by Dale Mayer
“And how will we know?” Lennox asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’m just wondering if maybe his buddy saw something.”
“But would he tell? From what you’re saying, it seems like they tried to bring the two back together, meaning this guy is a friend of her ex. So would he talk in a deal like this? Especially now, after all this time as buddies?”
“More than likely he’ll say he doesn’t know what he saw.”
Lennox nodded, and they returned to the shelter, where the two women were sound asleep. He started up the little cookstove, while Keane went through the food and laid out what they had left.
“We’ve got plenty here,” he said, “even if we stay another day.”
“I hope you don’t mean that,” Sandrine said.
He chuckled. “So you’re awake, are you?” he asked in a teasing voice.
“I am,” she said, “but I woke up more chilled than when I went to sleep.” Smelling the frying fish, she asked, “Time for breakfast?”
“You’ll be sick of fish after this,” Lennox said.
She smiled and shrugged. “I’m alive. I’m safe, and you’re filling my stomach,” she said. “I don’t really care, and I’m particularly grateful that you’re cooking it first.”
At that, he laughed and said, “Well, you’re first up.”
And, using the same darn lid, she ate while he cooked the next fish. Brenda woke up next. As soon as she was up and settled back in after a trip outside, she sat beside Sandrine. Brenda had a smile on her face and said, “I know it’s been a pretty shitty couple days for you guys, but I don’t remember very much of it.”
“Well, hopefully there won’t be much more to remember,” Sandrine said.
“Well, I am remembering a lot of it. The whole thing is pretty shocking with everything that happened,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough for saving my life.”
Keane looked over to see her smiling at Sandrine.
“I couldn’t do any less,” she said.
“Now the question is, would you have done that on your own,” Brenda said, “or was it only because Scott pushed you?”
Chapter 10
“Did you see him?” Sandrine asked Brenda. “I wondered if I had imagined it,” she said, “I was standing on the side, hanging on to the lines, and he pushed me in. But I was afraid it was my imagination.”
“No,” Brenda said. “Remember? I was behind you, so I could see the two of you clearly. I wasn’t even sure what I was seeing. But he shoved you in and then stood there, with that look on his face.”
“What kind of a look?” Keane asked.
“Anger, joy, fury, almost vengefulness. I don’t know. It’s hard to say, since I was struggling in the water and, at the same time, trying to comprehend what I’d just seen.” She turned to Sandrine. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“For what?” Sandrine asked.
“For listening to Greg and trying to patch you two up again. Obviously Scott is not who we thought he was.”
“No,” she said. “He certainly is not. Besides, I told you on the boat why I broke up with him. I knew he and Greg were friends, and I didn’t want to complicate things for you guys, so I didn’t tell you the whole story earlier. I figured just saying that we broke it off and that I was moving on would be enough.”
“Greg took that really badly. He thought you guys were perfect together,” Brenda said.
“Yeah, except for the part about Scott being a lying cheater and apparently an attempted murderer,” Sandrine said quietly.
“What will you do about that?” Lennox asked.
She looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“What will you do about the attempted murder part?” he asked again, looking serious.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Is there any point in doing anything?”
“You can’t let him get away with it,” Brenda said. “He could try it again on someone else.”
Sandrine winced at that. “And yet, to go through pressing charges and maybe a trial, when it’s just an accusation in the midst of a storm, seems difficult. It could be twisted around so much. I can already hear what the attorneys would do to me. And you, since you’re a witness,” she said.
The two men were suspiciously quiet.
She looked at them. “What do you guys think?”
Their gazes were steady and strong, but Keane said, “Remember what you said to me earlier? About the things that you value the most?”
She nodded. “And?”
“How would you feel if he killed another woman?”
She glared at him. “Not fair.”
“No,” he said, “it’s not. But maybe you should think about it.”
Keane hadn’t wanted to bring it up, but, at the same time, they would face it and soon. He was wondering about that as they packed their gear, then got them all to where the coast guard long-range interceptor boat would land to pick them and their gear up.
Lennox called out at the top of his lungs, “Ahoy.”
Keane spun to see a boat approaching the small cove. He looked at the two women and said, “Stay here.” He raced to the shore. When he recognized one of the coast guard boats farther away, he smiled and waved. It took another ten minutes for them to gain the beach, and, at that point in time, he turned to see the two women and Lennox were halfway to him. When the three uniformed men hopped out, a lot of shoulder slapping and handshaking followed, but they were all good guardsmen and nothing like what Keane had been dealing with so far. “Before we leave, we need a confab,” he said.
One of them looked at him and said, “Oh?”
“Yeah. Plus, did you guys bring any body bags with you?”
The officer frowned. “No, I don’t think so, although there might be one in the storage kits. Why?”
Keane waited until Lennox joined him, and then, with the women standing and listening, he gave as clear an accounting as he could of what had happened since they’d arrived. All three search-and-rescue men stared at him in shock.
“Seriously?”
Keane nodded. “So the one guy took off, heading around the island to our left,” he said. “Presumably he’ll go all the way around, then turn south, but I don’t know that. His partner’s body was dumped in the ocean around the corner, and we have two up here.”
The guardsmen just stared at him.
Keane shrugged and said, “Come on. Let me take you up.” He looked at the other officers and said, “You might as well stay here, if you want.”
They shook their heads. “No. We’re with you all the way.”
Sandrine asked Brenda if she wanted to wait alone here at the beach.
“I’ll wait with Brenda,” Lennox stated.
After getting a nod from Brenda, Sandrine said, “Then I’ll come with you too, Keane.”
The conversation continued as the men asked question after question. Keane answered as well as he could, and even Sandrine chimed in with any answers she had.
By the time they made it to the small shelter, where Wilson sat with a bullet in his head, everybody stood in a circle of silence around the body. Then Keane pointed to where they had buried Adam. “So we have two here,” he said, “and they both need to be taken back.”
“Well, crap,” the one guy said.
“I know. It hasn’t exactly been what we thought we were signing up for.”
“And the Zodiac that you took to land?”
“It’s around the beach, unusable,” he said. “We’ll take you there too. But, between here and there, we should find another body around the rocks.”
“We can try to retrieve that one.” One of the men stepped back and brought out his phone. “I’ll walk back to the interceptor and call the cutter. We’ll need a second boat out here and some body bags. We’ll do a full recovery.”
Keane nodded and watched as he walked away.
The other two guardsmen walked into the little shelter, then stepped back out a
gain, studying the makeshift doors. “Somebody went to a lot of effort, yet I can’t imagine how long this has been here.”
“I don’t know,” Keane said. “The wood is old but must have been brought here. Those are two-by-fours and one-by-sixes.”
The men nodded. “Looks like old barn boards.”
“Maybe, but it was built deliberately. Smugglers?” Keane asked.
“It’s hard to say. Maybe this was a good place for meetings. I don’t know.”
“Wow,” another said, studying it. “We’ve seen some interesting islands, but this one takes the cake.”
“I’d just as soon get off this one,” Sandrine said, yawning. “I admit to feeling a little bit like the ocean waves out there. Kind of battered and blown against the rocks.”
Understanding crossed the men’s faces. “You’ve had quite the time of it.”
“I have, indeed,” she replied.
Keane wondered if he should mention what had happened to her or leave it for her to bring up, when one of the coast guard guys smiled at her and said, “That’s okay. You’ll feel better when you realize that your boyfriends are on the coast guard ship.”
Sandrine stared at him in shock. “Both of them?”
“Yep, both of them.”
She glanced toward the shore, where Brenda was. “I’ll tell Brenda,” she said, shooting Keane a worried look, then racing toward the beach.
“She looked happier for her friend than for herself.”
“Yeah. A bit of a story comes with that,” Keane said. “It’s not really my story to tell, but the guy is her ex-boyfriend,” he said. “They broke up a while ago, and the other couple was trying to get them back together on this trip.”
The guy whistled. “Well, that didn’t go as planned.”
“Not even close,” Keane said. “And there’s more. She believes her ex pushed her off the boat in the first place.” Both men stared at him. He nodded. “Again, not my story to tell and I don’t know if she’s willing to bring it up or to go any further with it, but let’s keep an eye on the ex-boyfriend.”
“Jesus,” the one officer said. “Hasn’t she gone through enough already?”
“That’s partly why I hesitated to bring it up,” he said. “The event was witnessed and independently corroborated by the other girl, by the way.”
“Wow, that’s crazy. He’s been incredibly friendly and seemed worried about her,” one man said.
“I hear you,” Keane said.
“That doesn’t mean a whole lot to me at the moment though,” the other man replied.
“Right,” Keane said. “But we don’t know if it’s because he wants to know if she remembers or if he’s looking for a second chance to kill her.”
“Well, that he doesn’t get,” one said.
“No way,” said the other.
“I know. I’m giving you a heads-up, just in case.”
“Appreciated,” he said. “And you didn’t shoot these guys, right?”
He shook his head. “Lennox shot the one buried over there, but that’s because Adam was firing on them at the time.” Keane pointed to the bullets still slammed into the wooden doors.
“I noticed those,” the man said. “What the hell? It’s bad enough they ended up in the water in the first place, but to get rescued only to end up on a deserted island like this and have the people who saved your life turn crazy and try to kill you is too much. Not to mention their smuggling buddies coming back and trying to kill you all too.”
“It’s been a hell of a couple days,” Keane said. “They cut my rope when I was rappelling down, so I took a hell of a fall. Lennox got shot and slammed over the head.” He studied the man in front of him and the little shelter. “I, for one, won’t be sad to leave this place either, and I’ve been here a lot less time than the women.”
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
“It is. Have you been on this island before?”
“Yeah, we’ve done a couple training expeditions here, but not on this side. We were on the south side.”
“Right,” Keane said. “It’s pretty vast and has lots of different plateaus. Different levels and little pathways. Some man-made but some natural from what I can see.”
“Right,” the guy said. “We weren’t exactly sure of some when we were here before, but, like I said, we weren’t in this little cove.”
The other coast guardsman added, “I remember riding past it, but I don’t recall seeing any shelter up here.”
“It’s so far up that we wouldn’t see it from shore,” the first replied.
Just then the other group at the beach walked back toward them. Keane studied Sandrine’s face, but she had her head bent toward Brenda, the two of them talking back and forth.
“So, the other one is Brenda, and she’s the admiral’s daughter?” one of the coast guardsmen asked.
“Yeah, and it’s a damn good thing that we found them,” Keane said. “Brenda has quite a head injury. She’s doing better now, but she’s still very weak.”
“We can get her to the coast guard ship and give her a medical checkup there,” he said. “She can go back with us first.”
“Agreed,” Keane said.
“Good enough for me,” the coast guardsman said. “I guess what we should do is get the women back, and then we’ll get the rest of this collected.”
Keane nodded, his bags already packed. He said, “You want me to stay here and give you guys a hand?”
“I think, once we get everybody back on the boat,” he said, “we’ll take a run around to see if we can pinpoint where that body in the water is. There’s a chance it’s not even close to the island anymore,” he said. “The turbulence and currents out here could have taken him anywhere.”
“I could see him from up above, and, when I came down, he was already getting churned up, so I’m not sure where he is now,” Keane said.
“Right. Let’s go.” Then he looked at the two women, smiled and said, “Are you good to go?”
“Absolutely,” Brenda said. “I wouldn’t mind sleeping on an actual bed for a bit.”
“Well, we’ve got a doctor on board the main ship,” the coast guard officer said. “He’ll take a look at your head and make sure you’re good to go. Then we’ll definitely find a bunk with your name on it. Not the most comfortable, as beds go, but, compared to the floor of that shelter, you’re gonna love it.”
“That’s the best news yet,” she said. “And, as much as I love getting fed, fresh fish would never be my first choice.”
“Hey, I thought I did a good job,” Lennox said.
She looked at him with half a smile and whispered, “You did an excellent job. I just happen to hate fish.”
At that, he looked at her in shock, then laughed. “Well, you were a good sport about eating it anyway,” he said.
“That’s because I didn’t have any choice,” she said. “I knew I needed to eat something in order to keep up my strength. So thank you very much for what you did for us.”
“Not a problem,” he said. “It was fun.”
“If you say so.” She smiled and carried on, walking slowly toward the beach.
Keane watched as she went, only to realize that Sandrine stood beside him.
In a low voice, she whispered, “Did you tell them?”
He looked down at her. “I mentioned it. Yes.”
She wrinkled her face up at him.
“We’ll make sure that you stay safe on the ship,” he said. “This guy won’t get a second chance to hurt you.”
Her shoulders sagged as she looked at the uniformed men. Then asked, “What if I’m wrong?”
“Come on. You heard what Brenda said.”
Sandrine sighed and said, “I just wish you hadn’t mentioned it.”
“I’m sure you do, but remember? Honesty, right?”
“Okay, fine. He’ll probably avoid me anyway.”
“Well, we’ll see,” he said. “Are you planning on going back with them?�
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She shot him a horrified look. “Are you kidding me?”
“Just asking,” he said. “Maybe absence made the heart grow fonder.”
“Not likely,” she said. “Besides, we have a thing going.”
“We do?” he asked cautiously. But the coast guard guys were ahead of them, making plans, out of earshot, and she had looped her arm through his, as they brought up the rear.
“Obviously,” she said, as she raised her face to the sun. “Not exactly sure what this thing is. But it sure eclipses anything I had with Scott.”
“Really?” Keane felt inane for not coming up with a better answer. Where was the suave can-do attitude now? But something about this woman always caught him sideways.
She squeezed his hand. “That’s okay. Big strong silent types like you don’t have to talk much.”
“That’s not exactly what I was thinking.”
“Or am I crazy? Is this my imagination?” She stopped, stepped in front of him and frowned. “Am I?”
“Are you what?” He spoke cautiously, easily recognizing the pitiful yawning silence in front of him.
“Am I off my rocker? Am I crazy to think something is between us?”
He gave her a special smile and whispered, “No. You’re not. But I don’t even know where you live. I don’t know anything about you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “What if we both don’t think that love, honor and loyalty are important?” Her quirky smile meant she was teasing him.
At those words, something inside him settled. He nodded. “You’re right. We could both think that lying cheating assholes were people we wanted to spend time with.”
She twisted her face up and said, “Ow. Sure glad you’re joking. That was a pretty painful experience.”
“I’m sure it was,” he said gently. “But listen. I’m not the cheating kind.”
“Neither am I,” she said, then kissed him gently on the cheek. “And see? We’ve got this thing between us.” With that, she entwined her arm with his and walked toward the beach.
