Uncharted (43 page)

Karyn propped her head on her hand and gazed at them in despair. Why couldn’t the others see the obvious? The island wanted to entice them deeper, to draw them back to the skull.

“There’s always the cave,” she pointed out, her gaze locking on Mark’s. “The caverns must continue for miles.”

Mark’s eyes clung to hers as if analyzing her motives, then he nodded. “She’s right. We need to go back to the caves.”

Susan shook her head. “I don’t want to go back there.”

“Honey.” Lisa’s hand closed around Susan’s wrist. “If the wind begins to howl again, you’ll
have
to seek shelter. You can’t stay out here during one of those windstorms.”

“You can tend the fire for now,” Mark said, looking around. “In fact, that’s a good idea. We’re going to need lots of smoke, so Susan ought to gather as many palm fronds and dead logs as possible. Lisa, why don’t you and Kevin search the passageways of the caverns again. Try to leave no opening unexplored. Karyn, you can keep looking for your pot. I’m going to explore the other side of the beach; maybe I can find a container over there.”

Karyn closed her eyes, overcome by the sense, unanchored but strong, that she had stumbled into a nightmare. The dead were trying to signal the living. They were maintaining a fire in hell. They were searching for a way to quench a thirst that could never be satisfied.

How could these people look around and not realize where they were? How could they acknowledge what they’d seen in the caverns and not understand what those visions meant? Those images weren’t hallucinations; they were hidden secrets on display. The unvarying sameness of this place, the exposure of their true selves, the lack of day and night and sun and vibrant color—how much worse could hell be?

And these so-called friends were no comfort. She bit the inside of her lip, choking on words she wanted to scream. How could she have ever loved these people? Mark was a waste of skin; Lisa, a bitter and jealous woman. Susan was walking proof that beauty went no further than skin deep, and Kevin, the love of Karyn’s life, had proven himself as shallow as the wave wash on the shore. He had claimed to love her, but the only thing he truly valued was his position at that stupid corporation. What would it have cost him to move to New York? He wouldn’t have had to abandon his dream in favor of hers; they both could have found work in Manhattan.

But he’d dug in. He’d let her leave. And neither of them had thought about what they were doing to Sarah.

She looked around the circle. The group had come together in the hope of rediscovering the joy they’d known in college, but they’d drifted too far and changed too much. And now they were too grown up to pretend.

Besides, back at FSU, had any of them really known what love was? John had; he’d demonstrated his love by teaching, helping, and supporting them through good times and bad. David had; he’d invested his life in his family, his patients, and his friends.

Karyn, on the other hand, had lived a role. She’d played the part of good person and good mother. She’d pretended more in life than she had on stage, and soon everyone would know it.

She swallowed hard and lifted her chin. “You can search all you like, but I doubt you’re going to find water. You’re not going to die, though. None of us are.”

“Shut up, K.” Mark’s voice brimmed with bridled anger. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She laughed softly. “I’m not stupid, Morris. We’re stuck here, and we’re going to stay here. We’re not allowed to leave.”

In a silent fury that spoke louder than words, Mark turned to Lisa. “You and Kevin get into the caves. When you get to the first fork, stay right. Take every right turn so we can map the areas we’ve explored.”

Karyn lifted her chin. “I’ll prove it.”

Kevin turned from Mark. “Prove what?”

“My theory.”

He folded his hands into his armpits. “And how are you going to do that?”

“Watch me.”

Before the others could reply, she stood and moved toward the skull with long, purposeful strides. She heard the familiar
pop
of Kevin’s arthritic knee as he rose, followed by Mark’s voice. “Let her go. She’s delusional.”

I’ll show you who’s delusional
.

Lowering her head, she pressed on.

Kevin shaded his eyes and watched Karyn storm across the sand. “I hope to God she’s wrong,” he said, only half-joking.

Beside him, Lisa snorted softly. “God has nothing to do with this place. If she’s right, God has abandoned us.”

“Good grief.” Mark’s voice dripped with cynicism. “You sound like a bunch of . . . well, I don’t know, but you don’t sound like educated people. I’m beginning to think this place is getting to you.”

Susan’s brittle laugh sounded more like a cry of pain. “Why shouldn’t this place get to us? Have you visited those caverns? Have you seen what we’ve seen? If you have, you have to know this place is evil.” She turned toward the skull, where Karyn had begun to climb the rocks at the base. “I think K might be right. Maybe we
are
dead, and this is . . . some kind of proving ground.”

“Nonsense,” Lisa said, but Kevin heard no conviction in her voice.

He lifted his head and studied his ex-wife. Karyn had not entered the cave; she was climbing the rocks wedged against the side of the skull. She moved as if she wasn’t sure of her footing, but even from this distance he recognized the stubborn set of her neck and shoulders.

She wasn’t giving up.

Lisa lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the overcast sun. “Where is she going? I thought she was going into the cave.”

“She’s lost her mind,” Mark said. “I climbed up those rocks, and there’s nothing on the top of that skull.”

Kevin felt his blood run cold as understanding crept into his thoughts. Karyn wasn’t looking for anything; she was trying to prove a point. She wanted to prove they were dead, and how better to do that than to—

“Karyn!” He uttered the loudest shout his thirst-parched throat could muster, but she didn’t look his way. He took three steps before a lightning bolt of pain shot from the injured ball of his foot all the way up his leg, then he turned to the others. “We’ve got to get her down.”

Lisa stood, too, but confusion filled her eyes. “Why?”

Not taking the time to answer, he set off at a limping run.

One hand on a rock, another hand on the next, tug, make sure it’ll support
your weight, then step up.

Moving with the careful patience her physical trainer recommended for the rock wall, Karyn climbed toward the skull’s highest point. This was a hard way to prove a theory, but if she was wrong, death would be a mercy, because dehydration was a hard way to go. If she was wrong and the others
did
find water, there would be more available for them if she wasn’t around.

Yet she deserved this place. The truth had avalanched over her as she’d stalked across the sand. A voice in her brain had asked:
What
if there’s hope?
And another voice had answered:
You can go home and
get back to work
.

That’s when she’d known. If they were rescued in the next ten minutes, she’d go back to New York, report to the set of
My Brother
Beau
, and do whatever she could to make the world sit up and notice Karyn Hall.

She loved her work too much to give it up. She loved herself too much to change. She loved Sarah desperately, but she didn’t love her enough. The island had made that clear.

“Karyn, stop right there!” Kevin’s cry, thinned by the distance, thrummed against her ears. She steeled her heart against the panic in his voice and took another step upward, then lay flat against a boulder to evaluate the remaining distance.

Five more feet. The next rock was large and smooth, but crevices at the side offered several handholds. She could brace her feet against the rock of the skull itself.

“Karyn!”

Kevin’s voice was stronger now, rising above the crash of the waves and the rattling insects of the forest. When she looked down, she saw him limping across the sand, favoring his injured foot, which had lost its tank-top bandage.

Let him come. He couldn’t catch up, and he couldn’t convince her to abandon her plans.

She grasped an upper crevice with her right hand and reached for the left, feeling the stretch of the muscles along her side. As her arms trembled with exhaustion, she summoned the iron will developed from months of physical workouts and spidered up the side of the skull.

José Velasquez would have been proud of her.

“Karyn!”

Summoning every bit of strength in her battered body, Karyn hoisted herself over the last rock, then crawled to the peak of the skull.

She stepped over the surface and felt the pricks of small pebbles beneath her bare feet. The leaden sky felt even more oppressive from this height, and the view that should have stretched before her dissolved into a heterogeneous blend of gray at the edge of the horizon. Water, sky, clouds—was there no end to the unvarying sameness of this cursed place?

Behind her, chirping forest went suddenly quiet, as if it were listening. She moved closer to the sea and stood at the rim of the skull. Beneath her, empty eye sockets stared out at the rocks where she would soon lie—whole or broken, cursed or dead.

What sort of environment offered no options? No hope? Only hell.

She had to be right.

Today would be a good day to die . . . if she could.

When Karyn disappeared from view, Kevin pushed himself harder. His gait deteriorated into a hell-bent stagger; his lungs tore at him as he gasped, unable to inhale enough air to push a shout out of his throat. “Ka-ryn!” His voice was no longer cooperating; thirst and exhaustion had left it raspy and weak.

He limped to the rocks at the base of the skull and looked up. Karyn had not reappeared, so she had to be standing up there, waiting for him to say—what?

“Karyn,” he wheezed, cupping a hand around his mouth. “Come down. Let’s talk this thing through. You’re confused, that’s all. This place has upset everyone . . . but you’ve got to keep it together. Don’t you want to go home to Sarah?”

For a long minute he heard no answer, then he saw her, her white shirt a flag flapping against the shrouded gray sky. “Karyn,” he called again. “Look at me. Don’t do this. Don’t mess around up there.”