The dog’s sweet nature was deceptive, however. I’d once seen her lock hold of the wrist of a diner fleeing without paying his bill and refuse to release it until Ryan gave her the command.

“We were going to spend this weekend in Orlando at my cousin’s wedding,” Ryan went on, “but duty calls. This’ll be more fun, anyway.”

“Only a cop would consider a hurricane more fun than a wedding,” Angela whispered to me in passing, rolling her eyes, and we both laughed.

As the day wore on, the crowd at the café began to thin out, even the island’s hardiest charter boat captains beginning to take the order to evacuate seriously. Everyone began going home to make sure their houses and boats were secured against the expected 130-mile-an-hour winds.

By one o’clock, the place was empty—save for a few of the regular afternoon barflies—and dark, thanks to the shutters and the fact that the sky had become so gray and overcast. Thunder rumbled in the distance—though there was no visible lightning—and the wind was stronger than ever, thirty miles per hour, with gusts of up to fifty, according to the Weather Channel.

“Anyone left in the Florida Keys,” a reporter stationed in Key West cheerfully said into his microphone as wind and surf buffeted him, “must surely have a death wish.”

“Go on home,” Ed said to me and Angela gruffly, switching off both TVs. “I’m gonna close up early today. I’ll pay you through the rest of your shift, though.”

Angela and I eyed each other uncertainly. Although Ed and his wife happily paid their employees’ insurance, they had never, in all the time I’d known them, let us off early with pay.

“Are . . . are you sure, Ed?” Angela asked.

He’d grunted, giving the counter a swipe with his favorite striped dish towel. “No sense staying open for the lunch and dinner shifts today when it’s just gonna be dead like this.” He’d already kicked out the barflies, who’d shuffled amiably off to Ron’s Place, a bar up the street that had never, in anyone’s memory, closed due to weather. “No one’ll be comin’ in anyways once it starts rainin’.”

With Angela hurrying off to her mother’s and no other hurricane parties to go to, I had nothing else to do, so I took Ed up on his offer, pedaling home to feed Gary, have lunch, and make sure all of my belongings were sitting at least a foot off the floor in the event of flooding.

At least, that’s what my plan was until I finally got to my place after battling the wind—which I expected to be much more oppressive than it was, but at this stage was more like riding against the stream of a blow dryer set on cool—and opened the heavy wooden gate to the courtyard to wheel my bike inside . . . and froze.

The frangipani tree that for the entire time I’d lived there had provided shade and, at least part of the year, beauty and fragrance from its blossoms, was gone.

Well, not gone, exactly, but completely uprooted and lying on its side, as if someone had chopped it down, leaving pink blossoms scattered everywhere.

But no one had chopped it down. Its root-ball was facing the gate, leaving a deep, gaping hole in the courtyard floor, while its distressingly broken branches were pressed up obscenely against the doors and windows (fortunately shuttered) to both my apartment as well as Lydia and Sonny’s and Patrick and Bill’s, as if crying, “Let me in! Let me in!”

But thankfully, none of us had been home at the time it had blown over. At least, I didn’t think so. Except for the wind, which continued to lazily sweep the frangipani blossoms back and forth across the tiles, the courtyard was completely still. The mockingbird that for so long had perched atop the tree and sung its little heart out was gone.

Most of the birds on the island, in fact, seemed to be gone. I could hear no birdsong. Clearly, they sensed something instinctively that I did not.

“Crap,” I said aloud. Because I could see no way in which I was going to be able to carve a path through those twisted roots and broken branches—some of them oozing a sticky white liquid—back into my apartment. Not without the aid of a saw. Or possibly a bulldozer. I was locked out of my place until help, in some form, arrived.

Which was bad—really, really bad—because Gary was in there. Sweet, helpless Gary.

I whipped out my cell phone, snapped a shot of the fallen tree, and sent the photo along with a few urgent texts to both my landlady and to Patrick and Bill, then stood there and . . . waited.

What else could I do? I didn’t have any tools, or access to any, and it didn’t seem like the kind of thing to call 911 over when what few emergency personnel we had left on the island were already so stressed with real emergencies. Over and over on the Weather Channel they’d shown clips of the governor saying that anyone who chose not to evacuate was taking their life into their own hands, and not to expect rescue from emergency services, who were evacuating themselves or were already overloaded with real emergencies (which this was not . . . yet).

But of course, this would be a real emergency soon—to me, anyway—if I couldn’t get in to save Gary.

And what about Patrick and Bill? It didn’t look as if they were home—surely if they were they’d have heard the tree fall and be trying to open their door.

But what about Sonny’s guinea pigs?

When no one texted me back in ten minutes I knew what I had to do, even though I really didn’t want to.

I didn’t bother texting him, because Ed was so anti–cell phones. Instead I called him at his home, on his landline. The Hartwells were some of the few people I knew who still had one.

He answered on the second ring. “This is Ed.”

“Hi, Ed,” I said, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt. “It’s me, Bree. I’m really sorry to bother you, but a tree—a really big tree—has fallen across the courtyard of my apartment building and is blocking my door, and the doors to some of my neighbors. I think a wind gust must have blown it over. Anyway, I can’t get in, and my cat is inside, and I think—”

Ed’s voice was sharp with interest. I’d forgotten how much he loved any kind of crisis, especially if it allowed him to use large tools. “A big tree, you say? How big?”

I eyed the tree. How was I supposed to know how big the tree was? I was no arborist. “Really big. Twenty feet, maybe?”

He sounded disappointed. “That’s not so big.”

“Well, it looks like it just flopped over, roots and all—”

Ed sounded more interested. “Root rot. Probably from all the rain last night. Okay, you stay put, we’ll be right over. Where are you again?”

I thanked him and gave him the address. It wasn’t until I hung up that I realized what he’d said . . . we’ll be right over.

We who?

And sure enough, less than five minutes later, Ed Hartwell arrived in a battered red pickup that I recognized as belonging to his nephew . . . with that same nephew driving.

No. Oh, no.

I tried not to notice how enticingly male Drew looked as he swung from the truck, his white linen shirt half-unbuttoned due to the oppressive heat, revealing illicit glimpses of that taut brown stomach and chest.

I especially tried not to notice as he grabbed one of the biggest chain saws I’d ever seen out of the back of his truck. I told myself not to pay attention to how naturally he held it, or how good he looked with it. I mean, a chain saw? Since when was I attracted to men who carried chain saws?