When they said Florida, I was thinking sun and beaches and babes in bikinis.”
“The beach is right there.” I nod at the bluff. “Ulie will be on it in a bikini at some point, no doubt, so shut the hell up.”
“They sent us to fucking hell.” He shoves a hand through his short sandy waves, cuts me a glare.
On cue, his twin sister groans her agreement as she spills out behind him, tugging at the collar of her plain gray blouse. She’s been pissed since the relocation team at the Witness Security Safesite and Orientation Center confiscated all her clothes and replaced them with a wardrobe that in no way stands out. Good for blending in . . . which is something Ulie is completely unaccustomed to.
But that was the point. They spent twelve days drilling our new identities and our cover story into our heads. They remade us and took everything from us that might identify us as Felix Delgado’s heirs—except the one thing I guarded with my life. Or, five things, really. I feel in my pocket for the five birthstone rings that I managed to hide from the Feds and smuggle out of Safesite.
Ulie fists a hand into her long, dark hair to keep it from whipping into her eyes so I can benefit from every watt of her scorching scowl. “Why couldn’t we go to Miami? At least there’s a decent fashion school there.” Her disdain-filled gaze turns on the two-story house, and I’m surprised the worn shingles don’t erupt into flaming tinder. “What are we supposed to do here? There’s nothing.”
“It will be fine.” I jam the car key into my jeans pocket, fish out the house key.
If I said it is fine, that would be a lie. We’re so far from fine I don’t even know what fine looks like at this point. Pop secured witness protection for us kids as part of his plea bargain last year when he flipped on the head of our rival organization in exchange for a lighter sentencing on his racketeering conviction. I’d never even considered taking it until some cocksucker sent a thug into my family’s home to kill us. But now that we’re out of Safesite and I have some room to maneuver, it will be fine. I’ll send out some feelers, find out who ordered the hit on me and my siblings, and make them pay.
There will be blood.
“I can already feel my IQ dropping,” Ulie mutters, but it’s nearly lost on a gust of wind.
“Don’t be such a snob, Ulie,” Lee says as she climbs out of the passenger seat and flicks Grant’s ear. “And shut up, Grant. You’re not helping.” She elbows past him, slips into the backseat, where our littlest brother is tucked into the corner, grinding his fists into his eyes as he wakes up from the ninety-minute drive from the airport to the remote island of Port St. Mary.
I climb three wooden stairs that groan under my weight onto a covered wraparound porch that looks over the ocean. Just as I duck under the eaves, the squall swirling around us opens up and unleashes its substantial load. Fat drops pelt the roof over my head and ping off the Chevy.
“Shit!” Ulie screams. She and Grant bolt up the stairs behind me. Lee hauls Sherm out of the car and shelters him under the hem of her blue cardigan as they run for the porch.
My four younger siblings stand dripping on the porch behind me as I push open the door and scan the dark interior of our new home. Flat gray light slants through the window with the loose shutter, revealing a decent-sized living room with a large brick fireplace to the left of the door. White sheets glow out of the gloom like ghosts, draping what are obviously a large sofa and two chairs. To my right is a door to what appears to be a bathroom, and beyond it, a staircase starts up from the living room, disappearing through the ceiling to a second floor above.
Not quite the family mansion.
I reach out and flip a switch on the wall. An overhead light in the open kitchen beyond the living room flickers to life. The cabinets are stained dark with glass fronts, the counters are gray Formica, and the appliances look beyond old. A rectangular island with three wooden barstools separates the large kitchen from the living room. To the right of it is a kitchen table with six