by kps
He sat up, watching her, and she stretched again, provocatively. "Well? What shall we do now? Put on our clothes and our polite faces and go back to the others, or . . ."
Out of habit, her eyes ran up and down the beach to make sure they were alone.
Unbroken stretch of sand, marked only by the waves, except for . . . she cried out with sudden alarm and rage, "Look, Webb! There are footprints! They come up right here . . ."
And then they both heard the sound. A scream-a woman's scream, echoing hollowly.
Followed by another, and another.
"Christ!" Webb swore. There were more precarious steps, leading down from the deck onto the beach, but he seemed to uncoil his body from its semiprone position as swiftly as a leopard, poised for an instant before he sprang from the edge of the deck onto the crisp sand below. He was already running when, after a moment's hesitation, Ria followed him. Before she had left Cuba she had been trained in guerrilla fighting, and her body was lithe and firm-muscled. Her hesitation had only been to snatch up the gun she always carried with her. It had a silencer fitted, and she knew how to use it.
It was too late to blame herself for having given in to hysteria; too late already when she pressed both hands over her mouth-as much to stop herself from gagging as to cut off her own involuntary screams. Anne knew it when she saw the shadow. She scrambled to her feet and tried to run, but again it was just as if she were living out one of her nightmares. The damp sand sucked at her shoes, and he caught her and spun her around all too easily.
"What the hell were you doing, spying .. ." He sounded out of breath and furious at the same time. She managed to wrench one arm free, scrabbling in her purse for the gun in a last-ditch attempt at self-preservation. She couldn't see his face, since his back was to the crimson sunlight, but she knew that he was still naked, fresh from lying with that woman. Hate combined with primitive terror, making her keep on struggling; fighting against his cruel grip on her wrist, beating and kicking at him; biting his arm and tasting salt blood in her mouth, until swearing, he twisted her around and the purse dropped from her shoulder with everything spilling out of it. He held her against his body now, with both arms twisted up behind her back. The pain became unbearable and she opened her mouth to scream, only to feel his hand clamp over her mouth.
The sun shone in her eyes, almost blinding her through the glaze of tears, and Anna-Maria was only an outline as she drawled, "It's a good thing you've got the bitch under control, mi querido. Otherwise I'd have enjoyed shooting her. And maybe that's what we ought to do-she knows too much to let her go. We can leave her here with her dead lover, and let the crabs and the ocean take care of her."
"You're far too blood-thirsty, my love. And not too practical. Don't you think we ought to find out just who knows she came out here-first?"
Anne began to kick backwards and struggle again until she felt he would break her arms; and then she sagged against him, feeling his body against hers in a travesty of what had been between them before. The tears had begun to stream down her face now, and she was ashamed of the display of weakness.
"But she's here, and she heard us talk-we can't let her go back and tell them! We could kill her now and stuff her body back in one of those little caves-where the tide last night brought his body. See where it has become wedged in?" Anna-Maria's voice was quite normal, even casual. She might have been talking of what to do with the dirty laundry.
"The difference between a professional and an amateur lies in covering all the possibilities before you act," Webb said coldly. He still held her fast, although by now he must have sensed she was incapable of any more fight. "I'm not having anything pinned on me. So we find a safe place to stash her away until we find out if she was sent here to spy on us or came on her own-and who she told."
"What difference does it make? And where would we put her? I think it's a waste of time." Anna-Maria sounded sullen. There was vicious hatred in the look she directed at Anne. But at the same time, she had been trained to follow orders, and Webb seemed to have taken charge. As long as he was being practical, and not soft ...
Anne heard them arguing back and forth over her head, and it seemed unreal to hear herself discussed as if she weren't there.
"Ask her-ask her who knows she came out here. If she tries to scream again, I'll fix her. And if she's reluctant to talk, I know how to make her-her kind is always soft, I can tell she's not used to pain or to rough treatment."
"Shut up, Ria! We haven't got time for that. We should be getting back and establishing an alibi for ourselves. You can restrain yourself for a little while.
Afterwards ..."
The way he let his words trail off was both a threat and a promise, and Anne felt a trickle of ice run down her spine. There was death in the gun Anna-Maria carried, still pointed at her. Death and betrayal in the way Webb held her.
In the end it was he who came up with a solution. "The boat. It has a canvas cover.
And it's hardly likely anyone would think of looking there. In any case, the tide's already starting to come back in, and it'll wash away all the footprints on the beach. If we can make it seem like she was scared and decided to run away .. ."
Anna-Maria's smile wasn't really a smile at all. A cruel curving of her lips that showed her strong white teeth. "How very clever of you, darling! Yes, that's it. And I can tell we are going to work very well together."
Craig Hyatt had spent most of the afternoon watching video-tapes. He knew that the monitoring system had broken down during last night's storm; but they had a couple of pretty good Sony machines that operated with any television set. Harris Phelps was downstairs with Yves Pleydel, trying to calm everyone down, and it was Sal Espinoza who was obliging enough to bring up a selection of tapes from the vault.
"While everyone else is busy, you might want to catch up on the action you've been missing," he said with one of his lazy smiles.
Tactfully, then, he had left Craig alone. And with reason. Apart from certain other episodes, they were mostly of Anne. Not the passive, cold creature he remembered from the days of their marriage. The woman he watched seemed to be a different being altogether-a wildly passionate, sensual female who gave as much as she took.
Who seemed to have lost all modesty and reserve. He watched her with the Egyptian, Karim, hardly able to believe it was the same shy, inhibited girl he had married and taken as a virgin-tried to arouse. She seemed drugged with passion ...
And then he watched her with Webb Carnahan, volume turned up, perversely. So that was how she could be-how she needed to be treated. Like a whore ... His palms were sweating, and he felt an ache in his groin. So that was how he should have treated her, instead of trying to be patient and tender. She'd leaned against him, unresisting, when he'd offered to take her away. An act, or genuine?
Find out, his senses told him. Find out! Down one floor and down a short corridor.
This big mausoleum of a house reminded him of an old hotel he'd once stayed in.
Why did some people choose to build mansions to live in? And now all this belonged to Anne-through the generosity of Harris Phelps, who had made sure his room adjoined hers ... Phelps hadn't seemed to mind his turning up. Maybe they had one of those modem arrangements that were so fashionable in some international circles.
Craig Hyatt was a practical man who prided himself on his clear thinking, but he couldn't help the surge of purely primitive rage that swept through him for a moment.
Damn Anne for a conniving, false-faced bitch! Obviously, she had learned to let go.
Why couldn't she have done it with him?
He met Harris coming out of Anne's room, his face wearing a look of concern. Before Craig could speak, Harris said, "Hyatt, have you seen Anne? She told me she was going to rest, but she's gone from the room-and the gun I gave her is gone, too."
They had tied her up and gagged her and left her to suffocate-if she didn't die of a chill first. Anne heard herself moan with sheer terror, and the sou
nd was muffled and hollow. She was lying uncomfortably on her back on the bottom of the small motorboat; the canvas cover was drawn tautly back into place so that it cut off the light and most of the air her lungs craved.
"Sorry, baby," Webb had murmured, leaning over her as he made sure the knots were tied fast. "But all's fair in love ... you should have remembered what I told you last night."
Over his voice she'd heard Anna-Maria's jeering laugh. "All's fair in love and war, yes? And I am not sorry. I would like to see you suffer a little before you die-it will give you something to think about until we return for you."
The wind was blowing harder. She wanted to struggle and thrash about as she had when they had dragged and pushed her back out of the cave and up the steps to the deck. Anna-Maria had emptied out her purse; she had laughed contemptuously when she found the gun.
"So you had a little gun, huh? And you were afraid to use it, or too slow ... it doesn't matter now."
If she struggled, the boat might go over the edge ... the tide had started to come in already; Anne thought the roar of the waves was growing louder-and the sound of water sucking greedily around the wooden pilings that supported the deck.
It was hard to keep from panicking. She had told Jean Benedict not to tell ...
everyone would be looking for her and no one would know until it was too late.
Sometime during the night one of them or both of them would come and lower the boat over the edge. Or perhaps they'd take her out with weights attached to her body and let her sink. So simple. She couldn't come back then, like Karim ...
What made this worse than the Dream was knowing she wouldn't wake up-knowing that of all the ways in which he could have killed her, Webb, who knew of her hidden terror, had chosen this way.
"Sometimes she can be a headstrong, disobedient little brat!" From somewhere hidden in the deepest recesses of her memory, she heard her mother's petulant voice. "Look at the way she keeps spying on me!"
She had been spanked and sent to bed; the threat of being sent back to Deepwood by herself if she didn't learn to behave had made her cry herself to sleep. "Don't forget to say your prayers, Anne." Her grandmother's voice had always been gentle, even when she was reproving her.
"Now I lay me down to sleep." That one had always scared her, with its ominous suggestion "
... and if I die before I wake." She didn't-couldn't-remember any other prayers she'd learned by rote so long ago. She was going to die-oh God, why hadn't he made it quick? Why hadn't he let Ria shoot her? She didn't want life to end like this-dying in slow stages by anticipation before the final end.
A fresh paroxysm of primitive, hysterical terror took hold of her as she fought the gag in her mouth, trying to scream, scared by the sounds that came from her own throat.
She struggled, after all, and felt the boat rock slightly. Or was it the rising wind that had done it? Breathing became difficult when she started to sob.
She mustn't, she mustn't! She might drown in her own tears. If she didn't give in, if she tried to think-people had escaped from worse predicaments. Think of all the books she'd read, the movies she'd watched. Wasn't survival the primal instinct?
Anne forced herself to lie very still, concentrating just on that much, until the rising tide of hysteria had ebbed somewhat. She had reached the point when she had nothing left to lose-except I her life. And she was still alive, they had left her here alone; she had a little time, at least. Concentrate! she told herself fiercely. Don't give in, don't give them that satisfaction.
She tested the knots that bound her wrists and ankles, and found them surprisingly loose. Her circulation hadn't been cut off yet, and the rope that had been lying on the bottom of the boat was old. Her wrists had been tied behind her back. If she could bring her ankles up to where her fingers could reach for those knots-it was worth a try at least. There was no convenient broken glass lying around, no old rusty knife she could use to saw through the rope. Just her fingers, before they became too chilled to use.
"Has anybody seen Anne?" Harris Phelps made the question sound casual. Yves Pleydel and the cameramen were still outside taking background shots of the unusual color effects the smoke from the fire had produced in the sky. Yves had let himself get too caught up in the goddamned movie itself, leaving "those other details"
to Harris and Espinoza, since Randall had taken off. He had grumbled at the fact that no one was around when he needed them-meaning Anne, of course, and Webb Carnahan, who turned up belatedly with Anna-Maria, of all people, holding hands and acting for all the world as if they were on vacation-or a second honeymoon.
No one had noticed or remembered seeing Anne Mallory at all during the day. They'd all been too occupied with their own affairs-making up their minds if earning double pay plus a bonus was incentive enough to keep them here with a fire raging a few miles away. But by now most of them had realized there was no danger as long as they stayed on the island, and it had begun to seem like an adventure. After all, the winds were blowing the other way, and it wasn't as if they were actually marooned.
"I can't understand where she would have gone!" Harris said. His fingers brushed nervously at his mustache.
Espinoza shrugged. "Women! Who knows? Perhaps she felt in the mood to take a solitary walk. To think. Perhaps she wanted to escape from her ex-husband?"
"Where would she escape to? None of the cars is missing- I checked. Palumbo hasn't seen her either. It's starting to get dark, and if she isn't back ..."
"You are both looking so grim!" Anna-Maria sauntered up. She had left Webb arguing with Yves Pleydel, who was furious because neither Webb nor Anne had been available when he needed them.
"What do you think-that you are being paid to be on vacation?" His accent became very pronounced when he was angry. But Webb could handle him, and she could find out from Sal if little Anne had told anyone she was going down to the beach.
Then ...
"But of course she'll be back," Espinoza was saying..
He looked relieved to see her. "Where have you been? Have you seen Anne?"
She looked sunburned-and sated. He found himself wondering exactly what had been going on between her and Webb Carnahan since he'd last spoken to them both.
"We've been sunbathing on the beach. And we didn't see anyone. Why do you ask?
Isn't she in her room?"
"No!" Harris Phelps looked annoyed. "And it's not like Anne to just wander off on her own without a word .. ."
"Perhaps she went off with this Mr. Hyatt-her husband, yes?"
"Hyatt's as anxious as I am." Harris's voice sounded stiff.
It was left to Sal Espinoza to interpose smoothly, with a warning look at Anna-Maria,
"He's on the radio right now, is he not?" He gave a shrug as he explained to her, "Our telephones no longer work-the fire, of course."
At that moment Craig Hyatt came outside, looking harried. In a gesture quite uncharacteristic of him he raked his fingers through his hair.
"I'm not sure what the hell's up. But apparently the coast guard and the navy have been called in to help fight the fire, along with personnel from Fort Ord. They say they might need to billet some of their people here-it's a convenient spot -I'm quoting the coast guard commander now-and they've learned you have a helicopter pad here ..."
He let his words trail off, looking from one suddenly still face to another. He said distractedly, "Hell! I don't know if it means something or not-any more than you do. It could be Reardon's Medici hand at work, or it might not be. As far as I know he's sitting tight until he gets more feedback. But ..." And then quite abruptly he cut his speech short when he asked, looking directly at Harris, "Has Anne turned up yet?"
Chapter Forty-six
THE MOON CAME UP EARLY-an orange lantern hanging in a smoky sky. Very few people on the island noticed it. Harris Phelps was giving a lavish party for the cast and crew of Greed for Glory-an extra fringe benefit for staying on. Very few noticed that Harris himself wasn't pre
sent. The food was great and there was unlimited booze-who cared?
Yves Pleydel stood off to one comer, nibbling on a fingernail. The music had been turned up too loud-it blasted his ears. Sourly he watched Sal Espinoza, who positively oozed Latin charm this evening, playing surrogate host. He wished Espinoza would take his ex-wife Claudia off his hands. And he wished most of all that he hadn't become so carried away with the idea of finishing up the scenes that had to be done here that he'd persuaded Harris to keep everybody on. They should have all left while the going was good, and scattered in their various directions. Now -
something was up. The coast guard and the military, tipped off by Reardon no doubt, might soon be crawling about everywhere, prying into things. He wondered angrily what Webb Carnahan had had to do with this latest move.
"Hey! I am still here; remember me?" Claudia pulled at his arm petulantly and Pleydel forced a smile. He almost felt sorry for the silly little bitch. In spite of too much makeup (why did so many Italian women insist on ringing their eyes with black?) she looked rather haggard. She had had a shock last night, and it had taken a clever combination of threats and bribery to keep her from pushing everyone else across the border into hysteria.
"Petite, how could I forget you?" She had never understood sarcasm, of course. It was one of her more fortunate traits. "And you have finished your drink. I'll get you another .. ."
She was already quite drunk. Another drink might make her pass out, and leave him free.
Claudia said with a pathetic attempt at dignity, "You do not have to treat me as if I am a child! I tell you that I saw what I saw! And I know a few things, too." She laughed at the look that crossed Pleydel's face. "Are you surprised? Do you think I am completely blind? In any case, Karim told me a few things -he asked me to come back to Egypt with him. Perhaps it was not him but the other person he struggled with who fell from the cliff-or perhaps he had to leave very quickly when he heard what has happened to his uncle."