“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I’m not. I’m damned glad you have it. And I’m definitely glad it was a gun. It seemed a very strange place to have such a body part,” she teased.
“I’ll show you body parts,” he whispered.
“Promises, promises…”
They quickly grew breathless and winced here and there, pressing their fingers to each other’s lips, smiling, laughing, making love just a bit awkwardly and with just a bit of difficulty and yet finding that the smiles, the whispered warnings and the laughter itself made the moment sweeter and more frantic, and even in hushed gasps the moment of climax incredible and shattering. Then they lay together, damp and breathing deeply, hearts thundering, interlocked, and strangely silent.
“You’re going out, aren’t you?” Vanessa whispered.
He nodded. “I just…I…I needed this time,” he said. He’d never realized that he didn’t know how to speak to a woman. Not true, speech had been easy. But he had never intended to become involved, never realized that he could feel that he needed to wake up with someone every morning. He let out a breath and turned to her and just let the words come. “I think I love you,” he said.
She smiled. “I think I love you, too.”
“I think…I think that when this is over you shouldn’t leave,” he said. “I think that we should both see where this thinking is going. I think the thinking could become certainty.”
She brushed her lips against his, and her eyes, so dark and beautiful a blue in the shadows, met his. “I think that I’ll be here,” she said softly.
He didn’t want to leave her; he had to. He knew that he was right, that even if the three of them guarding the place appeared to be overkill, it was necessary.
He rose, reaching for his clothes and dressing quickly in the cramped quarters. Vanessa slipped back into the flannel gown. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“But—”
“Get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day, and…well, you are distracting,” he told her.
“All right,” she said softly.
He unzipped the flap on the tent and slipped away.
Despite everything that had happened during the day—or perhaps because of it—Vanessa found herself falling into a deep sleep almost immediately after Sean left her.
For a while, even in sleep, she knew the comfort of the sweet rest.
Then she felt as if she was being touched.
She opened her eyes. It was dark in the tent, though the many torches set into the sand kept the area light enough. Strange patterns and shadows were dispersed between faint lights.
She must have still been sleeping. She could see a face. It wasn’t the face that had been on the figurehead, not that of Dona Isabella.
It was the face of the blonde woman, not as pretty, just a little worn. Kitty. Kitty Cutlass.
And her eyes were tinged with worry now.
She was dreaming again, of course.
“Come, come…come on. You must leave, please, hurry!” the woman warned her.
She had been sleeping so, so deeply….
She was still struggling to rise when she saw another face.
Zoe’s. Zoe was shaking her and half sobbing, very softly. “Vanessa, you have to come. Quickly.”
Vanessa sat up instantly. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Bill…he’s… Please, you can’t wake the others. You can’t let…you can’t let Lew see us. You have to come quickly. He knows something, and if you let out the alarm, Lew will come and kill him. Please, Vanessa, hurry! Be silent.”
Tears streamed down Zoe’s delicate cheeks. “All right, all right, Zoe. We have to get to Sean—”
“Yes, but after you see Bill. You’ll have to make Sean understand!”
She slipped quietly out of the tent with Zoe, her heart racing. Lew? She had trusted him! He had a family, little children…
She crept low, but they had barely gone a few steps before she heard Sean’s voice.
“Hey. What’s going on?” he asked.
Zoe stared at him without speaking.
“Sean,” she said softly. “You need to be quiet and not raise an alarm.”
“What’s going on?” Sean repeated.
“Zoe—”
“Zoe’s tired of waiting and being pushed around,” Zoe said flatly. Her voice was deep and coarse and dry, and not her at all.
Sean drew his gun but not quickly enough. Vanessa felt the steel prod of Zoe’s weapon at her back. “Set it down, Sean. Shooting Vanessa will be a piece of cake.”
“Zoe, what do you think you’ll accomplish?” Sean asked her.
“Satisfaction—and her rewards,” Zoe said.
“But you can’t get off this island alive,” Sean argued.
“Put your gun down, Sean. I’m good with weapons. This is a Magnum .45—Vanessa’s entire chest will burst out in your face, and it will be all your fault,” Zoe said.
“Shoot her, too, Sean,” Vanessa said. “She intends to kill me in the end anyway!”
They could both sense Zoe’s delicate finger on the trigger. Sean set his gun on the ground.
“Now step out of my way,” Zoe said. “Vanessa and I have a little business together.”
By then, the others had come running.
Ted with his speargun, Liam with his police revolver. But Zoe was calm and resolved. “Put the weapons down. I cannot tell you what it will look like if I fire into Vanessa’s flesh and blood and bone!” She said the last with relish.
Liam held on to his gun for a moment.
Suddenly, he stiffened.
“Down, my friendly neighborhood cop,” Bill Hinton said. “Set it down, come on now, good cop! Zoe, go on, take her. I’ve got the situation here.”
“Hell, no!” Liam said. He spun quickly, but not quickly enough. Bill Hinton brought the butt of his gun down on Liam’s head with a savage vengeance and turned to shoot at Marty’s foot. Marty, stunned, let out a roar of pain and fell to the sand.
“I said to drop all the weapons!” Bill thundered. He turned his gun on Jaden. “She’ll look great with a shattered kneecap!”
The entire group was still. “Take her, and I’ll be right behind,” Bill said, his voice bizarrely gentle as he spoke to Zoe.
“Hey, I’ll be all right,” Vanessa said. “We’re just going for a little walk in the woods.”
Her heart was racing. She saw the trapped fury in Sean’s eyes, and she was afraid that he’d wind up dead in the sand himself if she didn’t defuse the immediate situation. “Please, stand back,” she begged Sean. “I’ll be all right.”
She wasn’t going to be all right. She couldn’t believe that Zoe—who had cried in fear of what she had done to Barry that day—could be this person. But she had been fooled—Zoe was petite, delicate. Zoe was a murderess, apparently. And she had probably managed to spring the door on purpose, knowing it would bring a weakening of the ranks.
Zoe dragged her into the trail where she had first traveled to find Carlos.
Zoe meant to kill her, just as she had killed Georgia Dare. It wasn’t for money. It was because she had become strangely…possessed.
Sean made a dive into the sand, rolling to retrieve his weapon.
In all honesty, he wasn’t sure if he would make it or not.
But it didn’t matter.
Just as Bill started to rage at him, his attention distracted as he tried to take aim at Sean, something came leaping from the tent behind Liam’s prone body—something! A whir of motion and of fury.
Sean got his hands on his gun just as Carlos Roca brought Bill down to the ground. Bill twisted, trying to aim his gun at Carlos Roca’s face.
Sean fired, as carefully as he could, praying that his aim would be true.
It was. Bill Hinton screamed in agony as his hand exploded and his gun went flying. Carlos Roca did not find mercy at that cry of pain. He slammed a bone-crunching fist into Hinton’s face, and the cry was cut off cleanly. Hinton was out.
“Jesus!” Jaden cried, almost sinking to her knees, then rising, going one way, and then the other, not certain whether to see to Liam or Marty first.
“Liam!” Ted suggested, and they crossed one another as Ted raced to Marty and Jaden hurried on to Liam.
Jake Magnoli stood in the middle of the group, his jaw wide with astonishment and horror.
“Zoe? Bill?” he breathed.
Jay had been frozen in place. He moved, pacing, looking at Sean. “She’s crazy. She’s got to be crazy. She’s got Vanessa. Why Vanessa?”
“We’ve got to hurry, track them, run…!” Lew Sanderson cried.
“No! No, we have to track them, but she can’t see us,” Sean said. “She’ll kill. I know she’ll kill. We have to take her by surprise.” He looked up. Bartholomew was at the start of the trail. He looked at Sean, and he began to run into the darkness of the pines.
“She can’t hear us, she can’t see us!” Sean said. “Carlos…come. Lew and the rest of you, stay here. Help Liam and Marty. Call for the authorities!”
He ran toward the trail, his heart thundering.
Zoe? Zoe Cally? The little bitty blonde…
The little bitty bloodthirsty blonde.
“All right, I admit to being incredibly confused,” Vanessa said, trying to keep her voice calm and her words conversational. “I did figure out the truth behind Dona Isabella, right? What I’m trying to understand is how on earth you came to be so…”
“Crazy?” Zoe asked. “I’m not crazy. She’s here. She is the power of the sea. Eventually, she’ll reward us, and we’ll live like royalty within her realm!”
“What are you talking about? She made you kill people. You ruined your own work with the movie—”
“Oh, right! The only people who would have made money on that movie were you and Jay,” Zoe said. “While Dona Isabella…you must understand. She thrives on blood, she needs so much blood in the sea. Souls are good, too, but she really likes a good machete massacre.”