Impulse (29 page)

Marcus had to be all right. Why had he phoned? Perhaps the call hadn’t even been from Marcus, and if it had, he was just reporting to Dominick that all was going well. She prayed with all her might that that was the case.

She gained the beautiful white beach and chose a shaded spot under a palm tree. The air was so clear and clean, it made the suffocating thick jungle seem like a bad dream.

She stripped down to her suit and crashed through
the gentle waves, swimming strongly out beyond the breakers.

Link regarded the woman from the protection of the jungle. He’d been told by Mr. Giovanni to keep her in sight at all times if she left the grounds. So she wanted to swim? Who the hell cared?

He watched for ten minutes or so until he was bored enough to sit down and light a cigarette. Finally she came out of the surf, and he watched her walk to her spread-out towel and sit down. Almost immediately she pulled on a loose-fitting top, leaned back against the palm tree, and pulled an apple out of her bag.

At least she wasn’t bad to look at, he thought, wishing now that he also had an apple, too.

Soon she pulled a book out of the bag, settled back, and opened it. At that point, Link decided to nap. What could she possibly do with a damned book?

Rafaella turned to a journal entry dated July 1997:

He’s taken a new mistress. She’s an incredibly beautiful French model by the name of Coco Vivrieux. From what I could find out, he met her in France and immediately they became an item, as the Hollywood rags say. I close my eyes and see them together, naked, in bed, his hands all over her beautiful body, his mouth clinging to hers, and I hear the noises she makes when he comes inside her. God, I can’t bear it.

I had to put my journal away for a few days. I couldn’t bear to write, but I know I must accept her in Dominick’s life. I have no choice, and after all, he doesn’t remember who I am. I might never have existed for him. I’ve tried to make excuses for him for that day in Madrid in 1989 when he looked right through me. After all, I’ve told myself countless times over the years, I was very slender when I was twenty years old. I’m fuller now, a woman, and my hair is darker than it was then. Yes, I had pale blond hair when I was twenty, I’ve told myself. And dark glasses—I’m almost certain
I was wearing dark glasses in Madrid, the kind that hide your eyes completely. After all, isn’t the sun so very strong and bright in Spain? Doesn’t one always wear dark glasses? My own daughter wouldn’t have recognized me. That’s what I’ve told myself, Rafaella, over and over, until I hate myself, my weakness.

The word was that his new French mistress is in her early thirties and getting a bit long in the tooth to stay on top much longer in the modeling world. Thus she accepted Dominick’s offer without too much hesitation. He’s taken her to that bloody island he recently bought in the Caribbean.

I must go there. I must see it. It’s stupid and obsessive and I am aware of it, but there it is.

My hatred for him grew by another good-size bound when he took Coco. He’s had so many women over the years, but I know, I’m certain that she will last. The funny thing is that she doesn’t seem to be an evil woman, a greedy kept woman. I’m trying to find out everything I can about her. No, the hell of it is, she appears quite nice.

I must stop thinking about him. I did for a while, when you graduated from Columbia and Charles and I attended and Charles threw that wonderful party for you at the Plaza. You were so gracious, Rafaella, even when Charles wanted to call the newspaper in Wallingford, Delaware. Charles, of course, is furious. He counted on handing you the moon, at the very least. I threatened him with loss of all sex with his wife if he said anything to you, and the dear man managed to swallow his bile.

You told me at your party that you were worried about Benjie. Well, I am too. Benjie is a nice man but he’d take anything his father offered him, in a flash. No, really it’s more Susan who wants things, so many things, and she is really very talented. Charles doesn’t at all mind being manipulated by her. Or so it seems to me. She’s also teaching little Jennifer to be
manipulative, conniving. Poor Benjie, he’ll never be the success Susan expects him to be. Or the success Charles expects him to be, for that matter. His watercolors continue to improve in their beauty and quality. He loves sailboats and the ocean, and they are mostly his subjects. I always buy several of them for Christmas presents for my friends. What else can I do?

I must see the island. I must see where he lives, with her, with that damned French model.

Rafaella closed the journal. Her mother had actually seen the island, studied it, willingly engulfed herself in pain. And to think she had never imagined that her mother had been suffering such torment, had spent her life gnawing over painful memories, creating new ones with every stroke of her pen in the journal, with every newspaper and magazine clipping she cut out and so relentlessly and neatly placed inside the journals. Rafaella wished very much that her mother hadn’t come to the island. Until then she’d kept herself physically away from him.

When would it stop? Perhaps with the publication of the biography Rafaella would write about Dominick, the very unromantic illegal-arms merchant, the purveyor of death?

Rafaella wished she were with her mother at this moment. She felt awash with guilt, even though intellectually she knew that a vigil at her mother’s bedside would have no bearing on anything. It would change nothing. She leaned her head forward and rested it on her knees. She prayed. She hadn’t prayed, not really, since she’d been sixteen, and then it had been a selfish prayer, one that had been answered, one she hadn’t deserved: Oh, please, God, let me have a convertible for my birthday, please, God—

And there it had been, more than she’d prayed for, a Mercedes 450 SLC, red with white leather interior, jaunty and ready for her, sitting on the gravel drive
in front of the house, Charles and her mother holding out the keys to her, smiling, smiling—

Stupid selfish child. But that was years ago and she had changed and grown up. But her mother hadn’t; she’d remained locked into her hatred of Giovanni, her obsession with the man.

Link watched Rafaella, wondering what she was thinking. She was obviously upset. He hoped she wouldn’t cry. His grandmother, who’d raised him, hadn’t cried except when he’d hurt her, and then it was great gulping sobs, and as an adult he simply couldn’t bear a woman’s tears. He was vastly relieved when the young woman seemed to shake off her funk, gather her things together, and rise. She was pretty, no doubt about that, and her eyes were particularly fine, that pale blue that darkened with emotion, like now. Those eyes of hers—Link shook his head. He needed to get off this bloody island; he was going stir-crazy. He quickly shrank back behind a palm tree when Rafaella walked toward him. As he watched her progress through the jungle until she was lost from his sight, he wondered if he were protecting her by shadowing her or protecting Mr. Giovanni from another assassination attempt.

Link began his trek back to the compound, keeping a goodly distance between himself and Rafaella. There hadn’t been another assassination attempt. Of course, that first failure had been quite a fiasco, and the island was a fortress in itself, quite a deterrent. And the men, keyed up after the first attempt, shamed to their toes for their failure to guard Mr. Giovanni, were now losing it, boredom getting to them again, making them careless, not obviously—no, never that, they were professionals, after all—no, it was their judgment, their reflexes if there were a sudden attack. Link decided to speak to Lacy, who probably already recognized the problem. If there were a second attempt—
when
there was a second attempt—Lacy and the men would be ready.

Funny, Link’s thinking continued, funny that those Dutchmen had poisoned themselves before Mr. Giovanni could question them. Funny that they should have poisoned themselves at all. Did
Bathsheba
have such a fanatic hold on its men?

Link sighed. None of it made much sense to him. And he’d searched the Dutchmen before locking them in the shed; searched them personally. They must have had the poison glued between their toes.

Link was continuing his ruminations when he heard her scream, high, thin, filled with terror and surprise. He sprinted forward, veering right at another cry, this one choking, pain-filled. He came to a horrified halt to see Rafaella Holland just off the path, the one and only boa constrictor on the bloody island, all ten feet of it, wrapping itself lazily around her body, its dark brown crossbars glistening as they slithered to her waist, tightening, ever tightening.

She saw him, and he saw the sudden hope in her eyes. “Shit,” he said, and drew his knife as he sprinted forward.

Rafaella forced herself to hold very still even though she wanted to continue her struggles. She wanted to vomit, she wanted to yell, but she didn’t move a muscle. The boa’s coils were heavy, so very heavy, and she was being bowed to her knees, but there was Link, and she instinctively closed her eyes when he cleanly slashed his knife through the snake, just below its head. There was no sound, only the loud thud as the head hit the ground. Did she expect a scream of pain from the snake? She was shuddering now from shock as the snake’s heavy coils began to loosen their hold on her. Her ribs, released from the gripping pain, heaved as she frantically sucked in air. She felt Link pulling the snake off her, knew he was unwinding it, and it was all she could do not to vomit.
She opened her eyes and saw the blood, blood everywhere, on her bare arms, all over her baggy top, on Link, and covering the knife blade. And the boa constrictor lay headless at her feet, giving spasms still that made the coils hump upward, and she jerked away quickly, and raced away, only to fall on her knees and vomit. There was little in her stomach, but she couldn’t seem to stop the spasms. She dry-heaved until she was weak and shaking and ready to fall over. But she didn’t; the snake was too near.

She felt Link’s hand on her shoulder. “It’s dead, Miss Holland. Come along now, let’s get back to the compound and get you cleaned up.”

Rafaella looked up at him and slowly shook her head. “I can’t, Link, I just can’t.” She pulled herself to her feet, avoided the snake, and raced back toward the beach.

Link let her go. Quickly he wrapped the snake’s now-limp coils about his arm and dragged the rest of it into the jungle, out of sight. The other animals would devour the carcass. And Miss Holland wouldn’t have to see the thing again.

He waited another moment, then walked toward the beach. He stopped at the edge of the jungle and looked out toward the sea. She was standing knee-deep in the surf, wildly and frantically splashing water on herself. Her hair was matted down and he could practically feel her skin crawling with revulsion as she scrubbed the snake’s blood out of her clothes.

“Get hold of yourself,” Rafaella said over and over, even as her fingers fretted madly with the pale pink stains on her shorts. Then her fingers stopped and her arms dropped to her sides. The rush of adrenaline was over. She stood there utterly still, weary to the depths of her, the warm water slapping at her thighs, and she knew now that she was safe, quite alive, and the horror was slowly receding. She looked up then, took a deep breath, and saw Link standing patiently at the
edge of the white beach, watching her. She waved and she fancied he smiled as he raised his arm and motioned her back to him.

“Thank you, Link,” she said when she reached him. “You saved my life, and to me, sir, that is quite a wonderful gift.”

“It’s all right,” he said, and he was smiling at her, a sweet smile, a gentle smile, and she was nearly undone. She wanted to cry, but she saw the appalled expression on his face and swallowed convulsively. She even managed to grin. Link understood and awkwardly patted her back.

“There aren’t any more of those monsters,” he said presently. “That one’s dead as a bloody doornail—whatever that means. My grandma always used to say that when I was a boy—‘You keep doin’ that, Everett, and I’ll make you deader than a doornail’—and so it is, Miss Holland.”

Rafaella looked up at him, sniffed, and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Everett? Your name’s Everett?”

Well, he’d done it to himself. “Yes, ma’am. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it to yourself. Merkel would batter me into the ground if he knew. And old Lacy, well, he just might roll off the island, he’d laugh so hard.”

“You can count on me, Link. But I think it’s a lovely name.”

“So did my ma,” he said. “So did my ma.”

And there was the snake story to tell again and again, until Rafaella began to think it was but a tall tale, nothing more than a snake story that she and Link had embroidered to terrify the listeners. And Coco, mouth agape, cried out several times, “Oh, my poor Rafaella,” and folded her against her breasts, patting her back.

Dominick said nothing in her hearing. He studied the bedraggled young woman, wondering where the devil that blasted snake had come from. Boas rarely
left their own territory even when free to do so, and that snake had been cozy and happy high in Dominick’s private zoo on the middle ridge, and yet it had somehow gotten free of its pen, providently come down and waited just off the path, and given Rafaella the scare of her life. It didn’t make sense; he happened to look at Link at that moment and knew that the other man was just as confused.

It was near to evening when one of the men found a large wooden cage in the jungle. And then things became clear. Someone had brought the boa here, loosing it on the trail to the beach. But the timing? Who had been the intended victim? It was accident, purely, that Rafaella had been on the path. Unless, he thought, unless that someone waited until Rafaella started back from the beach, waited and then opened the cage and loosed the boa.

He said as much to Coco as they dressed for dinner, but before she could reply, Merkel was at the door, out of breath because he’d run upstairs, and told Dominick that Marcus was on the phone again and that Jack Bertrand had tried to kill him but Marcus had got him instead.