Page 40 of Ten Beach Road

“I said there was a weird email on your old account,” Anita repeated. “All it said was,Sing it, Gloria.” Anita paused again. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Nicole turned so that the FBI agent’s only view was of her back, though she was painfully aware that if she said anything incriminating here he wouldn’t have to read her lips to know it. Anyone who’d ever read a mystery novel or watched television knew that cell phones were about as secure as Swiss cheese. Not that she was planning to say anything he would want to hear.

Still, the message was a bit of a shock. “Thatisweird,” she said in as casual a tone as she could muster, because to disavow the weirdness of such a message would, in fact, be completely weird. “When did that email come in?”

“Late last night,” Anita said. “About midnight.”

Which was when Nicole had been tossing and turning on her mattress in the echo-y house, trying not to hear the pitter-patter of little rodent feet in the attic above her; a noise she had, fortunately, not heard since her childhood and had hoped never to hear again.

“Hmm, I can’t imagine what that would mean,” she said, though of course she could. “Who did it come from?”

“I don’t know. I think it came from some kind of blind address. I wasn’t able to reply in any way.”

“Hmmm,” Nicole said one more time for good measure. “Well, it must be spam or something. I don’t even know anybody named Gloria—except for that woman we fixed up once with Terrence Sim.”

“I don’t know,” Anita said. “I just wanted to see if it meant anything to you or not.”

Nicole felt Agent Giraldi’s gaze on her back and was careful not to tense her shoulders or give any clue that anything of importance was being discussed. It was possible he had an advanced belt in body language, too. “Thanks, Anita. You can go ahead and delete it. I’m sure if it’s actually meant for me, whoever it is will make another attempt to get in touch.”

They said good-bye and, still striving for casual, Nicole took a last sip of wine and signaled her waiter for the bill. When she’d paid it she stood, and with a small nod at the sunbathing FBI agent, she walked past the pool and back through the Don, too busy thinking to even breathe in the heady scent.

Sing it, Gloriawas a definite reference to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” which had served as her and her younger brother’s personal anthem. It had been a promise of sorts that things would somehow work out.

As she left the hotel and walked across Gulf Boulevard toward her car, she tried to think what the point of the message was and if another would follow. The only thing she knew for sure was that after all the months of trying unsuccessfully to reach him, for some unknown reason Malcolm had finally tried to reach her.

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