The house seemed disturbingly empty with Steve gone. Empty and quiet. Unwanted phrases slipped through Kirstie’s mind: quiet as the dead, lonely as a cemetery, silent as a grave.
She wandered the rooms restlessly, finding no joy in the bars of sun slanting through the arched windows in the living room or the French doors of the loggia. The cheery tinkle of the fountain in the patio seemed irritating, extraneous, an artificial merriment, like a music box’s tinny rhapsody or the rippling chatter of wind chimes.
She looked for more dishes to wash, but there were none in the kitchen sink. She poured a glass of water and left the water running, pointlessly, wastefully, until she realized she had left it on, just to hear the noise it made. Then with a jerk of her wrist she closed the tap.
Back in the living room she confronted the television set, which had remained off throughout the past two weeks. She had considered it a victory of sorts not to have turned on the set even once, to have lived for half a month without the canned idiocy that was too much a part of modern life.
But now she needed it. The TV was company, and a distraction; she wanted both.
She found the remote control, figured out how to work it. The TV popped on with a buzz and crackle. She flipped through channels, passing game shows and soap operas, before settling on a noontime Miami newscast.
Ana stretched out before the flickering picture tube as if lying by a fire. Kirstie was too fidgety to relax. She circled the room, idly rearranging things—the schooner on the mantel, the potted fern in a corner, the globe near the couch—while the newscasters alternated glibly between happy talk and sober seriousness.
The world, it appeared, had survived her two weeks of neglect. Nothing had changed. The same dreary procession of disasters and senseless tragedies still filled the airwaves.
On the screen, a video graphic read fire; cut to a burned-out housing project on Tenth Street, someone’s mother shrieking in Spanish as a small body was wrapped in sheets and carted away.
Back to the news desk. Another graphic: carjacking. Cut to the scene of a fatal struggle over an automobile, the victim’s remains already gone by the time cameras arrived, the lenses focusing greedily on a smear of blood discoloring the curb.
The news desk again. Graphic: murder.
“Nationally,” the female anchor said, “the manhunt continues for a serial killer now officially linked to the deaths of seven women in six western and southwestern states—”
This wasn’t helping at all.
Kirstie clicked the remote, and the TV shut off.
“I guess listening to the news isn’t exactly the best way to calm your nerves,” she remarked to the room.
Ana cocked her head and panted.
The heat was starting to get to her, or maybe it was tension. Either way she was sweating too much; she felt sticky, grimy. A shower would cool her off.
She went down the loggia, into the bathroom, and found Jack’s clothes neatly folded on the rim of the tub. Lifting them in her arms, she carried them into the master bedroom. As she laid them on the bed, something small and green slipped out of the back pocket of the jeans and fluttered to the floor.
She picked it up. A folded bill—no, many bills. Five twenties, four fifties, four hundreds. Seven hundred and twenty dollars in all. A fair amount of cash to be toting around. It struck her as vaguely suspicious.
Oh, come on. Plenty of people carried more money than this, even when they weren’t on vacation.
Still, she couldn’t help wondering what else Jack had in his pockets. Something incriminating? Proof that her distrust of him was justified? Vindication of her warnings to Steve?
Doubtful. But not entirely impossible.
The only way to find out, of course, was to look and see.
She recoiled from the thought. Search his clothes like a thief? She wasn’t some crooked chambermaid. She was Jack’s hostess. He was her guest.
But an uninvited guest. An unwelcome guest.
Even so, Miss Manners definitely would not approve.
Well ... fuck her.
Harassed by guilt, yet feeling a certain sneaking pleasure despite herself, Kirstie unfolded Jack’s blue jeans, then emptied the pockets one at a time.
In the other back pocket, a wallet. She examined its contents. California driver’s license. An additional $213 in bills of various denominations. Three major credit cards, all in Jack’s name.
Nothing dramatic there. She replaced the wallet and inspected his side pockets. Car and house keys. Antacid tablets in a blister pack. Folded tissues. Loose change.
That was all.
Kirstie released a breath. Disappointment competed with relief. His belongings were thoroughly dull. Not much different from what Steve would carry in his own pockets. No cocaine, no amphetamines, no phony ID or stolen credit cards, no straight razor crusted with blood—
She blinked.
And no knife.
But Jack had carried a knife. She’d seen it. He’d removed it from his pants pocket, stripped a blackberry-bush cane of its thorns, stems, and leaves to make a stick for Ana to fetch.
She checked all the pants pockets again, then searched Jack’s shirt.
Nothing.
He must have taken it—taken it with him—on the boat.
She hadn’t seen the knife when Jack left. And Steve’s bathing suit, the one Jack borrowed, had no pockets.
He’d hidden it somehow. Hidden it on his person.
And now he was out there with Steve, the two of them alone together.
She heard a sudden rapid clacking noise and realized it was her teeth, chattering idiotically.
“Jesus, why didn’t you take the gun? Why were you so stubborn?”
She was addressing her husband, who was not here, who might never be here again.
The room was hot. Of course it was. This was Florida. Everything was hot. But the heat seemed suddenly more intense, stifling, overwhelming—she pressed her hand to her forehead, felt a rush of lightheadedness, a curious weakness in her knees.
Your head. Lower your head.
She leaned over the bed, her head down, until the faintness passed and her heart was not racing in her chest. With effort she cleared her mind of panic and forced herself to think, to be calm and reasonable.
What exactly was she afraid of? Did she honestly think Jack would ... kill Steve?
Crazy.
Even if he had taken the knife, so what? Skin-divers routinely carried knives, which came in handy for digging up artifacts found on the sea bottom, cutting free of entangling boat lines or seaweed, even killing a moray eel if one should bite down on a groping hand.
There were many possible reasons why Jack had thought it best to take the knife with him. The intention to commit some irrational act of violence was the least likely explanation.
But if all that was true, why couldn’t she stop shaking?
She feared Jack, that was why. She sensed danger in him.
People made jokes about feminine intuition, but Kirstie had always believed in it. Women were more intuitive than men, better at reading emotions and gauging a person’s inner state. Perhaps biology had equipped members of her sex with some neurological hard wiring that made them more adept at interpreting feelings, relationships, nonverbal communication—the soft, fuzzy parts of life that most men scorned.
There was nothing soft and fuzzy about Jack Dance. Outwardly he was a smiling, affable rogue. But inside ...
Inside there was something hard and angry and pitiless, something that hungered for power, reveled in pain.
She had never sensed a similar hardness in her husband. And while ordinarily she would be grateful for that, now it made her afraid.
All right, what to do? She could radio for help. Call the police. But by the time she explained the situation, it might be too late. Besides, she had nothing concrete to report. Her fears could easily be dismissed as the products of a hysterical fantasy, as perhaps they were.
But perhaps not. And if n
ot, then Steve was in danger, might already be under attack, might even be dead, and there was nothing she could do, no way to reach him, no way to help—
Wait.
The boat Jack said he’d rented. The dinghy.
He’d beached it at the cove.
The cove was at the other end of the island, but Pelican Key was small, the distance short. She could get there in ten minutes—fifteen at the most.
She’d never operated a boat, any kind of boat, but she’d seen Steve do so when he steered the motorboat to shore. It looked simple enough.
And for her own protection she would do what Steve had refused to do. She would take the gun.
The thought banished the last wisps of fog clouding her brain. She ran around to the other side of the bed, knelt, raised the bed skirt, groped eagerly for the pistol.
It wasn’t there.
But it had to be. Steve kept it under the bed, where he could grab it in an emergency, as he’d done last night.
She searched the floor desperately for over a minute before concluding that the gun really was gone.
“Steve changed his mind,” she whispered. “He took it, after all. Thank God.”
But how could he have done that? When she’d spoken with him in the hall, he’d dismissed the idea. And he hadn’t gone back into the bedroom afterward.
Jack had been in here, though. He had changed into his borrowed bathing suit while she and Steve waited in the foyer.
Had he looked beneath the bed for some reason, found the gun, taken it? No, that made no sense. Besides, he couldn’t have concealed the Beretta in the swimsuit. Too bulky.
So where was the goddamn thing?
Well, maybe Steve hadn’t replaced the Beretta in its usual spot after the false alarm last night. Maybe he’d hidden it in a drawer or something. Or packed it this morning for the trip home.
Wherever it was, she would have to go without it. She couldn’t waste precious minutes on an exhaustive search.
Too much time had passed as it was. Nearly a half hour since the boat’s departure. Anything could have happened by now. Anything.
She was running as she headed out the bedroom door.
18
Jack swam just under the surface, head down, legs flexing and thrusting in a series of scissor kicks. The oval lens of his face mask framed the reef passing slowly below.
Lavender sea fans undulated in the drift and drag of the current, sensuous as swaying palms. Rainbow parrotfish nibbled at coral towers, consuming the living polyps within. A squadron of inch-long neon gobies darted among the colonnades and galleries of coral, streaking under archways and congregating on terraces, then capriciously reversing course to retrace the route they’d traveled.
The clarity of the water was astonishing. Clearer than the air in L.A., Jack thought half seriously.
Mesmerized by the stream of hallucinatory images gliding past, he had almost forgotten what he’d come here to do.
Almost.
But the intention was still there, still beating inside him, hard and steady, like a second pulse.
He focused his attention on Steve, swimming a few yards ahead, fins pedaling at a steady rate of twenty beats per minute. The proper rhythm for a flutter kick, Jack knew. He had taught Steve to swim and dive in these waters many years ago.
The memory stung him, painful as fire coral, but the hurt did not penetrate as deeply as it once would have. He was adjusting to the reality of what he had to do, coming to terms with it, suppressing his last twinges of conscience. He wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or dismayed at that development.
It didn’t matter either way. His feelings were irrelevant. There was a job to do.
He peeled back the waistband of his swimsuit, touched metal. The knife was still in place.
For the past twenty minutes he had awaited an opportunity to use it. But Steve, swimming steadily, had remained always out of reach.
Not for much longer, though. Jack would have his chance soon. He could feel it.
Steve circled a tall coral tower that broke the surface, forming one tooth in a ridge of jagged dentures above the waterline. Jack followed, breathing through his mouthpiece, aware of the slight tightness in his chest and diaphragm exerted by hydrostatic pressure even here, one foot below the surface.
Below, a moon jelly lazily passed over an alien landscape strewn with greenish brain-coral boulders and staghorn coral trees, scaring grunts and sharpnose puffers out of its path. Battlements of coral fortresses flickered madly with the racing shadows of a school of silver pilchards, like a wild rush of warriors storming the walls.
Steve’s kicking slowed. He pivoted to face Jack and pointed down. Waited for Jack’s nod, then took a breath and dived.
Jack lingered on the surface a moment longer, inhaling and exhaling deeply—four breaths—five—reducing the carbon dioxide in his lungs to extend his time on the bottom.
He needed extra time, extra stamina. Because he was going to do it now. Four fathoms down, or deeper, he would strike.
One thrust of the knife, and Steve’s throat would open up, black blood curling upward like smoke. Even if the wound wasn’t fatal, Steve’s ensuing panic and disorientation would kill him. He would never make his way to the surface in time.
Jack inhaled once more and held his breath. Body arrowed downward, legs briefly thrust into the air, he pulled himself completely under the water with a power stroke, then let his arms trail at his sides as he kicked hard, driving himself lower.
He passed palaces and labyrinths of coral, spires and canyons, archways like stone rainbows, garishly varicolored. Hydrostatic pressure increased markedly in seconds. His sinuses closed up, and his ears hurt; he swallowed several times to equalize the pressure between his Eustachian tubes and the water outside his eardrums.
Steve dropped still lower. Jack struggled to close the gap between them. The damn fins were slowing him down. He was wearing Kirstie’s gear, and her flippers were small and flexible, designed for novices; they lacked the speed and maneuverability afforded by the rigid fins Steve wore.
At a depth of thirty feet lay a grove of gently waving gorgonians, a miniature forest of bright yellow branches, threaded with the sleek, nimble forms of half a dozen bluehead wrasses. Steve perched on a coral ledge and examined the sea fans in the strong sunlight that filtered through the crystalline water like a luminescent mist. The blueheads scattered, seeds flung by an anxious hand, melting into shadows.
Jack alighted on the ledge also. Steve glanced at him, pointed to the gorgonians in lazy slow motion, then returned his gaze to the coral colonies, intrigued by their vivid colors, their languid undulating dance.
Steve himself would be dancing soon. A frenetic tarantella of muscle spasms and thrashing limbs.
Jack reached for the knife. Took a step closer ...
Abruptly Steve turned. Tapped his throat once. Ascended, swimming swiftly toward the glitter of refracted light on the surface.
He needed to take a breath. Damn.
Jack felt a faint burning sensation in his own lungs. He rose also. His ears gurgled as the pressure eased. His sinuses opened again, and the dull pain above and below his eyes faded.
He broke water a few yards from Steve, removed his mouthpiece, and gulped air. The motorboat lay fifty feet away, wheeling slowly, tracing a large circle with the anchor line as its radius.
“Had enough?” Steve asked, treading water. His oversize mask, large enough to accommodate his eyeglasses, looked vaguely comical, an adult’s gear worn by a child.
Jack considered his reply. He could try to prolong the dive, hope for a second chance, but he didn’t think he’d get it.
The boat, then. He would have to do it on the boat.
“Yeah, I’m pretty beat,” he said, putting exhaustion in his voice. “Guess I’m not used to this Jacques Cousteau stuff anymore.”
“You’re not the only one.” Steve’s fatigue sounded genuine. He was out of shape; Jack could see that. No def
inition to the abdominal muscles. Flabby pecs. Bony shoulders.
He’d gone soft. Easy prey.
Jack replaced his mouthpiece, cleared his snorkel tube with a snort, and swam back to the motorboat. Before boarding, he and Steve removed fins, snorkels, and masks and put them inside the boat. Together they climbed over the gunwale.
Steve sat cross-legged in the stern. “Might as well stow your gear.”
Jack, squatting in the bow, handed over his equipment one item at a time. Steve put it in the vinyl case at his feet, then began packing his own gear, head lowered, the sunburnt nape of his neck exposed.
Jack felt his heart speed up. Felt the familiar tension in his body, the song of rushing blood in his ears, the electric tingle in his fingertips.
He could reach Steve in a single step. Lunge forward, plant the deadly blade between his shoulders.
The muscles of his calves and thighs tensed, coiled springs wound tighter, ever tighter. He knew how the lioness feels as she hunkers down on the windswept veldt, scenting antelope at a water hole. Like her, he was a predatory animal, preparing to pounce and claw.
His hand slipped under the waistband of his swimsuit and withdrew the knife. Slowly he extracted the spear blade. It gleamed like a viper’s fang.
Steve, preoccupied with stuffing his flippers into the crowded case, still had not looked up.
Jack pursed his lips. A last twitch of irresolution stirred in him, a final tick of conscience. He hardened himself against it.
This was for survival. And survival justified ... anything.
Do it.
Goddammit, do it now.
He sprang upright. The boat rocked. A lurching step carried him forward, the knife poised to descend in a looping thrust, and with shocking abruptness Steve recoiled, his hands clearing the bag, left hand empty, the right gripping something small and shiny and blue-black.
A gun.
Jack froze, holding the knife awkwardly at chest height, the blade aimed downward, pointing like an arrow at the hull.
Steve lifted the pistol a little higher. The muzzle was a small black hole, an unwinking eye, staring coolly up at Jack from three feet away. Steve’s own eyes, gray and darkly thoughtful, hazy behind the sunstruck lenses of his glasses, did the same.
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