Eyes of Fire

She was going to die, Sam thought, and she had just figured out what her father had known about the Beldona.

If given the opportunity, she could most probably find the ship.

Water lapped over her head again. She turned, trying to swim hard.

She heard the sound of a motor. She flipped over again, blinking against the wind and the rising sea. A boat was coming toward her. A flashlight was seeking her out in the waves.

Adam.

Adam had come at last…. “There she is!”

It was a woman’s cry. Sam blinked against the sea and salt. Oh, God. No.

Joey and Sue were standing portside, pointing at her. Joey’s little gun was thrust into the waistband of his swim trunks as he leaned over the wooden railing.

“There! There!”

Sue seemed to be reaching toward her.

Had they come to rescue her? Or put that bullet through her heart?

“Get her, Joey!”

She could slip beneath the surface. Let the sea take her.

She was tired. So tired.

Something tugged on her leg. Pulled her down. Oh, God! She panicked, choked.

A shark. That was what survivors said. That there was no pain at first, just a jerk, a sensation of being pulled downward. They’d never known what hit them, just looked down to see a pool of blood spreading around them….

There was no blood that she could see. Just the darkness of the water.

And another jerk. Hard.

Oh, God, so hard! She couldn’t possibly fight it. It was like a vise. She was being bitten right in two, and now she could feel the pain as she was tugged, pulled….

Pulled irrevocably downward into the cold, black, swirling void of the sea….

16

D own…

A shark.

Not a shark.

Adam.

He was in front of her in complete diving gear, thrusting his regulator into her mouth, drawing her downward. His arms locked around her, and despite the darkness, his silver-gray eyes met hers through the glass of his diving mask. They both kicked the water with their swim fins, moving through the silent, salty darkness of the sea, sharing the air from Adam’s tank with slow, practiced breathing. Sam didn’t know where he was taking her, and she didn’t care. It seemed that they were merely drifting in the chill blackness, but Adam seemed to have a strategy.

She was alive.

She had believed that he would come for her.

And he had.

He lifted a thumb, indicating the surface, then adjusted his buoyancy control vest, filling it with air. They kicked upward from the fifteen to twenty feet to which they had descended. She was grateful to see that they had come up just twenty or thirty feet from the Sloop Bee. The dive boat was rocking strenuously in the turbulence of the ocean. Adam pulled off his mask and spat out his mouthpiece.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded, then threw her arms around him. “You found me. Oh, my God, you found me. I didn’t think that anyone could find me in the wind, in the darkness…. I thought I was going to die. Oh, Adam, I didn’t want to die, but I kept thinking about my father. It must have been so horrible for him—but you came for me.” She clung to him with such energy that his vest couldn’t quite maintain them above the surface. She didn’t care. If they were to drown now, at least they would go together. She found his lips. They tasted of salt, but they were warm. He kissed her back, and his warmth filled her. She wasn’t going to die. She was going to live.

And she was going to love him.

Adam suddenly kicked the water hard, and they broke the surface again.

“You found me,” she whispered.

He smiled, inhaling deeply. “It wasn’t difficult. I had Jem head for the Steps. I was sure that was where they’d be.”

“Where did Joey and Sue get that boat?” Sam asked. The last word was a gurgle; she’d been hit by a wave.

“Hank stole it.”

“Hank stole it?” she repeated incredulously.

“He had to—to escape. He’d been kept in the garage of a marine company for a year. When he got out, he didn’t know who to trust, so he escaped to the water—and Seafire Isle. He left the boat in the harbor. Joey and Sue must have discovered it, and decided that it would make do for their own use.”

“I still don’t understand. Were they keeping Hank prisoner?”

Water slapped her in the face again. She was shivering; her teeth were chattering.

“Let’s get out,” Adam advised.

When they made it to the Sloop Bee, Yancy and Jerry North were at the ladder to help her out. She was instantly wrapped in a blanket, hugged, handed from person to person. And there were a lot of people—Adam, Yancy, Jerry, Liam Hinnerman, Jim Santino and Sukee. Behind them all, she saw that even Avery Smith was aboard.

Not Avery Smith. James Jay Astin. She had to remember that.

“Where’s Hank?” she whispered to Yancy.

Yancy explained softly that Hank was with the baby.

Sam looked around, not seeing Jem and Matt.

Adam read her mind. “They’re bringing the Emersons around,” he told her.

A cup of coffee was pressed into her hands. She accepted it gladly, sitting on the starboard side of the boat.

“I’m so grateful to be here, to be alive. To all of you for coming out, but I’m still so confused.”

Adam sat down at her side. “You certainly have every reason to be confused. Because just about everybody is guilty of something.”

Sam arched a brow. James Jay Astin cleared his throat and came around and sat on her other side. “Well, you know who I am,” he said. He looked forward, then at Adam, and then at Sam again. “Lew and Judy Walker have recently resigned from my employ.”

“What?” Sam gasped.

“They were working for Mr. Astin,” Adam explained evenly.

“But they’re actually good people, Sam. All they were trying to do was find the Beldona for me. They didn’t do a thing illegal. And neither one of them would ever harm you in any way.”

“What a relief,” Sam murmured. “So—neither of them knocked me out or killed my father?”

“No, of course not!” Astin told her. “And neither did I,” Astin said grimly. “I was your father’s friend, Miss Carlyle. That’s the absolute truth. I am sorry for the deceit we practiced. I beg that you forgive me.”

Sam nodded slowly. “You’re forgiven. All of you,” Sam said.

Jim Santino cleared his throat. “Sorry, Sam. I guess it’s pretty obvious. I’ve been trying to use you, too, to find the Beldona.” He hesitated. “I’ve been working for my dad, but honestly, I would never have hurt you, either.”

Sam nodded at Jim, then looked at Adam. “Who have you been working for?” she demanded.

He smiled. “Myself. Actually, I was using the Beldona to find you again. And my