternly at Rae, who was still eating French toast and bacon with total concentration.

“You don’t think… You’re not saying that she…” Kellen was shocked.

“I’m not saying anything.” Olympia changed her attention to Max. “Men are notorious for thinking they can barge in and grab anything they want.”

Max’s expression didn’t change—which showed a lot of control on his part.

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