Deborah Brown - Madison Westin 07 - Kidnapped in Paradise Read Free Page A

or dead body––out,” I pointed to the street. “The lighthouse stays and becomes a seashell store.”
    Fab scowled at me. She hated my shell obsession. I brought buckets full home from the beach and occasionally forced her to stop at the Beach Shack so I could snag a bag. I used them for mulch in my potted plants, as they didn’t attract families of bugs.
    “Now that we ’ re agreed,” Fab said, as she glared at Gunz.
    Gunz’ s phone rang and he went out of earshot to answer it.
    Fab turned to me, saying, “I’ve got my first corporate account and I need you for back-up tonight.”
    “What ’ s the job?” I asked.
    “Nice neighborhood, which will satisfy your boyfriend. You stay in the car, wait for me to come back. Like the old days. Anything goes wrong, you drive away.”
    Creole and Didier were both adamant that we not take jobs in criminal neighborhoods. Creole had gone so far as to place a tracking device in the Hummer, though Fab regularly disconnected it and always chalked it up to faulty equipment. Recently he ’ d found a way to affix the offending device so that she could no longer remove it, pound the hell out of it, and toss it in the back of his truck. Nor could she expect to avoid the wrath of Didier.
    “I would never leave you, and you know that.” I looked at the lighthouse in a new light now that I ’ d gotten over the shock. “I love it. Is it stolen?”
    “Who in the heck steals something that big?” she sniffed.
    Most people wouldn’t notice that she didn’t answer the question, but I did.
    “I wouldn’t get too comfortable until big brother Brad okays this unholy twosome of yours. He put hours of sweat turning the run-down dump of a trailer park into a tourist destination, and he ’ s not going to allow anything to mess it up,” I warned her.
     

  
    Chapter 3
     
    I heard a shrill whistle and turned to find my brother Brad, and hopefully soon-to-be step-son Liam, waving from the entrance to the Trailer Court.
    Brad was getting serious these days with Liam’s mother, Julie. They were talking about buying a house. That level of commitment would be a first for my brother. It surprised me that our mother hadn’t ambushed the two of them with a surprise wedding, a fact which I bet had more to do with her boyfriend putting his foot down, rather than her exercising patience. Brad spent a lot of time with teenaged Liam; he somehow mastered that fine line of adult good influence and friend. When I hung out with Liam, it made me think that maybe I wouldn’t suck at motherhood… someday.
    Gunz grunted something to Fab that only she could understand. Before jumping back on his bike, he nodded to me, which I interpreted as, ‘See ya ’ . I walked across the driveway to Jake ’ s, leaving Fab behind in an animated conversation with the big man.       
    “Why do you two look so shifty?” I asked Brad and Liam.
    “We just stopped cleaning up for a cigarette and a beer before the reporter gets here,” Liam told me with a straight face.
    I kissed Brad on the cheek.
    “You two get in trouble and it will be my fault, you know. Then I’ll blame Mother. And what reporter? Please don’t tell me someone died and it made the news.”
    Brad, muscled and tan from all the time he spent on the water with his commercial fishing business, leaned his six-foot frame against the picket fence. While his boat had been docked for repairs, he’d personally undertaken the renovation of the Trailer Court. It sat at the back of the property I owned, adjacent to Jake’s and barely visible behind a row of trees.
    He bulldozed the old trailer park, once a crumbling eyesore, and it was now fast becoming a favorite place to stay. I had to admit that the genius of his plan escaped me at first. Brad was enthusiastic, so I went along with his ideas. It sounded better than an empty lot, and I had no intention of selling it to condo-building vultures.
    Brad rescued a handful of Airstreams from the