The Cost of Betrayal

by Dee Henderson

  Greg was looking forward to the coming year, to seeing where it took them both. Janelle smiled at him over a rib, like she knew what he was thinking. They had a good beginning to what promised to be an interesting future.

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Epilogue

  one

  HE WAITED, lurking against the buoy’s cold, rusty body, awaiting her.

  He glanced at his watch.

  Any moment now.

  His breathing shallowed as he focused. He’d only have a few seconds, a blink of an eye to act, and then he’d disappear beneath the murky surface.

  Sand and silt tossed up from the storm worked even better with his plan than he could have imagined. Finally, things were turning his way.

  Taking another shallow breath, he tried to force his heart to pump harder, his adrenaline to burn. He’d enacted this moment repeatedly in his mind, had swum his escape route more times than his gloved fingers could count. He had this—had her.

  He spotted movement, her head rolling sideways, barely breaching the waterline for a brief, controlled gasp of air—one of her last. She swam with the current, which would carry her dead body down along the shoals of Henry’s Point, where his crime would look like the perfectly painful accident he’d envisioned. But the other one would follow shortly, always a few minutes behind the bend. That was his window to act. His perfect window.

  Her arms smoothly stroked in a straight line toward the buoy, her right hand finally reaching out and grasping ahold of what she expected would be a safe resting place. How wrong she was. Her head rose above the surface, and without hesitation, he swung.

  Teni was off her game today. How could she not be after what had just happened between her and Alex? She fought against the storm-driven waves to increase the pace of her stroke, knowing Julia was outracing her, but at this point she didn’t care. Sobs threatened to wrack her body, but she fought them off, focusing on her breathing as the painful breakup flashed through her mind. Why on earth had he waited until they’d arrived at their wedding venue, her home island, before breaking the news?

  Alex looked down at his feet, then back at her. “I think we’ve both known something’s been wrong ever since the engagement.”

  “Alex?” He was right. She had felt something was wrong but could never pinpoint what.

  He held up his hand. “Let me get this out. You know I think the world of you . . . but that’s not enough for a marriage, Ten.”

  “But . . .” she sputtered. Why had he waited so long? They were only hours from meeting with her pastor about wedding details.

  “Give me a hug,” Alex said. “I’m going to have Lenny run me back to Annapolis before this storm hits.” He glanced at the darkening sky. “Looks like it’s going to slam Talbot.”

  Much as her heart had just been slammed. If she was honest with herself, she felt the same concern as Alex—knowing they weren’t right for each other, but she hadn’t understood why. She supposed that didn’t matter. Regardless of the reason it wasn’t working, it was over now. And it still hurt.

  She propelled forward in the water, swimming with the current as her mind raced back to the vision of Alex sailing off beneath the darkening sky, taking her dreams of marriage with him. To take Teni’s mind off the pain, her cousin Julia had insisted they still make their traditional end-of-season race out to Barner’s Buoy, but she was clearly in no state of mind to truly compete. She was barely resisting the urge to ball up and cry.

  As she swam she realized she was losing a friend—just a friend. Losing her fiancé should have felt like losing so much more.

  What was wrong with her?

  Why couldn’t she find a love like she’d experienced with Callen Frost all those years ago? But did she really want that? That love had ended in horrible, soul-crushing heartache.

  As she reached the buoy, she lifted her head, fully anticipating finding a gloating Julia waiting there. She’d finally beat Teni to the buoy after all these years of racing, but Julia was nowhere to be seen.

  That’s odd.

  Teni checked her time. Twenty-two minutes. Pitiful.

  Typically, she nailed the thousand-yard swim out to the buoy in around eighteen. Julia was usually around twenty. Teni should have been a minute or two behind her. Julia had streamed past her in the inlet. Surely she would have noticed if she’d passed her cousin during the swim.

  She grabbed the buoy and sidled around it. “Jules?” she called over the burgeoning waves. “Jules? Where are you?” No way Julia would turn around and make the swim back without waiting for her to arrive and taking a hefty rest as they always had.

  Teni’s gaze flashed to the once-white buoy, now a mottled gray, but it wasn’t the buoy that garnered her attention, but rather the bright red substance on and surrounding the rusty handhold they always used to grab onto as they rested.

  She swallowed, panic slithering through her veins.

  A boat approached from the distance, but her focus remained on her cousin.

  “Julia!” She ducked under the water but saw nothing—only the white caps sloshing above the surface, muddying the waters several feet below.

  Breaching the surface, she took a deep breath, trying not to give in to the panic suddenly flooding her system. Everything was fine. Julia probably just decided to skip the rest and head back to shore because the storm was coming in. And what appeared to be blood . . . She looked back at the red now being washed away by the waves.

  Had Julia gotten hurt?

  “Julia?” she hollered again, something urging her to stay—to keep looking.

  “Ten?”

  She stilled at the sound of his voice—the first time she’d heard it in over a year.

  Callen Frost. Not now.

  Swallowing, she turned to find his boat idling ten feet to her six.

  “What are you doing out here?” he called out as rain began falling, wind lashing white caps up and over her chin as she worked to stay buoyant.

  “Jules and I . . .”

  “Your race?”

  She nodded. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Collecting my crab pots before the storm rolls in.” He gestured to the loosely woven silver-wire pots that suckered the crabs in and prevented passage out.

  His dark brows furrowed. Dark brows, dark eyes, the color of the sky at night over Talbot. “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “I can’t find Julia, and there was something that looked very much like blood on the buoy.” She could say that with a good deal of certainty, given her job with the National Resources Police, along with her specialization in underwater investigations.

  “You think she cut her hand? I’ve always told you that buoy is a rust bucket.”

  Teni shook her head. “That was my first thought, but it was too much blood and not shaped like a handprint.”

  His eyes narrowed—eyes that used to captivate her. “What are you thinking?”

  She swallowed. What was she thinking? She was thinking like an investigator mixed with the fact that Julia was a missing family member. Training plus emotion equaled overreaction at times. “Maybe I’m overreacting, but I’ve got a sick feeling in my stomach. I don’t think Jules would have turned back without waiting the extra minute or two for me, especially not if she was hurt.”

  Callen reached out and looped his hands under her arms, hefting her up to his boat. The first time she’d been in his arms since that fateful day on the beach nearly a decade ago.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Helping you find Julia.”

  “I can find her better in the water.” It was where she excelled, and he was the l
ast person she wanted help from.

  “In this approaching storm, you really think that’s the best way to proceed?”

  No. She was reacting emotionally. She needed to calm down, focus. Why did it have to be Callen who came to her aid?

  two

  THE FARTHER SHE AND CALLEN TRACKED BACK, the faster Teni’s heart raced—until they were at the boathouse and there was still no sign of Julia. No goggles. No wet footprints. Her cousin’s towel still hanging on the hook. No sign of dripped blood.

  A lump weighted at the bottom of Teni’s stomach. “It doesn’t look like she’s been back.”

  Concern deepened across Callen’s face. “What are you thinking?”

  Why did he always ask her that? And she never got to reciprocate, or at least never got an answer beyond, About you. At least until that day . . .

  “If Julia got hurt, if she was struggling in any way and she didn’t stay at the buoy . . .” Teni thought aloud, pacing, trying to make her mind approach the situation as if she’d been called on the scene. And that was the scariest aspect. So many scenes she’d been called to started out just like this—a missing loved one, only a small clue, a direction, a spot of blood. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat at the thought of how most of those cases ended with her retrieving the loved one’s body from the seabed or the bottom of the bay.

  “If she were struggling in any way, she is a good enough swimmer to know to let the current carry her . . . and it is pulling toward . . .” She calculated in her mind. Talbot Island had zero cell coverage, so there was no fast way to look up the tides, but she didn’t need to, she felt them. . . . “Henry’s Point.” It was where nearly everything lost in the bay surrounding Talbot eventually washed up, where beachcombers and treasure hunters flocked after a storm to seek their latest token or beautiful shell.

  “Back in the boat,” Callen said, hopping in and offering Teni a hand.

  She grasped hold of the hand she’d held on to so often as they’d run through the white oak and black walnut trees populating Talbot, crunching over acorns and dried leaves, tripping over golf-ball-sized black walnuts, their hands black from cracking them open to eat the goody inside. So many memories wrapped up in one man—the best and the absolute worst.

  “It’ll be all right,” he said, laying a hand on her shoulder and squeezing.

  She nodded, fighting the barrage of emotions flooding through her as rain trounced them.

  Thoughts of Julia flashed through her mind—her fuzzy socks, purple lipstick that only Jules could pull off, a night of chick flicks and buttery popcorn mere hours ago. Jules wasn’t just her cousin, she was her best friend. If anything had happened to her . . .

  She swallowed, refusing to let her mind wade there.

  The boat ride out to Henry’s Point took less than five minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. Why was she so fearful? Julia had probably just cut her hand, was hurting, the waves burgeoning, and she let the current carry her to Henry’s Point rather than try to make the swim against the current back to the boathouse. But why wouldn’t Julia have waited the minute or two for her? It didn’t make sense.

  Callen focused on navigating the shoals while approaching the tiny barrier island—more like sand bar, actually, one they’d spent plenty of summer days on. She blinked through the thickening rain and cloud cover, trying to make out her cousin amid the marsh and sand.

  Please be waving to me.

  The island was fully visible from their vantage point and there was no one standing on the shore, but that didn’t mean Julia wasn’t huddled up somewhere in the marsh.

  “Jules,” she called.

  Callen navigated around the shoals, idling just offshore. “I can’t go in closer or it’ll run aground.”

  “I’ll go in.” She dove into the waves and current-driven water without a moment’s hesitation. Callen’s voice echoed through the water, but it was muffled and she wasn’t stopping, if that was what he was suggesting. The rip current pulled hard, but knowing better than to fight it, she let it pull her out before she swam back in at an angle.

  She reached the shore moments before Callen did. He was fully clothed and fully drenched.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I was worried you were caught in the riptide.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got it.” She’d always been a strong swimmer, but he still managed to beat her every time—he always thanked his Pocomoke roots, the island’s natives, for the inherent ability. She’d worked at it—to him the gift came effortlessly.

  They trudged through the marsh, Teni sinking into the sand well above her ankles, the rain cold on her skin, the one-piece Speedo not nearly enough cover for the deluge they were in.

  “Jules?” she called again.

  “Julia?” Callen hollered.

  They worked their way from the north point toward the south point, and Teni was just about to give up and relax in the thought that Julia was probably safely back at the boathouse now with some cockamamie story about what happened. But then Callen whispered, “There.”

  Julia. Lying with her face in the sand, her limbs dangling in the marsh.

  Teni rushed forward and flipped her cousin over. The side of her head was smashed in, her eyes open and lifeless, sand coating her lips.

  Teni cleared Julia’s airways and started CPR.

  Callen raked Teni up in his arms, holding her shivering body against his sturdy one, engulfing her in a bear hug. “She’s gone, honey. She’s gone.”

  “No.” She shook her head, tears streaming from her eyes. “She can’t be. We were just . . .”

  She’d just lost her parents the year before last in a tragic boating accident, and now Julia—her sister for all intents and purposes—was gone. She blinked as tears gushed hot down her cold face. This can’t be happening. . . .

  “I know.” Callen cradled Teni’s head in his hand, and her gaze shifted back to Julia, her cousin’s wet hair mangled with sand, marsh, and seeped blood. Had she hit her head on the buoy?

  Teni sniffed and pulled back slightly, looking up at Callen, who sheltered her eyes from the rain by cupping his hand over her forehead. “For that kind of wound, it would have had to have been a really strong wave that slammed her just right against the buoy.”

  “True, but it could easily happen if she came up and didn’t see a wave coming, or some of the damage could have occurred on the rocks of the shoals as the current carried her to Henry’s Point. You can already see bruises forming.”

  Teni nodded and rested her head back against Callen, bawling for the loss of Julia on the one shoulder she never thought she’d rest her head on again.

  three

  “I’LL GET HER,” CALLEN WHISPERED. “You wait on the boat.”

  “No.” Teni sniffed, shaking her head.

  He frowned. “What do you mean no?”

  “No. This needs to be documented.”

  “Honey, she hit her head and drowned. It was an accident.”

  “But it’s my job as an NRP officer to document every incident—accident or not.” She’d do this right, for Julia.

  “Okay, what do you need to do?”

  “I need my equipment bag off my boat. I need to photograph her before we move her.”

  “Ten . . . ?”

  “I’m doing this right.”

  “Okay.” Callen held up his hands, having learned long ago when she wasn’t budging. “Let’s go back and get your bag.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not leaving her alone.” She looked up at Callen. At six-foot-one he towered nearly a foot over her five-foot-two frame. “Will you please get it?”

  Callen raked a hand through his soaked hair. “Sure. Where is it on your boat?”

  She explained, and he left her alone with Julia, her heart breaking, the only warmth the tears streaming down her cheeks. First her parents and now Julia. Why was this happening? Why was God ripping everyone she loved from her life?

  Callen watched Tennyso
n Kent in her element. He’d never seen her work a case, but considering the loss she’d just endured, she was managing to document her cousin’s accident with impressive focus and proficiency. Poor Teni. First her fiancé left the island—he’d passed Lenny’s boat heading away from Talbot as he was heading back in, radioed Lenny for the deets, and learned the engagement had been called off. That was the last thing he’d ever wanted to happen to Teni, but it provided an undeserved second chance to win the heart of the woman he’d always loved but had been foolish enough to let go.

  “Okay,” she said, slipping her camera with its rain guard back into the case. “We can take her home now.”

  He nodded and bent, gently lifting Julia’s limp body, his heart squeezing, remembering when his mom had made him hold her as a baby. A crying, squirming little thing in his six-year-old arms, but it was Teni’s cousin, a new Kent family member, and they all kowtowed to the Kents.

  Now she was a limp, dead weight in his arms. He tried not to look in her eyes, for he swore they were full of fear. Had she survived the initial blow against the buoy? He prayed not. Prayed she’d died instantly rather than suffered as the current and undertow dragged her body up onto Henry’s Point. Once a place of amazing memories, it was now a place of two terrible losses—first Teni, ten years ago by his thoughtless words after a horrible action that had destroyed their relationship, and now her cousin to the ravages of a storm-surging bay.

  He swallowed as he placed Julia’s body below deck and covered her up with a sheet from his master bunk. Teni stood watch from the stairwell, gripping the silver rail, her fingers blue. What had he been thinking, or rather, where was his head?

  He grabbed the comforter out of the cupboard by his bunk and wrapped it around Teni. “Here, this ought to help.”

  She clutched it to her tiny frame. “Thanks.”

  He nodded. “We’ll let mainland police know about the accident, but I doubt they’ll risk sending someone out in the storm.” The nor’easter whipping up the east coast had shifted course midafternoon and was now due to hit them full-on tomorrow. Talbot Island had no police force, so it fell under the jurisdiction of Crisfield—the closest town on the mainland but still an hour’s boat ride away.