Breach Of Promise

“There!” Nina shouted. “She dumped him! He must have been trying to swim away from her and got caught in the current.” Out beyond the cove, also caught in the drifting waters they saw him flailing, the dark orb of his head dipping below the surface.

“I’ll go after her,” she told Paul. “I’m not strong enough to lug Winston back. You get him.” She started to jump into the water, but he held her back.

“Let her go,” he said.

Nina looked at Genevieve in the boat, and back at Paul. “We can’t leave Winston out there.”

“I’ll get Winston.” He held on to her.

“You’re no good to me or anyone else dead!” Nina cried. “She’ll run you both down if I don’t stop her!”

With a look of agonized indecision, he let go.

Nina dove, swimming as fast as she could to cover the few short yards between her and the speedboat. In spite of the pain, she ordered her injured wrist into action, kicking furiously to make up for the weakness in her stroke. Behind her, she dimly noted splashing as Paul set off to rescue Winston.

Rain broke from the sky, battering the water below and the people in it. Wet already, Nina hardly noticed. Within seconds, she reached the boat. Genevieve was searching frantically for something. Alternately kicking, cursing, and screaming at the boat, she lurched from side to side and front to back. Within a few moments, she stood up, triumphant, key in hand.

Meanwhile, Nina pulled down the ladder by the propeller, straightened up, and hauled her dripping body into the boat, into air as wet as the lake, her injuries forgotten, feeling like a monster rising from the deep, larger and more powerful than the disheveled person facing her now.

In the fleeting seconds when they faced off, Nina could find not even a hint of the youth and charm and personality that was Genevieve. She faced a stranger.

“Genevieve, why?” she asked, rain running down her face, trying to give herself a moment to assess the situation so that she could decide what to do next to stall Genevieve and give Paul time to get Winston to safety. “The tension. You’re not well-”

“Remember that little private meeting we had way back when? She promised me three million dollars,” said Genevieve, twisting the boat key savagely.

“Who?” asked Nina, looking around for a weapon and discovering only one, the knife held fast in Genevieve’s free hand.

“Lindy.”

“Lindy bribed you to bug the jury room?”

“Of course not. She offered me a bonus if we won. That’s a perfectly legitimate incentive in the business world. Too bad I had to open my big mouth and go bragging to Winston about it before I knew Wright was going to cause me such trouble. Even then, Winston never would have figured out what I had done if you hadn’t found that damn bug.”

“Lindy knew about Wright?”

“She didn’t want details. She wanted to win. And she did, didn’t she? I won it for her and by God, I’m going to get my money out of the deal.” The engine started up. “You know I always thought I’d do like the other ants because that’s what I was raised to do. But I am my father’s daughter. I just couldn’t resist the opportunity when it came along.”

While Genevieve talked, Nina edged in closer. “What are you going to do now?”

“Take care of Paul and Winston first, then you.”

“I thought you cared about Winston. And even me, a little.”

“Stay back,” Genevieve commanded, stabbing the knife in the air toward Nina.

Nina backed up quickly.

“You’ve got to go, Nina. I was stupid, losing track of that microphone. But I can fix everything right here in the tragic boating accident that’s just about to happen. You accidentally run down your friends and take your own life. It’s feeble, but the only witness will add substantiating details.”

“The attack on Rachel Pembroke?”

“She was Mike Markov’s muse, and way too influential. Without her pushing him to fight hard against Lindy we’d have had a much better chance to win the trial. And of course, she was a crucial witness. I hid in the backseat of her car, thinking I’d get her alone and stage a suicide. But she spotted me and cracked up the car before I could do anything. Then Lindy showed up out of nowhere, so I never finished the job. So I decided to trust my usual research method, listening in on the jury. This was the first time I’ve had to intervene to such an extent. I really am very good at my job. No one could have predicted Wright’s change in attitude. It wasn’t my fault.”

She wouldn’t look at Nina, although she still held the knife poised in one hand. With her light hair pasted to her head and water streaming down her face, she looked half drowned, half something supernatural. Moving the boat around in a circle, she searched for Paul and Winston.

Nina couldn’t see them anywhere. Where were they?

“You know there are all kinds of old shipwrecks out there,” Genevieve said, “bits of flotsam from Vikingsholm on the bottom of the bay around here.”

“Please, Genevieve,” Nina said, eyes straining out into the rain, her fright reaching fever pitch.

“Maybe, if you aren’t drowned already, when you get to the bottom you’ll see something down there.” As Genevieve reached the end of the cove and open water, she said, almost to herself, “How did everything get so out of hand?”

Nina pounced, silently invoking God, ghosts in the lake, and anyone else who might take an interest, to help her shove Genevieve away from the wheel. Genevieve took the onslaught like a redwood, without budging. Swiping the knife efficiently, she slashed deeply into Nina’s arm. “Stay back,” she said, angling the boat out of the cove, “or I’ll cut your throat. There’s a perfect cemetery down there, one that never, ever reveals its secrets.”

Fighting tears brought on by the pain in her arm, Nina turned her back to Genevieve and took hold of the rope that still held Matt’s boat attached to the marina boat. The Andreadore bounced behind like a child’s sled on a suicide run down a mountain. She untied it awkwardly, using her slashed right arm since the left remained almost out of commission. Then, lifting herself to the edge of the seats, she jumped for it. One knee slammed into a bench, and the other collapsed under her as she came in for a landing.

Watching Nina get away, Genevieve cried out with frustration.

Amazingly, the key remained in the ignition of Matt’s boat. Fighting lances of pain in her arm, Nina turned the key and took hold of the wheel.

Nothing happened. The Andreadore had died without even offering up its usual nose-thumbing, the smell in the air of gasoline. Matt’s boat began to drift east, following the route of the kayak, going out to the big lake beyond.

But maybe it was okay, Nina thought. Maybe Genevieve would forget about hurting any of them, dock on land near Vikingsholm, and climb to the highway. Maybe she had a car stashed up there. She could be in L.A. by evening, gone from their lives forever, buried in its anonymous millions.

But even while she told herself this story with a happy ending, Nina didn’t believe it. Genevieve had come too far. She had listened in on the jury. She had already killed. Now she would collect her pay.

The same thought must have occurred to Genevieve because she turned the boat back toward the island.

Paul saw Nina reach the boat and heard voices, but he had no further attention to spare on Nina’s troubles. The cove was tiny, but once he reached the deeper waters beyond where he had seen Winston, he had to concentrate on locating the head that had resurfaced once already. Stroke, stroke, steady.

Out of breath, and so cold he had to remove himself mentally from his body to go on, he finally reached him.

Grabbing first by the hair, then by the shirt Winston still wore, Paul began to tow the other man. “Winston,” he said, gasping for air. “Can you help me at all?”

A gurgle, then a strangled voice. “My hands are literally tied, man!”

Genevieve had removed the ropes around Winston’s ankles but she had left the ropes Paul had tied around his wrists. Paul tried but could not remove them. He had done a very good job tying them. “I’m just going to have to drag you in,” he said.

“Get these ropes off!” Winston pleaded, frenzied. “I’m drowning! Get them off!”

“Hang on,” Paul said. He had no energy left, not enough to argue, and certainly not enough to lug a football player across this melted continent to safety. He began to kick his feet, trying to paddle with one arm.

“You’re going to kill me!” Winston sputtered, as his head dipped into the churning lake.

They had gone no more than fifty feet before Paul heard it: the motorboat returning.

Well, dark or not, Genevieve could see them easily. The moon had risen, and above the silvery water and raindrops he imagined his head as the light side of the moon, to Winston’s dark.

“We’re going down,” he said, “out of sight.”

Winston struggled violently until he was out of Paul’s grasp. Held aloft by sheer will, unable even to paddle, he faced the boat that was coming at them. “Augh! Augh! Genevieve stop!” he shouted. “No!”

Rushing at them like a locomotive, big as an ocean liner, the immensity of death obliterated their small horizon.

Nina watched in horror as Genevieve plowed straight into Paul and Winston. So immersed in emotion she felt she, too, had been hit by Genevieve’s boat, she twisted the starter on Matt’s boat like a crazy person who had only one obsessive task to attempt and never complete. After inspecting the water for the reemergence of Paul and Winston, Genevieve brought the boat around swiftly and started back for Nina. She planned to crash her speedboat into the Andreadore.

“Start, damn you!” Nina jammed the key into the ignition once again and twisted, but the boat did not start.

What had Matt said on their last trip out, while she squawked and complained and swore she would never get it? The boat will start. What starts the boat is not technique, it is confidence. Here’s confidence right here, see it? The black lever to the right of the wheel. Now take that confidence and mess with it. Give it a sip of gas. Move it here… She moved it, swiveling the key back and forth with her other hand. Nothing. Put it here, more toward the middle of the slot…

Genevieve was so close, Nina could see into her eyes. What she saw there moved through Nina’s body, making her tremble. She saw total concentration, pure violence coming at her. Why, those merciless eyes practically glittered with it…

The engine caught.

Swinging the wheel wildly to the left, Nina thought she could feel Genevieve’s cold breath as she passed, missing the Andreadore by inches.

With a few seconds’ grace, Nina turned to look at the cove. There, on the far edge, she saw two heads popping up with a huge splash. Paul and Winston. They had somehow managed to duck under the boat. They were still alive.

Crying out in pain, she swung the boat around, pitching in the wind and tipping way to the right, so close to going over she could count the foam bubbles forming around the raindrops on the surface of the water. She would get there first. She would save them all somehow.

Behind her, Genevieve advanced.

“It’s Nina!” Paul cried out. “She’s coming this way.”

“Nina?” Winston coughed. “She’s after us, too?”

“No!” Paul said. “She’s trying to lure Genevieve away from us.” The muscles of his arms were wired so tight to keep him and Winston aloft, he thought they might snap. “Genevieve’s not taking the