by Nora Roberts
She sent Jo an apologetic, slightly desperate look. “Mr. and Mrs. Littleton, if you and your family would go out to the shuttle. Mr. and Mrs. Parker. Miss Houston. I’ll be right there. Now if the rest of you will be patient, my niece will be right with you.”
Having no choice, she waded through the bodies and voices and gripped Jo’s arm. “Out here for a minute. I swear, you’d think we were about to be under nuclear attack.”
“Most of them probably haven’t dealt with a hurricane before.”
“Which is why I’m glad to help them on their way. For heaven’s sake, this island and everything on it have stood up to hurricanes before, and will again.”
Since privacy was needed, Kate took it where she could get it, in the powder room off the foyer. With a little grunt of satisfaction, she flipped the lock. “There. That ought to hold for two damn minutes. I’m sorry to leave you surrounded this way.”
“It’s okay. I can run the next group down in the Jeep.”
“No.” Kate spoke sharply, then blowing out a breath, she turned to the sink to splash cold water on her face. “You’re not to leave this house, Jo Ellen, unless one of us is with you. I don’t need another thing to worry about.”
“For heaven’s sake. I can lock the doors to the Jeep.”
“No, and I won’t stand here and argue about it. I just don’t have the luxury of time for it. You’ll help most right here, keeping these people calm. I have to swing around and pick up some of the cottage people. Brian was going by the campground. We’ll have another flood of them in shortly.”
“All right, Kate. Whatever you want.”
“Your father brought the radio down to the kitchen.” She took Jo by the arms. “He’s well within hailing distance. You take no chances, you understand me?”
“I don’t intend to. I need to call Nathan.”
“I’ve already done that. He didn’t answer. I’ll go by before I bring the next group. I’d feel better if he was here, too.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me, honey pie. I’m about to leave you with the world’s biggest headache.” Kate sucked in a breath, braced her shoulders, and opened the door.
Jo winced at the din of voices from the parlor. “Hurry back,” she said and mustered a weak smile as she walked straight into the line of fire.
OUTSIDE, Giff muscled a sheet of plywood over the first panel of the wide dining room bay. Lexy crouched at his feet, hammered a nail quickly and with easy skill into the lower corner. She was chattering away, but Giff heard only about every third word. The wind had died, and the light was beginning to take on a brutish yellow hue.
It was coming, he thought, and faster than they’d anticipated. His family had their home secure and would likely ride it out there. He’d delegated one of his cousins and two friends to begin boarding up the cottages, starting on the southeast and moving north.
They needed more hands.
“Has anyone called Nathan?”
“I don’t know.” Lexy plucked another nail from her pouch. “Daddy wouldn’t let him help anyway.”
“Mr. Hathaway’s a sensible man, Lexy. He wants what’s his secured. And he’s had a night to think things through.”
“He’s as stubborn as six constipated mules, and him and Brian together are worse than that. Why it’s like blaming that bastard Sherman’s great-grandchildren for burning Atlanta.”
“Some do, I imagine.” Giff hefted another sheet.
“Those who haven’t a nickel’s worth of brains, I imagine.” Her teeth set, Lexy whacked the hammer onto a nailhead. “And it’s going to be mighty lowering for me if I have to admit my own daddy and brother got shortchanged in the brain department. And that they’re half blind to boot. Why, an eighty-year-old granny without her cheaters could see how much that man loves Jo Ellen. It’s sinful to make the two of them feel guilty over it.”
She straightened, blowing the hair out of her eyes. Then frowned at him. “Why are you grinning at me that way? Is my face all sweaty and grimy already?”
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, Alexa Hathaway. And you always surprise me. Even knowing you inside out, you surprise me.”
“Well, honey ...” She tilted her head, batted her lashes. “I mean to.”
Giff slid his hand into his pocket, fingered the small box he’d tucked there. “I had different plans for doing this. But I don’t think I’ve ever loved you more than I do right this second.”
He tugged the box out of his pocket, watching her eyes go huge and wide as he flipped open the lid with his thumb. The little diamond centered on the thin gold band winked out points of fire in the sun.
“Marry me, Alexa.”
Her heart swelled and butted against her ribs. Her eyes misted so that the light shooting from the diamond refracted and blinded her. Her hand trembled as she pressed it to her mouth.
“Oh, how could you! How could you spoil it all this way?” Spinning around, she thumped the hammer against the edge of the wood.
“Like I said,” he murmured, “you’re always a surprise to me. You want me to put it away until we have candlelight and moonbeams?”
“No, no, no.” With a little sob, she struck the wood with the hammer again. “Put it away. Take it back. You know I can’t marry you.”
He shifted his feet, planted them. “I don’t know any such thing. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
Furious and heartsick, she whirled back to him. “You know I will if you keep asking. You know I’ll give in because I love you so much. Then I’ll have given up everything else. I’ll stay on this damn island, I won’t go back to New York, and I won’t try to make it in the theater again. Then I’ll start to hate you as the years pass and I start to think, if only. If only. I’ll just shrivel up here wondering if I could ever have been something.”
“What makes you think I’d expect you to give up on New York and the theater, that I’d expect you to give up everything you want? I’d hate to think you’d marry a man who wants less for you than you want for yourself. Whatever you want for Lexy, I want twice that much.”
She wiped a hand over her cheeks. “I don’t understand you. I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying I’ve got plans of my own, wants of my own. I don’t plan on swinging a hammer on Desire my whole life.”
Mildly irritated, he took off his cap to wipe the sweat off his forehead, then shoved it back on again. “Things need to get built in New York, don’t they? Things need fixing there just like anywhere else.”
She lowered her hands slowly, staring into his eyes, wishing she could read them. “You’re saying you’d go to New York. You’d live in New York? For me.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” Impatient, he snapped the lid closed and shoved the box back into his pocket. “If I was to do that, I’d just end up resenting you, and we’d be right back where we started. I’m saying I’d go for both of us. And that even with the money I’ve been putting by, we’d live pretty tight for a while. I’d probably have to take some classes if I wanted Nathan to give me a chance at a job in his firm.”
“A job with Nathan? You want to work in New York?”
“I’ve had a hankering to see it. And to see you, onstage, in the spotlight.”
“I might not ever get there.”
“Hell you won’t.” His dimples winked down, and his eyes went from sulky brown to golden. “I’ve never seen anybody who can play more roles. You’ll get there, Lexy. I believe in you.”
Tears gushed out even as she laughed and threw herself at him. “Oh, Giff, how’d you get to be so perfect? How’d you get to be so right?” She leaned back, catching his face in her hands. “So absolutely right for me.”
“I’ve been studying on it most of my life.”
“We’ll have a time, we will. And I’ll wait damn tables until you’re out of school or I get my break. Whatever it takes. Oh, hurry up, hurry up and put it on.” She ju
mped down, held out her hand. “I can’t hardly stand to wait.”
“I’ll buy you a bigger one someday.”
“No, you won’t.” She thrilled as he slipped the ring onto her finger, as he lowered his head and kissed her. “You can buy me all the other bright, shiny baubles you want when we’re rich. Because I want to be good and rich, Giff, and I’m not ashamed to say so. But this . . .” She held up her hand, turning it so the little stone winked and danced with light. “This is just perfect.”
AFTER two hours, Jo’s head throbbed and her eyes were all but crossed. Kate had come and gone twice, hauling guests to and from, swinging by various cottages. Brian had dropped off a dozen campers, then headed back to make another sweep in case there were any lingering. Her only news of Nathan was that he was helping board up cottages along the beachfront.
Except for the monotonous thwack of hammers, the house was finally quiet. She imagined Kate would be back shortly with the last of the cottagers. The windows on the south and east sides were boarded, casting the house into gloom.
When she opened the front door, the wind rushed in. The cool slap of it was a shock after the thick heat of the closed house. To the south, the sky was bruised and dark. She saw the flicker of lightning but heard no answering thunder.
Still far enough away, she decided. She would check shortly and see what track they were predicting Carla to take. And as a precaution, she would get all of her prints and negatives out of her darkroom and into the safe in Kate’s office.
Because she wanted to avoid her father for a while yet, she took the main stairs, checking rooms automatically to see that nothing had been left behind by a harried guest. She flicked off lights, moving briskly toward the family wing. The sound of hammering was louder now, and she found it comforting. Tucking us in, she thought. If Carla lashed out at Sanctuary, it would hold, as it had held before.
She caught the sound of voices as she went by Kate’s office. Plywood slipped over the window, blanking it as she passed. Either Brian was back or her father had gone out to help Giff, she decided.
She snapped on the lights in her darkroom, then turned on the radio.
“Hurricane Carla has been upgraded to category three and is expected to make landfall on the barrier island of Little Desire off the coast of Georgia by seven P.M. Tourists have been evacuated from this privately owned island in the Sea Islands chain, and residents are being advised to leave as soon as possible. Winds of up to one hundred and twenty miles an hour are expected, with the leading edge striking the narrow island near high tide.”
Her earlier confidence shaken, Jo dragged her hands through her hair. It didn’t get much worse than this, she knew. Cottages would be lost, by wind or water. Homes flattened, the beach battered, the forest ripped to pieces.
And their safety net was shrinking, she thought, with a glance at her watch. She was going to get Nathan, and Kirby, and if she had to knock her father unconscious, she was going to get him and her family off the island.
She yanked open a drawer. She could leave the prints, but damned if she’d risk losing all her negatives. But as she started to reach for them, her hand froze.
On top of her neatly organized files was a stack of prints. Her head went light, her skin clammy as she stared down into her mother’s face. She’d seen this print before, in another darkroom, in what almost seemed like another life. Over the roaring in her head, she could hear her own low moan as she reached out for it.
It was real. She could feel the slick edge of the print between her fingers. Breathing shallowly, she turned it over, read the carefully written title.
DEATH OF AN ANGEL
She bit back a whimper and forced herself to look at the next print. Grief swarmed over her, stinging like wasps. The pose was nearly identical, as though the photographer had sought to reproduce one from the other. But this was Ginny, her lively, friendly face dull and lax, her eyes empty.
“I’m sorry,” Jo whispered, pressing the print to her heart. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The third print was certainly Susan Peters.
Jo shut her eyes, willed the sickness away, and gently set the third print aside. And her knees went to water.
The last print was of herself. Her eyes were serenely closed, her body pale and naked. Sounds strangled in her throat as she dropped the photo, backed away from it.
She groped behind her for the door, the adrenaline pumping through her, priming her to run. She backed sharply into the table, knocked the radio onto its side. Music jangled out, making her want to scream.
“No.” She fisted her hands, digging her nails into her palms until the pain cut through the shock. “I’m not going to let it happen. I’m not going to believe it. I won’t let it be true.”
She rocked herself, counting breaths until the faintness passed, then grim and determined, she picked up the photo again.
Her face, yes. It was her face. Taken before Lexy had cut her hair for the bonfire. Several weeks, then. The bonfire had been at the very start of summer. She carried the photo closer to the light, ordered herself to study it with an objective and trained eye.
It took her only seconds of clear vision to realize that while the face was hers, the body wasn’t. The breasts were too full, the hips too round. She set the photo of Annabelle beside it. Was it more horrifying, she wondered dully, to realize her face had been imposed on her mother’s body? Making them one, she thought.
That’s what he’d wanted all along.
BRIAN steered the Jeep down the maintenance road of the campground. Several of the sites had been left in disarray. With the way the storm was rolling in, he figured that wasn’t going to matter much. The wind was already ripping like razors through the trees. A gust shook the Jeep around him, had him gripping the wheel tighter. He calculated they had perhaps an hour to finish preparations.
He had to fight not to hurry this check run. He wanted to get to Kirby, lock her safely inside Sanctuary. He’d have preferred shipping her off to the mainland, but knew better than to waste his breath or his energy arguing with her. If one resident stayed put to ride it out, she would stay put to treat any injuries.
Sanctuary had stood for more than a hundred years, Brian thought. It would stand through this.
There were dozens of other worries. They would undoubtedly be cut off from the mainland. The radio would help, but there would be no phone, no power, and no transportation once they were hit. He’d fueled the generator to provide emergency power, and he knew Kate kept an ample supply of bottled water.
They had food, they had shelter, they had several strong backs. And after Carla did her worst, strong backs were going to be a necessity.
He continued to tick off tasks and options in his mind, growing calmer as he assured himself there were no stragglers in the camping areas. He only hoped there weren’t any idiots hiding out in the trees, or staking in near the beach, thinking a hurricane was a vacation adventure.
He cursed and stomped on the brakes as a figure stepped out on the road in front of the Jeep.
“Jesus Christ, you idiot.” Disgusted, Brian slammed out of the vehicle. “I damn near ran you over. Haven’t you got the sense to stay out of the middle of the road, much less the path of an oncoming hurricane?”
“I heard about that.” His grin spread wide. “Amazing timing.”
“Yeah, amazing.” Resenting every second wasted, Brian jerked a thumb at the Jeep. “Get in, I might be able to get you down for the last ferry, but there isn’t much time.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Still smiling, he lifted the hand he’d held behind his back and fired the gun.
Brian jerked back as pain exploded in his chest. He staggered, fought to keep the world from revolving. And as he fell, he saw the eyes of a childhood friend laughing.
“One down.” Using his boot, he nudged Brian’s limp body over. “I appreciate the opportunity to fix the odds a bit, old pal. And the loan of the Jeep.”
As he
hopped in, he gave Brian one last glance. “Don’t worry. I’ll see it gets back to Sanctuary. Eventually.”
RAIN began to lash at the windows as Kirby gathered medical supplies. She was dead calm as she tried to anticipate every possible need. If she was forced into triage, it would work best at Sanctuary. She’d already faced the very real possibility that the cottage might not survive the night.
She understood that most of the islanders would be too stubborn to leave their homes. By morning, there could be broken bones, concussions, gashes. The house trembled under a hard gust, and she set her jaw. She would be there to treat any and all injuries.
She was hefting a box, heading out to load it in her car, when her front door swung open. It took her a moment to recognize the figure in the yellow slicker and hood as Giff.
“Here.” She shoved the box into his arms. “Take this out, I’ll get the next one.”
“Figured you’d be putting this kind of thing together. Make it fast. The bitch is coming in.”
“I’ve nearly got everything packed.” She pulled on her own slicker. “Where’s Brian?”
“He was checking the campground. Isn’t back yet.”
“Well, he should have been,” she snapped. Worry dogged her heels as she ran in for the rest of her supplies. The wind shoved her backward when she tried to step out on her porch. It whistled past her ears as she bent low and fought her way forward.
“You all secure here?” Giff shouted over the pounding of the surf. He grabbed the box from her and shoved it into the Jeep.
“As much as possible. Nathan helped me with it this morning. Is he back at the house?”
“No. Haven’t seen him either.”
“For God’s sake.” She pushed back her already streaming hair. “What in hell could they be doing? We’re going by the campground, Giff.”
“We don’t have a lot of time here, Kirby.”
“We’re going by. Brian could be in trouble. This wind could have taken some trees down. If he wasn’t at Sanctuary when you left, and you didn’t pass him along the way here, he could still be over there. I’m not going in until I make sure.”