Uncharted (33 page)

The door closed, leaving the man in a pool of shadow as he took the woman into his arms and nuzzled her neck.

Although Susan had been too dehydrated to perspire, she felt suddenly slick with the sour sweat of fear. She recognized the man, she knew him well, but none of the others could ever see this. When he had come to town, they met for dinner, never intending to let things go this far. But desire overpowered good sense, and after dinner she had suggested that she keep him company for the night . . .

Her stomach dropped as the blond woman pulled out of his embrace and moved toward the bed. She switched on the lamp. “What’s your hurry? We have all night.”

When the man stepped forward, Susan saw as much yearning in his face as in the woman’s. He gave the blond a raking gaze, then spoke huskily: “I’ve waited years. Please, don’t make me wait a minute longer.”

Susan’s cheeks burned as the urgency in the man’s voice propelled the woman into his embrace. The blond’s arms slid around his neck, then her face shifted to the unemotional, murderous visage of a bloodthirsty spider.

Susan turned from the pool, not wanting to see any more of the night that had ended in her tears and his confessions. Before the clock struck midnight, Dr. David Payne had called his wife and admitted his betrayal, while Susan huddled beneath the sheets, feeling as vile as vomit.

He couldn’t even wait for her to leave with a modicum of dignity. No, his damnable conscience forced him to call his wife and throw himself on the altar of Julia’s mercy. After he hung up the phone, with tears streaming, he begged for Susan’s forgiveness too.

To avoid the loneliness of an empty bed, after her husband’s death, Susan had slept with many men. None of them had ever made her feel ashamed. Until David.

“No,” she moaned, stumbling away from the pool, then dropping to her hands and knees at the opening of the cavern. She leaned against the stone wall and tried to clamp her mouth shut, but the anguished wail broke free, and she began to sob.

Later, she lay on the sandy floor feeling drained, hollow, and lifeless. No matter what happened, the others could not visit this chamber, they could not look into this reflecting pool. She didn’t want them to think ill of David. But more than that, she couldn’t have them recoil from her appearance
and
her character.

The others must never know what she’d done.

If only Sarah could see me playing Tarzan.
The thought was so absurd that Kevin leaned on a stand of stubborn bamboo and began to laugh, though he felt a long way from real humor.

By the time he returned to the group with an uprooted stalk and ant-bitten hands, Mark had scraped most of the rust off one side of the bumper. The edge was jagged and uneven, but it should cut the bamboo more easily than sharpened stone.

Kevin dropped the bamboo onto the sand, grateful he was able to carry his share of the workload.

Mark nodded in approval. “That’s a good size. Hard to pull up?”

Kevin snorted. “Had to wrestle the thing out of the ground. Got bitten by about two dozen ants when I dug the roots out.” He held up his hands, displaying the dirt impacted beneath what remained of his fingernails. “But I’m happy to deliver one good-sized bamboo pole.”

“Man wins bamboo battle. I’m glad to see you could handle it, Kev. I was beginning to think you might be going soft up there in your executive office.”

Kevin sank to the sand. Was that an intentional slam, or was Mark kidding? Everyone knew he wasn’t the flannel-shirt-and-shotgun type; few execs at his company spent their free time in the woods. Mark prided himself on being some kind of Jungle Jim, but he could
have
the wilderness. The only outdoor activity Kevin enjoyed involved manicured grass, sand traps, and little wooden tees.

Still, Mark’s knowledge had been useful. They wouldn’t have made any progress without his blasted expertise.

“Give me a hand, will ya?” Mark asked, positioning the bamboo so it lay perpendicular to the metal strip. “Rather than use this huge bumper as a saw, we’re going to press the bamboo against the sharpened edge until we split this thing lengthwise. See what I mean?”

Kevin nodded. Did Mark think he was a total moron?

“Okay. I’ll hold the steel steady while you push the bamboo onto the edge.”

“Easier said than done,” Kevin mumbled as he assumed his position. Mark braced the metal strip with both hands while Kevin threaded the stalk beneath Mark’s arm and pressed the steel against the clump of roots. The initial cut was the hardest—both of them had to force the steel to bite into the root system—but once the steel sliced into fibrous plant tissue, pulling the hollow stalk over the bumper required nothing more than grunting effort.

Finally, Kevin collapsed, a split stalk on the sand in front of him. He glanced sideways and saw Mark’s grin.

“Good job, Kev. Now sit tight and watch this.”

Kevin was about to say he didn’t have the strength to do anything else, but Mark had piqued his curiosity. Using the sharp edge of the piece of broken glass, Mark hacked two notches in one length of the split bamboo; then he filled the hollowed space around the notches with shredded paper.

“I need you”—he gestured to Kevin—“to hold this piece so it doesn’t wiggle while I work.”

Kevin grabbed the end nearest the notches as Mark picked up the other half of the bamboo. After taking a deep breath, he used the second half of the stalk as a saw, moving his arm back and forth in a fast, vigorous motion.

“The . . . fire saw,” Mark said, his words punctuating his movements, “is . . . the . . . method . . . of last resort . . . but it . . . works.”

The words had no sooner left his mouth than a slender tendril of gray smoke rose from the paper beneath the moving saw. Kevin let out a yelp, and Mark smiled grimly as he bent to blow on the paper. A small flame sputtered to life.

While Kevin watched, Mark lifted the bamboo with the burning scraps, shielding it with his free hand, then dropped the burning tinder into the fire pit. Within a few seconds the brown palm fronds curled into flame, and smoke began to ascend.

“And we have fire.” Kevin looked at Mark with newfound appreciation. “You did it.”

Mark shrugged. “Now we have to keep the fire going, which means one of us will have to stay out here pretty much all the time. You can bank a fire for the night, but we need to keep this one smoking as long as it’s light. That means green leaves, mostly, over good wood to keep the fire hot. We’ll have to show the women how to tend it.”

Kevin nodded, realizing that precautions were a good idea if only because their energy was ebbing away. Unless they soon found water and food, they might not have the strength to start another fire.

“Round up the others,” Mark said, “while I get this baby established. Now that we’ve built our fire, we need to come up with another plan in case this doesn’t work.”

Kevin winced. “What do you mean, if this doesn’t work? You said these islands were well traveled—”

“They are, but have you seen any ships out there? I didn’t want to say anything in front of the girls, but I think we might have landed in some kind of forbidden zone—probably smack in the middle of a military test range. So while this fire is good and someone
ought
to see it, I don’t want to be singing ‘Kum Ba Ya’ around the campfire if they start shelling this place, do you?”

Jarred by the thought, Kevin stood and strode off to find the others.

Mark looked around the circle and saw something he’d never seen in his friends’ eyes—respect. Behind him, the fire burned steadily, sending up a billowing gray cloud, but it was time to tell them smoke signals might not be enough.

“Kev and I have been talking,” he said, knowing they’d accept the idea more readily if Kevin’s name was attached, “and we think we need a plan B. Someone ought to see our fire, but we also need to build a raft.”

“What about the dump?” Lisa asked. “Someone’s bound to come back.”

“A person who’s dumping illegally may not be eager to pick up witnesses to his crime,” Mark said. “Or they may not come for weeks. We can’t wait around that long.”

A warm wind blew past them with a soft moan, then Karyn barked a laugh. “Okay. So how are we going to build this raft?”

Mark picked up one of the split stalks. “We use the materials at hand. If there’s one thing this place has, it’s bamboo. We can cut several tall canes, lash them together, and build a base big enough to support the five of us. We’ll have to figure out which way the currents flow, but there’s no reason we can’t cast off and reach a populated island in a few hours. After all, we were on the boat at least three hours before the storm hit. We can’t be far from Kwajalein.”

He glanced around the circle. Karyn looked skeptical, Kevin eyed the bamboo with a calculating expression, and Lisa bit her bottom lip. Susan’s veiled head remained bowed.

Lisa dropped her hand to Kevin’s arm. “Why not? If we all pitch in and help, I think it’ll work.”

Karyn rolled her eyes, but she didn’t protest.

“We’ll need you girls to help make bindings.” Mark pointed to a pile of seaweed on the beach. “If you gather those lengths and braid them together, we ought to come up with a serviceable rope. It’ll take time, but you can do it.”

“I’ll help.” Lisa flashed a smile. “Sounds easy enough.”

“It’s decided, then.” Mark nodded at Kevin. “I think we can use this bumper like a two-man saw and cut some of the larger bamboo stalks just above the roots.”

A wry smile flitted across Karyn’s face. “Maybe you’ll find water,” she added, but her voice was hollow and empty of hope.

After finding a small spot of shade beneath a slanting palm tree, Karyn stretched out on the beach, not caring that her neck and hands were exposed to the sand. Let the grit sting her skin; let the UV rays bake her flesh into layers of wrinkles. The ants could crawl over her body; she didn’t have the energy to care.

Lying amid the rattle of insects in the hot air, she remained motionless as palm branches filtered the weak sunlight and projected shadowy symbols on the backs of her eyelids. Her body, so recently inflamed by pain and panic, couldn’t relax into the numbness of sleep. But with her eyes closed and her brain lulled by the monotonous sound of the crashing surf, she could drift into the hazy half world between sleeping and waking.

Among shadows and the scattered fragments of memories, she visited her apartment, drifted through the foyer, and went in search of her daughter.