In the Dark (16 page)

David, wary, still hesitated.

“You had plenty of time to kill her,” Seymore said.

“You could have shot me,” David noted warily.

“You’d have shot back. But the point is…you dropped the speargun and went after Alex.”

“Of course I went after her! I love her.”

Seymore inhaled. “Listen to me, I didn’t kill anyone. I know you think it’s me, but I’m working with the FBI—”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Now you’re a G-man.”

“No, I’m a special consultant. I thought
you
were killing people—until two minutes ago.”

David found himself staring at the man. His basic reaction was to distrust him, but there was something about the man he believed. Maybe the fact that the Glock had been a guarantee, the speargun a maybe.

Seconds ticked by. Alex was in the care of a creature that could survive the darkness and the elements better than any man. But she was still out there somewhere. And the greatest likelihood was that the dolphin would bring her back to the lagoon. It wouldn’t take the animal long.

There was also the matter of the man lying on the beach just feet away from them, possibly dying.

“I’m not the killer,” Seymore said.

“And neither am I,” David said harshly. More seconds ticked by.

Gut reaction. Dane had told him to go by his gut reaction.

He let another fraction of time go by. Then he moved.

Ignoring Seymore, he got to his feet quickly and walked over to the prone body of Len Creighton. There was blood on the man’s temple, but he still had a pulse.

“He’s alive,” David said. Hunkered down, he tried to assess the man’s condition quickly. Concussion, almost certainly. Shock, probably.

If they left him there, he would certainly die in the next onslaught of the storm. But if he was burdened with the man, Alex could die before he got back to her.

David’s back was to Seymore. The man could have picked up the gun and shot him, but he hadn’t.

David turned back to him. “He’s got to be taken to shelter.”

Seymore picked up the gun, shoving it into his belt. He stared at David, but, like him, he knew that time was of the essence.

“Alex is out there,” John said.

“Yes.”

“She’ll trust you before she trusts me, though she doesn’t seem to have much faith in either of us at the moment,” he said at last. “Go after Alex. I’ll take Len.” Then, true to his word, he bent down, lifting the prone man as if he were no more than a baby.

David hoped to hell the guy was really on his side. As an enemy, he would be formidable.

Was he wrong? Was this all part of an act? Were they all supposed to die tonight, but on Seymore’s own terms? He might be leaving Len to face instant death.

There wasn’t time to weigh the veracity of John Seymore’s words.

“Cottage eight was Ally and Zach’s. It’s probably open,” David said.

“Meet me there,” John Seymore said briefly.

There was nothing left to do. David turned, scooped up the speargun, and started running back toward the Tiki Hut and the dolphin lagoons.

At first Alex had thought she had signed her own death warrant. It wasn’t that she didn’t know the power of the waves. She’d been out in bad weather before. She’d seen people flounder when the waves were only four feet. She couldn’t begin to imagine how high they were now, but desperation had driven her into the water.

Even with everything she knew, she still hadn’t imagined the battering she was going to take, the impossibility of actually swimming against the force of the sea.

She had thought she was going to die.

Then she had felt the smooth, slick, velvet sliding by her. Her mind had been too numbed at first to comprehend. The animal had made a second glide-by, and then she had known.

When Shania returned for her that time, she was ready, catching hold of the dorsal fin, just as she taught tourists to do on a daily basis.

She caught hold, though, and knew that she was doing it for her life. Still, despite her fear and panic and the waves and the desperation of the situation, she was awed. She had heard stories about dolphins performing amazing rescues. She worked with them on a daily basis, knew their intelligence and their affection.

And still…she was in awe. For a moment she wondered where the dolphin would go, and then she knew.

Safe haven.

The dolphin lagoon. Shania’s home, the place where she found shelter. Where she had gone when she had been sick and injured. Where she had been nursed back to health.

The dolphin moved with astounding speed. As they neared the submerged gates to the first lagoon, Alex was afraid that she would be crushed against the steel. Shania had more faith in her own abilities. She dove low with her human passenger and raced through the opening, and they emerged in the sheltered lagoon.

“Sweet girl, sweet girl, thank you!” Alex whispered fervently to the dolphin, easing her hold and stroking the creature. “I owe you so many fish. I won’t even slip vitamins into any of them,” she promised.

Soundlessly, Shania moved off. Alex swam hard to the platform, crawling out of the water, shaking.

She was cold, soaking wet, barefoot, and no better off than when she had begun.

The winds would whip up again, and she had not found shelter.

Out there, somewhere, were two armed men. David and John.

And then there was Jay…. Would he have left Len to die on the sand? Oh God, she’d forgotten in her panic. And Hank? Where had he gone?

Her heart felt as numb as her fingers. There was nowhere to go, and no one to trust.

What the hell to do now? She started to rise, but a sudden wind gust nearly knocked her over. The storm was on its way back.

She headed back around the lagoon, creeping low, her goal now the Tiki Hut. The bar was solid oak. If she wedged herself beneath it, with any luck she would survive the winds and get only a minimal lashing from the rain.

Another gust of wind came along, pushing her forward. She was going to have to wedge herself tightly in. She could and would survive the night, she promised herself.

But when morning came…what then?

David raced along the path, pausing only when he neared the lagoons, trying desperately to see in the darkness. The rain was becoming heavier; the wind had shifted fully and was now beginning to pick up speed.

Trying to utilize the remaining foliage for cover, he searched the area surrounding the lagoons, then the water. The darkness was deceptive, but he thought he saw dark heads bobbing now and then.

He had no idea which animal had come for Alex, how it had known she was in trouble, or where to find her. Dolphins had excellent vision; he knew they sometimes watched people from deep in the water. But how a dolphin had known where to look for Alex, he would never know.

Even though he couldn’t see Alex, he was certain the dolphin had brought her back to the lagoon. Unless something had happened along the way.

He wouldn’t accept such a possibility.

David sprinted around the lagoons to the platforms. He felt he was being watched. He searched the closest pool, then the farther one. At the second lagoon, one of
the dolphins let out a noise. He brought a finger to his lips. “Shh. Please.”

Assuming that John Seymore had told him the truth, and taking into consideration the fact that Len Creighton was definitely out, there were still two more men on the island, one of whom obviously posed a deadly threat. “Where did you bring Alex, girl?” he asked the dolphin. Intelligent eyes stared back at him, but the animal gave no indication of Alex’s direction in any way.

As he retraced the path back toward the resort, David thought he saw a movement in the Tiki Hut.

Alex?

He set the speargun down against the base of a palm, knowing that for the moment, he needed his hands free.

What if the person seeking shelter in the hut wasn’t Alex?

It had to be.

And if not…he had to take the chance anyway.

Slowly, crouching low, he started to move in that direction. He crept with all the silence he could manage and with the cover of a growing wind.

There she was, seeking shelter under the bar of the Tiki Hut. A good choice.

Still, he didn’t show himself. She would scream, run, perhaps make it to the lagoons, and with her animals certain she was in danger, they would protect her once again. They were powerful animals, and knew their power. They could be lethal, taking a man to the bottom of a pool, keeping him there.

He moved very, very slowly. Then froze.

There was a sound from the brush nearby.

A bullet exploded, the sound loud even against the howl of nature.

David made a dive, crashing down against Alex and clasping a hand over her mouth before she could scream.

She panicked, tried to fight him. “Shh, Alex, it’s me. You have to trust me,” he mouthed as her eyes, luminous and huge, met his. She remained as tense as a stretched rubber band, staring at him.

Then another shot sounded in the night. He felt her flinch, but he couldn’t release her mouth nor so much as shift his weight. If she drew attention to them now…

Forcing his weight hard against her, his hand still pressed against her mouth, David remained dead still. Listening. Waiting. It was so difficult to hear over the storm, to separate the natural moan, bend and rustle of the foliage from the sounds that were man-made.

He waited.

Then…yes. Someone was going off down one of the paths. He could hear the barely perceptible sound of receding footsteps.

He eased his hand off Alex’s mouth. She inhaled fiercely, staring at him with doubt and fury and fear.

“Please, Alex,” he begged. “Trust me.”

Her lashes fell. “Trust you?” she whispered. “What about John Seymore? Did you kill him?”

She sounded cold, almost as if she were asking a question that didn’t concern her.

“No.”

“So you’re not the killer? He’s not the killer?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t
think
so?” she said, her voice rising.

He clamped a hand over her mouth again. “Shh.”

She stared up at him with eyes of pure fire. He eased his hand away again. “Damn you, Alex, I love you. I’d die before I’d cause you any harm. Don’t you know that about me?”

Her lashes fell again. “Actually, it’s hard to know anything about you,” she said.

That was when the lightning flashed. Struck. The boom of thunder was instantaneous, as the top of the Tiki Hut burst into flames.

For split seconds, they were both stunned.

Then David made it to his feet, seizing her hand, dragging her up. “We’ve got to move!” he urged. With out waiting for her assent, he dragged her quickly through the debris of branches and foliage that now littered the floor.

They headed down the trail toward the cottages as the rain began to pelt them.

“Where are we going?” Alex gasped, pulling back. “Our cottages are the first place anyone would look.”

He didn’t answer; the night had grown so dark again that he was barely able to make his way through the trails. All his concentration was on finding their way.

“David?”

“Shh.”

He longed to pause, to listen.

He dared not.

Moments later, they reached the cottage where he had delivered Ally Conroy the night before. The door was closed, but when he set his hand on the knob and turned, David found it unlocked.

Then he paused at last.

Seymore could have been lying. The guy was military, experienced. He could kill them all off, one by
one. He would never be found. Before relief crews could make it to the island, he could head out, move Alicia Farr’s body once again, then disappear. He would know how to do that.

Gut instinct.

And no choice.

David opened the door.

A
lex blinked, colliding with David’s back as he entered the cottage, then stopped dead.

She peered past him.

The darkness was broken by the thin beam of a flashlight in the kitchen area of the cottage.

They heard the click of a trigger, and a face appeared in the pale light.

John Seymore.

For a moment his features were as macabre as the eeriest Halloween mask. And for a moment she and David were as frozen as ice.

John Seymore took his finger off the trigger, shoving the gun back into his belt. “Alex. You’re all right,” he breathed.

“Yes,” she said stiffly.

“Where’s Len?” David asked.

“I’ve got him on the floor in the kitchen. I cleaned the
wound. He’s got a concussion, I’m sure. There’s nothing else I can do for him now,” John said.

“He’s alive?” Alex breathed.

“Barely. His only chance is for us to get him across to medical care the minute we can,” John said.

Alex moved around from behind David, still wary as she passed John Seymore, heading for the kitchen.

Len was stretched out there. John had covered him with blankets from the beds and set his head on a pillow. She touched Len’s cheek and felt warmth. His pulse was weak but steady, his breathing faint, but even.

She sat back, leaning against the refrigerator, allowing herself the luxury of just sitting for a minute, appreciating the fact that she was alive.

Then her mind began to race. The wind was howling again. She could hear it rattling against the doors in the back. She winced, afraid they would give way, then reminded herself that they were guaranteed to withstand winds up to a hundred miles an hour.

She began to shiver, then started as a blanket fell around her. She looked up. David was standing there; then he hunkered down by her side. A minute later John Seymore sat down across from them, on Len’s other side.

“Who did this to him?” Alex demanded, looking from one man to the other.

David stared directly at John Seymore as he answered. “Either Jay Galway or Hank Adamson,” he said.

She shook her head. “Jay cared about Len too much.”

“Did he?” John asked dryly. “Jay is the manager here. If Alicia had ever shown up, he’d be the one to know it.
Especially if she wanted to arrive in secret. Jay could have met her on the beach and killed her.”

“No,” Alex said. “Jay’s hurt—I nearly tripped over him up at the main building, and then he—never mind. It had to be Hank.”

“A reporter? Without any special knowledge of boats or the sea?” David asked quietly.

She stared across Len’s still form at John Seymore. “So…you’re FBI but not exactly an agent?” There was wariness in her voice, and she knew it.

John sighed. “Look, if I hadn’t been so suspicious of David, I would have identified myself from the beginning. But I didn’t know who could be trusted. For all I knew, you were in on it somehow, Alex.”

“What I want to know,” David said, “is how the FBI became interested in Alicia Farr, and why?”

“The government always wants its cut,” John said simply. “Different agencies, at different times, had their eyes on Daniel Fuller. He liked to talk. According to his stories, the ship went down in American waters. No way was the government going to let a treasure hunter get to her secretly.”

“So…you followed Alicia?” David said.

John shook his head. “I’d been in Miami. We knew Daniel Fuller was dying, but he refused to see anyone but Alicia. I’m sorry she lost her life over this, but she was a fool. She didn’t exactly hide her visits. She was overheard calling Moon Bay. So I came to see what would happen when she arrived. My job was just to find out what she knew about the
Anne Marie.
But Alicia didn’t show up. You did, David. And Seth Granger, who talked way too much. And the reporter. Then Alex found the body on the beach.”

Alex felt David’s fingers curl around hers. She swallowed hard. There was something so instinctively protective in that hold.

For a moment, the gravity of their situation slipped away.

If John Seymore suddenly pulled out his gun, she knew David would throw himself between them. He
did
love her.

Maybe he had always loved her.

But the sea would always come first.

“How did you know Alex found a body on the beach?” David demanded sharply.

John shrugged. “I made a point of meeting up with Laurie Smith. She’s a very trusting individual. Too trusting, really. It was risky, telling Laurie the truth. But it also seemed important that she lie low, since someone might know she had been with Alex and seen the body.”

“Laurie is on the mainland, or at least the main island, if she didn’t head out of the Keys entirely,” Alex murmured. “So she knows. She knows everything that’s going on. It’s insane for someone to be trying to kill us all now. The authorities will know.”

David was staring at John again. “Maybe not so insane. Whoever killed Alicia also helped Seth Granger to his death. That means they didn’t care about financing. We’ve got someone on our hands who means to get to the wreckage of the
Anne Marie
, bring up the treasure without equipment or an exploratory party, then disappear.”

Alex looked from one man to another. “All right, for the sake of argument right now, David, you’ve decided it isn’t John, and, John, you’ve decided it isn’t David.
And it’s obviously not Len or Jay.” She frowned. “I told you, when I ran out of the storm room, I tripped over Jay.”

“He was dead?” David asked sharply.

Both men were staring at her.

She shook her head. “No,” she admitted. “He…he tried to grab me.”

Their silence told her that they both believed Jay was guilty.

“He was the one who insisted on going out,” David said to John.

“He’d know how to kill the generator,” John agreed.

“Wait!” Alex protested in defense of her boss. “He didn’t attack me. I was afraid, so I ran, but…but he could have been hurt,” she said guiltily, “and just trying to get me to help him.”

“Alex,” John said seriously, “you know that you’re the one the killer really wants. It was your name Daniel Fuller mentioned over and over again. Are you sure you don’t know why?”

She felt David’s tension, his fingers tightening around hers. She knew what he was thinking. If you actually know something, for God’s sake, keep quiet now!

He might have decided to trust John Seymore, but John’s question had set off sparks of suspicion in his mind once again.

So why did she trust David so implicitly? Maybe he had been so determined to save her because he, too, believed she knew something.

“I don’t have a clue. He never talked to me about the
Anne Marie
. Ever. He rambled on, told lots of stories about the sea, and he loved the dolphins. That’s all I
know,” she said. Her words rang with sincerity, as they should have. They were true.

“Well, hard to hide anything on a dolphin,” David said. He was staring at John Seymore. Sizing him up again?

“What do we do now?” she murmured.

As if in answer, the wind howled louder.

“Wait out the storm,” John said.

“You have a gun,” Alex said, pointing at John. “The doors lock. We can just wait until someone comes from the main island, until the sheriff gets here. Even if the killer comes after us, well…there are three of us, not counting Len, and one of him.”

“Or two,” David said grimly.

John cocked his head toward David. “You think Hank and Jay are in on this together?”

“I don’t think anything. I’m just trying to consider all the possibilities,” David said.

“Once the storm is over, we can’t really sit around waiting to be attacked, anyway,” John said.

“Why not?” Alex asked.

“Because,” David said, not looking at her but at John Seymore, “even if Nigel was the first one to show up after the storm, he could be shot and killed before he ever got to us. If only one man is behind this, it’s likely the other one is dead already. And we know the killer’s armed.”

“We need a plan,” John murmured.

“Whatever the plan, Alex stays here,” David said. “Locked in, when we go out.”

“Great. I’ll be a sitting duck,” Alex murmured.

“Locked in,” David repeated sternly.

“And what are you two going to do?” she demanded.
“This isn’t a big island, but there are all kinds of nooks and crannies where someone could hide. How are you going to find him—or them?”

“Well, we’ve got a few hours to figure it out,” John said grimly. “No one will be moving anywhere in this wind.”

Toward dawn, Alex actually drifted off, her head on David’s shoulder. He was loathe to move her, not just for the silky feel of her head against him, but for the trust she had displayed by allowing her eyes to close while she was next to him.

Trust, or exhaustion.

“It’s over,” John said.

Seymore hadn’t dozed off. Neither had David. They had stared at one another throughout the night. Now it was morning, and the storm was over.

They had their plan.

David roused Alex. “Hey,” he said softly.

She jerked awake, eyes wide.

“We’re going,” he told her. “Remember, you don’t open the door to anyone once we’ve gone. Not John, and not me.”

“I don’t like this,” she protested. “The sheriff could be far more prepared than either of you think. He’s not a bumpkin. You should both stay put, right where you are. That leaves us as three against one, remember?” She was pleading, she realized.

“You’ll be all right if you just stay locked in,” David said.

“I’m not worried about me, you idiot!” she lashed out. “I’m worried about the two of you. Going out as if you—”

“Alex, let us do this,” John said.

“Don’t forget, no one—
no one
—comes in,” David warned her sternly again. This was going to be difficult for Alex, he knew. She was accustomed to being the one in charge, accustomed to action.

And they were asking her to just sit tight.

“I’ve got it,” she said wearily. “I heard you. But I still don’t understand what the two of you are going to do.”

“We’re going back together for the speargun,” David said. “Then John is going to watch the trail, and I’m going to wait at your cottage.”

“You know, whoever this is could come here and we could ambush him. Or them,” she tried.

“Alex, he—or they—may never realize we came to this cottage,” David said. “In fact, we’re praying that he doesn’t.”

He got to his feet. John joined him. He reached a hand down to Alex, drawing her to her feet and against him. His voice was husky when he said, “No one.” He moved his fingers against her nape, sudden paralysis gripping his stomach.

Seymore looked away.

David kissed Alex. Briefly. But tenderly.

“Follow us to the door and bolt it immediately, don’t just lock it,” John told Alex. “If it’s Jay, he’s got a master key.”

“Bolts, on both doors,” David said. “Front and back.”

“Yes, immediately,” she said.

They stepped out cautiously.

The world seemed to be a sea of ripped-up palm fronds and foliage. Small trees were down all over.

“Close the door,” David told Alex.

Her beautiful, ever-changing, sea-colored blue-green
eyes touched his one last time. She went back in, and he heard the bolt slide into place behind them.

“This way for the speargun,” he told John Seymore.

The other man nodded grimly and followed his lead.

Alex’s diving watch was ticking.

Five minutes, ten minutes. Fifteen minutes.

By then she was pacing. Every second seemed an agony. Listening to the world beyond the cottage, she could at first hear nothing.

Then, every now and then, a trill.

Already, the birds were returning.

Her stomach growled so loudly that it made her jump. She felt guilty for feeling hunger when David and John were out there, in danger, and Len Creighton still lay unconscious on the kitchen floor.

With that thought, she returned to his side. He hadn’t moved; his condition hadn’t changed. She secured the blankets around him more tightly.

That was when she heard the shots.

She jumped a mile as she heard the glass of the rear sliding doors shatter.

Alex didn’t wait. She tore through the place, closing doors so that whoever was out there would be forced to look for her. Then she raced into the front bedroom, opened the window and forced out the screen, grateful they hadn’t boarded up the place. As she crawled out the window, she wondered if the shooter was Jay Galway or Hank Adamson.

Then it occurred to her that maybe they didn’t know the truth about John Seymore.

And he was the only one of them who she knew had a gun.

In the stillness of the morning, the bullets hitting the glass, one after another with determined precision, sounded like cannon shots.

David had been waiting by the door of Alex’s cottage. He’d left it ajar, standing just inside with the speargun at the ready as he watched the trail. No one would becoming through the back without his knowledge—he’d dragged all the furniture against it.

But at the sound of the gunshots, he started swearing. What if John Seymore was the shooter?

No, couldn’t be. Gut instinct.

Someone was shooting, though, and David felt ill as he left the cottage and raced dexterously over the ground that was deeply carpeted in debris.

What if his gut instinct had been wrong?

He’d left Alex at the mercy of a killer.

Heedless of being quiet, he raced toward Ally’s cottage, heading for the back door.

Instinct forced him to halt, using a tree as cover, when he first saw the shattered glass. He scanned the area, saw no one, heard no one.

Racing across the open space, the speargun at the ready, he reached the rear of the cottage.

He listened but still didn’t hear a thing.

The broken glass crunched beneath his feet, and he went still. Once again he heard nothing. Slowly, his finger itchy on the trigger, he made his way in and moved toward the kitchen.

There, lying under a pile of blankets, just as they had left him, was Len Creighton. Then, before he could even ascertain whether Len was still alive, David heard a noise, just a rustling, from the front bedroom.