by Dale Mayer
Sandrine must have dozed off because, as she woke up again, the sky around her was nowhere near as dark as it had been. As she lay quiet, Sandrine felt an almost rested and relaxed feeling, as if she’d gotten a couple hours of real sleep. She looked over to see her best friend resting peacefully. Sandrine’s bladder was killing her though. She got up and shuffled outside, wincing at the sight of Wilson with the bullet hole still shining bright in his face.
“Poor guy,” she whispered. With no place to hide to take care of her business, she headed off to the side, dug a small hole, quickly relieved herself and buried it. As she pulled her clothes back into position, she walked back to the cavern, remembering what Lennox had said about not being seen. But she hadn’t even thought about it when she had bolted outside to go to the bathroom, and now such an odd sense to the air hung around her. She made her way slowly down to the cliff’s edge and the water, wondering if the men were coming back or if something had happened to them up top.
And then she saw movement on the staircase around the corner. It was Lennox and Keane. She raced toward them, and Keane opened his arms.
“You should have stayed in the shelter,” he said. “What if it wasn’t us?”
She looked at Lennox, who was frowning at her. “I know,” she said. “I was supposed to remain inside and stay quiet, and then I fell asleep. When I woke up, I had to pee really badly. I didn’t even think. I bolted outside, and then an eerie stillness took over. I knew I’d screwed up.”
“Well, we found two other men,” he said. “One killed the other and then took off in their boat.”
“You didn’t stop him?”
“It would have meant killing him,” Keane said. “Something we don’t do casually. He wasn’t out to hurt us. It wasn’t really worth taking him back if we could have kept him alive. Yes, he was an enforcer for a drug smuggling team. And, yes, I’m sure somebody gives a shit,” he said, “but honestly that wasn’t our priority just then.”
“Neither was the boat obviously,” she said with a smile.
“We have the coast guard coming to pick us up. Remember?”
She nodded. “I do remember, so that’s good. What time is it anyway?”
“It’s about four-forty,” Lennox said.
She groaned. “So, not quite morning yet.”
“Close enough, but we need to grab some shut-eye. It’s likely to be a long day.”
“Well, I can stand watch,” she offered.
“You could,” Keane said cheerfully. “At least you can with me. Lennox, you go down first. Your shoulder has got to be screaming.”
He nodded, silently acknowledging Keane’s observation, and they headed up toward the shelter. Lennox headed straight inside, and she watched as he dropped to his knees, laid down gently and rolled over onto his back.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Keane said with a smile. “We rest whenever we can, so we’ve learned to take advantage of the opportunities as we get them.”
“Do you think we’re safe now?”
“Well, we definitely still have some unknowns,” he said, “but hopefully we are safe.”
“And there won’t be any trouble getting picked up, right?”
He smiled. “I doubt it.” He motioned to the rocks where he had been sitting before, on the opposite side from where Wilson lay.
“Should we move him?” she asked worriedly.
He sighed. “We’ll retrieve the bodies anyway,” he said. “That’ll be in the morning.”
“You mean, in an hour or two,” she said drily.
He smiled and nodded, then sat down, leaning against the rocks, and closed his eyes.
“Do you want to rest?” she asked. “I can certainly keep watch.”
“I’m half awake right now,” he said. “I do need to rest, but Lennox needs it more. We’ll switch soon enough.”
“Okay,” she said and sat down beside him, a little bit of a distance between them, which she couldn’t quite leave alone until she moved over closer.
He smiled when she snuggled up against him. “You’re quite safe, you know?” he murmured.
“Maybe,” she said, “but something about being alone for all those hours makes me appreciate the comfort of someone beside me.”
“Being alone is both the best and the worst.”
She thought about that and realized how very prophetic it was. “I’ve always loved alone time,” she said, “but being alone with Brenda so very sick was just so devastating. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t have the skills to deal with this outdoor living.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “but you’ve survived it really well.” He rolled his head to the side so he could study her.
She smiled up at him. “What are you thinking?”
“Well, I was thinking about the push that sent you into the water.”
She winced. “I keep trying to convince myself that I just imagined it.”
“Any problems between the two of you?”
“No, I wouldn’t have thought so,” she said, “especially if he wanted to get back together. We were both up for the same job, so that caused a little bit of dissension,” she said. “I got it, and he didn’t. He ended up moving to a different location within the company—a different building actually. It made it less stressful to see him—or maybe for him to see me.” She shrugged. “I thought it would be okay, but obviously it wasn’t. He started to harass me when he saw me. On my way in and out from work. After we broke up, it was way worse.”
“Surely that’s not a reason to kill somebody though.”
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t like to think so … but maybe in a rash moment of anger or something. I don’t know.”
“Well, what I was told was that he had a garbled statement about how the one went in and then the second one went in. Both men said they weren’t good swimmers, and, beyond throwing you guys life preservers, they were stuck trying to keep the boat upright.”
She thought about that and then agreed. “I don’t know if they are good swimmers or not,” she said, “but I can imagine the waves would have been trying to send them into the water too. I’m glad they’re both safe.”
“Maybe,” he said, “but did you think about what happens if he did try to kill you and if you make it back to shore?”
She stared at him. “Well, he didn’t come on shore and try to kill me, so I’m sure he would write it all off as my imagination.”
Keane stayed quiet at that. “Tell me again about breaking up with him and how you got on the boat.”
She frowned, not liking the way he was thinking.
“Come on.”
“We were together for about a year when I found him with someone else,” she said. “So I broke up with him. I told him that my friend had seen him with another woman, but really it was me.”
“Okay, and the boat?”
“I was supposed to go sailing with Brenda and Greg, but, when I got there, I discovered Scott was there too.”
“And yet, you still went out?”
“We were all friends once, and we still work together,” she said. “I wasn’t really happy about it, but Brenda did tell me it had been Greg’s idea and not hers.”
“But Brenda still went along with it.”
“I never told her that I was the one who found Scott in bed with somebody else,” she said calmly. “Scott and his new girlfriend were so involved in having sex that they never heard or saw me. So I ducked out of the apartment as fast as I could. When he denied it, Brenda had hoped it was all a mistake and that this outing might help. The whole job thing made it more confusing too.”
“But it was more than that, right?”
“Well, I found out about getting the job on the same day I came home early to find him in bed with somebody else I knew,” she said. “I quietly left, then later told him that my friend had seen him with her in the middle of a workday and entering the apartment I shared with Scott,
stopping to kiss each other outside on the front steps. It was a pretty ugly scenario. I moved out of the apartment, took a few things, leaving him all the furniture. I found a studio apartment closer to work, so I didn’t have to commute. I thought it was all a done deal, so I was nursing my broken heart, working my new job, and I wasn’t even thinking about him beyond the inevitable occasional contact at work. And then Brenda and Greg contacted me to go sailing, which is something we used to do a lot of. When I got there, I found out Scott was going with us.”
“Wasn’t that awkward?”
“Awkward, yes. But not as awkward as it would have been if he’d been there with his new girlfriend.”
At that, Keane snorted and laughed. “Good point,” he said. “So what happened? Were they really trying to get you guys back together again?”
“Yes, apparently. But the weather was building, and I was keeping quite a distance between us. When Brenda sat down beside me, she apologized, saying she didn’t realize things were as bad as they were. I told her then about finding him in bed with this other woman. It was somebody she didn’t know, but I had talked about her before, having seen that woman and Scott together at a coffee shop a couple times. I had believed him when he told me that she was an old friend. I’m very much the trusting type,” she said drily.
“Again, both good and bad,” he said.
She laughed. “Definitely. Anyway, it was a terribly awkward sailing trip. Then the weather got ugly, and things got even uglier when we ended up in the water.”
“It sounds like it was also uglier because you’re worried that he may have tried to kill you.”
“I don’t think he tried to kill me,” she said. “More a case of getting angry for a moment and seeing an opportunity.”
“Right. An opportunity to kill you,” Keane said drily. “And didn’t you tell me that he was the one encouraging the other guy to go farther and farther out to sea?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts,” he said firmly.
“Yeah, I guess. Fine. It is possible that he took an opportunity to take advantage of an accident. But it’s not like he would get anything out of the deal, except the satisfaction of knowing I wouldn’t be there to bug him again. I mean, I walked away, so he got the furniture and everything else in the apartment. So what the hell difference does it make?”
“Unless he wanted you back?”
“Well, that wouldn’t happen and hardly makes sense to kill me then, does it?” she said. “I hold very few things in life really dear, but loyalty, honesty and honor are three of them.”
“A woman after my own heart,” he said. “That makes us dinosaurs in this world. You know that, right?”
“It’s not the first time I’ve heard that,” she said sadly. “My mom taught me these ethics. When she died of breast cancer a good eight or nine years ago now, that was one of the things I wanted to maintain for myself in her memory because she did the job of raising me right. The rest of the world is a messed-up place.”
“Amen to that,” he said, but his voice was getting a little slurred.
She whispered, “Just sleep. I’ll keep watch. I promise.”
He stirred. “I know you will,” he said, “and I don’t think there’s any immediate danger, but I’m on duty so—”
“Good, so just doze then. That internal radar system you have seems to work rather well.”
“Oh, it does,” he said. “It’s just that, every once in a while, you can’t necessarily trust it.”
“I think trust for you is hard.”
“What about you?” he asked. “You’re the one dealing with the aftereffects of a cheating boyfriend.”
“At least you said cheating and not murderous,” she quipped.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t defend him again,” he said, his voice light.
She curled up tighter against Keane, letting her head drop onto his shoulder. When he lay his head to rest on hers, she smiled and just held his arm close. Something was very soothing about being out here. She could see the whitecaps bouncing off the waves in the distance—only a couple hundred yards away—but they were protected in this alcove. That was a very strange thing to say, considering the fact that a sharpshooter had taken out Wilson. She stared at the dead man, feeling a sense of peace and unease at the same time. She was amazed at the human ability to cope under stress and to make the abnormal normal in order to deal with it.
She’d never seen a dead man before; yet here she was already dealing with Adam and Wilson. She’d never been almost drowned or had to deal with her best friend being critically injured out in the middle of nowhere like Brenda had been, but it was yet another sign of how Sandrine was coping. Maybe her connection, this bond she felt toward Keane, was the same thing, but she hoped not. She didn’t want it to be a stress response or a coping mechanism.
Something was so very special about him. He was so different from her last boyfriend, and that was a bonus in itself.
She had been the one who had told Keane about the push in the middle of her shoulder blades, and, as she lay here with her eyes closed, she relived that moment when she was panicked because Brenda was in the water. Sandrine threw that life preserver at her, seeing Brenda struggling to keep her head abovewater. Sandrine had just made the decision that she should go in after her when she felt that hand—a solid thumb, long fingers and a palm pressed up against her back—and it pushed. It wasn’t a case of Hold on. Don’t jump or Careful or you’ll fall in. No, it was clearly a shove, and she realized that her ex-boyfriend really had tried to kill her.
As she lay here dry-eyed in the morning light, she had to wonder, What would she do about it?
She was pondering her options when Lennox came out of the shelter. He looked at Keane and quietly said, “Your turn to crash.”
As awake as ever, Keane replied softly, “Okay.” He looked down at Sandrine at his side and whispered, “I’ll go crash. Are you okay here, or do you want to come with me?”
She grinned. “I’m coming with you.” She slowly stood, groaning as her body unwound itself from her very uncomfortable position up against the rocks. She followed him into the shelter, checking on Brenda first, relieved that she slept normally. “Looks like Brenda’ll be okay,” she said, as she settled in the sand beside Keane.
He rolled over, wrapped himself around her, and she snuggled back, spoon style, and closed her eyes. She could feel his chest rise and fall in a deep rhythm behind her. It amazed her that he was so capable of dropping off like that. A skill she should try to cultivate, so she yawned once, closed her eyes and fell asleep.
Keane slipped from the cozy position with Sandrine wrapped in his arms and stepped outside to relieve himself. He then walked to where Lennox sat near the water, pulling in a fish. “You’re really good at that,” he said.
“Practice,” Lennox replied. “It might not be the ideal food, but it’s good and fresh, at least.”
“Any thoughts on the smuggler?” Keane asked.
Lennox shook his head. “No. I think Mother Nature will take care of him. At least I hope so.”
“We need to contact the coast guard.”
“I already did,” Lennox said. “They’re on their way. Apparently the two boyfriends are with them.”
“What? Why?”
“They were trying to show everybody exactly where the women had gone missing because apparently they didn’t trust that the coast guard would find them.”
“We gave them coordinates.”
“I guess the admiral, Brenda’s father, approved it.”
“Of course he did. Something you need to know,” he said quietly. Then he told Lennox what Sandrine had said about her ex-boyfriend pushing her into the ocean.
Lennox sat back and stared at him. “Seriously?”
“She hinted at it earlier, unsure that she wasn’t just overly upset. But I quizzed her about it, while you were sleeping. I don’t like it. We’ll talk to her more this morning, and we probably should
talk to Brenda as well,” he said.
“Wow, so we have a murderer on board?”
“Attempted murderer anyway,” Keane said. “And I’m wondering if that isn’t partly why he’s trying to get onto the coast guard ship.”
“Uh-oh,” Lennox said.
“Right, so he can finish the job.”
Lennox studied him to see if he was serious and then shook his head. “It’s a pitiful world out there. But, if he does finish the job, he doesn’t have to face her accusations that he tried to kill her, does he?”
“Nope. She has no proof either.”
“And, given the circumstances and what she’s been through, it would be easy to suggest she made it up.”
“Particularly if he can use the breakup—or, hell, the fact she got the big promotion and he didn’t—and say she’s just after revenge.”
“And he gets away with it,” Lennox said.
“Exactly,” he said. “Something I’m not a big fan of.”
“And yet, you are a big fan of her,” Lennox said, laughing.
Keane chuckled. “There’s an awful lot to like.”
“No argument there,” Lennox said, “but we have to get off this island in order to move on with anything.”
“Right. So do you think the drug smugglers will come back in again?”
Lennox thought for a moment. “Our guy didn’t seem to think so, and, if they find the body of his partner floating in the ocean, then the answer is no.” He lifted out four fish and said, “That’s one for each of us. What do you think?”
“Looks to me like it’s time to eat,” Keane said, hopping to his feet. “And then we need to pack up and get to the shore and see about leaving this place.”
“Yeah, to face the next stage of the mission,” Lennox said. “Sounds like we’ll flush out an attempted murderer.”
“Stop him from making a second attempt at least,” Keane said. “That would not be cool at this point.”
“No, because then he’ll face you.”
“Yeah. In a big way,” Keane said, laughing. But inside he knew it was no laughing matter. Ever since Sandrine had mentioned it, something had been in the back of his mind. “When we were talking before, it really cemented the problem she would face heading back again. I hope she’s wrong,” he said.