originally.
Even the thought of retracing her route through acres of almost impenetrable vegetation-sharp-edged saw- palmettos, creeping ground ivy, foul-smelling skunkbush-exhausted her. But she would have to do it. And hope that Jack wasn’t lurking in ambush somewhere along the way.
She was retreating toward denser brush when a hoarse whisper stopped her.
“Kirstie.”
Frozen, huddled behind a clump of groundsel-tree, she listened.
“Kirstie, are you out there?”
Steve didn’t seem to see her. He was just calling her name at random.
She waited, afraid to move and possibly draw his attention. It was a strain to hear him; his rasping stage whisper was barely audible.
“I shot Jack. But he’s not dead, only wounded. And… he’s got the gun.”
Could it be true? Had Steve rebelled against Jack, redeemed himself? Skepticism competed with a desperate desire to believe.
“Jack’s looking for me. Thinks I went north. But I doubled back to find you. I know you’ve come for the boat.”
A breeze kicked up, and she heard his jacket ripple like a sail. The sparkle of his glasses was the sole identifiable feature in the ink-blot enigma of his face.
“Show yourself. Please. I won’t hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. I’m not part of this anymore.”
But how could she accept that statement, how could she risk believing anything he said, when this could so easily be a trap?
Still, she had heard gunshots. She was sure she had.
“Please, Kirstie.” His whisper turned sibilant, a hiss. “You’ve got to trust me.”
Trust him? Did she dare?
A few minutes ago, she’d vowed never to trust another person. Now she was being asked to trust Jack Dance’s accomplice.
But he was something more than that. He was her husband.
And she did believe he hadn’t wanted to see her hurt. He’d intervened when Jack was slapping her around. Saved her life, probably.
Whatever his weaknesses and sins, he must still care for her. Now, repentant, he was offering a chance at escape.
“Kirstie? Can you hear me?”
She had to give him the trust he asked for, this one last time.
“Please.”
Had to.
Slowly she stood. She walked forward, out of the cover of the trees, onto the hard coral sand.
“Here I am,” she said in an answering whisper.
The glint of his glasses swung in her direction. “Thank God. Hurry up, get over here.”
She did not hurry. Her steps were slow and measured as she crossed the narrow strip of beach.
“Come on. Come on. ”
The dock was less than fifty feet away. She wished there were a moon. She wanted to see Steve’s face, study his expression. If she could look into his eyes…
Her sandals crunched on coral, a soft, gravelly sound. The sea breeze twined around her bare legs, groping like lascivious fingers. On the horizon burned the lights of Upper Matecumbe Key, distant as the stars, close as the boat that could take her to Islamorada and safety.
She had left cover behind. Here on the yards of bleached sand she was totally exposed, a slender target in a field of white.
Ahead, Steve waited on the dock, motionless, a swatch of night cut out of the larger darkness around him.
A bad feeling, a premonition of some kind, bobbed to the surface of her consciousness. Perhaps because Steve was standing so still, so deathly still, not running to greet her as she might have expected-or perhaps because she was so terribly vulnerable now, and more vulnerable with every forward step-whatever the reason, she felt suddenly as if she were walking down the center lane of a turnpike, traffic rushing at her, horns blaring, a quick, grinding death under a tractor-trailer’s giant tires only seconds away.
She slowed her steps.
“Kirstie! Dammit, what’s taking you so long?”
His strained whisper-something was wrong about that, too. She wasn’t sure quite what.
Time slipped into a lower gear. Seconds elongated, stretching like taffy. The world took on a fantastic clarity; every ripple of starshine on the water, every weave and pucker of the coral beach, every smallest detail of her environment was magnified, brightened, enhanced.
But still she could not see Steve’s face.
“Hurry up!”
She stopped.
There was no reason for it, no logic to it, or at least none she could name; but abruptly her legs would advance her no farther.
On the dock, a blur of motion.
Steve’s right hand peeling back the flap of his jacket. Something shiny in his fist, rising fast.
The gun.
Betrayal.
She pivoted, legs pumping.
Behind her: crack.
Puff of sand at her feet. Chips of coral stinging her ankles.
She ran for the brush, the trees. Just in time she remembered to zigzag.
Crack.
The second shot landed along the straight-line path she’d been running a heartbeat earlier.
Trees close now. Ten feet ahead.
Crack.
Rustle of leaves as the bullet whizzed past her head and struck one of the pines.
Near miss, that time. Inches.
She reached the trees, flung herself headlong into the brush.
Crack.
God, he was still shooting.
“Stop it!” she screamed. “Stop it, you son of a bitch!”
She scrambled wildly through the ground cover, plunging into a dense, concealing thicket of horse nettle, heedless of the plants’ slashing thorns.
Huddled there, shuddering all over, she waited for the next shot.
None came.
Perhaps he was following her. Moving in close for a surer kill.
She dared a look.
Steve remained on the dock. As she watched, he leaned over the side, aimed the gun straight down, and fired a single shot at the motorboat, puncturing the hull.
He was scuttling the boat. Denying her that means of escape. So he and Jack could hunt her down at leisure, take her life at will.
Shivering, she retreated deeper into the brush. She didn’t stop crawling until the dock was lost to sight, the undergrowth around her a solid barricade.
On her knees, she leaned against a rotted log, the corpse of a fallen magnolia. Large black beetles crawled on it. Some detoured onto her hand, her arm. She didn’t care.
“God damn you, Steve,” she said for the hundredth time, but with even greater feeling now.
He was every bit as bad as Jack. No, he was worse.
