“Because as she continually refused to leave, her brother-in-law formed the idea that she was living in sin with one of the local people, and not only that, that she had betrayed her husband. And so he tricked her. He said he would leave, if she would promise to wave him off from the lookout. That was how she came to be there, on another sultry afternoon, with a storm brewing. And that was where he pushed her into the ocean, as repayment for the disgrace he thought she’d brought on the family. And of course, so that he and her brother could take over the lease, prosperity at her expense. And that of the local people. Within a generation, you see, they were all gone from the island. The only reason the story survived is that one of them did, over on the mainland.”
Erin listened, horrified, yet somehow she knew this was the truth. “That can’t be what happened,” she whispered.
“Why? Because it’s not a happy ending?” asked Anna. She shook her head. “Bella’s story is not about happy endings, nor even about extraordinary life. It’s about injustice. That’s why she watches us from the Leap – as a restless guardian. So, there you are Alex. Now you know. So you go ahead and work out how to wake up, because for certain this here is an injustice.”
A silence settled. Alex’s hand was warm where Erin held it, her body as rigid as his was limp. Nothing had changed, but the weight of Bella’s story settled uncomfortably on her heart. If that was what had truly happened ... if someone as brave and unusual as Bella could fall to the forces against her, then what hope was there? Erin felt the woven pattern of the hospital blanket against her forehead. Anna’s hand came against her shoulder, and she couldn’t help feel her mother was really preparing her for the worst.
Erin woke with a jerk some time later, the blanket pattern now a painful score across her cheek. Around her, the ward was the same white, green and electronic blur. Alex slept on. She stumbled blearily out and stood in the long hall where a window overlooked the car park roof to a wedge of the shore and ocean. But seeing that expanse of blue couldn’t temper the awful gloom growing inside her.
She went back to the bedside where a few minutes became an hour, and more, until darkness settled. She rose only for the evening ward round at seven, when the nurse encouraged her to get something to eat before the cafeteria closed, and showed her the way down the staff stairs so she could avoid the media hovering outside the front doors.
It was on the walk back upstairs, with a barely-touched cold toasted sandwich wrapped in foil, that Erin pulled her phone from her pocket and switched it on. Three messages from Travers had come through. Wearily, Erin leant against the wall next to the stair door to call him back.
“You might want to come back to the island,” Travers said when the call connected.
“I’m not leaving here.”
“It’s important.”
“Alex is still unconscious,” Erin said, putting a hand to her forehead. “Besides I’m not responding to any more vague requests to come to the island. I did that for Skye, and look at how that turned out!”
“Fine. What about coming back to see what really happened on that boat?”
Erin suddenly felt very awake. “What are you talking about?”
“You remember weeks back, when I had my gear tampered with? Well, I’m not a trusting sort of person. I put cameras in my cabin, and a few other places. And there’s something interesting here.”
Erin sighed, her energy tank empty even of fumes. “Forget it, Travers.”
“If you don’t help me decide what to do, I’m calling the police,” he said.
A jolt restarted Erin’s heart. “Why?”
“Because I don’t think what happened was an accident. Skye and Tristan are both back here. I know how important he is to the island. I don’t want to be wrong about this.”
But the island couldn’t be further from Erin’s cares, especially when she spotted her mother coming back down the hall. “I’ll call you back,” she told him, without any intention of doing so.
But as she approached the ICU, she nearly ran into the nurse coming the other way.
“Oh, Erin, I was just coming to find you.”
Erin’s skin tightened. Here it comes.
But the nurse smiled. “The doctor has decided to wake Alex up. He’s breathing on his own now.”
In disbelief, Erin followed the nurse back to the beside, standing back while the team removed the tube and carefully brought Alex round. He still didn’t seem like himself, but the moment his fingers moved, Erin clapped her hand across her mouth. Oh my god, was he going to be all right?
The next moment, she had her hand in his. “Alex, it’s Erin.”
He made a low sound, his head turning towards her. He still seemed half-asleep but it was a miracle, more than she could ever have imagined. Dr Bailey pulled a chair in beside her.
“Now, it might be slow for a while,” she said. “He’s going to feel pretty awful, and we don’t know yet how his body has been affected. Those things we’ll work out gradually.”
But all Erin cared about was that Alex had woken up. That he could hold her hand. And even when he went back to sleep most of the night, she stayed where she was. The next morning, Erin woke cramped at the beside, and was surprised to find him looking down at her.
“You’re awake,” she said stupidly.
A tiny, lopsided smile. “I hear I’ve been ... sleeping a while,” he said. His voice was rough, and he grimaced.
“They said your throat would be raw,” Erin said, “so don’t talk.”
“I’ll get used to it,” he said slowly. That tiny grin again. He lifted a finger slowly to point at her. “You look funny.”
Erin ran a hand over her face and again found the indentations of the blanket and sheets. Coupled with the fading bruises on her face, she could only imagine the stunning sight she must make. But it hardly mattered.
“I promise I’ll go clean up when you’re next asleep,” she said, allowing herself to smile.
He shook his head. “Don’t want to sleep yet. Need a shave. And coffee.”
She laughed, relief making her giddy. “I think they call it designer stubble. And I don’t think they’re letting you near caffeine for a while.”
Another ghosted smile on his face, then his expression turned serious. “Erin ... how did I get here?”
“To the hospital? You flew over in a helicopter.”
Another shake of his head. “No. I mean. What happened?”
Erin glanced towards the nurse’s station. “What did they tell you?”
“Accident. Nothing else.”
Erin took a breath, thinking, careful. “What do you remember?” She squeezed his hand. Alex stared up at the ceiling, his eyelids red.
“Going to see Helmut. Then ... nothing.”
“Nothing?”
A tiny shake of his head. “I start to think I remember, and then I ... get confused. I think about … that other time.”
“You’ll get it straight, don’t worry,” Erin said, but the assurance she gave him she didn’t feel in her heart.
She spoke Dr Bailey later, who was pleased with Alex’s progress, but warned Erin again that there could be rough days ahead.
“His memory may recover, but it might not either. And he could have insomnia, or headaches. And of course there’s always the risk of depression. It’s not uncommon in people with a head injury, though Alex has several points that favour him avoiding it.”
“Like what?”
“No problems with alcohol, his stable job before the accident, and his high level of education.”
Erin chewed her lip. “Do you know about his other accident?”
When Dr Bailey’s eyebrows lifted in question, Erin had to outline the crash that Alex had described in Hawaii, and how it had affected him afterwards.
“We didn’t know about that,” she said slowly, when Erin had finished. “Oh, man. How unlucky can you be? He always seemed so level and calm ... well, I never would have guessed. We’ll be keeping a c
lose eye on how he’s doing.”
Now the immediate danger seemed over, Erin was left with the consequences of the incident for everything else around her. From what the nurses told her, the media scrum was still outside, and at least one journalist had been ejected while trying to sneak into the hospital. Erin had been absent from work for several days now. Tristan would probably think the publicity was a good thing, but the idea made her ill. So did what Skye knew. And now, Travers was saying something about the incident.
Erin finally called him back.
“You’d better not be wasting my time,” she said. “And it’s going to be late afternoon before I can get on the shuttle.”
“Don’t even think about walking out the front doors of the hospital,” Travers said. “It’s a reporter madhouse. Get in a taxi out the back and head down to search and rescue. I’ve got a buddy there with a powerboat. He’ll run you over, and I’ll be waiting at the jetty.”
Erin paused. “Not planning on taking over the world, are you Travers?”
“Not until Sunday.”
Chapter 27
Travers was wearing a pair of dark glasses and leaning on the end of the jetty when the powerboat finally cut its engines. The owner, Charlie, was a jovial type who didn’t seem in the least fazed to be taking a solo passenger at top, bone-jarring speed across to Haven. Erin expected a dozen questions, and then found he asked none. The engines and the wave shocks were too loud to talk over anyway.
Charlie didn’t hang around. As soon as Erin’s feet hit the dock, the power cruiser executed a neat circle and sped away. Travers already striding off, leaving Erin to follow.
“How’s Alex?” Travers asked, when she caught up.
“You’d know if you’d stuck around,” she fired back.
He compressed his lips. “It’s not that I don’t care. But this is important.”
His tone was enough to keep Erin quiet until they reached his cabin. Inside, she found that his coffee table had been seconded as an electronics bench, the TV pulled in close with a tangle of wires connecting a number of different boxes.
Travers walked a circuit of the room, peering through each window before he sat down. Erin watched him with her eyes narrowed.
“Really? We playing secret agents now?”
“Pay me out all your want, Erin, but you have no idea what sort of guy Tristan is and what resources he might have. It pays to be careful.”
Erin threw up her hands. “I’m angry at him, too, Travers. It was a stupid thing he did, and I can’t forgive him for it. But this is all ...”
She broke off as Travers pulled up pictures on the TV, grainy images of a room with a desk. It only took her a few minutes to recognise the location. “That’s Tristan’s office in the resort.”
“Yes,” Travers said, clicking on. Another view showed the inside of the portable meeting room. The next was another shot of the resort, though Erin had trouble working out where exactly. Then a view over the airstrip. Then a clear one of the main beach, looking down towards the resort and Bella’s Leap – that one must be on the end of the jetty. Then two more of the jetty itself.
“Now, watch.”
And so Erin did, while he played a sequence of videos. Alex coming down from the headland, walking along the beach. Talking with Tristan, their silent mouths moving. Alex turned his body, clear in his intent to leave, but then Tristan said something. Alex squared his shoulders. Then the two of them disappeared down the jetty, and onto Tristan’s boat. Erin’s skin prickled with goosebumps.
“Now, watch this from three hours earlier,” Travers said.
Travers rewound and showed her Tristan sitting in his office, watching at the window. The time spinning in fast forward over hours, until Alex went past down the beach towards Helmut’s. And then, Tristan going to the jetty, and waiting and waiting until Alex came back. Patiently. Calmly. Waiting.
Stalking.
“How did you even put a camera in Tristan’s office?” Erin said faintly.
“Let’s just say before I was a medic, I did many other things for queen and country.”
Travers paused the shot of Tristan on the jetty, just as Alex entered the frame again, and pushed his chair back. “I’m only sorry that I didn’t wire his boat, too. Because there’s no way what happened was an accident. I don’t believe it. Tristan planned it. Very carefully.”
“You expect me to believe that he planned Alex to go overboard?”
“You saw the tapes.”
“They don’t prove anything,” she said.
“There’s more. We need to go over to the clinic.”
So Erin followed Travers to the clinic, which seemed dark until she walked in and found someone in a waiting-room chair.
“Helmut!” Erin exclaimed, as the old painter rose and kissed her on both cheeks, only the plaster on his throat evidence of his life-threatening illness.
“Erin,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. But his eyes were grey and serious.
“Go ahead,” Travers said. “Tell Erin what you saw.”
Ten minutes later, Erin left the surgery with the glow of white rage lit behind her eyeballs.
“Erin, wait,” Travers hissed as he dogged her heels. “I didn’t clue you in so you could fly into a revenge spiral. At least think about what you’re going to do.”
Erin reached the edge of the old resort fence with Travers still jogging to keep up and snapped at him to stay put. She wasn’t having someone standing behind her. Then she was through the fence, past the meeting room, and into the old overgrown courtyard.
The door of Tristan’s office was slid half-open, and she heard voices inside. Slowing at the threshold, she saw Skye perched on the edge of Tristan’s desk, a pencil stuck over her ear and a sheaf of papers in her hand. Tristan himself was on his feet, as though he’d been pacing, his face pinched. Both of them looked up as Erin tripped in the doorway.
Recovering, Erin caught Skye’s scowl and Tristan’s guarded expression.
“Can we help you?” Skye asked, icily.
“I need to talk to Tristan.”
Erin could feel how wide her nostrils were, how she was drawing breath like a racehorse after The Cup. She caught her reflection in Tristan’s television; she looked wild, a sea monster beached after a storm.
“Are you feeling all right?” Tristan asked. And for just a second, Erin’s resolve faltered. The concern in his voice was so genuine. She could hardly imagine he was the same person in Travers’ video, or in Helmut’s description. It took a moment to remember how he’d turned on her once, too, and that Alex was still lying in his hospital bed. She sucked a breath, the air damp and smelling of stale coffee grounds from the machine.
“I just wondered,” she said, “how you think you’re going to get away with it.”
“Erin, we’re trying to work here,” Skye interrupted.
“Is this more of that environmental bullshit from the nosy diver boy?” Tristan cut across Skye. “Do we have to go through it again?”
“Ignore her, Tristan,” Skye said, putting a proprietary hand on his arm. “She doesn’t care about the island. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself.”
Erin’s gaze moved between the two of them. She saw the devotion in her sister’s eyes and felt sick for her. Skye was smarter than this; she’d always been the one with the sharp observations and the cutting opinions.
“I’m not talking about that,” Erin said.
Skye now tried to turn Tristan back to their work, shutting Erin out. “I think we should call Marcus again,” she said. “Really try to hammer them.”
Bad idea, Erin thought, just as Tristan shook Skye off, and not gently. He hated being pushed around.
“Stay out of this, will you Skye?” he said. “I can handle this myself. So take off and let me deal with it.”
His anger was like a guard dog’s snap: sudden and savage, before he jerked it back on some kind of control chain. Skye flinched. After a hurt pause, she pushed past E
rin, but not before Erin could see the fear in her eyes. Maybe that was the first time she’d seen him this way.
Erin could only hope.
“What the hell are you going on about?” Tristan growled, when Skye had gone. “You’re my Racing Director and you just take off for days. If this was a normal arrangement you’d be out the door.”
Erin stepped across the room, keeping the desk between them, choosing her words. The idea of working for him again was so far from her mind. “How come you haven’t asked me the most obvious question yet?”
Tristan seemed to take this as a reprieve. He smiled, clearly thinking she was playing. “What’s the most obvious question?”
“‘How’s Alex?’”
“I’m hardly be interested in your boyfriend’s health.”
“No. I suppose not. Especially after you tried to murder him.”
There was a pause, then Tristan actually laughed. A deep, hearty unbelieving laugh. He wiped at the corner of his eye with his knuckle. “Oh, wow, Erin. Haven’t you been dreaming up some fantasies. I wish I could tell you that I cared so much that I tried to off the bastard, but he just can’t sail for shit. You have to avoid the boom when you’re running down-wind.”
He was taking such a perverse pleasure in it, Erin felt her stomach bottom out, wondering how deeply this malevolent streak ran in him.
“The boom, yes. It’s much harder to avoid a swinging grappling hook.” She held his gaze, looking for some flicker that he was rattled. “Someone saw you, Tristan. They saw what really happened.”
Tristan only laughed harder, but it sounded forced now. He leaned a hand casually on the desk, the other sliding into his pocket. “You’re being taken in by a shyster, Erin. I would have thought you were smarter than that.”
“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about Skye. She doesn’t know about your temper, does she?”
Tristan’s smile flickered. “On the contrary, she has been very useful. Not much of a lay, though, I’d have to say. Nothing like you.”
On a Starlit Ocean Page 26
