Riptide (29 page)

It must be the bottom.

Christina cartwheeled around until one foot, at least, made contact. She connected, only for a second, and pushed off with all her might, shooting off to what she prayed was the surface.

She shot up, breaking free at last, sucking down air in gulps. Her feet hung, connecting with nothing, empty and free.

She was in water over her head.

She took in great ragged gulps as another wave broke over her head, making her eyes sting.

Her fingers connected with something that was slippery and smooth like rubber.

She knew in an instant—that thing was Danny Cisco.

The look in his eyes was murderous.

He lunged for her in the roiling sea.

Christina kicked him away.

He grabbed her leg and held on.

Christina screamed and tried to kick him off.

Waves came at them from all sides and, impossibly, from behind. Great, swollen towering columns of darkness, pushing and pulling them every which way.

A heavy piece of wood sped past on a current of brown foam. Six inches closer, and it would have knocked her
under. Bits of things, a dead fish and, impossibly, a basketball, whirled past.

One of the waves, followed by two more in rapid succession, crashed on top of them.

Christina was pushed down like a plunger, into the cold depths. She landed on the bottom, scraping it once more while her lungs burned, desperate for air.

Countless shells bit into her skin.

The sheer magnitude of the wave made it impossible to get a foothold to push off.

But the angry sea was fickle, tossing her first one way, then another.

For one single instant, the pressure let up. Christina searched desperately for the bottom with her hands and feet.

She connected just long enough once more to push off with a hand and a foot to what she hoped was the surface.

She broke the top once again, sucking in air while she could.

She swung her hands around wildly in a clumsy attempt to tread water.

Danny Cisco, by far the stronger of the two, was already there.

Christina tried to kick away again, but she was no match.

He clamped down on her, pinning her arms at her sides.

The menace of the waves was lost in the danger of his grip.

Christina realized that her death, in the end, would come at the hands of Danny Cisco.

“Please,” she begged between breaths. “Please, my
son!” She tried desperately to kick away. But it was no use.

Danny had her in a vise grip.

She caught a glimpse of shore, tiny and far away in the gray dawn. Out of reach here inside the heaving depths of the sea. Christina’s heart sank.

Another wave broke over them, tumbling them and spinning them again.

Danny held her tight even underwater.

Christina struggled back to the surface.

He was holding her down, pinning her beneath the waves.

Christina fought and kicked for all she was worth.

The current helped, scrambling them around like twigs.

Christina managed to break the surface once more.

“Help,” she screamed. “Help, help, help, help!”

There was no one to hear, only the cold, dark ocean.

Danny laughed at her, and it was this small act of cruelty in the midst of a cold black tide that could kill them both, that was more evil than anything else he had done.

He was staring at her, his face inches away in the raging waters. “I killed your husband for you, scheming bitch,” he rasped. “And now you have to die.”

“No!” Christina screamed as the waves rose around them. “I never agreed to that!”

“You asked me to kill him. And I did!” Danny tightened his grip on Christina as his rage mounted.

“No, Danny,” Christina said between gulps of air.

The current was changing around them.

Danny didn’t seem to feel it. “You did,” he spat. “And you were going to let me take the rap. Bullshit!” His eyes
glinted. “You know what? They’ll find you washed up onshore, and you know what they’ll say? What a fuckin’ shame it was that Christina Cardiff got wasted again after rehab, so fucked up she went into the ocean and killed herself.” He lowered his face to hers, yanking her down by the hair until seawater rushed in to fill her mouth.

Christina struggled to spit it out.

Her head slipped lower as he gave it another vicious yank.

She felt her neck snap back, and water filled her nose. Christina knew he would hold her under until she died.

But the ocean, which had been tossing them every which way, suddenly took a ferocious new turn.

Christina felt herself spin as the current revved around them, pulling her free from Danny’s grip like she was a rag doll.

She felt herself spinning away from him, speeding away from him on top of the raging water.

Christina had never experienced anything like it.

A look of panic passed over Danny’s face at the sheer force of the current, which was propelling them out to sea with the force of a jet engine. He opened his mouth, but the water tore at him, and this was the last look Christina had of Danny’s face, mouth open in a round “O,” gasping for air.

He lost interest in her then, turning his back to begin pumping toward shore, fighting the current with all the strength he had in his massive shoulders.

Another wave came towered over her and broke, this time not pushing her down.

This wave dragged her out to sea with supernatural speed.

Christina tried to turn, tried to follow Danny inward to shore but felt herself sucked deeper out to sea. She sped along, faster and faster, churning along in the racing waters.

She screamed, but it was no use. And then she realized what was happening, what this was.

Christina Cardiff was caught in a riptide.

Black water raced all around her, forcing her farther and farther from shore.

Into deep water.

Swimming against it, the way Danny Cisco was, would only tire her.

Not that she could try. The raging water made it impossible even to lift her arms against the force of its fury.

The ocean floor had long since disappeared beneath her feet.

Christina felt herself being flung out into open ocean.

The shore, she knew, was impossible to reach.

Even Danny was gone, in the distance now, his arms pumping like matchsticks, getting nowhere on top of the raging sea.

Christina was too frightened even to scream. She remembered from her water safety course long ago there was no escape from a riptide. The only way out was to surrender, go with it, and try to swim sideways out of it.

And so she did.

She lost sight of the shore each time a wave rose up around her, blocking her view of the only guide she had.

Even as she fought the ocean, Christina Cardiff felt herself in mortal danger of drowning with panic.

Instinct took over, and she battled on, too numb in the cold water to do anything else, kicking her way in what she hoped was a line parallel to a distant shore.

She went on this way, feeling her strength ebb with each kick, until at last—impossibly—the tide released her from its death grip.

It was an act of what some would call luck, and others would call grace.

Christina Cardiff’s life was spared.

Danny Cisco’s, as the passage of several days would reveal, was not.

C
hristina Cardiff wondered what kink in the workings of her mind had twisted her thinking so much that she had made this place out to be Oz.

Whatever might have been, her mind was unfurling itself now like a pretzel being pulled apart and laid out straight, end to end for all to see.

It hurt, but it was not the same pain that used to make her duck back under the covers as soon as she awoke, hoping only to escape once more into sleep.

She’d woken up three mornings so far, back in rehab. Three wake-ups without wishing she were dead.

That was something.

Maybe Matt Wallace was right about miracles.

“Recovering alcoholics are special. We get a chance to start life over.” He had told her this at least ten times on the drive in to JFK, then when it was time for her flight to leave, taking her back to rehab in Minnesota, he had taken her by the shoulders and squeezed hard.

She got a flutter of hope in her chest every time she pictured the look in his blue eyes.

“Remember what I said, Chrissie, we get a chance to do it right this time.”

Christina was beginning to believe he might be right.
“I’ll go.” She downed the last sip of the bitter swill that passed for coffee around here. “It’s my turn.”

Peter swiveled to face her in his molded-plastic chair. “Okay, Christina.” A smile lightened the worry lines on his face. “The floor is yours.”

The circle broke into a round of hearty applause.

The dry-cleaning king of the Midwest, the one facing indictment and a possible prison term, hooted and stamped his feet. “Go, Christina!”

Sylphan from Bucks County leapt to her feet, raising her hands to the acoustic-tiled ceiling to start a wave. “You go, girl!”

The boy-band bass player from Studio City followed suit.

Others, some of the same faces mixed with new ones fresh from the detox unit where Christina had spent the last several days,
took
up the chant. “Christi-nuh! Christi-nuh! Christi-nuh!”

As though, Christina thought, she was about to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. She ducked her head, embarrassed, staring down at the ugly purple-and-green carpet.

Change or die, she reminded herself.

Another not-so-subtle AA slogan.

She cleared her throat and tried to begin. “I am Christina, and I am an alcoholic and a drug addict.” Her voice broke. She let her tears fall, accepting the tissue someone pressed into her hand.

“Hi, Christina,” came the chorus from around the room.

Just like in the movies. Except it wasn’t so goofy when your life depended on it. Christina wept openly now.

“Tell us how you got here,” someone called.

“Now, there’s a story,” Christina said, when she got control of her voice.

There was a smattering of laughter.

“This is my second try at rehab. I wasn’t ready to quit drinking the first time. Things just hadn’t gotten bad enough, I guess,” she said with a rueful smile. “Even though any sane person would have sobered up if they found themselves in the situation I found myself in.” She cringed, closing her eyes against the images that were burned forever in her brain just like they were burned onto Danny’s DVD.

Christina forced her eyes open. “I was in the wrong place, with the wrong people, doing the wrong things.”

The room erupted into knowing laughter.

Peter gave an encouraging nod.

“It was so bad, my son wouldn’t stay with me,” she said.

A couple of heads bobbed up and down. Some patients, she knew, had lost custody of their children. That was a “yet” for Christina.

AA-speak for the fate that awaited her if she drank again.

“My in-laws wouldn’t have anything to do with me.” Christina’s voice grew stronger. “And then, things got worse.”

The room turned silent.

“My life got so bad, you can read about it this week’s
People,
” she said.

“Been there, done that,” called the dry-cleaning king.

And that was the crazy thing about AA, Christina thought. No matter what you confessed to having done
while you were drinking, there was someone else who had done it, too.

Almost.

“If not for the paparazzi,” she continued, “I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.” It was true. Partly.

It turns out the mean little black dog from next door was the one who woke up and heard Christina’s screams over the sound of the wind. The dog barked and barked (like it always did) until Biz finally woke up and let him out.

Little Shep had raced, snarling and yapping, straight for the source of screams in the dunes. The dog’s cries caught the attention of the lank-haired Brit (who told the police later he harbored a lifelong hatred of Scotties), who was parked in his usual spot in the cul-de-sac at the bottom of Christina’s drive.

The paparazzo used his cell phone to call 911, or Christina would have been swept halfway to Iceland.

She glanced at her counselor.

Peter was watching her with that Miles-and-Miles-of-Compassion look that was his stock-in-trade. “We told you the first time,” he said, “the elevator’s going to keep going down. You can get off anytime.”

“I understand now,” Christina said quietly. “Hopefully, I’ve had my last drink. I want to build a new relationship with my son, be the mother he wants me to be.” Her voice broke. “I know that if I stay sober, I can put the past behind me.”

The woman sitting beside Christina reached over and patted her shoulder while Christina cried.

“It’s okay to cry,” Peter said. “Who wouldn’t be sad right now if they were you?”

There was no arguing with that, so Christina took a
swipe at her nose with the tissue and got down to business. “I have just returned from my husband’s memorial service. Make that two memorial services,” she said, correcting herself. “I held one, then my in-laws held a second one, which I managed to attend but only as a guest. Nobody wanted me there, and I got drunk after, but I did manage to sit there quietly without making a scene, for the sake of my son.”

She choked up again, thinking about Tyler, and needed a few deep breaths to continue. “And that was after I had been fished from the ocean off the coast of East Hampton, something you all probably saw on the news.”

An expectant ripple passed through the room.

Christina had to admit her life—even by rehab standards—had spun wildly out of control.

Even this crowd was silenced by what she spoke of next.

“I nearly drowned in a mishap that claimed the life of a man,” she hesitated, searching for the right word. How to describe Danny Cisco, the man she had known as Daniel Cunningham?

“A mishap that claimed the life of a man with whom I had been involved,” she said at last. “Ironically, that man drowned in a tragic accident just days after my husband also drowned in a tragic accident…”

The classic melody rolled over Ben Jackson’s back deck. “…They found Amos White in fifteen pieces, fifteen miles apart…”

Frank McManus closed his eyes in rapture. “Glendale Train.”

“New Riders,” Ben Jackson said. “Classic. I chose it for you, my friend.”

Frank tipped up his Bud in a toast and took a swig. It helped alleviate the throbbing in his shin. He reached down to rub it, but caught himself in time.

The stitches would open if he rubbed the wound too hard.

They sat in companionable silence, enjoying John Dawson’s lyrics, which had stood the test of time.

When the song had ended, Frank took another swig. “My old man used to say, let the dead bury the dead.”

“That’s cold,” Ben Jackson said, taking another sip of his Bud. “You know, whatever went down, it was a clean scene both times. The swim trunks are gone. Nothing left but ash.”

“ME ruled both deaths an accident.”

“Only she knows what went down.”

“And she’s off to rehab.” Frank McManus raised his Bud in another toast.

“Case closed.” Ben Jackson clinked bottles with Frank. “Unless the good widow Cardiff gets to thinking things over and tells a new story someday.”

“Could happen,” Frank remarked.

“When pigs fly, is my guess,” his partner responded.

Frank McManus glanced at the grill. “Those burgers ready to flip or what?”

“ ’Nother minute,” Jackson said, sliding a flipper under one to check. “Chill, bro,” he said with a grin. He looked through the kitchen window, to where his wife Cirie was removing baked beans from the oven while Biz Brooks tossed a salad.

The two women were chatting up a storm.

“No worries, man, I’m not about to screw up our family audition night.”

Frank took another sip from his tall boy to cover his embarrassment. Truth was, he wanted things to work. He hoped it would be the first of many such nights. Frank rubbed his leg again as the Jackson progeny called for him to come down the deck stairs and into the darkening yard to take a look.

They had managed to catch a firefly in a mayonnaise jar to show Miz Biz, as they called her.

“He can’t,” Ben Jackson called. “His leg hurts. Come up here now and wash up. Dinner’s ready.”

This drove the children farther away into the darkness.

Jackson piled burgers onto a platter, waving off Frank’s offer to assist. “You just sit,” he said, chuckling as Frank lowered himself onto a bench with a small groan. “Hey, old man, you need a cane or what?”

Frank McManus responded with a suggestion that would be anatomically impossible for Ben Jackson to achieve. “Freakin’ dog,” he muttered. “Came right at me with no warning as soon as I walked into her house.”

Jackson laughed harder. “What are you gonna do?”

“What can I do?” Frank McManus grumbled, but he started to laugh, too. Fact was, he was happier than he’d been in a long time.

He’d taken Biz Brooks out to lunch, then out to dinner and a movie, then dinner in a fancy restaurant before asking her here tonight to meet the people that mattered as much as his own kids to him.

Each time he came to pick her up, everything was quiet on Jonah’s Path. It had been since Christina Car
diff-according to what he’d read in the tabloids—had packed up a few weeks back and shipped herself back to rehab.

Things were going pretty well until little Shep took it to the next level, sinking his fangs deep into Frank’s leg.

“I’m so sorry.” Biz swatted the animal off, uttering the famous last words of dog owners everywhere. “He’s never done anything like this before.”

And she had smiled at Frank in that sweet way she had, making Frank forget the dog had just ruined a new pair of pants from Brooks Brothers, and the tickling on his ankle was blood. “Are his shots up to date?” Frank had asked, eyeing little Shep, who sat, panting and worn-out with effort, in his usual spot under the hydrangeas.

“Oh, yes,” Biz had said, grabbing her purse. “Come on, I’ll take you right to my doctor.”

And Frank McManus had to admit it wasn’t a bad deal because he had got to spend another two hours in Biz’s company, if you included driving time to and from Southampton General Hospital and the time it took the ER doc to sew up his shin.

“Man, oh man,” Ben Jackson said, balancing the burger platter in one hand and his Bud in the other, “I hate dogs.”

“Yeah,” Frank McManus nodded. “Me, too.”