Uncharted (21 page)

When the boat dipped forward at a ninety-degree angle, Kevin knew they were going to capsize. Instinctively he reached for Karyn, but he couldn’t get to her in the tumbling cabin.

He clawed his way through confusion as the black water rushed in and filled the cabin. By the time he reached Karyn, she was facing the now-vertical ceiling, her nails frantically scraping the wooden panel. Wasting energy.

He caught her shoulders, turned her, and held on until she looked at him.

They used to be able to read each other’s thoughts. Perhaps they still could.

With her eyes locked on his, he offered a tentative smile and purposefully thought of Sarah. They had created a beautiful daughter, a child who was safe in New York. She reflected the best of each of them. She would be their legacy.

Karyn’s lips parted as her last breath escaped, and her face rippled with anguish. She stopped struggling. Her brow furrowed as her fingers rose to touch his lips.

He nodded, understanding.

Karyn’s eyes burned with the deep blue that lights the heart of a flame, then she leaned toward him and lightly pressed her lips to his.

At the first rush of water, Mark turned toward the hatch and knocked Kevin aside in his desperation to be free. In an instant he was submerged with the others, but he refused to panic. He had been in life-or-death situations before, and he always won.

He kicked his way out of the cabin and allowed the air in his lungs to carry him upward. Once his head broke the surface, he gulped in a deep breath, then dove for the bobbing boat. The cabin had a starboard porthole; he swam to it and pressed his palm against the glass. He saw nothing but darkness within, then something pale and white glided past the window: Susan’s arm, sparkling with a diamond tennis bracelet.

She was a goner. So were the others, unless they managed to escape that death trap of a cabin.

Rising to the deck, Mark spotted Captain Weza, his wrists still strapped to the railing with duct tape. Another captain going down with his ship.

Mark’s bowels tumbled when he saw John Watson. The old man was rising toward the surface, his face a study in calm. His gray hair undulated in an underwater current; his blank eyes were wide, his lips curved in a still smile. His empty hands floated at his sides as his body drifted away from the boat.

The tiny trickle of blood that marked his forehead after Mark hit him had been washed away. Only Kevin knew Mark had to strike the old man in order to restrain the captain, and Kevin would never tell. Not now.

Mark felt his skin contract in a shiver that had nothing to do with the water temperature. While he watched, the boat shifted and released a small pocket of air, then slipped slowly into the depths.

If the cabin held an air pocket, the others might yet be alive. There was still time for them to escape, but they’d have to swim
now
. . .

His lungs burned; he couldn’t wait. He pulled for the surface, then inhaled life-giving oxygen in an explosive gasp. He rode the waves like a cork, his arms and legs keeping him upright as he spun in the water and looked for survivors.

None yet. But the waves were high; his friends could be quite close, and he wouldn’t see them.

Or maybe he survived alone.

Maybe he wouldn’t survive at all.

Comprehension seeped through his outrage, then he began to laugh.

What an inauspicious end for the Florida Phantom. He had killed thirty-one women in his secret career; thirty-two if he counted the woman from Port Wentworth. He had planned to outperform Ted Bundy, who killed at least forty, but fate had taken a hand.

At least he’d never be caught. If he died at sea, no one would ever know. The gators had disposed of the evidence at home, and no one in Port Wentworth knew his name or face. The Mercedes had been stripped of its tags, the VIN numbers completely defaced.

He looked up at the glowering sky and shook a triumphant fist. “Take me now, if you can! I dare you!”

25

Pain rose inside Karyn like a wave, curling, breaking, sending ripples of agony along every nerve. She gasped for breath, sat up, and opened her eyes.

She was lying on a black-sand beach that evoked memories of Punalu’u on Hawaii’s Big Island. The glittering blue ocean before her stretched away into a breathtaking vista of sky and sea.

She lowered her gaze. Her white blouse was torn, her exposed skin sunburned and blistering. She had lost her shoes. Her ears registered the dull throb of her heart, listlessly pushing blood through her arteries like the waves pounding the shoreline of this unfamiliar place.

She moaned as she shifted her position. None of her bones appeared to be broken, thank goodness. She was grateful to be alive, though every limb throbbed. The palms of her hands had been slashed and scratched; three of her nails had broken off in the quick.

She closed her eyes and struggled to remember what had happened. They had crowded into the cabin when it began to rain. The boat had tipped forward; a window had broken. Water, lots of water. Kevin had looked at her as if he knew they would die, but they’d survived. Or
she
had.

She lifted her head to look for Kevin, then groaned as a sharp pain raced from the bottom of her neck to her lower spine. No sign of Kevin on the beach, but perhaps he had walked away. He had to be there.

Their daughter couldn’t be an orphan, not at fifteen.

Like an arthritic old woman, she pushed herself to a standing position, then winced as the tender soles of her feet protested. Her feet must have scraped against something—wreckage or coral—and she must have clung to debris before being washed ashore. If she could survive, so could the others.

She closed her eyes and prayed she wouldn’t be alone. Though she enjoyed Tom Hanks in
Castaway
, she couldn’t help thinking she’d go stark raving mad with only a volleyball for company. Still . . . life alone had to be better than the alternative.

She blinked as she surveyed her surroundings. She wasn’t sure what island she’d washed up on, but the place looked nothing like Majuro—no homes, no roads, no docks. Not a single sign of civilization, only pristine dark sand that glistened in sunlight streaming from behind billowing clouds.

Her heart tripped when she looked toward the center of the island. Several yards beyond the sand, a stand of whispering palm trees offered a bit of shade; beyond the trees a towering rock formation cast a long shadow. For some inexplicable reason, the sight of the rock sent a tremor scooting up the back of her neck.

Quickly, she looked away. No time to climb rocks now; she needed to look for the others. She was helpless without them. Mark or John or Kevin would know what to do.

Please, God, let Kevin be here.

She groaned as she took another step and pain flared in her leg. She must have strained every muscle in her struggle to escape the boat, but she would endure whatever she must to find the others. She had to get home to her new job . . . and to Sarah.

Susan awakened with wasps of pain buzzing along the nerves of her forearm, swarming in her hand, and gathering on her cheek. A faint whistling sound rattled in her head, and she could taste blood on her tongue.

Her grip on reality tightened as she opened her eyes and sat up in a whisper of wind that stirred the warm air around her. In the distance, insects buzzed in a continuous churr.

She blinked and stared at her palms, which had been sliced in several places. The deep cuts had been washed by the sea, for the flapping skin was swollen and bloodless.

She gulped, forcing down the sudden lurch of her stomach. She lifted her hand, touched her sandy fingertips to the soft skin between her cheekbone and the outer edge of her eye, and felt . . . a chasm. No, not a chasm, a cut. A
deep
cut.

Grief welled in her, black and cold, as she ran her finger over the serrated edge of flesh. The cut, numb now, began at her temple, traversed her cheek, and pointed toward the corner of her nose. When her questing finger felt an unexpected edge to her nostril, she realized that almost half her nose was missing.

The whistling sound in her head had been air rushing past the remaining flap of skin.

Susan dropped to the sand and retched. She could not control her disgust; the thought of her appearance shook her until her teeth chattered, and between each whistling breath she heard herself repeating a four-letter word as if she had been stricken by an incurable case of Tourette’s syndrome and would spend the rest of her life unable to stop whispering this single obscenity:
ugly
.

What had happened?

They had been on the boat. She was in the cabin; water, water rushed in from everywhere. She looked for one of the men, hoping they would save her, but Mark disappeared, and Kevin pulled Karyn into his arms. Susan scrambled forward, slapping at the tumbling suitcases and tools that blocked her escape—

But somehow she
did
escape. By some miracle, she washed up on this island with the breath of life still in her lungs.

Yet there were worse things than death, and being a freak was surely one of them. How could she live like this? How could she face the others in this condition?

Trembling, she lowered her hands and examined what remained. Her shoes were gone, as were her rings and her diamond bracelet. Her cotton skirt was torn, her ivory blouse stained with something that looked like grease. Another gash marked her left forearm, a cut that had already scabbed over in a dark crimson thread.

She was in fair condition, then—except for her face. And maybe she wasn’t ruined. She’d been extensively damaged, but today’s plastic surgeons could work miracles. If they could fix kids with cleft palates, surely they could help a woman whose nose had been partially sliced away.

Then again . . . children had young, elastic skin. Her skin was older, less flexible, damaged from too many summers in the sun.

She wanted to survive, but not if surviving meant being someone else. She’d been beautiful for so long she wasn’t sure she could adjust to being anything else.

She closed her eyes as a sudden yearning assaulted her. Why couldn’t David be here? She needed him now. She had always needed him. She’d need a plastic surgeon soon, and if David were here, he’d know what to do to lessen the scarring. He’d know how to get her off this island and to a hospital. David had always known how to accomplish the impossible, whereas she . . . she knew how to decorate.