Eyes of Fire

even appreciate the fact that her head was on a pillow. Her legs were free, stretched out on a boat bunk. She had the sensation of close confinement and imagined that the boat had to be some kind of sport vessel, somewhere between twenty and forty feet, with perhaps a master’s and a guest cabin. The movement that rocked her made her think that she was in the aft of the boat—the guest cabin, perhaps? The bunk was center of the aft section, bolted down.

She struggled to free her wrists. She was bound with some material that wasn’t rough, like rope, but that seemed even stronger than rope might be. The more she struggled, the tighter her bounds seemed to get.

“I tie good knots.”

The strange, husky whisper startled her. She went dead still, listening.

Breathing. Slow, easy, even breathing. Near her. Very near her.

“Who are you? What do you want?” The words should have been forceful, adamant. Show no fear, she told herself.

But, of course, she was terrified. And the words were neither forceful nor adamant. They were a bare whisper.

“Who the hell are you?” That was better. “Other than a complete ass, because you can’t possibly get away with this.”

“I can, easily, because that storm is moving in much more quickly than you might imagine. And let’s see…”

There was a sibilant hiss to the words. They were drawn out, spoken very low. Deep. They had an edge that seemed to creep right beneath her skin.

“Let’s see…you fought with your lover, Miss Carlyle. Silly girl. So things aren’t always perfect with the ex-cop. But he’s a good lover, eh? Strong fellow. You should have stayed with him. He was trying very hard to protect you. But you know what, Miss Carlyle? The good guys don’t always win.”

“Who are you and what do you want?” she asked stubbornly. Her throat was bone dry. She was afraid to move. She was shivering, and yet she was surely dripping sweat. Her arms were beginning to feel painfully numb. She was beginning to feel a rise of absolute hysteria, desperate to get the blindfold off her eyes.

“I want you to dive, Miss Carlyle.”

“Why?”

“To take me to the Beldona.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“I know you can find her.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know where she is.”

“Well, then, Miss Carlyle, you can find the ship, or you can rest with her. Do you understand?”

Sibilant laughter seemed to touch and surround her.

Fear crept along her spine. Like a crawling maggot. One maggot, two maggots, dozens of them….

“Who in God’s name are you?”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you dive.”

“Dive—like my father?” she said. “Dive and wind up dead just the same? You can kill me now.”

No, no, no, she didn’t mean that. She didn’t mean that at all. In seconds she would start crying, begging for her life. She wanted to live. She wanted to run to the house and the bar. Maybe take another good swing at Hank, and then one at Adam. Then she would stand her ground. Find out just what was going on. Demand to know what had happened, who had known what, where Hank had been…

What Adam had known.

And why Adam had come. What was real and what was not.

“Kill you,” the voice mused.

She felt him come closer. Felt his breath. She started to twist and kick. Hard. She lashed out with her feet and caught some body part.

He swore.

Then something was slipped around her feet and pulled tight. A belt? It was lashed to something at the foot of the bed, and she could no longer move her legs.

“This is going to be a difficult position to dive from,” she managed to say sarcastically.

“We’re not ready to dive yet. Besides, didn’t you suggest that I just go ahead and kill you now?”

“I—”

“But I’m not going to kill you. Yet. You’ve got to bear in mind, Miss Carlyle, that there are many things that are worse. Much worse than death….”

Husky, warm laughter fanned her cheeks.

Then she felt a touch on her bare thigh, moving upward along it.

“There are much, much worse things….”

Adam burst into Sam’s cottage.

“Sam!”

No reply.

He ran through the house quickly, calling her name. “Sam, please, for the love of God, talk to me!”

Silence.

He came running out on the lawn just as Yancy ran up to him worriedly. “She’s not here?”

“No.”

“We can’t just panic.”

“We have to panic. I’m going to keep looking. You get Jem and Matthew out, tell them to search everywhere.”

Yancy nodded and hurried toward the other cottages. Adam looked at the house, his heart pounding. She was upset, furious with both him and Hank, he told himself. Just because he couldn’t find her that minute, it didn’t mean something bad had happened.

He started around the main house, feeling the coolness of the wind.

It was rising already, though the storm wasn’t actually due for another day. That was what Yancy had said.

But storms were moody. They didn’t always do what the weather forecasters said they were supposed to. They could quicken without warning. Their velocity could rise.

The air was cool. Definitely a portent of a storm coming.

“Sam!” He shouted her name. The sound of it was carried on the rising wind. The damp air brushed against his cheeks; the breeze lifted the hair from his brow. “Sam!”

No answer. He started jogging toward the path that led to the docks.

The night was dark. The grounds were illuminated by spotlights, but bushes, trees and the angles of the main house and the cottages cast huge pools of shadow and blackness here and there, Stygian voids like black holes in time and space.

“Sam!” he called again.

Where the hell had she gone? Adam swore to himself. He should have told her earlier, but he hadn’t really understood a damned thing himself, except that Hank had been taken and held in a warehouse for nearly a year. Communicating a hundred feet beneath the water when he had been half in shock hadn’t been easy, even with a dive slate. Besides, Hank had begged his brother to keep his secret until he’d seen Sam.

And now this.

He was a fool, an ass….

Too late. Where the hell was she?

He heard footsteps, feet running on the grass behind him. He swung around.

Jem and his young cousin, Matt, a slimmer version of Jem, were running toward him, Yancy following a little breathlessly behind.

“Have you seen her?” Adam demanded.

“No,” Jem said.

“The only thing we can do is go from cabin to cabin,” Adam said.

“Yancy said she was upset,” Jem said calmly. “Maybe she just wants to stay away from you, Adam.”

“I—” he began, then broke off.