The eye of the storm was just about on them.
"Hell," Hank Adamson swore. "This is ridiculous. I'm going to sleep. Alicia Farr is dead, and you found her," he told David. "That doesn't make any of us guilty of anything. You're right. Tomorrow, or as soon as he can, Nigel will come out and take care of things."
He pushed his chair away from the table. Alex kept her eyes tightly closed, not wanting any of them to know she had heard their conversation.
"We're in the eye," Jay said suddenly. "Len, come with me. I'm going out. Just for a minute. Just to take a quick look around." He sounded strained.
"You shouldn't go out, Jay," David said.
"I have responsibilities here. I have to go out," Jay said. "The rest of you stay here. Len will be with me. Everyone will have someone keeping an eye on them."
"Just you and Len together?" John said.
"All right, then. Three and three. Hank, you come with us for a minute," Jay said.
Hank groaned.
"Please. Three and three," Jay repeated.
With a sigh, Hank rose and joined them. Jay unbolted the door, stepping out into the dim light of the world beyond the shelter. "We'll just be a minute."
Alex didn't believe for a minute that he was going out to check on the damage. They kept a gun in a lockbox behind the check-in counter. He was undoubtedly going for it.
"What the hell are you doing on this island?" David asked John.
"The same back to you," John said.
Then, out of the blue, the radio went silent as the room was pitched into total blackness.
Chapter 11
The hum of the generator was gone.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
For a moment David sat in stunned silence, listening to the absolute nothing that surrounded him in the pitch darkness. Then he heard a chair scraping against the floor.
John Seymore. The man was up, and Alex was sleeping on a cot just feet away. Seymore could be going after her. Fear—maybe irrational, maybe not—seized him. He couldn't seem to control his urge to protect Alex, no matter what.
He sprang up, hearing the scrape of his own chair against the floor. He heard movement, tried to judge the sound, then made a wild tackle, going after the man.
He connected with his target right by the row of cots. His arms around his opponent's midsection, together they crashed downward, onto the cot where Alex had been sleeping.
Dimly, as Seymore twisted, sending a fist flying, David became aware that the cot was empty. Alex had fled. She might still be in the storm-shelter room somewhere, or she could have found the door and escaped.
Seymore's fist connected with his right shoulder. A powerful punch. Blindly, David returned the blow. He thought he caught Seymore's chin. The man let out a grunt of pain, then twisted to find David with another blow.
They continued fighting for several minutes with desperate urgency, until suddenly an earsplitting gunshot rocked the pitch-dark room.
Both of them went still. The shot had come from the doorway.
Instinctively, they rolled away from one another.
"Alex!" David shouted.
There was no answer.
After the explosion of sound, silence descended again. He wasn't sure where Seymore had gone.
With a sudden burst of speed, he picked himself up and raced toward the open door. Insane or not, instinct compelled him to do so.
Alex was certain that John and David were going to tear each other apart. Damn Jay! They were supposed to stay together, watching one another, and instead he'd gone for a weapon. What the hell did he intend to do? Hold everyone at gunpoint until the authorities came? Shoot them all?
Could Jay be the killer? No! She refused to believe it. And yet… As soon as he'd left, the generator had gone off.
What the hell had happened?
She had no idea. All she knew for certain was that David and John had suddenly become mortal combatants. Did they know something she didn't? Was one of them telling the truth—and the other not?
She had to get away, in case the wrong man triumphed. Not that she had any idea which one was the wrong one.
She'd already deserted her cot before they toppled over on it. She immediately made a dash for the door, nearly killing herself in the process, the darkness was so complete. She burst into the office and stood dead still, listening. Once she was certain the office was empty, she made her way to the reception area, inch by inch, using the furniture as a guide.
She meant to head for the lockbox herself, just in case she'd been wrong and Jay hadn't gone for the gun after all. Then became aware of breathing near her. She held dead still, holding her own breath.
Waiting, listening.
Aeons seemed to pass in which she didn't move. She nearly shrieked when she realized someone was moving past her, heading for the storm room. Once he had gone and her heartbeat had returned to normal, she tried to move around the reception counter.
Her footsteps were blocked. She kicked against something warm. Kneeling, feeling around, she realized that she hadn't stumbled against a thing but a person.
She recoiled instantly, fought for a sense of sanity, and tried to ascertain what had happened—and who it was. The form was still warm. She moved her hand over the throat, finding a pulse. Feeling the face and clothing, she decided she had stumbled upon Jay Galway, and he was hurt!
Either that, or…
Or he was lying in wait. Ready to ambush the unwary person who knelt down next to him to ascertain what had happened.
Fingers reached out for her, vising around her wrist. She screamed, but the crack of a gunshot drowned out the sound. She wrenched her wrist free and rose, determined to get the hell out of the lodge. The storm might be ready to come pounding down on them again, but she didn't care. There had to be a different place to find sanctuary.
As she groped her way out of the lodge, tamping down thoughts of Jay and whether or not he was hurt or dangerous, she was certain that her survival depended on escape. She lost several seconds battling with the bolts on the main door, then got them open and flew out.
Everything in her fought against believing Jay was the killer. He definitely hadn't been the one shooting the gun.
If Jay was on the floor, where were Len and Hank?
This was all insane!
The night was dark. Thick clouds covered the sky, even in the eye of the storm. Still, once outside, she could see more than she had before.
She hurried along the once manicured walkway, heading not toward the dock but around to the Tiki Hut, on the lodge side of the dolphin lagoons.
As she rushed forward, she was aware of a few dark dolphin heads bobbing up.
She never passed without a giving an encouraging word to her charges. Despite the darkness, she was certain the dolphins could see her, and they would instinctively know something was wrong when she didn't acknowledge them.
She should say something to them.
She didn't dare.
She was determined to make her way to the cottages. Not her own—that would be the first place anyone would look for her—but she was sure she would find a door that hadn't been locked. The cottages were nowhere near as secure as the storm room, but at least they'd been built after Hurricane Andrew and were up to code.
But as she veered toward the trail that led toward the cottages, she saw another form moving in the night ahead of her.
Panic seized her. There was no choice. She had to head for the beach.
She turned, then heard footsteps in her wake.
She was being pursued.
David was desperate to get to Alex. He damned himself a hundred times over for the announcement he had been forced to make. For not beating the crap out of Jay, rather than letting him leave the room.
But had Jay—or anyone—destroyed the generator? Or had technology simply failed them when it was most desperately needed?
Didn't matter, none of it mattered.
Out of the r
oom, he stumbled, swearing, as he made his way through the inner office and out to reception.
He hesitated. Somewhere on the wall was a glass case that held a speargun. It was a real speargun, one that had been used in a movie filmed on the island a few years earlier. He'd passed it dozens of times, giving it no notice.
Now he wanted it.
Groping along the wall, he found the case. He smashed the glass with his elbow, grabbed the weapon, then heard movement behind him.
David streaked for the front doors, praying that nothing would bar his way.
He found the door, which was slightly ajar.
Yes, Alex had definitely gone outside.
He swung the door open, leaving the lodge behind.
It occurred to him to wonder just how much time had passed since the eye had first come over them.
And just how much time they had left.
There had to be a way to double back and find a place to hide and weather the storm.
Alex ran along the path toward the beach, then swore. There was no branch in the trail here, but if she crawled through the foliage, she could reach one of the other paths. All too aware that someone was following and not far behind, she caught hold of an old pine tree and used it for balance as she entered into the overgrowth.
Already, much of it was flattened. Even if she had found a path, it wouldn't have been worth much. The storm had brought down hundreds of palm fronds already. Coconuts, mangoes, and other fruits littered the ground. She tried to move carefully, then paused, wondering if she had lost her pursuer.
She stood very still, listening.
She could hear the sea. The storm might not be on them again yet, but the water was far from smooth. She could hear the waves crashing, could imagine them, white capped and dangerous. And beneath the water's surface, the sand and currents would be churning with a staggering strength.
Had the wind begun to pick up again yet?
Footsteps.
Whoever had been behind her was pursuing her now with slow deliberation, as if he was able to read the signs of her trail in the dark. Maybe he could.
Who was he? Had Jay been an enemy, just waiting in the darkness, or a victim? If not Jay, who could it be?
She froze in place, stock-still with indecision. Which way to go?
There was a rushing in her ears. Her own pulse. She ignored it. She had to listen above it.
Yes, there was another sound in the night. Footsteps, not the beat of her own heart.
Her pursuer. Close. Too close.
As silently as possible, she edged forward, then came to a dead stop once again. There was a new noise, coming from in front of her.
Where to go?
Only one choice.
She headed toward the beach.
She was ahead of him, so close it was as if he could still smell her perfume, on the air. And still she was eluding him.
She knew the island, and he didn't.
David didn't dare call out her name. Someone else might hear him. Once again, he damned himself for the bombshell he had dropped that night. Now the killer knew. He had hidden Alicia's body and now he knew he'd failed a second time. For a moment his mind wandered to the spot where he'd found the body. It wasn't an area where he had believed it would be found, where dive boats brought scores of people daily, but it wasn't impossibly far from the beaten path, either.
So what did that mean? What did the placement of the body mean?
He couldn't worry about it now. He had to use every one of his senses to find Alex.
Before it was too late.
He paused and listened. The rustle of the trees was eerie in the strange breeze that gripped the island. It was as if the storm was gone…and yet still there.
She was moving again. The sound was so slight, he nearly missed it. He started tearing through the bushes again, following.
She was heading for the beach.
He saw her as she raced forward, then stumbled and fell. Seconds later, he burst out of the bushes behind her.
"Alex!"
He saw then what she was seeing. Just feet from her, Len Creighton was facedown in the sand. In the night, David couldn't make out anything else, whether the man was injured, unconscious…dead.
He couldn't see Alex's reaction to her discovery, but he could tell she'd heard him. She was on her feet again, and she was staring at him, and even in the dark, he could see the fear in her eyes.
"Alex!" he cried. "Alex, come here."
She kept staring at him. As he waited, afraid to move closer, lest she run again, he surveyed the area as best he could in the dark.
Where had Len come from? How had he gotten here?
Where was the danger?
He stared at Alex again. "Alex, you've got to trust me. Come with me—now. Quickly!"
He was dimly aware of leaves rustling nearby; he knew someone else had reached them even before he heard a deep voice protest, "No!"
John Seymore. Damn. He'd been on his trail the whole time. Now, David realized, he'd led the bastard right to Alex.
John Seymore stared at David with lethal promise. He had a gun. Apparently he'd been armed all along and never let on. He could kill the other man, and he knew it. But whether or not he could kill him before David sent a spear into his heart was another matter.
"Alex!" Seymore shouted, keeping a wary eye on David. "Come to me. Get away from him."
"Alex!" David warned sharply.
It seemed as if they stood locked in the eye of time, just as they were locked in the eye of the storm, forever.
Alex stared from one man to the other, and back again. Her gaze slipped down to Len Creighton, who was still lying on the beach, then focussed on the two men once again.
Then she turned and dived straight into the water.
"Alex, no!" David shouted.
He couldn't begin to imagine the undercurrents, the power of the water, in the wake of the storm. And he didn't give a damn about anything other than getting her back. He even forgot that a bullet could stop him in his tracks in two seconds. He dropped the speargun and went tearing toward the water.
A dim line barely showed where water and sky met. As he plowed into the waves, he saw something shoot through the water. For a moment he thought Seymore had somehow managed to move quicker than he had and had gotten ahead of him in the violent surf.
Then he realized that whoever was ahead of him was huge, bigger than a man. David plowed on, fighting the waves to reach Alex, heedless of who else might be out there. He broke the surface.
Then he saw.
Alex was being rescued. And not by a man, not by a human being at all. One of her dolphins had come for her. Where the animal would go with her, he didn't know.
"Alex!" he screamed again.
But she had grabbed hold of the dolphin's dorsal fin, and the mammal could manage the wild surf as no man possibly could.
She was gone.
He treaded the water, watching as the dolphin and the woman disappeared in the night. The danger hadn't abated in the least; it was increasing with every minute that went by. He was losing to the power of the water himself. Fighting hard despite his strength and ability, he made it back toward the beach. When he reached the shore, he collapsed, still half in the water.
A second later, someone dropped by his side.
Seymore. Apparently he had ditched his weapon, as well, equally determined to rescue Alex from the surf.
Both men realized where they were and jerked away from one another. Then both looked toward the weapons they had dropped. David could see Seymour's muscles bunching, and he knew his were doing the same.
But Seymore cried out to him instead of moving. "Wait!"
David, wary, still hesitated.
"You had plenty of time to kill her," Seymore said.
"You could have shot me," David noted warily.
"You'd have shot back. But the point is…you dropped the speargun and went after Alex."
"Of course
I went after her! I love her."
Seymore inhaled. "Listen to me, I didn't kill anyone. I know you think it's me, but I'm working with the FBI—"
"Yeah, yeah, sure. Now you're a G-man."
"No, I'm a special consultant. I thought you were killing people—until two minutes ago."
David found himself staring at the man. His basic reaction was to distrust him, but there was something about the man he believed. Maybe the fact that the Glock had been a guarantee, the speargun a maybe.
Seconds ticked by. Alex was in the care of a creature that could survive the darkness and the elements better than any man. But she was still out there somewhere. And the greatest likelihood was that the dolphin would bring her back to the lagoon. It wouldn't take the animal long.
There was also the matter of the man lying on the beach just feet away from them, possibly dying.
"I'm not the killer," Seymore said.
"And neither am I," David said harshly. More seconds ticked by.
Gut reaction. Dane had told him to go by his gut reaction.
He let another fraction of time go by. Then he moved.
Ignoring Seymore, he got to his feet quickly and walked over to the prone body of Len Creighton. There was blood on the man's temple, but he still had a pulse.
"He's alive," David said. Hunkered down, he tried to assess the man's condition quickly. Concussion, almost certainly. Shock, probably.
If they left him there, he would certainly die in the next onslaught of the storm. But if he was burdened with the man, Alex could die before he got back to her.
David's back was to Seymore. The man could have picked up the gun and shot him, but he hadn't.
David turned back to him. "He's got to be taken to shelter."
Seymore picked up the gun, shoving it into his belt. He stared at David, but, like him, he knew that time was of the essence.
"Alex is out there," John said.
"Yes."
"She'll trust you before she trusts me, though she doesn't seem to have much faith in either of us at the moment," he said at last. "Go after Alex. I'll take Len." Then, true to his word, he bent down, lifting the prone man as if he were no more than a baby.
David hoped to hell the guy was really on his side. As an enemy, he would be formidable.
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