In the Dark (15 page)

No, David couldn’t be a killer. She wouldn’t believe it. He had his talents, but he had never claimed acting to be among them.

And yet, at that table, they had all been bluffing.

Anger against herself welled in her heart. No, how could she believe in her soul that she loved someone so much that she had been so afraid of losing him that she had pushed him away, and then believe him capable of deception and murder?

“On that note, I think the game is over,” John murmured. “Hell, I can’t believe you kept quiet until now.”

“I meant to keep quiet all night,” David said irritably. “There’s nothing anyone can do until the storm passes.
Then the body will be brought up, and Nigel will get to the bottom of what’s going on.”

“Maybe,” Jay said dully. “And maybe he won’t find out a damn thing and we’ll all be walking around afraid forever.”

“I don’t think so,” David said. “I’m pretty sure that whoever killed Alicia might have helped Seth Granger into the water. And that person will, eventually, give himself away. Until then, just be careful.”

“Great, David, thanks a lot,” Len said. “Now none of us is going to be able to get any sleep.”

“Why?” David said. “Hey, it’s just the six of us on the island. We stick together, nothing goes wrong,” he said flatly.

A strained silence followed his words.

“No one sleeps, that much is evident,” Len said at last.

The sound of the wind suddenly seemed to die out completely.

The eye of the storm was just about on them.

“Hell,” Hank Adamson swore. “This is ridiculous. I’m going to sleep. Alicia Farr is dead, and you found her,” he told David. “That doesn’t make any of us guilty of anything. You’re right. Tomorrow, or as soon as he can, Nigel will come out and take care of things.”

He pushed his chair away from the table. Alex kept her eyes tightly closed, not wanting any of them to know she had heard their conversation.

“We’re in the eye,” Jay said suddenly. “Len, come with me. I’m going out. Just for a minute. Just to take a quick look around.” He sounded strained.

“You shouldn’t go out, Jay,” David said.

“I have responsibilities here. I have to go out,”
Jay said. “The rest of you stay here. Len will be with me. Everyone will have someone keeping an eye on them.”

“Just you and Len together?” John said.

“All right, then. Three and three. Hank, you come with us for a minute,” Jay said.

Hank groaned.

“Please. Three and three,” Jay repeated.

With a sigh, Hank rose and joined them. Jay unbolted the door, stepping out into the dim light of the world beyond the shelter. “We’ll just be a minute.”

Alex didn’t believe for a minute that he was going out to check on the damage. They kept a gun in a lock box behind the check-in counter. He was undoubtedly going for it.

“What the hell are you doing on this island?” David asked John.

“The same back to you,” John said.

Then, out of the blue, the radio went silent as the room was pitched into total blackness.

T
he hum of the generator was gone.

Something had gone terribly wrong.

For a moment David sat in stunned silence, listening to the absolute nothing that surrounded him in the pitch darkness. Then he heard a chair scraping against the floor.

John Seymore. The man was up, and Alex was sleeping on a cot just feet away. Seymore could be going after her. Fear—maybe irrational, maybe not—seized him. He couldn’t seem to control his urge to protect Alex, no matter what.

He sprang up, hearing the scrape of his own chair against the floor. He heard movement, tried to judge the sound, then made a wild tackle, going after the man.

He connected with his target right by the row of cots. His arms around his opponent’s midsection, together
they crashed downward, onto the cot where Alex had been sleeping.

Dimly, as Seymore twisted, sending a fist flying, David became aware that the cot was empty. Alex had fled. She might still be in the storm-shelter room somewhere, or she could have found the door and escaped.

Seymore’s fist connected with his right shoulder. A powerful punch. Blindly, David returned the blow. He thought he caught Seymore’s chin. The man let out a grunt of pain, then twisted to find David with another blow.

They continued fighting for several minutes with desperate urgency, until suddenly an earsplitting gunshot rocked the pitch-dark room.

Both of them went still. The shot had come from the doorway.

Instinctively, they rolled away from one another.

“Alex!” David shouted.

There was no answer.

After the explosion of sound, silence descended again. He wasn’t sure where Seymore had gone.

With a sudden burst of speed, he picked himself up and raced toward the open door. Insane or not, instinct compelled him to do so.

Alex was certain that John and David were going to tear each other apart. Damn Jay! They were supposed to stay together, watching one another, and instead he’d gone for a weapon. What the hell did he intend to do? Hold everyone at gunpoint until the authorities came? Shoot them all?

Could Jay be the killer? No! She refused to believe
it. And yet… As soon as he’d left, the generator had gone off.

What the hell had happened?

She had no idea. All she knew for certain was that David and John had suddenly become mortal combatants. Did they know something she didn’t? Was one of them telling the truth—and the other not?

She had to get away, in case the wrong man triumphed. Not that she had any idea which one was the wrong one.

She’d already deserted her cot before they toppled over on it. She immediately made a dash for the door, nearly killing herself in the process, the darkness was so complete. She burst into the office and stood dead still, listening. Once she was certain the office was empty, she made her way to the reception area, inch by inch, using the furniture as a guide.

She meant to head for the lockbox herself, just in case she’d been wrong and Jay hadn’t gone for the gun after all. Then became aware of breathing near her. She held dead still, holding her own breath.

Waiting, listening.

Aeons seemed to pass in which she didn’t move. She nearly shrieked when she realized someone was moving past her, heading for the storm room. Once he had gone and her heartbeat had returned to normal, she tried to move around the reception counter.

Her footsteps were blocked. She kicked against something warm. Kneeling, feeling around, she realized that she hadn’t stumbled against a thing but a person.

She recoiled instantly, fought for a sense of sanity, and tried to ascertain what had happened—and who it was. The form was still warm. She moved her hand over
the throat, finding a pulse. Feeling the face and clothing, she decided she had stumbled upon Jay Galway, and he was hurt!

Either that, or…

Or he was lying in wait. Ready to ambush the unwary person who knelt down next to him to ascertain what had happened.

Fingers reached out for her, vising around her wrist. She screamed, but the crack of a gunshot drowned out the sound. She wrenched her wrist free and rose, determined to get the hell out of the lodge. The storm might be ready to come pounding down on them again, but she didn’t care. There had to be a different place to find sanctuary.

As she groped her way out of the lodge, tamping down thoughts of Jay and whether or not he was hurt or dangerous, she was certain that her survival depended on escape. She lost several seconds battling with the bolts on the main door, then got them open and flew out.

Everything in her fought against believing Jay was the killer. He definitely hadn’t been the one shooting the gun.

If Jay was on the floor, where were Len and Hank?

This was all insane!

The night was dark. Thick clouds covered the sky, even in the eye of the storm. Still, once outside, she could see more than she had before.

She hurried along the once manicured walkway, heading not toward the dock but around to the Tiki Hut, on the lodge side of the dolphin lagoons.

As she rushed forward, she was aware of a few dark dolphin heads bobbing up.

She never passed without a giving an encouraging word to her charges. Despite the darkness, she was certain the dolphins could see her, and they would instinctively know something was wrong when she didn’t acknowledge them.

She should say something to them.

She didn’t dare.

She was determined to make her way to the cottages. Not her own—that would be the first place anyone would look for her—but she was sure she would find a door that hadn’t been locked. The cottages were no where near as secure as the storm room, but at least they’d been built after Hurricane Andrew and were up to code.

But as she veered toward the trail that led toward the cottages, she saw another form moving in the night ahead of her.

Panic seized her. There was no choice. She had to head for the beach.

She turned, then heard footsteps in her wake.

She was being pursued.

David was desperate to get to Alex. He damned himself a hundred times over for the announcement he had been forced to make. For not beating the crap out of Jay, rather than letting him leave the room.

But had Jay—or anyone—destroyed the generator? Or had technology simply failed them when it was most desperately needed?

Didn’t matter, none of it mattered.

Out of the room, he stumbled, swearing, as he made his way through the inner office and out to reception.

He hesitated. Somewhere on the wall was a glass case that held a speargun. It was a real speargun, one
that had been used in a movie filmed on the island a few years earlier. He’d passed it dozens of times, giving it no notice.

Now he wanted it.

Groping along the wall, he found the case. He smashed the glass with his elbow, grabbed the weapon, then heard movement behind him.

David streaked for the front doors, praying that nothing would bar his way.

He found the door, which was slightly ajar.

Yes, Alex had definitely gone outside.

He swung the door open, leaving the lodge behind.

It occurred to him to wonder just how much time had passed since the eye had first come over them.

And just how much time they had left.

There had to be a way to double back and find a place to hide and weather the storm.

Alex ran along the path toward the beach, then swore. There was no branch in the trail here, but if she crawled through the foliage, she could reach one of the other paths. All too aware that someone was following and not far behind, she caught hold of an old pine tree and used it for balance as she entered into the overgrowth.

Already, much of it was flattened. Even if she had found a path, it wouldn’t have been worth much. The storm had brought down hundreds of palm fronds already. Coconuts, mangoes, and other fruits littered the ground. She tried to move carefully, then paused, wondering if she had lost her pursuer.

She stood very still, listening.

She could hear the sea. The storm might not be on them again yet, but the water was far from smooth. She
could hear the waves crashing, could imagine them, white capped and dangerous. And beneath the water’s surface, the sand and currents would be churning with a staggering strength.

Had the wind begun to pick up again yet?

Footsteps.

Whoever had been behind her was pursuing her now with slow deliberation, as if he was able to read the signs of her trail in the dark. Maybe he could.

Who was he? Had Jay been an enemy, just waiting in the darkness, or a victim? If not Jay, who could it be?

She froze in place, stock-still with indecision. Which way to go?

There was a rushing in her ears. Her own pulse. She ignored it. She had to listen above it.

Yes, there was another sound in the night. Footsteps, not the beat of her own heart.

Her pursuer. Close. Too close.

As silently as possible, she edged forward, then came to a dead stop once again. There was a new noise, coming from in front of her.

Where to go?

Only one choice.

She headed toward the beach.

She was ahead of him, so close it was as if he could still smell her perfume, on the air. And still she was eluding him.

She knew the island, and he didn’t.

David didn’t dare call out her name. Someone else might hear him. Once again, he damned himself for the bombshell he had dropped that night. Now the killer knew. He had hidden Alicia’s body and now he knew
he’d failed a second time. For a moment his mind wandered to the spot where he’d found the body. It wasn’t an area where he had believed it would be found, where dive boats brought scores of people daily, but it wasn’t impossibly far from the beaten path, either.

So what did that mean? What did the placement of the body mean?

He couldn’t worry about it now. He had to use every one of his senses to find Alex.

Before it was too late.

He paused and listened. The rustle of the trees was eerie in the strange breeze that gripped the island. It was as if the storm was gone…and yet still there.

She was moving again. The sound was so slight, he nearly missed it. He started tearing through the bushes again, following.

She was heading for the beach.

He saw her as she raced forward, then stumbled and fell. Seconds later, he burst out of the bushes behind her.

“Alex!”

He saw then what she was seeing. Just feet from her, Len Creighton was facedown in the sand. In the night, David couldn’t make out anything else, whether the man was injured, unconscious…dead.

He couldn’t see Alex’s reaction to her discovery, but he could tell she’d heard him. She was on her feet again, and she was staring at him, and even in the dark, he could see the fear in her eyes.

“Alex!” he cried. “Alex, come here.”

She kept staring at him. As he waited, afraid to move closer, lest she run again, he surveyed the area as best he could in the dark.

Where had Len come from? How had he gotten here?

Where was the danger?

He stared at Alex again. “Alex, you’ve got to trust me. Come with me—now. Quickly!”

He was dimly aware of leaves rustling nearby; he knew someone else had reached them even before he heard a deep voice protest, “No!”

John Seymore. Damn. He’d been on his trail the whole time. Now, David realized, he’d led the bastard right to Alex.

John Seymore stared at David with lethal promise. He had a gun. Apparently he’d been armed all along and never let on. He could kill the other man, and he knew it. But whether or not he could kill him before David sent a spear into his heart was another matter.

“Alex!” Seymore shouted, keeping a wary eye on David. “Come to me. Get away from him.”

“Alex!” David warned sharply.

It seemed as if they stood locked in the eye of time, just as they were locked in the eye of the storm, forever.

Alex stared from one man to the other, and back again. Her gaze slipped down to Len Creighton, who was still lying on the beach, then focused on the two men once again.

Then she turned and dived straight into the water.

“Alex, no!” David shouted.

He couldn’t begin to imagine the undercurrents, the power of the water, in the wake of the storm. And he didn’t give a damn about anything other than getting her back. He even forgot that a bullet could stop him
in his tracks in two seconds. He dropped the speargun and went tearing toward the water.

A dim line barely showed where water and sky met. As he plowed into the waves, he saw something shoot through the water. For a moment he thought Seymore had somehow managed to move quicker than he had and had gotten ahead of him in the violent surf.

Then he realized that whoever was ahead of him was huge, bigger than a man. David plowed on, fighting the waves to reach Alex, heedless of who else might be out there. He broke the surface.

Then he saw.

Alex was being rescued. And not by a man, not by a human being at all. One of her dolphins had come for her. Where the animal would go with her, he didn’t know.

“Alex!” he screamed again.

But she had grabbed hold of the dolphin’s dorsal fin, and the mammal could manage the wild surf as no man possibly could.

She was gone.

He treaded the water, watching as the dolphin and the woman disappeared in the night. The danger hadn’t abated in the least; it was increasing with every minute that went by. He was losing to the power of the water himself. Fighting hard despite his strength and ability, he made it back toward the beach. When he reached the shore, he collapsed, still half in the water.

A second later, someone dropped by his side.

Seymore. Apparently he had ditched his weapon, as well, equally determined to rescue Alex from the surf.

Both men realized where they were and jerked away
from one another. Then both looked toward the weapons they had dropped. David could see Seymour’s muscles bunching, and he knew his were doing the same.

But Seymore cried out to him instead of moving. “Wait!”