Breach Of Promise

by Perri O’Shaughnessy

  Within a minute, they caught sight of the tiny cove that offered the only safe harbor for a boat.

  “We can’t get in, Genevieve,” Nina said. “See that?” She pointed to the twisted tree that marked the island’s most southern point. “I’m sure there are rocks jutting under the water there. The wind’s up too much. It’s just gotten too choppy.”

  “Just get in a little closer, Nina,” Genevieve said, practically hopping with impatience. “I’ll jump in and swim. I did it once already, you know.”

  Nina stared at her. “But the weather is really getting bad now, Genevieve. No, it’s not worth risking Matt’s boat.” She scanned the bay. “Where the hell is Paul?”

  Gusts of strong wind battered the little boat, and they rocked like kids on a wooden horse, holding on wherever they could.

  Mist had settled over the island and over the two women, and the constant drone of the motor had by now numbed Nina to the point where she could barely hear Genevieve, even when she shouted.

  “If you’re so nervous, let me take the boat in closer, Nina,” Genevieve said. As Nina’s nerves went, so their voices had risen. Genevieve grabbed the wheel, nudging Nina out of the way with a heavy swing of her hip. “I grew up with boats.”

  Nina, taken off guard by Genevieve’s vehemence but unable to decide how to bring order to this unbalanced state of affairs, stepped away from the wheel. “You’re going to sink us,” Nina said, watching as the boat moved wildly in, heading for rocks. “Watch out to the left! Ahhh…!”

  No more than ten feet away from the edge of the island, near where the yellow kayak had been pulled over the rocks and onto the sand, Genevieve slowed the engine to its lowest speed and turned to face Nina.

  “You calm down,” she said. She had to shout to be heard above a sudden gust of wind that now howled around them. “Everything’s going just fine.”

  Nina lunged for the wheel. Any control she had had long since jumped ship. “I’m getting us out of here.”

  Genevieve kept her hand clamped down. “No, you’re not. Don’t be such a chicken. Let’s stick to the plan. I’m going in.” She steered with one hand. “I’m going to freeze unless I’ve got something dry,” she said, and while Nina watched, she bundled a sweater with a towel and tossed them onto the sandy beach just beyond the edge of the cove. Her hair blew back from her face. She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and absolutely nothing else.

  “There’s one other thing,” Genevieve said.

  But Nina had a question first. “Genevieve?” she said, and for just a moment, the wind let up and she achieved a kind of passionate clarity of concentration. “Genevieve, where’s your hearing aid?”

  The rope had not been in the hatch under Winston at all. After conducting an intensive search, Paul located it bundled amid the life jackets, under the plastic cushions on the seats at the front of the boat.

  Feeling only a little foolish, he tied Winston’s slack hands in front of him. Then he tied his feet to one of the seats, tight enough so that he was satisfied Winston would go nowhere without his help. The big guy wasn’t playing possum. He was unconscious.

  Fleetingly reminded of his days as a cop, where taking prisoners was an ordinary event, and everyone was dangerous until proven otherwise, Paul reached for the starter. Where was the key? It didn’t take him long to remember how quick he had been to rush Genevieve off the boat. She must have had the key in her hand, or in a pocket.

  He would call for help, he thought, then moved on to the picture of his and Nina’s cell phones tucked neatly away in the glove compartment of his car.

  Cursing, he looked for a manual. Of course, rental boats had radios. But that would have been too easy. The radio sputtered, offered a short pessimistic weather report, and before Paul could figure out exactly how to dial out, died with a whimper.

  Well, if you could jump a car, he thought, a boat ought to be a snap. He hadn’t entirely wasted his years as a cop in San Francisco. He set about managing it.

  Within five minutes, they were on their way and just in time, too. The sky had darkened slightly. They should have gotten off the lake right away, he groused silently, wanting to kick the dormant and unconcerned-looking man at his feet, but too civilized to do it.

  He took it slowly, having expended all his vitality on the hurried trip out. The jolt he had felt on seeing Nina outside the restaurant had disturbed him, and it was taking him some time to recover. He had said good-bye, and there she was again to tantalize him and make him deal with his regrets.

  But it didn’t change anything except the cleanness of his departure. He would leave Monday, as planned. Seeing her once more was enough to convince him, if he had in fact harbored any doubts in the matter. He was putty in her hands, and the least threat to her cut through him like acid. They were too connected, and going nowhere fast.

  He gunned the motor slightly. He liked speed, but Winston would get batted around. Paul would get batted around, too, so he kept his speed modest. With just a minute to tie the kayak to the boat, they’d be back on land before dark without undue haste.

  They had a good ten minutes at a steady clip before they would reach the entrance to the bay. Within moments of their starting out, one of the ferries that plied these waters passed by, passengers waving merrily. Paul waved back. Left alone again, he tried singing, but in the windy dusk even the snappiest tune hung too long in the air, lingering like a dirge. He switched to whistling through his teeth.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” a thick voice came up from down around his feet. “ ’Dixie’? Please don’t tell me you’re whistling ’Dixie’?”

  Paul shut up.

  “Mind telling me,” Winston said very slowly, and although he was enunciating carefully, his words slurred, “what this rope’s all about? That in combination with your choice in music is…” There was a long pause while Winston shaped his uncooperative mouth around the cumbersome words, “unpleasantly suggestive.” He struggled to pull himself up. Paul reached over to help him to the seat beside him.

  “Well, good buddy,” began Paul, figuring there was no time like the present to clear the air. “You’ve got some explaining to do.” They had reached the narrow aisle of water between two jutting peninsulas that led into Emerald Bay. Paul maneuvered into the middle and headed in.

  “Without a jury out and needing my attention, I hear well enough,” said Genevieve. Apparently reluctant to discuss further her miraculously restored hearing, Genevieve, scrawny but muscular under her clothing, balled up a fist, and slammed Nina in the face.

  Nina fell down. Trying to catch herself on one of the seats, she put out a hand, but she was falling too hard. She heard more than felt her wrist crack. She tried to recall moves from her martial-arts courses, but her mind was filled by the growing darkness and Genevieve’s astonishing transformation from colleague to deadly foe. She jumped up as fast as she could, trying to regain some footing on the slippery deck, but Genevieve was ready for her. In a fast movement, all too spookily familiar, just like the night that had sent Rachel and Mike over the side of the Dixie Queen, she took hold of Nina’s ankles and lifted her over.

  “You should have let me knock you out,” she said, unaccountably holding tightly on to Nina’s ankles. “But it’s not that easy to do, you know. Damn. I knew I must have dropped that bug in Winston’s office when we knocked my purse over during one last, very memorable lunch. Too bad you found it before I did.”

  Nina’s face went straight into the icy blue. The shock… She bent her neck back to clear the water, pushing with all her might against the side of the boat with her good hand, trying to scramble her way back up into the boat, but she could feel the groaning of her backbone. Chunky waves rushed up to greet her, blurring her eyes and washing into her mouth and nose. “Genevieve, let go!” she said, spitting water.

  As Nina lurched and lunged, Genevieve’s grip on her ankles tightened. “If you had just arrived ten minutes later, given me time to drown Winston, you’d be cruising al
ong in the other boat with your boyfriend, having a grand time. Doesn’t that just stink? Shoot, Nina. I didn’t want to have to kill you. It’s just a total pisser.” Out of breath with her exertions, she proceeded to push Nina down deeper, until Nina thought her back would crack. She intended to drown her, Nina realized, numb with cold and already exhausted. Then Paul would find Genevieve alone, with some neat excuse about Nina’s disappearance. By the time Paul could check her story, Nina would be dead, her body gone to rest with the drowned sailor’s.

  “This is exactly what happens when you can’t plan in advance. Otherwise, I’d have made it easier on you,” Genevieve said in a feat of almost superhuman determination, shoving Nina down hard. Nina clung to the side, raising her head above the water, and when Genevieve realized she couldn’t just drown her by hanging her over the side, she tried lifting Nina’s limp body up and down against the boat to knock the fight out of her. Waves of unconsciousness swept over Nina. She was tiring fast…

  “Winston was so easy,” Genevieve continued, and it was so strange, the way she wanted to explain, as if she still considered Nina a friend, and stranger still that Nina had the sense left in her bruised skull to follow her words. “Not that I wanted to hurt him. I’ve had so much fun with Winston,” she said wistfully. “I just love that big guy. And he’s been great to me. But, unfortunately, once you found that bug, Winston posed an unacceptable threat. He loves champagne, and what the hell, it seemed fitting, so I spiked it. We drank a couple of toasts…”

  She was thoughtful. “Even that other guy died pretty quick. There was all that catered food in the hallway outside the clerk’s office, just waiting for a little Southern spice, a dose of peanut for his very special meal before it went into the jury room. His even had a vegetarian label on it. And there I was passing by with my comfort food, peanut butter sandwich in hand. It was made to order. Don’t you just hate picky people,” she said. “Don’t you just despise them?”

  “Weren’t you afraid you’d be seen?” Nina gasped.

  “I’d been in that hall a half dozen times during the trial avoiding the press or following that flirt Winston around. Nobody took any notice of me at all.”

  Nina was out of time. One more thump against the side would be the end of her. Catching Genevieve during a lifting motion, using both hands, even the one she now thought might be broken, howling with pain, she pushed off the boat straight into the lake. Genevieve, hunched over the side and caught by surprise by Nina’s choice of direction, lost her footing and tumbled into the water right behind Nina.

  Nina opened her eyes and saw that she was underwater, sinking like a stone into the black depths of Lake Tahoe. Maybe from the time she came up here the lake had been waiting to take her, as it had others in the past, that sailor, the victim in her first murder trial. She kicked hard against the suction, wondering how deep she was, wondering how long her stretched lungs would hold out before they spewed out air and replaced it with water. Exhausted, pierced by pain in one arm, with no idea how far she had to go, she began paddling frantically and struck something. A boulder. She followed it up and burst through the membrane between water and air. Although the boulder was completely submerged, she could stand on it and get at least part of her body out of the water.

  The wind hurt worse than the water. She had to get back to land, had to. The island was fewer than a hundred feet away. She should be able to swim that in a few minutes… Her body could not handle the searing cold. Goose bumps patterned like a relief map rose to different levels on every surface of her skin and she was shivering until her teeth rattled.

  Completely drained of energy, panting, she examined the cove for Genevieve, spotting her instantly on the sand nearly hidden behind a bush. Genevieve had gone for the kayak. She would take the boat and get away. Nina watched, impotent, sucking in great gulps of the thin cold air, as Genevieve bent over to untie the yellow kayak, dragged it to the water, and jumped in, pushing off with a paddle. Galvanized, Nina went after her.

  Swimming silently near the surface of the rough water, with one arm dragging at her side, trying to stay submerged, Nina came up along one side of the boat and heaved, using both arms, even the injured one, screaming to relieve the pain she felt. Genevieve went over. Without waiting for Genevieve’s next spontaneous act, Nina yanked her off the kayak. When they reached the surface simultaneously, she balled her fist up tightly, as Genevieve had, and walloped Genevieve on the chin as hard as she could.

  Genevieve’s eyes shut. She sank, but Nina took hold of her hair and hauled her back up. Nina had done it. A knockout punch, one that would have done Mike Markov proud…

  Nina tried to hold on to the kayak and use it as a float, but she couldn’t hold Genevieve and the kayak. For a long moment, she allowed herself to consider letting Genevieve go. She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t. With a groan of resignation, she let the boat float away.

  Kicking them both back to the island without using her hurt arm proved difficult but not impossible. By the time she dragged Genevieve up onto the rocks by the cove, both Matt’s boat and the yellow kayak were bobbing merrily hundreds of yards away, completely out of reach. She fell beside Genevieve on the sand, half dead from the cold, stretched out, and lapsed into a stupor of exhaustion.

  No more than a few moments passed before she forced herself to stir, telling herself to keep at least one eye open. But her caution came too late. A fine drizzle of rain falling from the sky was interrupted by the shadow standing over her wielding a long, sharp blade.

  Genevieve had found her picnic basket.

  37

  As evening approached the lake turned to a velvety midnight-blue. The necklace of mountains surrounding the bay, shadowy outlines, piled upon each other in layers of paling grays. The wind that often came up at the end of the day kept the waves busy, lapping noisily against the shores. Swinging rapidly into the bay, moving as cautiously as he could in the deepening darkness, Paul felt they were edging toward the end of the world, and at any moment might fall off.

  Winston’s moment of coherence had passed, and he had settled back down and begun to snore heavily, not a healthy kind of snoring, but Paul didn’t have time to worry about that.

  He angled toward the empty, floating speedboat, reached over, and snagged the trailing line. With a little difficulty, he tied it to drag safely behind. The lighter kayak was floating much farther out, away from the island. But he had a more pressing question. Where were the women?

  The question demanded an immediate answer. He headed for Fannette, figuring out that they must have gone back there for something Genevieve wanted. Maybe the boat had simply come loose. The kayak, too. Unwilling to imagine an alternate scenario, he let that straightforward explanation console him until he got to the cove.

  No sign of anyone.

  “The hell,” Winston said clearly. “What kind of champagne was that?” He tried to raise his tied hands to his head, and failed.

  Paul pulled away, and began to circle the island, starting around the southwestern tip.

  “Genny?” said Winston, head lolling, eyes nearly rolled back into his head. “I know you don’t really want to hurt me. Let’s talk, honey…”

  “Winston!” Paul commanded. “What are you talking about?”

  But the other man’s eyes closed, and his head lolled back.

  Popping up sudden as toast, Nina swung with her right arm, connecting with Genevieve’s wrist, but she didn’t go far. Genevieve took her down and sat on her.

  “Don’t do this!” Nina screamed. “I won’t press charges!”

  The strangeness of this statement was not lost on Genevieve, who half-chuckled as she pressed down with her weight, trying to still a crazed, wiggling Nina. “Jesus, Nina, you’re gonna go to your grave jabbering like a lawyer.” She had Nina pinned. She raised the knife, trying to jab it into Nina’s throat, but Nina took hold of her wrist, and using the force of Genevieve’s thrust turned the hand so that the knife faced away, but the wr
ist came into close contact with Nina’s teeth.

  “Ow!” Genevieve screeched, dropping the knife.

  Rolling away from her, Nina jumped and took off.

  “Now where are you gonna go?” she heard Genevieve saying behind her. “There’s nowhere to hide on this little bitty island.”

  Nina found the rock stairs that led up to the teahouse hidden by the brush nearby. Scraped and gouged by the thorny bushes, she ignored the lacerating of her feet and the sharp twinge of her weak ankle and moved at top speed up, up, up, thinking, where could she turn off, where could she get away, buy herself some time…

  “Nina?”

  The voice behind her was too near. Her fear at that moment equaled the terror she had felt at the sight of the knife, an icy hollowness, like she’d been invaded by ghosts and would freeze up and die from the inside out.

  “Let’s work this thing out, okay?” Genevieve panted. “You want your money, too, don’t you?”

  Because there seemed nowhere else to go, Nina ran all the way up the hill toward the teahouse, too frightened to think or even to worry about breathing. Once inside, choking back all fear, she ran over the stone floor to the open window on the northeastern tip at the highest point on the island, leaned out, took a deep breath, and screamed the highest, most piercing, shrieking, fearsome scream she could muster. “Help! Help! Help!” Three cries, like the three trips to the surface a drowning person has before dying. She knew Genevieve could hear.

  Down below, she spotted Matt’s boat. She jumped up and down, shouting and waving her arm.

  Paul waved back.

  “This hasn’t been easy for me, you know. I never knew things would get this bad,” Genevieve said, ducking through the low door and coming at her.

  Paul whirled around the northeast tip of Fannette, going for the cove, all worries about the kayak gone, determined to get onto that island if he had to swim there.