Secrets of His Own
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Amanda Stevens
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Chapter One
Carrie Bishop clung to her cap as the supply boat headed due west, into the sunset. Just minutes from Everglades City, civilization ended and the topography became a vast no-man’s-land of sparkling channels that wound for miles through dense mangrove forests and swampy grass flats.
Once the refuge of pirates, the area had now become a sanctuary for modern-day smugglers bringing drugs, guns and humans across the border. Lawless and primal, it was the perfect place for a runaway bride to disappear.
Which was undoubtedly why Tia had fled to the islands after leaving her soon-to-be groom at the altar, Carrie decided as a wave bounced her up off the seat. Tia hadn’t wanted anyone to find her, especially her ex-fiancé, a handsome executive with an explosive temper.
Carrie wouldn’t have thought to look for her here, either, if not for the postmark on her letter. Known as the Ten Thousand Islands, the area could be extremely inhospitable to anyone without a good map, a GPS device and a can of heavy-duty bug spray.
Thank goodness she’d been able to hitch a ride on the supply boat, Carrie thought. She would never have been able to find the island on her own.
Although being miles from nowhere at the mercy of a complete stranger wasn’t exactly her idea of a fun day. And the driver had certainly done nothing to put her at ease. When she’d met him earlier at the marina, he’d snatched the money from her hand with barely a grunt, his manner so abrasive that Carrie might have had second thoughts about climbing aboard if the attorney who’d leased Tia the apartment hadn’t been at her side.
“Don’t worry. Trawick’s bark is far worse than his bite,” Robert Cochburn had assured her. He’d driven down from Naples to meet Carrie in Everglades City, and to her relief, he’d decided at the last minute to make the trip out to the island with her. “Besides, he’s the best driver around. He can navigate these waters blindfolded. Just relax and enjoy the ride.”
If only she could, Carrie thought as she watched Pete Trawick with a wary eye. But she found the man just plain creepy. His cold, assessing gaze made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, and the way he looked at her conjured up memories that both she and Tia had been running from for years.
Suppressing another shudder, Carrie turned to Cochburn. “How much farther?” she shouted over the roar of the outboard motor.
“We’re almost there.” He flashed a smile. “Beautiful country, isn’t it? Florida’s best-kept secret.” He’d taken off his jacket and tie before they left the marina, and now with his cuffs rolled back and wind blowing through his thinning hair, he hardly resembled the conservative, fortysomething attorney she’d first met at the marina.
When she’d talked to him on the phone the day before, he’d tried to discourage her visit to Cape Diablo, but Carrie had remained adamant. Without his cooperation, she would simply find her own way to the island because she wasn’t going back to Miami until she’d seen for herself that Tia was okay. It had been nearly two weeks since she’d received her letter, and Carrie had grown more and more worried with each passing day.
And then there’d been that strange phone call two nights ago. It had come just after midnight, and the connection had been so weak, the voice on the other end so garbled that Carrie couldn’t be sure the caller was Tia. But something in the woman’s voice—a note of frenzy—had instilled a deep sense of foreboding in Carrie.
Of course, she could be overreacting. A recent break-in at her apartment had left her on edge so it was entirely possible that she was letting her imagination get the better of her.
But no matter how many times she tried to convince herself there was nothing to worry about, Carrie couldn’t shake the notion that her friend was in trouble. If anything happened to Tia and she hadn’t done everything in her power to help her, she would never forgive herself. It was hard enough dealing with the old guilt.
“Have you ever been to the islands before?” Cochburn shouted over the engine noise.
Carrie nodded. “Once, when I was a kid. My father brought me here on a fishing trip.”
“Then you know enough not to wander too far off the beaten trail. Navigation is a nightmare down here. A novice could get lost and never be heard from again. Not to mention a certain unsavory element in the area.”
“I’ve read about the drug smuggling that’s so prevalent.” Just weeks ago the news had been dominated by a story about an elderly couple who’d disappeared while sailing in the area. When their bodies had washed ashore, authorities concluded they’d been murdered and their yacht hijacked by drug smugglers.
“These waters can be extremely dangerous,” Cochburn said grimly. “I’m not trying to frighten you, but I do feel the need to caution strangers to the area. If you exercise good judgment and a little common sense, you should be fine.”
Carrie felt a prickle of unease at his words. Had he given Tia the same warning? “You don’t need to worry about me. I’m a city girl at heart. Once I’ve seen that my friend is okay, I’ll be on my way back to civilization.”
Cochburn’s gaze fell on the duffel bag at her feet. She knew what he was thinking. If she’d only come for a quick visit, why had she bothered to pack a bag?
The answer was complicated. The length of her visit depended on Tia’s state of mind. She was prepared to stay for as long as she was needed, but if Tia was fine and enjoying her privacy, Carrie had every intention of turning around and heading straight back to the mainland. But judging from the tone of that letter, she very much feared the worst.
What if Tia had reverted back to her old self-destructive ways? What if Carrie was too late to save her?
What if, what if, what if? She’d told herself a long time ago that she was through playing that game, but old habits died hard.
She glanced back at Cochburn. “As I told you on the phone, I don’t want to intrude on Tia’s privacy. If she came out here to get away from it all, I intend to honor her wishes. At the same time, though…” She trailed off, her gaze moving restlessly back to the water.
“You’re concerned about her,” he said.
“It’s been nearly two weeks since I last heard from her. And you said you haven’t talked to her, either.”
“But that’s hardly cause for alarm,” Cochburn said. “I only met her briefly when she signed the lease agreement in my office. There’s no reason she would get in touch with me unless she had a problem with her accommodations.”
“But I can’t imagine why no one in Everglades City remembered seeing her,” Carrie said with a frown. “She has a very distinctive face.”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t read too much into that, either. Pete makes a supply run out to Diablo twice a week. The tenants never have to leave the island if they don’t want to. That would explain why no one we talked to at the marina remembered your friend.”
Yes, that made sense. Tia had always been a loner and normally Carrie wouldn’t have given her absence a second thought. She would have assumed that Tia needed time to heal after calling off her marriage to Trey.
But the tone of her letter coming on the heels of the breakup…
And then that weird phone call…
Carrie shivered in the late-afternoon heat. “Tell me about Cape Diablo,” she said to Cochburn as they approached another channel and Trawick powered down the engine, making conversation a little easier. “How did it get the name?”
“Probably the handiwork of some resourceful pirate looking to frighten away looters from his treasure,” he said with a grin. “There’s always been a bit of mystery associated with the island. Strange lights, phantom ships…that sort of thing. No doubt that’s why Andres Santiago chose the place to build his home.”
“Santiago was something of a pirate himself, wasn’t he?” Tired of fighting the wind, Carrie took off her cap and rested it on her bare knee as she finger-combed her tangled hair.
“I see you’ve done some research.”
She smiled. “A little. Tia mentioned Santiago’s name in her letters. She seemed so fascinated by the family that I suppose she aroused my curiosity.”
“I’m not surprised,” Cochburn said. “Most everyone around here is a little weary of the story, but I can see why a newcomer might find it intriguing. Back in the late sixties and early seventies, Andres Santiago ran a fleet of boats to Central America, smuggling guns into the area and drugs, among other things, out. He built the house on Cape Diablo so that the authorities wouldn’t be able to keep track of his comings and goings.” He paused. “You have to wonder, though, what kept his poor wife sane, trapped on that tiny island with only small children for company.”
“What was she like?” Carrie asked curiously.
“The first Mrs. Santiago died in child-birth…that’s about all I know of her. But the second wife had a rather colorful past. She was the daughter of a Central American dictator who was overthrown by a military coup back more than thirty years ago. The father was later executed, along with most of his family and staff. The only two survivors were his eldest daughter, Medina, and Carlos Lazario, her bodyguard. Somehow Andres managed to get both of them safely out of the country and he brought them back here where he later married Medina. Carlos still lives on the island. He and Alma Garcia, who was once nanny to Andres’s children, are the only permanent residents of Cape Diablo.”
“And the Santiagos?”
Cochburn turned to stare at the spindrift behind the boat. “The whole family went missing one night. No one ever knew what happened to them. But then…you said your friend wrote to you about the island so I’m sure she must have mentioned the disappearances.”
“Yes, she did. But I’m interested in hearing the whole story.”
Carrie couldn’t tell if he was pleased or annoyed by her request. “There’s not much I can add. The entire family vanished one night while the servants were on the mainland celebrating a holiday. When Alma and Carlos returned home just after midnight, they discovered the family missing and traces of blood in the boathouse. The authorities suspected foul play, but the case was never solved.”
And thirty years later, the mystery of the missing family still had the power to fascinate.
Perhaps even to possess, Carrie thought uneasily as she remembered the strange undercurrent in Tia’s last letter.
“Maybe Andres was afraid the authorities were on to him so he loaded his family into one of his boats and fled in the middle of the night,” she suggested. “The blood in the boathouse could have been a ruse to throw the police off track.”
Cochburn’s eyes met hers. “That’s an interesting theory.”
She smiled at his tone. “But you’re not buying it?”
“I barely remember Andres Santiago, but my father was the attorney who arranged the trust that allows Alma Garcia to remain in the house. The two of them were very good friends even though they were as different as night and day…the dashing smuggler and the straitlaced attorney.” He paused, and his expression turned pensive. “I never learned how or why they became friends, but I do know that my father remained loyal to Andres to the end.”
“So what did he think happened to them? If he was that close to Andres, he must have had his own theory.”
“He believed that someone Andres had crossed in the past came looking for revenge or else the insurgents who killed Medina’s family wanted to make sure she could never return to her homeland. In either case, my father was convinced the family met with a tragic end because if Andres was alive, he would somehow have managed to get word back to him.”
Carrie mulled over the possibilities for a moment. “What about the nanny…Alma Garcia? Was she never considered a suspect? It seems she’s the one who benefited most from the family’s disappearance.”
Cochburn grimaced. “If you call living alone on an island all these years a benefit. Alma didn’t inherit the property outright, and the only monetary compensation she receives is a small monthly allowance that barely takes care of her basic needs, much less the upkeep of the house and grounds. That’s why some of the property has been converted into apartments and rented out. Her inheritance was hardly the kind of fortune that would motivate one to mass murder. Besides, my father said that she was devoted to those children. She loved them as if they were her own. She would never have done anything to harm them.”
Stranger things have happened. “Why do you think she’s stayed on the island all these years?” Carrie asked.
“One can only speculate, but I think at first she was waiting for the children to return. Then later, once loneliness and dementia set in, she forgot why she was there. Whatever her reason, she’s remained in that house all these years, living in her own little world.”
Carrie tried to imagine what the woman’s life must have been like for the past thirty years, but it was hard to put herself in Alma Garcia’s place. Carrie had been born and raised in Miami, and she loved the daily hustle and bustle of big-city living. As a graphic designer for a local magazine, she was used to a hectic pace. She’d go crazy living so far from civilization. “You say she’s one of only two permanent residents on the island?”
“Yes, and as you can see, the area is quite isolated. If your friend came out here looking for solitude, she certainly found it.”
Carrie didn’t bother telling him that Tia had come to Cape Diablo for more than just solitude. She’d been running away, not only from a future with a man she no longer wanted—a man she might even have come to fear—but from a past that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Carrie knew what that was like because she shared Tia’s past. The two of them had been running from the same nightmare since they were twelve years old.
“Are there any other tenants?”
“A man named Ethan Stone moved into one of the apartments a few days ago. I don’t know much about him. His secretary made all the arrangements, but I gather he’s a Wall Street–type suffering from a bad case of burnout.”
“He has my sympathies,” Carrie murmured.
“And, of course, there’s Nick Draco, the carpenter I hired to do some repairs. He’s staying in the old servants’ quarters.”
“So at the moment there are only five people living on the island,” she said.
“That’s right. Like I said, if your friend wanted solitude, she came to the right place.”
They both fell silent after that, and Carrie turned her attention to the scenery as she tried to imagine Tia’s frame of mind when she’d traveled across these same waters three weeks earlier. She must have felt desperate when she’d fled Miami, but why Cape Diablo? Carrie had never even heard of the island. How had Tia found out about it?
Perhaps a friend or colleague had told her about it, Carrie decided. It was the kind of place that would only be advertised by word of mouth. Not at all like the five-star resorts Trey was undoubtedly used to, which was probably why Tia had chosen it.
For all Carrie knew, Tia had been contemplating the trip for weeks as her wedding day approached and her jitters had turned into panic. Maybe she hadn’t been able to work up the courage to call off the ceremony until faced with the inevitable.
Tia had left a note for Carrie in the bride’s room, begging her to break the news gently to the distraught groom. Trey Hollinger had put up a poised front for the hundreds of guests assembled in the chapel, but once he and Carrie were alone, he’d unleashed his fury on her. She’d tried to convince herself his misplaced anger was classic kill-the-messenger syndrome, but Trey’s wrath cut more deeply than that. He blamed Carrie for what happened. Everything had been fine, he’d raged, until she’d started planting ideas in Tia’s head.
“I know what you did to her back then. She told me all about it…how you ran off and just left her there. And now here you are back in her life and look what’s happened. You just couldn’t let her be happy, could you?”
Was he right? Had her rekindled friendship with Tia somehow set her friend back on the path of self-destruction?
Retrieving Tia’s letter from her bag, Carrie quickly scanned the contents for the umpteenth time, hoping for something that would reassure her. But far from putting her mind at rest, a fresh reading only deepened her foreboding.
After the first paragraph, Tia never mentioned Trey’s name. It was as if she’d put him completely out of her mind. Instead, she’d written about the island and the missing family. By the time she’d scribbled the last page, she’d begun—unwittingly, Carrie hoped—referring to the Santiagos by their given names, as if she’d known each of them personally.
I’ve seen photographs of the children. What beautiful little girls! I don’t know why, but I feel strangely drawn to them. Sometimes I go down to the beach and try to imagine the two of them collecting shells, building sand castles, playing chase with the surf. Reyna, so quiet and shy, and Pilar, too adventurous for her own good. They remind me of the way you and I once were.
Carrie’s grip tightened on the paper.
Maybe it’s because of our own tragic past that I feel so compelled to find out what happened to those little girls. Did they sail off with their father and stepmother that night or did something dark and sinister befall them? Are they out there somewhere leading normal, happy lives, or do their spirits still wander restlessly through the halls of this crumbling mansion?
I know how strange all this must sound to you, Carrie. It’s hard to explain, but I don’t think I can leave here until I find out what happened to them. Sometimes I think I was drawn to Cape Diablo for a reason. It’s as if the island itself is trying to tell me something…and it won’t let me rest until I uncover its secrets.
“CAPE DIABLO, DEAD AHEAD,” Pete Trawick shouted over the engine noise.
His gruff voice drew Carrie’s attention from Tia’s letter, and as she glanced up, she found Robert Cochburn watching her intently. The moment their gazes met, however, he smiled and jerked a thumb toward the front of the boat. “Heads up. You don’t want to miss the scenery. The island is beautiful this time of day.”
Carrie folded Tia’s letter and returned it to her bag, then stood to get a better look at the view. Backlit by a glorious sunset, Cape Diablo shimmered on the horizon, a lush emerald green gilded by the dying light. For a moment, as the sun hung suspended in a painted sky, the island seemed bathed in gold. A glowing sanctuary that beckoned to the weary traveler.
Grabbing her camera, Carrie snapped a few shots, but as they approached the island, the sky deepened and the water turned dark, as if a giant shadow had crept over the whole area. It was a strange phenomenon, a trick of the light that seemed too much like an omen. Carrie couldn’t seem to shake off a gnawing fear. The place seemed so wild and primitive. Anything could have happened to Tia out here.
As they approached the island, Carrie could just make out the red roofline of the house through the trees and to the right, an old, wooden boathouse nestled in a tiny cove.
Trawick turned the bow neatly toward the inlet and after a few moments, cut the engine. As they drifted silently toward the pier, Carrie became aware of a dozen sounds. Water lapping at the hull…the startled flight of an egret…an insect buzzing near her ear.
And, in the distance, a scream.
Her glance shot to Cochburn. “What was that?” she asked in alarm.
“A falcon, most likely.” He put up a hand to shade his eyes as he searched the sky. “There it is. See it? Circling just above the treetops.”
“A falcon?” Carrie asked doubtfully. “Way out here?”
“These islands are on the migration route. Maybe this one got lost from its cast as they flew north. When I was a kid, you could come out here in the spring and fall and spot dozens flying over Cape Diablo. My father said Andres found a wounded one once and nursed it back to health. He kept it in captivity for a number of years, but I suppose it was released after his disappearance. Who knows?” He gave Carrie an enigmatic smile. “Maybe the one you just heard is a descendant.”
A wounded falcon seeking refuge on Cape Diablo.
Cochburn didn’t seem to realize the irony, but to Carrie, it was yet one more clue as to why Tia had chosen such a remote location. If she’d known Cape Diablo was on the migratory route of the falcon, she might have taken it as a sign. She seemed so…mystical these days.
As the boat thudded softly against the rubber tires hanging from the pier, Cochburn climbed out and offered a hand down to Carrie. Gathering up her bag and cap, she grabbed his hand and let him pull her up.
They left Trawick unloading the supplies as they made their way along a trail that wound through a jungle of mangroves. In spite of the insect repellant she’d sprayed on before leaving the marina, Carrie had to constantly swat mosquitoes from her face as they emerged into what had once been a landscaped yard but was now overgrown with palmettos, bromeliads and swamp grass.
The house itself was still magnificent, a Spanish-style villa that appeared untouched by time as the late-afternoon sun glinted off arched windows and turned the white facade into gleaming amber. Carrie caught her breath. She’d never seen such a beautiful place.
But almost immediately she realized the soft light had created an illusion. A closer examination revealed the overall state of disrepair. Some of the roof tiles were missing and the salt air had rusted the ornate wrought iron trim around the windows and balconies. In dreary corners, lichen and moss inched like a shadow over crumbling stucco walls.
A subtle movement drew Carrie’s gaze to one of the balconies, and as she lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the glare, she saw the outline of a woman standing at the railing looking down at them. Carrie couldn’t make out her features clearly, but she had the impression of age and frailty.
And then a strange dread gripped her. As their gazes clung for the longest moment, Carrie suddenly had an overpowering sensation that she was in the presence of evil.
Whether it was coming from the woman on the balcony or someone else on the island, she had no idea.
