“Hmm?” No, she hadn’t been thinking of Seraphina, but she did now. “I wonder how often she came here, dreaming of the life she wanted with Felipe.”

“She died in a storm like the one that’s coming. I know she did.” Margo lifted her face to the sky. “With lightning flashing, the wind howling.”

“Suicide’s drama enough by itself.” Kate plucked a wildflower, twirled the stubby stem between her fingers. “If it had been a perfect day, with blue skies and sunshine, the results would have been the same.”

“I wonder what it is to feel that lost,” Laura murmured. “If we ever find her dowry, we should build a shrine or something to remember her by.”

“I’m spending my share on clothes, jewelry, and travel.” Margo stretched her arms up, tucked them behind her head.

“And it’ll be gone in a year. Less,” Kate predicted. “I’m going to invest mine in blue chips.”

“Boring, predictable Kate.” Margo turned her head, smiled at Laura. “What about you? What will you do when we find it? And we will find it one day.”

“I don’t know.” What would her mother do? she wondered. Her father? “I don’t know,” she repeated. “I’ll have to wait and see.” She looked back toward the sea, where the curtain of rain was inching closer. “That’s what Seraphina didn’t do. She didn’t wait and see.”

And the sound of the rising wind was like a woman weeping.

Lightning jagged, a flashing pitchfork of brilliant white through the heavy sky. The blasting boom of answering thunder shook the air. Laura threw back her head and smiled. Here it comes, she thought. The power, the danger, the glory.

She wanted it. Deep inside her most secret heart, she wanted it all.

Then came the squeal of brakes, the angry pulse of gritty rock and roll. And an impatient shout.

“Jesus Christ, are you all nuts?” Joshua Templeton leaned out of his car window, scowling at the trio. “Get the hell in the car.”

“It’s not raining yet.” Laura stood. She eyed Josh first. He was her senior by four years, and at the moment he looked so much like their father at his crankiest that she wanted to laugh. But she’d seen who was in the car with him.

She wasn’t certain how she knew that Michael Fury was as dangerous as any summer storm, but she was sure of it. It was more than Ann Sullivan’s mutterings about hoods and troublemakers—though, to be sure, Margo’s mother had definite opinions on this particular friend of Josh’s.