Southern Comfort - Fern Michaels [40]
“Mistake or not, that’s my answer. I’m going to hang up now, and I want to warn you not to call me again.” With shaking hands, Tyler broke the connection. He hated that his knuckles were bone white. He licked at his dry lips. Was it a mistake? Maybe. Only time would tell. What was it his old nanny used to say? Don’t cry over spilled milk or something like that. Overall, his tone had been hard and cold, and in the end, he thought the call had gone well.
Tyler looked at the Rolex on his wrist. Damn, he’d almost forgotten about the watch. He rummaged in his bag for the Timex with the leather strap he’d bought in the drugstore on the corner. He dropped the Rolex into the drawer in his night table.
A glance at his new watch told him he had roughly four hours to get everything together before he had to be at LAX. If he allowed himself some extra time, he could grab something to eat at the airport before going through security.
Maybe he could pull this off on his own. He wasn’t exactly stupid. Just cowardly. Well, this was where the rubber met the road, and there was no time to be either stupid or cowardly.
Tyler headed back to his home office and sat down at the computer. All he needed was a plan and a hell of a lot of luck.
Chapter 8
It was three o’clock in the morning local time when Lawrence Tyler checked into a Holiday Inn in Miami. He’d parked his Ford Mustang rental in the lot and lugged his own bag into the lobby of the hotel. He was simply too beat to drive all the way to Key West. He wished again that he’d been able to get a flight directly to Key West International instead of Miami, but booking a reservation at the last moment wasn’t the best way to secure a seat. He’d get up early and drive to Key West. By three-thirty, he was sound asleep in the queen-size bed with the orange bedspread.
From long habit, Tyler woke at six without the aid of an alarm clock or a wake-up call. For a moment he was disoriented, wondering where he was until he noticed the orange bedspread with the big yellow flowers on it, and it all came back to him. He hopped out of bed, showered, shaved, and dressed in the same clothes he’d arrived in.
Downstairs, he took the time to avail himself of the inn’s complimentary breakfast and coffee, which he swigged down at the speed of light. He checked out and was on the road by seven-fifteen.
On the long drive to Key West, he let his brain go into overdrive as he plotted his course of action when he arrived. He stopped once for a bathroom break and fresh coffee.
Tyler climbed back into the Mustang to continue his 120-mile trip down US Highway 1 to the Keys. It was a beautiful, hot sunny day, and he drove with the windows down, the radio playing some golden oldies that didn’t bother him at all. He wasn’t into jive and rap or any of the other funky stuff that passed for music these days. He absolutely loved the music of the fifties. That was the one and only thing he and his father had in common. Music for some reason always allowed him to think things through and come to a resolution of sorts. In short, music calmed and soothed his soul.
As he tooled along, his thoughts took him in all directions. If he could just remember who the phone voice belonged to, it might help him a lot. With the clock ticking on his case, he knew he was going to have to act quickly to sort out what was going down on Mango Key and at the same time be aware that it could be nothing but a hoax and a blackmail scheme. He’d never gone undercover as a solo agent before. Agents always worked as a team or as a group. What he was doing was totally outside the box, not to mention breaking the rules, and he had no idea if he was made of the right stuff to pull it off. He admitted to a certain amount of fear, yet he felt exhilarated at what he was about to do.
His thoughts took him to Patrick Kelly, the cop who lived on Mango Key. He’d read the man’s dossier and it was now committed to memory. He was ninety-nine percent certain Kelly was just who he said he was, a former homicide detective in Atlanta who had dropped