I shook my head. "I can't."
He grabbed my face in both hands, cradling my cheeks like I was fragile, and maybe I was. I felt fragile right now. But his words didn't reflect that. He spoke very clearly, eyes pinned to mine. "You can, and you will. I will help you."
He had to be tired. He'd not only pulled himself out of water stronger than I could ever hope to be, but he'd also pulled another limp, unconscious human being to safety. Maybe Georgie too. He had to be exhausted, but he was 100 percent focused. I could see it in his eyes. Thank goodness he enjoyed pushing his body to the limits as a hobby, or all of us would be so screwed right now. If he could do this, I could do this. I nodded, letting him and Georgie help me to my feet.
On wildly shaking limbs, I struggled to walk across the cove. I no longer had shoes. Neither did Alex. In fact, he was mostly naked, wearing only torn shorts. That was the risk he ran when he didn't button his ever-loving shirt. Georgie had one shoe, a white racing tank she'd been wearing under her Aloha Lagoon uniform, and part of her shorts. I was blessed to still be wearing suit pants and a pale pink shell that had once been covered with a white suit jacket. I'd had no idea water could be enough to simply tear clothes from a body.
The safety of the beach might as well have been a million miles away with the combination of injuries, bare feet, and jagged volcanic rocks. Alex knelt, grabbed a sharp rock, my pants leg, and a couple of leaves wrapped around the rock. I stood still while he cut strips from my pant legs, Georgie keeping watch.
When he was finished, he fashioned makeshift feet coverings for all of us, tossing Georgie's one shoe aside. We walked to the corner of the cove, none of us speaking. I could feel every stab of the rocks under the light linen of my pants material, not intended as footwear. I was certain the others were no more comfortable. Alex was trying hard to conceal a limp. He was hurt and didn't want us to know it, but when I caught a glimpse of his ankle, I saw a deep gash in the skin, probably from rocks under the water. I bit my tongue and looked at the expanse we would be expected to cross. There was a ledge, as thin as the path above us, leading around the cliff. It was maybe two hundred feet from the cove to a place where we could safely enter the water and not be sucked down. It might as well have been miles.
I drew a deep breath and focused on those feet. I could do this. We could do this. There was a new symbiosis between the three of us. We were a unit we hadn't been on the way down. I no longer cared what Georgie had done. It was ancient history. She was my sister before she was anything else. Together, we'd do this thing. And Alex. I couldn't think about how bonded I felt to Alex at the moment. It was dangerous. He pulled a length of thin rope from the pocket of his cargo shorts, hardly more than a shoelace in width, tying all three of us together.
He grabbed my arms again, focusing our gazes, not allowing me to look away. "We are going to do this. You can do this. One step at a time. I know that you're hurt, and you're exhausted, and you're weak. But if we can get to the place where the water is calmer, we can get to the shore on the other side. Just keep looking forward."
I nodded, drawing power from his intensity when I didn't have my own to spare at the moment. He took the front, I was hanging in the middle, and Georgie pulled up the rear, all of us tied at the waist. It was painfully slow going, both literally and figuratively. My twisted ankle screamed in frustration. By the time we were halfway across, my feet were mangled beyond being able to feel them. It was a blessing. I could see how much pain Alex was in. The cut had to be deep, and with the salt water and sand that had to be inside of it right now, I had no doubt the agony was acute. Georgie was breathing hard, her struggle silent behind me.
I slipped. The rope slowed my fall, and Alex and Georgie pulled me back to the ledge.
Alex slipped. He caught himself, using his bare hands to grip the volcanic rocks. He left bloody handprints behind us as we went. I didn't know how long it took to get to the place where we could safely enter the water. Two hours? Six years? I had no clue. It was long past dark when Alex finally stopped, slipping slowly into the water and helping us each enter behind him. The ocean was blessedly calm. We couldn't reach the bottom, and we were in no condition to swim.
We clung to the cliff, working our way along until we crawled onto the beach. For several minutes, we lay there in the dark. It was true that the people who had pushed us could be around, but I assumed they were gone by now. And frankly, I just couldn't move. If we couldn't see them, hopefully they couldn't see us either.
Eventually, we got to our feet and trudged the remaining feet to the car, crawling in and sitting there for another few minutes, headlights off, trying to pull ourselves together. Then Alex started the car, and we drove to the Aloha Lagoon Police Station, a single-story stucco structure in the middle of town. It was wonderfully brightly lit, and just looking at it made me feel safer.
The officer who met us inside the door took one look at us and said he had to call Detective Ray. We probably looked almost as torn up as we felt. We sat, bleeding feet stretched out in front of us. Alex's leg was no longer seeping blood but was now swollen beyond recognition. Mine was merely slightly swollen. Bedraggled hair, dirty faces, and pale skin. The officer asked Alex if he'd like to clean and treat his bleeding hands, but he merely stared at them for a moment and then shook his head. None of us had spoken since we'd left the cove.
Finally Detective Ray showed up wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, clearly having just come from home and not expecting us or any other matter of grave importance. He looked us over silently for a long minute. Then he shook his head and asked, "What happened to you three?"
* * *
The story took a long time to tell, though not nearly as long as it had taken to play out. I couldn't tell from his expression if he believed us or not. He was as unreadable as his office was messy. I couldn't make heads or tails of anything on his face or on his desk. He didn't speak much. Merely asked us questions, if he had them, and let us carry on with the narrative. His only real tell was when his eyebrows pulled together suspiciously when we talked about the poppies.
Alex patted down his pockets and sighed. "I lost my phone."
Georgie shrugged. "I lost my pockets, let alone what was in them."
I still had both legs of my pants, and I could still feel the phone in my pocket. Of course, I wasn't surprised to discover I couldn't get it to turn on. It lay unresponsive on Detective Ray's desk until I just gave up. It was dead for now. Maybe forever.
Detective Ray pinned us all with hard glances. "You shouldn't go into dangerous situations investigating things. These matters are best left to the professionals."
I was aghast. It was only his attitude that had driven us to that cove in the first place. I couldn't help but wonder if these opium poppies, and whatever force was behind them, were the things that led to Mallory's murder. Had someone done to her what they'd tried to do to us? Had she discovered too much? Or maybe she'd been involved with the process of growing them? How would we even know?
Alex held up a hand. "We had no idea it would be dangerous. It was completely abandoned last time I was there. All we wanted to do was take a few pictures."
Detective Ray glanced down at his disgusting desk. "We'll call Rick and take a copter down tomorrow to take a look. Don't go near the cove again."
He was safe with that one. I never planned to go to the beach again, if I had my way. Let alone Strangler's Cove. We drove back to the resort, barely awake, all of us struggling to keep our eyes open even though it wasn't too late. We'd missed dinner. I wasn't sure I'd ever eat again anyway. When we hobbled into the hotel through the service door, as to avoid scaring the guests, Darcy, the night clerk, came out of the break room, gasping in horror.
"What happened?" She dug those hideous nails into her palms.
"We had an accident at the beach," I explained, without any elaboration. I didn't really want this getting around. At least not until Detective Ray had time to get the proof.
She fussed ov
er us for a few minutes until we were able to shake her. We walked Georgie to her room, and I stopped Alex before he tried to walk the half mile to his cabin on the beach. "This is stupid. Get a room in the resort for the night. You don't even have shoes!"
He flashed me a small smile. "I won't have shoes tomorrow either."
"But at least you'll be better healed. Come on. Don't do this."
Shaking his head, he slid his fingers between mine. "Charlie, you did really well out there. Thanks for not drowning." His lopsided smile punched me straight in the heart.
"Thanks for not letting me drown," I whispered.
He shook his head. "I would never let you be hurt, if I could stop it. Never. I'm going home to get some sleep. I'll talk to you tomorrow."
"Let me help you," I said, reaching out my hand to take his again but then dropping it. "At least let me clean and bandage your feet and find you a pair of shoes."
He shook his head one more time. "It's okay." He nodded one time. "Tomorrow, Charlie."
It was just a form of good-bye. Telling me he'd see me tomorrow. But there seemed to be some kind of promise in it. Something that sent chills skittering across my skin. I nodded, not able to find my voice, and watched him hobble away. Then I went to my hotel phone and called Georgie, telling her to come upstairs and use my much-nicer suite to address her cuts and bruises.
She sounded a bit uncertain, which she probably couldn't be blamed for, considering the context. It was just that I'd merely realized that Jared's loss hadn't been nearly as traumatic as the thought of the real loss of my sister. I'd somehow reasoned I had time to be angry, but it was clear that might not always be true. I'd learned my lesson the hard way today.
When Georgie showed up, I ushered her into the shower first, taking some time to lay out on my luxurious bed and enjoy not being dead. My feet were no longer numb, and they were seriously pissed. I couldn't imagine how Alex's must be feeling, with the additional injury he'd gotten. My ankle was twinging, but in retrospect, without weight on it, I could tell the sprain wasn't bad. I'd recover. When Georgie came out, I directed her to my first-aid kit to address her feet, since I was positive her bag she'd come with contained nothing but spandex and maybe condoms. Then it was my turn in the bathroom.
Once I was finished and my feet were sufficiently cleaned and bandaged, I sat on the bed and regarded Georgie, sitting in a chair near the door, as though she was waiting for the first opportunity to leave. Maybe she just thought I'd take the first opportunity to kick her out.
I sighed. We would have to address this, though I wasn't particularly keen on it. "What you did to me was wrong." I decided not to bother sugarcoating it. Georgie wouldn't.
She sighed too. "I know. But marrying Jared would have been wrong too. You realize that, don't you?"
"Yes. But it was still wrong. I'm not mad anymore. Truly. But you could have at least said you were sorry."
Her second sigh was long and slow. "I am sorry. I'm still sorry. But I felt like if I told you that, you might decide Mom has the right of it, always believing or accepting any excuses a man might give. I was afraid once you started forgiving people, you might start forgiving Jared as well as me. And that wouldn't have been okay. I figured I'd just take one for the team."
"You're nuts," I said. "But I recognize you were trying to help in a very odd kind of way."
I also recognized that she was right to fear something like that when we'd been trained about love at the feet of our parents. Love meant forgiving people for anything, no matter how horrible it was. I lived in terror of becoming that person—the one who gave up everything because I couldn't bear to be alone.
She shrugged. "Hey, it worked, didn't it?"
Her logic was so mystifying, but I loved her anyway. "Yeah, it worked."
"Listen, Charlotte. I know your relationships aren't my business, even less now than they ever were before, but I hope you understand that he really cares about you."
I stared at her. "Jared?" It was such an absurd thing to say that I had no idea what to make of it.
Her upper lip curled. "No, not Jared. Lord, no. Alex. He really cares about you. I mean sincerely as a human being cares about you." The words caught me off guard and sent my stomach into a tailspin. "We saw you fly past us, and the backpack was off and he dived in after you, without a second of hesitation. Then some douche pushed me in too, and Alex pushed me out onto the shore and dived back down. Honestly, I'm not sure he would have helped me at all if he could have found you first. And if you had seen his face when we realized you weren't breathing. It was agony and terror. Pure and unadulterated." She shivered. "I've never seen anyone look like that before. If you really haven't considered it before, I think you should now."
It? I could barely wrap my mind around her words. I had no idea what "it" was. The thought of Alex's overwrought emotions crippled me. It was beyond painful to imagine him hurting over anything, let alone me. That told me above anything that I had some runaway emotions to get back under control.
"Considered what?"
"Just exactly what your relationship with Alex is."
I took a deep, shuddering breath. "Strictly business." The words came out much more calm and sure than I'd expected, much to my appreciation.
She eyed me suspiciously. "Really?" Her disbelief was tinted with outright disgust. "If there's one thing I know, it's men and the signs they give when they want a relationship with someone. Alex is giving every one of them. Are you sure, really sure, you're not into it?"
"Really." It was so easy to say. Maybe not as easy to believe in my head. Or even in Georgie's, judging from her skepticism. I needed to change the subject immediately. "Mom asked me why you quit your job."
Georgie's face shuttered immediately. "What did you tell her?"
"What you told me. That you were having some trouble with some guy named Marty."
She flinched, maybe because I'd told Mom. Maybe it was just the mention of the name. She took a shaky breath and stared at some point to my left, gaze unfocused.
"Mom said that wasn't possible. She swears you and good old Marty are best friends forever."
Georgie's mouth twisted bitterly. I had no clue what to make of her reaction. So far nothing in her behavior backed up Mom's claims that she and Marty were "thick as thieves" after all. But then she contradicted her expressions.
"That's us. BFFs, straight to the end."
She was saying something positive, but her depression and vulnerability were showing through her normal Georgie bravado.
"Did you fight?" Now I was turning into my mother, but I wanted to know what was going on with this Marty guy.
She shook her head, wordless for a long moment. Pure alarm shot through me when I saw moisture gather on her lashes. She blinked hard and sat up straighter. "There was no fight. I just walked away. I don't want to talk about Marty. Not now or any other time."
There was a brutal finality to her words. If I brought up Marty the BFF one more time, I had little doubt she'd be up like a shot and out of my room. Actually, I wouldn't have been shocked if she'd be out of the hotel and gone when I woke up. Clearly, Marty Gentry, he of the millions of dollars and mysteriously negative friendship, was a sore spot that had not yet even begun to heal over.
I lay down on the bed, my eyes ridiculously heavy, and gestured to the wide expanse next to me. "The slumber party option is open, but I can't stay up for another minute."
She seemed amused but declined, leaving for her own room. Ironically, once she was gone and I was free to sleep, I couldn't even begin to. The events of the afternoon played over and over again. All the places it could have gone wrong. All the things that could have meant the end of any of the three of us. The thought of it, playing on repeat, was enough to keep me tossing well into the night. Finally, at two AM, I grabbed the room phone and dialed Alex's bungalow number, telling myself that there was nothing overly personal about calling an employee to enquire after his welfare. If it was the middle of the nigh
t, well, sometimes I needed to take certain actions before my workday was truly done.
He answered on the first ring. Just a single low, smoky word. "Charlie."
I shivered. "I just…are your feet and ankle okay?"
I couldn't figure out how to vocalize what I was feeling or thinking at the moment. I picked the most concrete concern: the condition of his hands, leg, and feet when he'd left me.
"They're fine." I could hear the quiet amusement in his voice. "All cleaned and patched up."
We were both silent, and I felt like an idiot for giving in to the urge to call when I had no good reason. I was about to offer a lame good-bye and hang up, when he spoke again. "Thank you for calling." His words were quiet, but it wasn't hard to hear the sincerity. "It's late, Charlie. As much as I'd like to take this moment to have some much-needed conversations, we ought to get some sleep."
"Were you sleeping?" I asked, guilt creeping in.
"No." There was amusement underlying his words. "I was laying here wondering if it was too late to call you and if you were sleeping."
I closed my eyes, struggling to breathe calmly. I had no idea what I was doing. This was just stupid. I had absolutely no future with Alex, but I also couldn't deny that my feelings for him went far beyond gratitude for saving my life or even lust after our random make-out session in my office. He was dangerous.
"Good night, Alex."
"Good night, Charlie," he murmured, his low voice so incredibly seductive. I could listen to those two words every night for the rest of my life and never get tired of hearing their throaty growl.
I hung up immediately.
CHAPTER TEN
Morning came far too soon, considering how late I'd continued to toss and turn—until I'd passed out from sheer exhaustion. No matter what I tried to do, I still looked like crap. There would be little professionalism in my appearance today. I also had to wear ugly soft-bottomed flats to baby my battered soles and angry ankle. I trudged down to the lobby, where I was dismayed to discover both Alex and Georgie had beat me to work. How was that even possible?
Mele Kalikimaka Murder Page 14