Betrayals (28 page)

“And they survive?”

“Yes, they survive. Now, do you think you can roll over me and get to my other side? You’ll be farther from the water.”

“You’ve been out here longer….”

“Please, don’t worry about me. You’re smaller and younger—Mai, can you do it? It’ll hurt. Barnacles are nasty beasts, but if you can stand it, perhaps you can shelter yourself from the tide and hang on until help gets here.”

“My dad—”

“He’ll come, Mai. I’m sure of it.”

Another wave surged over the rocks and almost covered them this time, but Thomas was numb to the cold. He could see Mai’s small body lift in the water, then smash down onto the barnacles. At this rate, she wouldn’t even make it to high tide before being swept onto a wave and battered against the rocks, or even sucked out into the ocean.

“Mai…”

The pain had revived her. Biting down hard, she rolled onto her side, her back up against his side and groaned as the barnacles cut into her bound hands and wrists. The rain pelted onto her face as she used her momentum to carry her up onto Thomas’s back.

He welcomed the warmth of her body on his.

“Hold on through the next wave,” he told her, his voice hoarse.

The wave came, a huge swell that inundated him, but mercifully, only caught Mai underneath. Thomas could feel himself sinking into the barnacles. He couldn’t keep up the effort. His body would simply give out.

“I think,” Mai was saying, “if I get off you just right I
can sit up and maybe kind of crawl backward up onto the rocks. Should I try?”

Oh, Thomas thought, to be fourteen again. Her energy helped energize him. “Of course you should try.”

“But if that woman—”

“We need to worry about the ocean right now.”

“Why is she doing this to us?”

“Because she made a mistake a long time ago and couldn’t face up to what she’d done. So she kept compounding that mistake until now, and she feels she has no other choice.”

“I hate her.”

“Yes, but she wasn’t always like this, Mai. She’s an insecure and frightened woman, and that makes her very selfish and mean. I’m not making excuses for her. Everyone’s afraid sometimes. It’s how we act when we’re afraid that shows us what we are. Do you understand that, Mai?”

“I’m going to roll off you now and try to sit up. Okay?”

He smiled even as he heard yet another wave coming at them. “Okay.”

“Your father and I were brothers.”

Either Jean-Paul Gerard had gone nuts, Rebecca thought, or there was another fly squirming in the ointment. Right now it didn’t matter which. Crouched down, she climbed back up onto the seat of her truck and peered over the dashboard.

Nothing but wind, rain, gray sky, gray ocean. Jean-Paul had already disappeared down onto the rocks.

Staying low, Rebecca cracked open the passenger door and slipped out, leaving the door slightly ajar, although with the crashing surf and howling wind, probably no one would have heard it even if she’d slammed it.
And who’s around
to hear it?
The place looked dead. She shuddered at her terminology. Grandfather, Mai—they had to be around here somewhere. Given what Jean-Paul had told her, she was positive this was where her grandfather had come.

Annette was going to make him her scapegoat…again.

Hunched over, Rebecca used the Mercedes as cover and crept onto the walk, the flagstones slippery in the pounding rain. She moved quickly, but no one came out and shot her or grabbed her and took her away.
Should I have trusted Jean-Paul? What if I’ve been gullible and he’s no good after all?

She shook off the doubt and kept moving. The walkway branched off, heading to the front of the house in one direction and around back in the other. She picked the one going around back and stood. If someone saw her, so be it. She tried to look innocently oblivious to what was going on and totally unafraid, but neither was easy.

She went all the way round to the side entrance, nearest the ocean. The door was unlocked. Inside the house was quiet and warm, as beautiful as Rebecca remembered from her few visits there as a child. As she recalled, she’d always gotten into trouble for one thing or another.

There were wet footprints in the kitchen. Fear rising in her throat, Rebecca followed them out into the hall and into the front entry.

Annette came down the stairs, buttoning the cuff of her shirt. “Why, Rebecca—hello.” She sounded cheerful, and even smiled. “What are you doing here?”

“Where’s Mai?”

“Out on the rocks with your grandfather. I was just looking outside. The weather’s turned rather nasty—it’s insane for Thomas to keep a child out there in these conditions. He wanted to show her the surf at high tide during
a storm.” Annette came to the bottom of the stairs, her cuff buttoned. “I hope nothing’s happened to them.”

Rebecca stiffened, restraining herself, and headed back to the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” Annette demanded, following.

“I’m calling the police.”

“Why—Rebecca, obviously you’re upset about something. What? What on earth’s going on?”

Rebecca resisted the temptation to turn around and scream for her to just
stop,
but this was no time to lose control. She hunted around for a telephone.

A loud crack sounded outside.

Gunfire.

Annette shuddered visibly, and the color drained from her face. “What…”

“Save it,” Rebecca said.

And she was out the door and running.

T
he first shot struck Jean-Paul in his bad leg. It had missed his upper body only because he had dived off a boulder at the last split second. His landing in the tide pool below probably did him worse damage than the bullet that had seared his thigh. It wasn’t that he felt any pain—that would come later—but that he couldn’t move. He lay prone in the icy water, the tide washing over him.

“In the end,” Nguyen Kim had said, “I win.”

Jean-Paul searched with one arm for something with which he could pull himself out above the water line, but he cut his hand on barnacles and came up only with useless periwinkles, snails, mussels and slimy seaweed.

A wave surged over him. Cold, salty water filled his mouth and nostrils as his body was picked up by the powerful tide and thrown down again, along with the sea life clinging to the rocks. He didn’t fight. The tide would ebb, leaving the tide pool quiet and still for a few hours, himself drowned…unless that wasn’t good enough for Nguyen Kim.

The swirling water flipped Jean-Paul onto his side, and
as the wave pulled back, trying to take him with it, he could see Kim standing on the rock six feet above him.

Kim had been waiting for him. In the past, Jean-Paul might have taken him—in fact, had. But not today, with his body and spirit giving out. He had hoped, at least, his death would satisfy Annette and she would leave the others alone.

But of course, it was too late for that. Jean-Paul had seen the two figures huddled together against the battering tide…. Thomas and Mai…
no!

He had jumped from certain death, and Kim had fired.

Now the Vietnamese was preparing to fire again and finish him off. Jean-Paul felt his leg burning. The rest of him was numb.

Then—for no apparent reason—Kim was catapulted through the air, yelling, his legs kicking. His gun went flying. He more or less rolled, slid and plunged onto a steep, rocky embankment a few yards from Jean-Paul, and his momentum carried him down into the ocean, where the tide smashed him back against the rocks.

Steeling herself against the pain in her ribs, Rebecca clambered down off the huge boulder, down to the tide pool where Jean-Paul was bracing himself for another round of pounding surf. He looked dead. Then he grinned weakly at her, and she cried out with relief, wading out to him. She grabbed him under the arms. Going with the oncoming wave, she used its momentum to drag him out of the tide pool. Then she scrambled, heaving and tugging, moving fast so they wouldn’t get caught in the outward pull of the tide. Jean-Paul was scrawny and she was fit, but she still had to get him onto a rounded rock, above the water line.

She saw his blood-soaked thigh and understood why he wasn’t doing more to help himself.

The rain beat down on her, and she half expected Annette to appear on the rocks above them with another gun, another attempt to kill them both.

With one last burst of energy, she hoisted Jean-Paul onto the flat boulder where Kim had first landed. The rain seemed to make getting a decent breath even more difficult than it already was with her bruised ribs and the exertion, but she stayed on her hands and knees, gasping for air, willing back the stabbing pain.

“Grandfather, Mai,” she said, “where are they?”

Jean-Paul’s eyes focused, and he tried to push up on his hands. “On the rocks.” He winced in pain, pointing. “They’re in the tide.”

Rebecca could feel near-hysteria rising up in her. “And Kim…”

“He’s a killer. Save him for last.”

“Will you be all right?”

“Go!”

Not needing to be told twice, Rebecca was off, clambering over the steep rocks. Jean-Paul hated himself for not being able to go with her. To lie here bloody and useless was unacceptable.

He swore viciously in French.

Slowly, the pain beginning to register now, he pushed himself onto his hands and one knee, and began to drag himself over the rock toward the girl and the old man…toward his father, damn both their souls.

The waves seemed to be coming in higher and faster and more often, and Mai was terrified one would finally take her and the old man. She still didn’t know who he was. Barely conscious, he was unable to speak. They had both managed to sit up and worm their way to a more sheltered spot up
against a sleek, black boulder. There weren’t as many barnacles there, but they weren’t out of reach of the tide.

Mai was exhausted from fighting the waves. Even with the old man in front of her, trying to protect her, the force of the water was almost impossible to resist. She no longer even noticed the cold or the pain of her scrapes and cuts and bruises from being bashed round on the barnacles and rocks.

Dad…Dad, where are you?

Another wave was boiling in over her. She didn’t even prepare for it, but simply let it come.

White-faced and staring blankly out the passenger window, Quentin hadn’t spoken for the last five miles. Jared didn’t try to get him to talk. Preoccupied with his own fears, he hadn’t bothered to sugarcoat what he’d had to say: Annette—Quentin’s
mother—
had deliberately misled him about Tam and had ordered Tam’s killing and that of her own granddaughter.

“She’s lied to you and used you,” Jared had said brutally, “in the worst ways I can imagine.”

“But why?”

“To save herself.”

He’d explained what he could, not knowing if Quentin was able to digest anything beyond the fact that his mother had taken advantage of his guilt over his stupid involvement with the drug smugglers…that Tam hadn’t fallen into bed with his cousin…that Mai was their child.

Jared took the turn into the Winston driveway in Marblehead too fast and ran up into the pristine lawn, but quickly righted the car and sped up toward the house.

Annette’s Mercedes was coming at them.

It swerved onto the lawn to avoid a head-on collision.
Jared screeched on the brakes and jumped out. He didn’t look back to see what Quentin was doing.

Annette had already rolled down her window. “Jared, I’m so glad you’re here. I don’t know what’s going on—there were shots fired and Thomas has Mai down on the rocks. Kim’s doing what he can to help. I’m heading for the police now. I’ve tried to call, but the line’s dead. Someone must have cut it—”

“Give it up,” Jared said stonily. “I know what you’ve done and there’s no escape. If anything happens to Mai, I don’t care where you go, there’s no place you can hide from me. Got that, Auntie? Nowhere.”

“You’re dead wrong.”

Behind him, Quentin said, “No, Mother, I don’t think he is.”

“Quentin…” Annette swallowed, no color at all in her face, and began to cry. “Quentin, don’t let him poison your mind. I’m your mother. How could you believe I’d hurt anyone?”

“I’m going after Mai,” Jared said, unmoved, and ran off into the rain.

Quentin fell in beside him. “You might need my help—I know every rock out there.”

Jared clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

They heard the Mercedes engine race, and Jared glanced back, seeing the big car bang into Rebecca’s car, right itself, and go on. He had no idea where his aunt was going, but it didn’t matter. He’d find her.

“Grandfather…
Mai!
”

Rebecca choked back her terror and slid down the black rock into the icy, thigh-deep water. The force of the swell pushed her up against the wall of the rock and she had to
hang on to the edges of the rock to maintain her footing, hooking one arm around the slight figure of Mai Sloan. The girl was unconscious, and now, at high tide, every oncoming wave totally inundated her. Rebecca held on as the current tried to pull them back out with it.

Her grandfather’s thin body floated up in the foaming water and went with the receding wave, pounding over the rocks. Rebecca could see his pale, bloody face, and she screamed for him. He didn’t move.

Never loosening her hold on Mai, Rebecca shivered in the numbing surf and knew she didn’t have the strength to hoist Mai up over her head onto the black rock. She would have to edge to her right where, about twenty feet away, the steep embankment of rocks gave way to a small cove. The tide wasn’t as deep there. Rebecca would be able to leave Mai on the bank of sea-smoothed, softball-sized rocks and go back for her grandfather.

You can do this. Just stay steady and keep moving.

But as she peeled her fingers loose from their hold on the black rock, she could feel Mai being pulled from her. At first she thought it was the current, then she heard Jean-Paul’s French-accented voice. “I’ve got her.”

He was on his stomach on the rock above her, reaching one arm down and lifting Mai’s tiny body by her soaked shirt. Rebecca helped shove her up to him.

And then Jared was there behind him, taking Mai, and Quentin leaped into the water with Rebecca and thrashed out into a roaring wave where her grandfather bobbed helplessly. He got an arm around the old man, and they both disappeared in the gray swell. Rebecca dove in after them, losing her footing in the deepening water, the force of the tide trying to push her back. Barnacles cut at her hands and
feet, and she banged against rocks as she fought to stay in control, not to let the tide seize her.

Leaving Mai with Jean-Paul, Jared came around to a rocky point off to Rebecca’s left, where the water was just waist-deep. He jumped in, and Rebecca made her way toward him, guessing he’d spotted Quentin and her grandfather.

Within seconds, Jared pulled Thomas up and deposited him on the rocks.

Together, he and Rebecca dragged Quentin to safety. He’d bashed his head on a rock but was conscious.

Thomas and Mai, however, were another matter.

“Jared…” Rebecca bit her lip, unable to bring herself to ask.

But Jared understood. “They’re both alive.”

“We’ve got to get them warm,” Rebecca said.

Jared nodded grimly. With a jackknife from his pocket, he deftly cut the wet, cold rope binding Thomas’s hands and feet. He looked over at Quentin. “You’re in no shape to carry him. Can you get Mai?”

Without a word, Quentin took Jared’s jackknife and hurried back over the rocks to where Mai and Jean-Paul were. Jared lifted Thomas onto his shoulder and steadied himself before starting up to the house.

“R.J., I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.”

She climbed agonizingly to her feet and gave him a quick smile. “The day I let
anybody,
even you, Jared Sloan, carry me when I can walk…” She caught her breath and winced. “Just don’t wait for me.”

It was Quentin who called the police and the ambulance, who got out blankets while Jared and Rebecca peeled off Mai’s and Thomas’s soaked, tattered clothes. Ignoring their
scrapes and cuts for the moment, they wrapped them in the blankets. Jared held his daughter and tried to will his own warmth into her.

“Nothing will change, Jared,” Quentin said softly. “She doesn’t have to know who I am.”

“Yes, she does. I can’t keep lying to her. Before it was to save her life. Now…there’s no reason.”

“I won’t try and take her from you.”

“Good, because I’d fight you every inch of the way.”

“I just…I just want to be a part of her life, Jared. That’s all. She’s my cousin’s kid, right?” He looked at the pale, pretty face. “She’s going to be okay.”

On her way up to the house, Rebecca had stopped to help Jean-Paul Gerard, but he’d shooed her off. “The rain’s letting up—I’ll be fine. Take care of your grandfather.”

But now there was nothing more she could do for Thomas beyond what she and Jared and Quentin had already done, and so she grabbed a blanket and a first-aid kit and headed back out to the rocks. She’d taken a couple aspirin for her ribs. For now, it’d have to be enough.

The rain had stopped, and already the tide had begun to ebb. Rebecca went straight down to the black rock where she’d left Jean-Paul.

He wasn’t there.

She scoured the immediate area and scanned the gray swells, but saw no sign of him. How far could he get in his condition? Frowning, she started back up to the house, hoping he hadn’t just given up and lowered himself into the sea. But that wasn’t Jean-Paul Gerard’s style. He’d survived too much to give up now.

By the time she reached the grass, the police and ambulance had arrived. Jared pointed her out to a paramedic,
and she tried to protest, but there was no arguing with medical types.

As they draped a blanket over her, she noticed that her truck was gone.

She grinned. Jean-Paul Gerard had stolen it.