He knew how to hit. It was a talent, actually.
Her lip was cut, bleeding. A little trickle fell down her chin. She quickly caught it with her finger, staring at Liam. He walked to her, standing over her. He pulled her up by the hair.
“You’re going diving again. This time, you’re finding the way in.”
“Let go of me, you bastard.”
He hit her again.
She started to laugh. “You don’t dare hit me too hard. You could find yourself thrown right off this island.”
“I don’t think so. What right would Miss Carlyle have to interfere with a domestic dispute? Would you really ever want her to know?”
Jerry stared at him, hating him, wondering how she had ever thought she could use him toward her own ends. Foolish. She’d made so many mistakes in her life. So damned many.
Suddenly both his hands were in her hair, pulling painfully. “You will dive again. You will dive, or you will get hurt. And when I’m through hurting you…”
It was Liam’s turn to smile. “When I’m through hurting you, I’ll hurt her, as well. Badly. Anything that happened to her before will just be child’s play, understand?”
Jerry stared at him.
He hit her one last time for good measure.
“Understand?”
“I understand.”
“Now, next time we dive, what are you going to do?”
“Find the Beldona,” she said tonelessly.
He slammed her against the wall, then walked away. She sank to the floor.
He was good at hitting people. But he might have left a few bruises this time. She would have to do her makeup again. She was going to have to do her makeup again anyway.
Everything on her was running.
Silent tears were sliding down her cheeks.
Not because he had hurt her. He really couldn’t hurt her. Not really. She’d managed to hurt herself enough.
And he probably couldn’t hurt Sam. Sam had Adam. Jerry smiled despite her tears. Maybe Sam and Adam would never make it, but Adam wouldn’t let anything happen to Sam. Neither would Jem. Sam was going to be okay.
Oh, God. Sam had to be okay.
Especially if Jerry did as she was told.
And still…
The tears kept falling silently down her face. Danger remained for them all, but she wasn’t crying because of the danger.
She was crying because of what she had become.
And because she didn’t want Sam to know what she might have been….
It was late, Sam thought. Very late. She should have been at the main house a long time ago. She was completely falling apart as a hostess on her own island. Did it matter? Half her guests were obviously involved in some manner of intrigue.
Adam seemed suspicious of them, as well. So were they all guilty? Of what? And if they were guilty of some evil in life, did it mean that they had come to Seafire Isle with evil designs?
This was a vacation destination, and even crooks took vacations.
She stretched, realizing that, curled in Adam’s arms, she had dozed. Now, glancing at her watch, she discovered just how late it was. Nearly seven-thirty. With a groan, she moved her hand over the bed, seeking Adam.
But Adam was gone.
He would be nearby, though, she was certain of it. And though it was late, she stretched again, smiling, and for long moments she allowed herself the luxury of enjoying what they had shared.
The intimacy.
The words.
And still…
All the trust that should have been there wasn’t. He still wanted to know about Hank Jennings.
At first she’d been glad that he wondered.
Now she just wanted an exchange of information. Especially since there really was nothing to tell him about Hank Jennings.
Hank had come to the island as a student. He’d pitched in to help with anything any time his help was needed. He had talked about her father for hours on end.
She had even told him some of the stories she knew about the Beldona.
He’d become like a brother to her, always entirely decent, honest, gentle, kind, smart. And he’d fallen in love with Yancy. Yancy had tried hard not to fall in love back—she’d been convinced that interracial marriages didn’t work, and it didn’t matter that she was biracial herself. “You don’t understand, Sam, because you’re like Hank—you don’t want to understand. One drop of black blood and a woman is black.”
“But who cares, if you and Hank don’t?”
“The world cares,” Yancy had insisted. “Eventually, I’d hurt him.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would. I wish I didn’t think it was so.”
“I wish you’d believe enough in Hank.”
Hank asked Yancy daily to marry him. Yancy turned him down daily. Hank persisted, insisting to Sam that he would wear Yancy down eventually. The three of them and Jem did everything together. Picnic, swim, dive. Watch tapes on the VCR, listen to music, dance, discuss the world at large, the sea…
The Beldona.
She hated that ship. He had been so excited listening to her talk about it. She’d given him information and he’d used it.
And then he’d disappeared.
Yancy had had her baby soon after Hank disappeared. They all adored Brian, but Yancy refused to let anyone in Hank’s family know about the baby’s existence. “It’s better that way. It’s the way I want it. He’s my baby. I’ll love him. You’ll love him. Jem will act as his dad. We’ll make it this way, and that’s that.”
It still hurt that Hank was gone. It hurt because she had loved him, though not the way Adam so clearly thought, and because Yancy had been in so much pain, and because Brian didn’t have his father.
It hurt because she blamed the ship. Beldona. And herself, for telling him about it.
It was getting later and later, she reminded herself.
She rose quickly, finding her towel on the floor, slipping it around her. She looked for Adam and came upon him in the living room. He was showered and dressed. She didn’t think that he’d left her alone so he could go get fresh clothing, and the realization that he and Jem had moved him in here so completely without her knowledge was both reassuring and annoying. He was staring at the charts on the wall.
“Adam, it’s late. You should have woken me.”
He glanced at her, smiling, tall, dark, very handsome in his casual suit. “I thought you needed the sleep.”
“I thought you liked to talk to the others at cocktail hour and try to draw out all their secrets.”
He shrugged. “We have to dive alone. That’s our only hope.”
“Our hope of what?”
“Finding the Beldona.”
He was staring pointedly at the chart of the island.
“What if I don’t want to find the Beldona?” she asked him quietly.
He looked from the chart to her. “I figured you didn’t want to find the ship,” he said softly. “Because if you had wanted to find it, you would have.”
She shook her head. “That isn’t true. But it doesn’t matter. She’s a wretched ship. She destroys lives.”
He shook his head firmly. “That ship is an inanimate object. It destroys nothing. Men destroyed your father’s life. And the Beldona may provide the clue to finding out what happened. Besides, even more is at stake now. Remember? Hank Jennings disappeared, too. You were attacked. Unless you want me on your tail night and day for the rest of your life, we’ve got to find out what happened.”
She thought about that, lowering her lashes. It wasn’t actually so bad to have him on her tail.
Telling her that he had been in love with her. That he still loved her. That he wanted her.
Making love to her. Holding her….
But she could feel it just the same—tension was growing on Seafire Isle. Like the pressure that came with a storm. She was in danger. He couldn’t guard her every moment of his life, but she wasn’t equipped to fight o
ff whatever the threat might be by herself. She was strong, she was independent, she could fight—but she was also smart enough to realize that she could be caught unaware.
Drugged.
Taken.
And then what?
She didn’t know.
Emotional involvement aside, she needed Adam right now, and Adam needed her.
But Adam was holding out on her. She knew it, and she didn’t understand it. She couldn’t give herself totally to him when she knew he was still keeping secrets from her.
He could be so damned relentless. Like the others, it seemed he believed that she could find the ship. He saw more clearly than the others, though; he knew she didn’t want to find the ship.
She didn’t want to find her father’s remains.
Adam was staring at the charts again. “What are you looking for?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Something, some little clue that we’re all missing.” He spun around and stared at her. “Sam, you must know something,” he insisted.
“I have to shower and dress,” she told him, going quickly back down the hallway.
In the shower, she felt the water rushing over her. Her head seemed to pound in time with the beat of the water. She leaned against the tile while the water continued to fall.
Okay, so it was true that she had denied knowing anything about the Beldona because she didn’t want to find the ship.
She didn’t want to find her father’s body.
And Hank’s.
Then again, it was also true that she really didn’t know anything. Okay, perhaps that wasn’t quite true. She knew all the theories regarding the ship. She knew the Beldona’s history. The ship had gone down just after her English captain and crew had seized the Spanish ship Yolanda. Captain Reynolds of the Beldona had made prisoners of the Spaniard’s captain, his lieutenants—and the woman Reynolds had loved, a passenger on the Yolanda. So what did this give her?
Sam finished showering. She slipped into a short slinky silver-knit halter dress, then went out to the living room. Adam was still staring at the chart on the wall.
“I think I know why Robert Santino might have sent his son out to look for the Beldona,” she said.
Adam turned to stare at her. She walked into the room. “Captain Reynolds of the Beldona had fallen in love with Theresa-Maria Rodriguez, daughter of Don José Martinez-Rodriguez, a high official of the Spanish court. Theresa-Maria’s mother was an Englishwoman, and the young lady had lived in London for quite some time, long enough for her and Reynolds to form a passionate bond. Her father, however, was determined that she have nothing to do with an Englishman. He pulled her out of England and betrothed her to Don Carlos Esperanza, the—”
“The captain of the Yolanda,” Adam said. “Which made it an even greater triumph for Captain Reynolds when he seized the Yolanda. Unfortunately for him, of course, his own ship went down, as well.”
Sam hesitated for a second. “There was a theft of certain Spanish jewels at just around the same time,” she said. “I’d never heard of the theft in conjunction with the Beldona before, but my father was convinced that Don Carlos Esperanza had stolen the jewels. He was a man of standing in the community, and well to do, but not as rich as royalty, and it was often said that the young lady’s attraction to Captain Reynolds had a great deal to do with the fact that Captain Reynolds was as rich as Croesus. My father believed that, to convince the sweet and lovely young Theresa-Maria to fall in love with him, Don Carlos Esperanza stole the two missing Crown rubies. They were a matched set of rings, with enormous stones, nicknamed the Eyes of Fire.”
“Such jewels would definitely be enough to interest Robert Santino in finding the Beldona.”
Sam sat down across from him. “It’s obvious that Santino wants to find the ship. And maybe he’s sent his son here as a spy or whatever. But anyone can look for the ship. There’s nothing illegal in that.”
“There is something illegal about it if one party murders another party of that search.”
She raised a hand. “Let me try to get a solid grasp on everything you know—and suspect. Avery Smith is really James Jay Astin, we’ve established that. SeaLink is naturally interested in the discovery of the Beldona. They’re a marine company, and they have the financial backing and the wherewithal to bring up the treasure, should it be found. However, we have to assume that someone else is working for SeaLink—doing the actual diving with us, since we have the charming company of Mr. Smith for dinner but have yet to see him on the dive boat. Okay, back to the jewels. We have Jim Santino, son of organized crime boss Robert Santino—a man who might kill without blinking to acquire certain Spanish treasures. So it should be simple. One of them had probably been involved in the search for a long time, and when my father found the ship, he was killed.”
“You think your father found the ship?” Adam said.
Sam nodded.
“Then what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“If he found the ship and was killed for finding it, why is the ship still missing?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense, does it?”
“If someone killed him once he found the ship so they could seize the treasure for themselves, wouldn’t the treasure and the ship have surfaced by now?” Adam mused.
“And why is Hank still missing?” she added.
Adam cleared his throat awkwardly and stood. “I’ve just found out about another guest on your island.”
“Who?” Sam asked.
“I’d asked a friend of mine who’s with the Metro cops in Dade County to do some searching for me. There was a diver with suspected crime connections who washed ashore about a week after your father’s disappearance was reported.”
Sam arched a brow. “Washed up—dead?”
“Yes.”
“Adam, if he was dead then and he’s on the island now, something strange is definitely going on.”
“Not the dead man,” Adam said, exasperated.
“Then…?”
“His name was Marcus Shapiro.”
“There are no Shapiros here.”
“Your honeymooner is his son.”
“My honeymooner—Joey Emerson?”
Adam nodded.
“You think that Joey Emerson is here for a reason other than his honeymoon?”
“Well, I know that Emerson isn’t the name he was given when he was born.”
“But he looks so…”
“Harmless?”
“Doting,” Sam said.
“Pussy whipped.” Adam laughed.
She cast him a glance of irritation. “Like Brad Walker would say, Joey and Sue are all mush.”
“They may really be honeymooners.”
“Right. So, this Marcus guy washed up on the Florida coast. Was he connected to the island in any way?”
“Not that I know about. He might have worked for Robert Santino now and then.”
“So Joey may just be a nice young man on his honeymoon who changed his name because his dad had mob connections.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re suspicious of everyone.”
“Sam, someone on this island tried to kidnap you,” he said in exasperation.
“There is the possibility that whoever attacked me isn’t a guest. Other boats do come here. Lots of people stop by for our lunch and dinner buffets, even breakfast. Sometimes they stop just for directions.”
“There is a slight possibility that our attacker came from somewhere else.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“Not for a moment.”
“So what do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
She threw up her hands. “Who are you working for?” she asked again.
“I told you that I’d tell you soon. Very soon. For now, don’t you think we’d maybe better get on over for cocktail hour?”
“I think cocktail hour is over.”
&nbs
p; “I’m famished, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose,” she murmured.
“Weren’t you the one in a hurry before?”
“Before I thought that you weren’t telling me something important.”
He flashed her a smile. “You’re not telling me everything, either.”
“I’m trying to.”
“So am I,” he said softly. “Let’s go over, shall we?”
Sam stared at him, then nodded slowly. “Yes, let’s go over.”
It was Chinese night. Jacques had put together three different kinds of lo mein, vegetable, beef and pork. The fried rice came in “house special” and vegetarian. There were deliciously seasoned little ribs, shrimp or vegetarian egg rolls, hot and sour soup, mushu pork and beef, chicken chow mein, and more.
The mood in the dining room seemed strangely festive.
Sam was glad to see that Yancy had come down, and that the baby was with her as well. Sukee had decided to play with Brian, who was in his high chair, contentedly gumming a teething cookie and watching the conversation around him.
“Yancy, you okay?” Sam asked her, getting a word in while replenishing one of the chafing dishes.
Yancy jumped, startled. She looked pale.
“I’m, uh, fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I thought you didn’t feel well this morning.”
“I was tired this morning, that’s all.”
Tired, and jumpy, Sam thought. Either that, or she was becoming paranoid herself, seeing things in others that just weren’t there.
“Jem’s cousin Matthew came in on the mail boat. He and Jem took their dinner over to Jem’s cottage,” Yancy said, changing the subject.
Sam frowned. “I don’t want you left alone,” she began in a whisper.
“I won’t be alone,” Yancy said.
“They’ll be back after dinner?”
“I need to talk to you then, anyway. Privately.”
“I’ll never ditch Adam.”
“I meant privately with Adam.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Sam left and took a seat beside Darlene, smiling in return at the pleased grin the girl offered her.
“Did you have fun today?” Sam asked her.
Darlene nodded strenuously. “I had a wonderful time. I love to dive so much—I’m just afraid of some of the things in the water. I can’t help it. I’d never be able to dive alone.”
Eyes of Fire Page 19