Uncharted (44 page)
He stared in disbelief as she walked to the spot where the sloping stone forehead jutted over the rocks at the entrance to the cave.
“Karyn!”
Other voices babbled behind him; the rest of the group had caught on. Lisa was sobbing dry tears; Susan clutched Mark’s arm. Mark stepped forward, trying to take control, but even his booming commands couldn’t break Karyn’s concentration.
“Honey,” Kevin called, hoping the endearment would spark something in her memory. “Sweetheart, please! Look at me!”
His former best friend, lover, and wife didn’t answer as she squared her shoulders and leaned into empty space.
When she broke free of gravity and flew, Karyn’s first feeling was relief—pure, unbounded, and complete. She was once again onstage before a gasping audience, dancing through space to the music of a crashing sea and billowing clouds. When she extended her arms for a climactic bow, she found herself drifting in an ocean of white fog.
“What is this?” she asked, oddly amused by the unexpected development. Her voice emerged as the muffled croak of a woman speaking into cotton.
She lifted her gaze and saw a railing in the distance, the flower-bedecked balcony of a grand palace. A figure stood beside the railing, the familiar form of a tall and lanky man. He was talking to someone she couldn’t see.
“John?” She worried that she lacked the strength to force sound across the distance.
Yet the man turned and looked her way. Desperate to see him better, she grasped at the fog, but it dissolved in her hands.
By some unknown magic, the balcony glided toward her with the silent ease of a float in the Rose Parade. Karyn’s heart sang with delight when she recognized John Watson and the captain’s son, Michael Weza.
Beyond them, seated at some sort of table in a banquet hall, was David Payne. He was laughing with Captain Weza and other people Karyn had never met.
“John?”
Though her dry throat was barely able to produce sound, he heard. “Karyn!” He stepped closer to the balcony railing, his dark brown eyes softening. A shade of sadness entered his features. “I’m so sorry you’re not with us.”
So am I
, she wanted to say, but she had no time; she could sense inevitability rushing toward her. “John, help us! That’s David behind you, right? Send him to us, please, and tell him to bring water. We’re suffering. We’re trapped, and we’re in anguish.”
Tenderness and resignation mingled on his face. “David can’t go.”
“Why not? He visited me the night—”
“That was a
dream
, Karyn, not a visitation. The Lord thought you might pay attention if he cloaked his warning in a familiar image.”
She wavered, trying to comprehend what she was hearing. “If David can’t come, send the boy, will you? He can’t be so important that he’d be missed for a few minutes.”
“Karyn.” John looked at her, a veil of sympathy over his dignified features. “You had everything you could ever want in life, while Michael Weza had nothing but his faith. Now he is here, and you are there. We can’t get to you, and you can’t come to us.”
Karyn closed her eyes, unable to bear the sight of others feasting and laughing. “John . . . why does it have to be this way? I know I was no saint, but I don’t deserve to be here.”
Her question was followed by that awkward silence in which difficult words were sought and carefully stitched together. “How ironic, because none of
us
deserves to be
here
.” John spoke in the familiar rumble that was at once powerful and gentle. “We weren’t invited to the banquet because of any goodness in us. We’re here because we honored the Lord’s gift. I explained all of this in my book.”
Would he
ever
stop talking about his stupid book? She’d read it, she’d sold it—
“Perhaps,” John said, apparently intuiting her thoughts, “you never trusted it.” He answered with only a slight hesitation, but the tightening of the muscles in his neck betrayed his emotion.
So it was over. One life, begun and finished. Dozens of opportunities wasted. Eternity stretching in all directions, an endless future of the same frustrations, the same suffering, the same appalling companions . . .
Disappointment struck her like a blow in the stomach. “Please, John.” Her words came out hoarse, forced through a tight throat. “If you can’t come here, can you send someone to Sarah?”
“I don’t have that authority.”
“Please, please, don’t you understand? I love her. I wasn’t always a good mother, but I don’t want her to end up in this place.”
John’s face went deadly pale except for two red patches, one glowing in each cheek. “Surely there’s someone in her life who understands the story. And she has the book, doesn’t she? You must have left a copy lying around the house.”
Karyn swallowed hard as the truth stung. Her New York apartment overflowed with
stuff
—two closets were jammed with clothing, a gourmet kitchen held every conceivable gadget, her master bath contained every high-priced beauty product on the market; her library included every best seller in the last ten years
and
a valuable collection of autographed first editions. A copy of John’s book had to be standing on some shelf, but what were the odds Sarah would find it among so many useless volumes?
Cold, clear reality swept over her in a terrible wave. The trash heaped on this island wasn’t anonymous litter. The playbill on the beach hadn’t come from Kevin’s suitcase; Susan’s gold pageant dress was no coincidence. The twisted bumper hadn’t come from a car
like
Kevin’s; it had come from Kevin’s infamous Chevy.
The detritus of their lives had been cast up on this shore, and items that had once seemed important had been revealed for what they were—garbage.
“John.” Her voice broke. “Let me go to Sarah, just for a moment. Let me warn her about this place. If I can see her one more time, she’ll believe what I say—”
“We are forbidden to cross over.” John bent his head in what looked like heartfelt sympathy. “Sarah
will
hear the truth, but she must choose to honor it. That will be her decision, not yours.”
“But, John—” Karyn’s eyes blurred as the dense mist between their two worlds rose, blocking the festive gathering from view. With a sob, she buried her face in her hands and submitted to the onrushing darkness.
In the hollow of Kevin’s back, a single drop of sweat—probably all the moisture his body still retained—traced the course of his spine. Karyn’s body lay a few feet away, broken on the black rocks at the mouth of the cave. Her open eyes stared at nothing; her parted lips made no sound. A trail of blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
He looked away as his heart began to pound almost painfully in his chest. Even in their most heated arguments, he had never wanted her dead. Some part of him would always love her. She was the keeper of his secrets, the mother of his daughter, his best friend for more years than anyone on earth. She’d given him a home, a gift he never appreciated until he lost it—
His stubbornness had destroyed that home, and now he’d never be able to repair the damage.
“Oh no.” Lisa clutched her stomach. “I didn’t think she’d really do it.”
Mark eyed the body with an almost clinical detachment. “Not the way
I’d
choose to prove my point.” He dropped a burly paw on Kevin’s shoulder. “If it’s any comfort, she probably didn’t feel a thing. Looked like her neck broke on impact, and her skull . . . well, it’s probably busted in about a dozen places.”
Kevin looked away as his anguish peaked to shatter the last shred of his self-control. Already he heard the sound of retching from behind the boulders—Susan was vomiting up the contents of a hollow stomach.
He clung to a rock as the world swayed around him. Lisa put out a hand to steady him, but she turned her back to the sight on the rocks.
Mark raked a hand through his hair. “We ought to bury her—or at least burn the body. Unless—” He squinted and met Kevin’s gaze. “I hate to bring this up.”
Kevin blinked at him. “What?”
“Food, Kev. We need to think about food.”
For a moment Mark’s words pushed and jostled and competed for space, then they fell into order. “Are you
crazy
?” Kevin shuddered as a spasm of hatred and disgust rose from his core. “You think I’d eat my
wife
?”
“She’s not your wife anymore,” Mark said, his voice as cool as an undertaker at a hanging, “and the human body is nearly 60 percent water. The lungs are 90 percent and the brain 70—”
Kevin’s jaws clamped together as he pulled back his fist and socked Mark’s right eye. The punch turned Mark’s head, but the brute didn’t fall.
Instead, Mark slammed the heel of his hand against Kevin’s temple, sending a veil of darkness across the backs of Kevin’s eyes; then he clubbed the knife-edge of his palm across the nape of Kevin’s neck.
Kevin bent, his head erupting in blinding pain; but before Mark could regain his balance, Kevin charged forward, ramming a shoulder into Mark’s midsection. The heavier man fell on the rocks, several of his ribs crackling like dry twigs as they snapped. The side of his skull smacked one of the rocks with a sound like a melon falling on tile, then the sour breath from his lungs wheezed out of his throat.
Kevin staggered back, one hand rising to his brow as he stared at his fallen adversary. Good grief, had he killed the man?
No such luck. Mark groaned and blinked, then he pushed himself up and stood in the surf. Kevin was sure Mark would attack again, but the man wavered on his feet, blood from a cut above his brow painting his face into a crimson devil mask.
After a long moment, he placed a protective hand over his rib cage and studied Kevin with eyes that had gone hard and flat. “I don’t think you should do that again.” His nostrils flared with fury as his words hung in the air. “You’d live to regret it, but not long.”
Kevin held his ground. “You’ll touch Karyn over my dead body.”
“Use your brain, Kev. Her body may be the thing that gets us through this ordeal. We need food and water, and we need them now. K was crazy enough to sacrifice herself, so maybe she meant for us to make the best of the situation.”
“No way.”
“Remember the Donner party? Those people would have died if they hadn’t—”
“She’s my wife, the mother of my daughter. You are not going to touch her body.”
Mark’s eyes flashed. “I don’t think we can afford to be sentimental right now. You can keep your warm fuzzy feelings, but we need—”
A keening moan halted the flow of Mark’s words. Kevin turned toward the rocks in time to see Karyn’s fingers flutter. “K?”
In a clumsy ballet he splashed to her side. Her eyes had closed, and beneath the paper-thin lids he saw movement. An artery at her neck pulsed with life as color returned to her lips.
“Karyn!” He pulled her into his arms and clasped her hand tight against his cheek, then turned his face into her palm as he struggled to control his swirling emotions. “Thank God, you’re all right.”
Behind him, a faint shadow loomed. “God has nothing to do with us,” Lisa said, her voice flat. “Don’t you get it? K is right about everything. She was dead—she
is
dead. We’re all dead.”
“No.” He wiped the trail of blood from Karyn’s mouth, then clutched her more fiercely. “She wasn’t hurt as badly as we thought, that’s all.”
“It’s what K was trying to prove.” Lisa waded into the shallows and brushed his shoulder with her fingers. “I don’t know where we are, but we’re no longer among the living.”
Kevin refused to answer, then Karyn’s hand rose to press against his chest. He loosened his grip and lifted his head to study her face.
She moistened her lips, then looked at him with a faint shimmer in her eyes. “Lisa’s right.” Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “I saw John and David.”
“She’s wacko, man.” Mark swiped at a fleck of saliva at the corner of his mouth. “Brain damage, I’ll bet.”
When Kevin ignored him, Karyn thanked him with the smallest crinkling of her eyes. “I looked over into the place where they are and begged them to send someone to warn Sarah. I don’t want her coming here.”
He stroked her hair. “She’s not coming here. We’re going home to her.”
“No, we’re not; it’s over for us. But I don’t want her to suffer like this.”
Kevin closed his eyes and struggled to slip through her remarks untouched, but Karyn had no reason to lie to him now.
He buried his head on her shoulder and wept.
